EXIT Podcast Episode 20: The Ivy League (feat. Max Powers)

Transcript

Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast, joined here by Max Powers.

Speaker: Max is a bit of a jack of all trades.

Speaker: He spent some time in the corporate world.

Speaker: He's dabbled in entrepreneurship.

Speaker: He does some crypto mining.

Speaker: He owns a little rental property.

Speaker: But the main thing I want to talk about tonight is his experiences hiding his power level among our decadent globalist aristocracy.

Speaker: Welcome to the show, Max Powers.

Speaker: Oh man, great to be here.

Speaker: What an intro.

Speaker: I just hope that I can live up to that hype.

Speaker: So, uh, Max did some time in the Ivies and, um, had a pretty interesting experience there, but for starters, I want to talk about your dream, your vision of the future, where you want to be.

Speaker: Um, because you have a dream that's pretty interesting.

Speaker: Tell us a little bit about where you'd like to end up and why you think that's necessary.

Speaker: Well, really, really good question.

Speaker: So, um,

Speaker: You know, before I even found the exit group or anything, I, through some friends, kind of just, you know, I'll say started to realize where things were going, but started to realize the opportunities because of where things were going.

Speaker: And I basically had a dream to either be able to live

Speaker: they're exclusively part-time full-time whatever i want to do to be honest with you uh kind of in i guess one of the one of the bulking countries i have a like heritage claim which will give me kind of like full citizenship so that's pretty cool and obviously uh you know as a u.s citizen already you can you can have whatever dual citizenship you want which doesn't matter but uh just to be able to kind of come and go and also the country is obviously a little more i'll say

Speaker: based, I guess to use a way super simple term than kind of we're dealing with now.

Speaker: So just have the option to go to a place that's not going to like, I don't want to say kick me out of a job, but yeah, kick me out of a job or force a shot in my arm or try to make my kids cut off their genitals or things like that.

Speaker: All those types of things.

Speaker: You know, that's something that really excites me.

Speaker: So to be able to have a

Speaker: place in the mountains kind of over there.

Speaker: Just, I mean, who knows, maybe a place in the city too.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: That'd be awesome.

Speaker: But to just have options to be able to move myself and, you know, any family that I have, especially a family that I'm starting,

Speaker: to be able to do that and to kind of move freely.

Speaker: That's definitely the dream.

Speaker: Part of that is because, you know, I see where things are going and I certainly don't think things are getting better in the U S I think, Oh man, I mean, we get, this could be an entire podcast about how things are getting worse, but pick an aspect.

Speaker: You can pick any single aspect you want and things aren't getting better.

Speaker: And so that's,

Speaker: That's kind of my dream for that.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, and it's definitely true that as I think other societies are slowly opening up, you can definitely say things, for example, in China that you couldn't 20 years ago.

Speaker: And here you can say less and less.

Speaker: And we're sort of meeting in the middle.

Speaker: We have exit members that are in China.

Speaker: Oh, really?

Speaker: Because of the things that they want to say.

Speaker: those things are safer to say in China versus here.

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: Because as long as you're not, you know, criticizing the party over there, like they don't really care what your opinions are on most things.

Speaker: I want to say even when, when I was studying in school too, that I had a class on, on government, I think they touched on like the Chinese government.

Speaker: And I think it was, it was a study at Twitter, whatever it was.

Speaker: It was something about

Speaker: to where they even went so far as that you were more at risk of not even if you criticize the regime that was allowed to a certain level.

Speaker: It was that if you did it in a capacity that also then suggested or called for like collective action, basically like if you were just an atomized voice that was screaming in the void, they didn't really care because they understand that poses no threat.

Speaker: But the moment you want to try to collectivize or do something bigger, that's when they shut it down.

Speaker: And like, that's, it's always kind of stuck with me to be honest with you.

Speaker: And again, in some academic studies, how, you know,

Speaker: I don't know how valid it is, but at the same time, like it's, it's passing the smell test initially.

Speaker: That also seems like it's true.

Speaker: You know, like it makes sense.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, there's a billion of them.

Speaker: It's, it's hard for them to police all kinds of wrong thing, you know, except when they were in the throes of like violent sort of mob action to repress those things.

Speaker: But on like a, on like an ongoing, like,

Speaker: a bureaucracy to maintain ideological control.

Speaker: They really can't afford to be that picky.

Speaker: So speaking of ideological and institutional control, we just saw that Jack Dorsey stepped down in favor of Parag Agrawal, who says his role is not to be bound by the First Amendment.

Speaker: Yeah, I saw that.

Speaker: He's joining the Indian tech CEO mafia now.

Speaker: All the other ones, they're just ganging up together.

Speaker: Yeah, so suffice to say, he's a Stanford guy, so to speak.

Speaker: And you and I have talked about how elite education drives cultural change.

Speaker: So can you tell me a bit about the things that you saw among your graduating class and where they landed and the impact that that made?

Speaker: Well, the way that I always think about it, and I guess the way that's best for me to tell the story is that it wasn't really until I went through school, got out of school.

Speaker: Because while you're there, I mean, you're up and elbows with some of the high, like, you know, it was, yeah, very, very famous people.

Speaker: Sons of senators, like literally one's like a son of like a senator.

Speaker: And this grandpa's like the governor of a state.

Speaker: It was just like, it was pretty crazy.

Speaker: I saw him writing his name on...

Speaker: like on the attendance sheet and literally in a class earlier that day we learned about something like his grandpa as a senator passed and then I was like wait is that your dad he's like no that's my grandpa my dad's the governor I was like oh sick cool but so like you got some you got some interesting people but uh so like you kind of knew while you're there and you just get the air of like who you're around and it's uh you know a lot of people get high and it makes you feel pretty cool you're like oh you have to you know

Speaker: Being around those people, you feel special and you get out and you realize you're not really special.

Speaker: But I mean, some of those people stay special though because they do that.

Speaker: But the thing that struck me the most was that as, oh man, as I got further on and I got further from being in school, kind of further removed, I started to see two things.

Speaker: Both initially where these people filtered out from and even...

Speaker: And I just went to undergrad.

Speaker: So like I just saw from the undergrad level, the real power centers come from like the graduate level.

Speaker: But to be honest with you, at least half, if not three quarters of those people go to some sort of either IV or like very high tier kind of graduate school.

Speaker: And so I saw initially where they filtered out to and where they're continuing to filter out to.

Speaker: And it kind of blows my mind because people don't understand, nor do they understand,

Speaker: And it's not like it's like a, how do I put this without sounding like arrogant?

Speaker: It's not like in a way of like, oh, we're so cool.

Speaker: We control everything.

Speaker: But like people don't understand nor appreciate how much these people filter out into the highest echelons, almost immediately in the highest echelons of every single area of our society.

Speaker: It's legal.

Speaker: It's legislative.

Speaker: It's executive.

Speaker: It's entertainment.

Speaker: It's banking.

Speaker: It's obviously banking.

Speaker: It's banking.

Speaker: It's everything you can possibly.

Speaker: It's even startups, like even startups that are, it's,

Speaker: Man, it still blows my mind the very nature where you got some people.

Speaker: I remember just looking at people that are in, like I said, Mitch McConnell's office.

Speaker: Or they're clerking for the Supreme Court.

Speaker: You do that over and over.

Speaker: Or it's like late night TV show talk hosts.

Speaker: You just go over and over.

Speaker: I could go on like this forever.

Speaker: But you get the point as far as that goes.

Speaker: But anyways, how that ties on what we're talking about is that

Speaker: at least 25% of these people are like really like true believers.

Speaker: And those are the people that usually filter into like the NGOs or like the legislative or kind of like the legal system, the parts where you can really pull those like ideological levers of power.

Speaker: I would say there's probably another 25 that they go along with it, but like it's, I've dug into this a lot and it's only partly because for the, if these people are ready to wake up, they would have to like reinvent their entire life.

Speaker: And like, they're not,

Speaker: These people are like racehorses.

Speaker: They're very good at the purpose that they do, and they're very intellectually gifted, but you don't ever feel like there's a lot of authenticity.

Speaker: And so these people, those are the, those, that's a huge chunk of them.

Speaker: So those people go on to get along.

Speaker: But anyways, these people filter out into all of these things and they set the policy.

Speaker: I know like a lot of people like that it's America, it's bottom up.

Speaker: Like it's not though.

Speaker: It's not, I promise.

Speaker: Like it's not, it's not that way.

Speaker: And these people set it from the top down, whether it's like we said, the entertainment,

Speaker: or the legislative or the, especially financially, you know, I think talk about debanking people, you know, I know people at like black rock and blackstone, like all the, all JP Morgan, uh, Goldman Sachs.

Speaker: Like you just go on and on down the line.

Speaker: And it's, um,

Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Speaker: Well, especially the big ones are when they get into the Harvard Law.

Speaker: Those are all the people that become the governors or the senators.

Speaker: And they start smaller, so there's not too many that are there yet.

Speaker: But man, you give it like 10 years, you see how many of them there.

Speaker: And so it's pretty crazy.

Speaker: So they're clerking for the judges and essentially feeding them their rulings.

Speaker: They are working for the lobbying firms that write the laws that are then fed to the...

Speaker: legislators, you know, if they're involved in entertainment, they're making decisions about sort of what ideas are disseminated.

Speaker: There's

Speaker: there's almost no dimension of sort of mass media or institutional control that's not touched by these people.

Speaker: And that's why I wanted to talk to you because I'm interested in like what these people are like and who they really are.

Speaker: Because, you know, on Twitter, we have our view of what's like going on behind the scenes.

Speaker: And it's, you know, partly that's entertainment.

Speaker: We're just sort of schizo posting to pass the time and to make each other laugh.

Speaker: And partly it's sort of we are expressing what we really believe to be true, but we're expressing it in a way that's sort of daring people to take us seriously so we can call them a fag and tell them to go off.

Speaker: And there's definitely a cloak of irony on all this.

Speaker: But I got to imagine that being...

Speaker: so embedded in that culture and surrounded by those people, you had to have moments where you were like, surely they know, surely they can sense that I'm not one of them.

Speaker: And like, Oh man.

Speaker: Well, so yes and no.

Speaker: So when I got in there, I was still like, I don't know.

Speaker: I've always been like, kind of like more right wing on some things, like always growing up.

Speaker: I like, I don't know.

Speaker: I don't say like it's not big brain centrist, but like growing up, I've never in my entire life conceded on like like guns.

Speaker: I've always been comfortable with guns.

Speaker: Like it was never an issue.

Speaker: So I've never that was always kind of like a conservative foothold in my mind.

Speaker: But like I I grew up kind of liberal.

Speaker: And like so it wasn't until probably whenever the Republican primary was.

Speaker: I was not to put too much of a time on it here, but I was in school and this was when Donald Trump was going there.

Speaker: And I think it was down to like him and Ted Cruz.

Speaker: And I was sitting there and like, I didn't really know which way I was going to go.

Speaker: Because like I said, I was still kind of liberal, but I was like kind of like waking in the process of waking up.

Speaker: I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, I'm sure shit not going to vote for like Hillary Clinton.

Speaker: And so like I had been wearing a like a tank top that said like Donald pump, right?

Speaker: It was all those like stupid ones around campus.

Speaker: And I was getting these like these like stairs, dude, like death stairs, just stairs and cheers.

Speaker: And like, like, so I'm sitting there and like, I've always been a little bit of a troll at heart.

Speaker: And so like, dude, if I can get this from like a shirt, I wonder what would happen.

Speaker: I get like an actual like mega hat.

Speaker: So of course I got a mega hat.

Speaker: And, uh,

Speaker: So I go long story short, a couple of things.

Speaker: I was in this one, like one of those, like, it's kind of like pretty close at school there.

Speaker: And I was talking to a girl.

Speaker: And I had the hat on and I think she's in like Columbia or something like that.

Speaker: And we went to talk and they were talking about the hat.

Speaker: This poor thing's got like a little too contentious.

Speaker: And at one point I just stopped and I was like, this is when I was a little more like Sid Natty.

Speaker: And I was like, okay, if you're here, do you consider yourself like an American?

Speaker: She was like, no.

Speaker: I consider myself a Colombian.

Speaker: And like, like I didn't, I didn't mean this to come off like a dick.

Speaker: I was literally just like, well, then why don't you go back to Columbia?

Speaker: They didn't, they didn't like that very much, but it's an honest question.

Speaker: It's like, you don't want to be like, why, why are you here?

Speaker: Get out of here.

Speaker: But, uh, so that was one.

Speaker: And then there was another one where, uh, I literally, I didn't even say anything.

Speaker: I literally just made a girl cry by wearing that hat.

Speaker: Like, it was just, yeah, like, just literally, I mean, there's a bit more of a story, too, but I don't want to get too, too, you know, doxy there.

Speaker: But yeah, I made her go cry.

Speaker: Just didn't even say no words, just like wore the hat, looked away.

Speaker: All of a sudden, she's crying.

Speaker: And someone told me that's why she was crying.

Speaker: And I was like, that's, yeah.

Speaker: So I mean, I got to think that I got to think that in 2019 or 2020, you probably would have made the news.

Speaker: Like just just walking around Harvard with a Donald pump and a MAGA hat on like that.

Speaker: Um, that, that just speaks to how, how, how radically things have changed even over there.

Speaker: Um, so, so, I mean, suffice to say then, I mean, this was 2016 was a different time, but suffice to say, like you weren't, you weren't really hiding your power level over there.

Speaker: You were just sort of, you know, I mean, I was more like a, I was like a Steven Crowder, like kind of like that, that no, seriously, I was, I was on my way, but I like, I wasn't there yet.

Speaker: And I was like, ah, like, okay.

Speaker: and i'll tell you what really did it for me man was like uh there was it was it was honestly a lot of like the the fake nature of the the sexual assault stuff that they do and that like when they talk about how it's like one in five or one in four one in five girls and i always thought that weird because i'm sitting there and like hey when i found out that it was like wait the real rape rate of like when you have actual rapes of the countries and like the congo that it's the equivalent of like the war-torn congo and i'm like

Speaker: something doesn't seem right here.

Speaker: Like there's no way this college campus girls are getting away at the same rate as like a civil war torn country.

Speaker: Like it doesn't, it just didn't make sense.

Speaker: So that's kind of the first string that unraveled literally everything.

Speaker: That is the pinpoint starting point.

Speaker: And I mean, there's obviously some stories behind that too, but just like, that was definitely the starting point where I was like, Oh, okay.

Speaker: Like if this is fake, what else is fake?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I spoke to a guy and this, this speaks to kind of what you were addressing earlier.

Speaker: I talked to a guy recently who's pretty well connected in the Bay Area, and he told me this story about how someone he knew who was in a management position had a lesbian employee that they needed to fire for performance reasons.

Speaker: And so they decided to like buy a booth at some LGBT women in tech conference and like make this big donation and this big show of support for LGBT issues explicitly so that they would have the top cover to fire this lady when it was time to make their move.

Speaker: So when you say the people, you know, it seemed like they were true believers or just paying their dues.

Speaker: Was that like,

Speaker: do you think that they are still in that mode in the world of work?

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: 100%.

Speaker: So there is one of the biggest things that struck me towards the end was that the amount of, and this is something that doesn't get talked about that much, is that like, because it's not, I would say like officially like sanctioned or mandated, is that the amount of like opportunities for kids that are like mediocre, but you got a lot of kids that

Speaker: they feel entitled to like they're gay, they're gay and whatever.

Speaker: And they, they just get positions at like McKinsey and company or Bain or like all the top, the top firms that's just like reserved for like gay kids.

Speaker: So, um, are they true believers?

Speaker: So let me, let me tell you a quick story.

Speaker: That's, that's very good.

Speaker: As I sat, sat down one time, I was talking to this girl,

Speaker: about she was involved with whatever like there was like four like anti we'll call like anti-rape things right and like not to focus on this but this is just one thing that like this is again this is where the whole thing started so i was like oh cool well i mean just like just real quick i mean that's another sense in which the in which uh 2016 2017 was kind of a foreign country because now it's 100 percent race

Speaker: Like, Me Too is just totally off the radar now.

Speaker: And back then, that was the big thing.

Speaker: It was all about gender.

Speaker: Gender relations, yep.

Speaker: Continue.

Speaker: Yeah, so we were, there was like four of these organizations.

Speaker: They all had different stupid little names and all of the acronym, whatever, you know, the bullshit.

Speaker: And anyway, so I was sitting down to the one girl that was involved, either directly or just tangentially involved with them.

Speaker: and i remember asking her because like at some point i was like this is weird i asked her i was like is there any evidence to like to support that any of these groups have like curved any of like the the sexual assault campus and then she like and then the girl and this is where you talk about the true believers that like i came at her from every which way and just like just went through it like well if one worked do we need more and if more aren't working what are they doing wrong is more gonna like

Speaker: Just pretty simple stuff.

Speaker: They'd be like, all right, this should... And she basically just short-circuited and it goes into NPC mode where it's just like, well, I'd be happy to just go in at whatever.

Speaker: And it's like, okay, you're obviously not being honest about any of this.

Speaker: And so... Well, it's an industry.

Speaker: I mean... No, exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: It's an industry.

Speaker: And these activist orgs, when they accomplish some objective, like, you know, there were...

Speaker: probably thousands of Ivy League types, lawyers and activists and academics whose full-time job was gay marriage for like 10 years, maybe longer.

Speaker: And when Obergefell happened and gay marriage was legalized across the country,

Speaker: those people aren't going to go learn to code.

Speaker: Like they're going to just find the next thing.

Speaker: And, and so like there, there's a, there's a momentum to this that is self-sustaining.

Speaker: It's not going to go away.

Speaker: Like, I mean, honestly, it reminds me a lot of like the, uh, what's happening with like the, I hate to use this term, but like,

Speaker: deep state as far as like what was like the global war on terror is now just getting the internal war on fake terror.

Speaker: Oh, sure.

Speaker: Those guys have budgets to spend.

Speaker: What are they going to do?

Speaker: Well, it's the same thing.

Speaker: Like they, I mean, I would, I, you know, I would say they're more honorable in some ways, but like, at least they had like, I would say real skills rather than just making noise to make stuff that happened.

Speaker: But, right?

Speaker: Like, what they do actually, like, could have a useful purpose rather than just, like, pounding the table until you get what you want.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But, so anyways, there's, and again, it's hard to quantify, but I would say probably...

Speaker: at least 10 are like true diehard NPC.

Speaker: And to be honest, I think back of it, I think there's definitely like a huge correlation between the people that are the smartest and most successful and the people that supported this type of stuff.

Speaker: And it wasn't, it wasn't a positive correlation.

Speaker: I promise.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But it was, it was usually the people that were in there on diversity quotas of some sort, whether it was like gay, lesbian, trans, whatever.

Speaker: Those are usually people.

Speaker: And this is,

Speaker: I can't remember who I remember reading about that.

Speaker: They said basically this would happen.

Speaker: If you let people in like that, they're going to notice they're not doing as good as the other people and they're going to question why.

Speaker: And when they don't want to acknowledge that just because they're not as smart or not as good, they're going to say, oh, it's racist.

Speaker: It's sexist.

Speaker: It's, I don't know, homophobic.

Speaker: What insert X, right?

Speaker: And yeah, so that's kind of right.

Speaker: So you've got probably 25 that's that.

Speaker: 25 that's like on their side, but like...

Speaker: they're not, they're not driving it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: They're long for the ride, but they're not driving.

Speaker: They're not driving.

Speaker: And then you have, I don't know if it's 25.

Speaker: Cause I honestly, to be straight with you, I don't think it was that big, but maybe like another, let's say 10 to 20% is like, just doesn't care.

Speaker: They don't give a shit.

Speaker: Like they don't, they don't care what they just wanted.

Speaker: Fucking snort Coke and make money and do whatever.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Which like nothing wrong with that, man.

Speaker: Go do you.

Speaker: But like,

Speaker: they're just in that spot.

Speaker: And then there's probably another 20 to 25.

Speaker: I don't know if it's 25.

Speaker: I would say at max probably 20 that's either leaning towards our side, on our side, or just at least friendly to our side.

Speaker: Oh, that's surprising.

Speaker: And that's like...

Speaker: it's bigger than you think because like I, I had a moment where I was at school and like, I felt very like alone basically.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I try to figure out why, and I was trying to think back to like my friends and like why I like my friends.

Speaker: And I realized that was cause like, I liked them because they said things, they said what they thought and it was real and authentic and genuine.

Speaker: One of the things that, that bothered me and felt empty was that every conversation felt like this, just like bland, not like repeat.

Speaker: Cause they were all different.

Speaker: They're all smart conversations, but there just didn't,

Speaker: there didn't feel like there was anything else to it is the best way I can put it.

Speaker: It was just like these hollow conversations.

Speaker: And so I started to kind of like speaking out, not like, I don't know, how do I put this?

Speaker: I like directly, but I know the one that I was fighting back at the time that I would just like unironically just be like, okay, was when they started bringing up the trans thing.

Speaker: And I was just like, no, they're mentally ill people.

Speaker: I will not, I will not budge on this.

Speaker: And I was at the time I had taken some, some psych classes and this is, um,

Speaker: I remember looking into the definition of like what they, whatever they read, configure the definition of like, uh, what's the, what's the official word now for when you're like, oh, gender dysphoria or whatever.

Speaker: When they reconfigure the definition to like, not be as bad as it was, it still is a mental illness.

Speaker: You by definition cannot be trans without being mentally ill.

Speaker: And like, if you just drive home that point, they were at least honest enough where they wouldn't like it and they still wouldn't like you, but they would still just be like, well, yeah, but,

Speaker: insert everything that would follow, but they still couldn't run away from that point.

Speaker: And at that point, people just kind of stopped talking to you.

Speaker: So it was just like, whatever.

Speaker: But, uh, you know, you put your MAGA hat on or your down pump thing and just walk away.

Speaker: But, uh, like, yeah, I mean, so I, I went to a, I went to a relatively woke, uh, master's degree program and I never, I never felt any inclination to like pick fights.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: Um, you know, when people would say things, I just, I just didn't feel like engaging.

Speaker: And I, I, I sort of, I was already getting enough of that on Twitter that I, you know, it was like, I'm good.

Speaker: I'm topped off.

Speaker: Um, but the one thing that I would do is, is some of my classmates who were female, um, who would express if they expressed any, any like dissatisfaction with, um,

Speaker: the career trajectory that they were on or like aimlessness, which a ton of them had, they were like, you know, this is just sort of the next thing to do.

Speaker: And, you know, I'm not sure, like, you know, what really the point of all this is.

Speaker: I would be pretty direct with them.

Speaker: Like, I don't think that you should, like, I think that you should have a family.

Speaker: I think that would be more meaningful to you.

Speaker: I think that would be better for you and better for the world.

Speaker: Oh, bro, you are a misogynistic gig, bro.

Speaker: What are you doing?

Speaker: Now, here's why I did it.

Speaker: Here's why I did it.

Speaker: Because, like, if you're talking about gender orientation or race or sex or whatever it is, you know,

Speaker: the odds that that conversation is going to make anybody's life better is like zero.

Speaker: There's no, there's no, there's no version of the world.

Speaker: It's honestly, man, it's, it's negative because most of the time people hate you more than they would have hated you before.

Speaker: And like, I would argue you're worse off than they're worse off for that.

Speaker: Cause it's not, not one of those people like, Oh, hate hurts you.

Speaker: But just like everyone is more agitated after that.

Speaker: No one, no one feels better.

Speaker: Like in the big picture, those conversations need to happen.

Speaker: And that's why I do it on Twitter.

Speaker: But like interpersonally, my personal relationships, the gain from having that conversation versus the chaos that it unleashes doesn't make any sense.

Speaker: But on this one issue, it's like there's a non-zero chance.

Speaker: that somebody remembers that conversation, they make a different decision and it makes their life way better.

Speaker: And like, I, you know, these are, these are my friends.

Speaker: These are people that, and they're smart women and capable and they could totally do the job.

Speaker: It's just spreadsheets.

Speaker: I mean, these are like, you know, even these like quote unquote elite, you know, MBA jobs that they're supposed to be having are mostly a joke.

Speaker: And, and, and, you know, so it's not like, you know, you're not good enough.

Speaker: You can't do it.

Speaker: It's like,

Speaker: my attitude is always like, I, I need to do this for the family.

Speaker: Like that's my only goal here.

Speaker: And like, if your goal is like,

Speaker: I want to be able to vacation in the South of France and I want to live, laugh, live, laugh, love and do that.

Speaker: See, this is, this is what I was talking about, dude, is that when people for them to break out of this, they have to reimagine their entire lives.

Speaker: And none of them are comfortable doing that because the moment they've been brought up their parents and their parents' parents.

Speaker: And I mean, obviously it was different how many generations ago, but the milieu that they're in with their parents, their family, they all go to the same vacation spot.

Speaker: Expectations.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's the expectations and everything that goes along with it.

Speaker: These people would have to get new friends, probably new family to be honest with you.

Speaker: Like every, every, they would have to entirely destroy their life to build it back up again.

Speaker: And none of them want to do that because something I've always, something I have always maintained is that the kids are,

Speaker: it's always the kids that are like smart that come from like middle to like maybe upper middle class.

Speaker: So sometimes even like the lower of the upper class, like they're wealthy, but they're not like, they're not, you know, private jet wealthy.

Speaker: They're like drive a, you know, drive a Mercedes, maybe wealthy, right.

Speaker: Something like that.

Speaker: Or even less than that.

Speaker: Maybe just drive a, like a, you know, a nice suburban, whatever.

Speaker: Anyways, I've always maintained that what I saw was the kids that came from those types of backgrounds, sometimes even the lower two, but there just wasn't enough of them that mattered.

Speaker: Like they were the, they were the best off because they knew how to deal with like, ah,

Speaker: It sounds so gay, but adversity and all that bullshit.

Speaker: But seriously, no.

Speaker: Those Squisbee Mercedes kids.

Speaker: Yeah, no, not quite like that.

Speaker: But you know what?

Speaker: It's the kids that can't just call up their parents that can call up the, oh, dude, you know, there was, where we were at, if you wore, like, a tie from a certain, like, organization on campus, and you got in trouble in the county, like, I can't remember if it was the DA or the judge, like, if you wore that, he was also a member of that.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: They would, like, basically go lighter, easy, like, as easy as possible and get you out of pretty much anything you wanted.

Speaker: not like full on get you out, but everything they could do, it was known that like you're part of the same thing.

Speaker: So like, that's what I mean.

Speaker: It's like, you're not, you're not going to be part of that milieu.

Speaker: But anyways, the kids are like a little scrap.

Speaker: Well, cause you also have to keep in perspective the kids that maybe their parents drive a suburban Mercedes are not the kids that their parents are literal billionaires or a hundred millionaires.

Speaker: It's all a matter.

Speaker: That's what I mean.

Speaker: Anyway.

Speaker: So the kids that come from that,

Speaker: they've at least dealt with a thing or two not going right.

Speaker: They haven't got what they want job wise, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker: They seem to deal the best.

Speaker: And I would, they don't want to go the highest because they're the connections, but those are the ones that I enjoyed the most because they crossed like the skills with the, the ability to overcome.

Speaker: And they were, they were mostly the genuine people because I don't know why, to be honest with you, but those were the, those are the awesome ones.

Speaker: Then you see some of the other ones though, that, oh man, kid was like,

Speaker: Let me say this.

Speaker: I saw one that was a, like a ninth generation Ivy league kid to like the same school and yeah, nine generations.

Speaker: I don't, I don't even know how many families are like that, but anyways,

Speaker: A lot of them will struggle because they never really had much real adversity.

Speaker: They struggle because there's nothing... How do you go higher than where they're at?

Speaker: Their parents are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever it is.

Speaker: Where is there to go?

Speaker: What do you do?

Speaker: Professionally, anyway.

Speaker: If they had some imagination, they could probably...

Speaker: go to a whole different, climb a different ladder, but that's not really on the radar.

Speaker: So a lot of people, and this feeds the next one, a lot of people have been prophesying the death of the universities as an elite filter.

Speaker: um and i mean well right like i i agree with you that that's that that's not going anywhere um but did you get the sense that most of the people there were legitimately smart enough and competent enough to do the work that they were going to end up doing or are they going to make a hash of these institutions good good question okay i can give you i'm saying i've been out enough that i've

Speaker: The only way I can answer that confidently, I feel like is if I were to fast forward 30 years of my life and see what has happened to the people who have gone, what has happened to the institutions they've filtered into, right?

Speaker: But as a proxy, let me say this.

Speaker: I knew of a girl who was trying to apply to, I'd say Harvard Law, and she had like a 3.9 GPA or something, and she had like

Speaker: like a one 68 or 69 on like the LSAT.

Speaker: So like real like top tier shit.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And, but she was a white girl and she like, as my understanding, either got like waitlisted or she like, Oh, she like, I think she got like waitlisted, but then she got accepted to some special program.

Speaker: And then she like got into Harvard law.

Speaker: And so like, it wasn't even like an immediate thing.

Speaker: Like we're talking like this top, just top, top, top tier.

Speaker: And like still could barely get in now.

Speaker: Contrast this.

Speaker: Before I say this, and not to be all, not to cuck on it, but the next guy I'm going to talk about, really nice guy.

Speaker: I really like him.

Speaker: He's from Africa, African.

Speaker: And now that he's graduated, he's gone back and he's doing really cool stuff, great stuff over there.

Speaker: I love that.

Speaker: He's going back, trying to help Africa.

Speaker: Fantastic.

Speaker: Not even in a crappy gay NGO way, in a literal, he's doing real stuff to help them.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: Anyways, yeah, so it's cool.

Speaker: But anyways, this guy had like a 3.6 GPA and like just mediocre like LSAT scores.

Speaker: Redacted.

Speaker: did a dual degree like at the, at the same time.

Speaker: And so it's just like, they're smart.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But like, this is the way I've had this theory for a long time is that what you're going to see is that like, as more and more of these upper institutions, whether it's the graduate schools or Goldman Sachs or whatever, take, take any institution as they chop the talent down.

Speaker: Cause it's not, what's the best way to put this?

Speaker: It's not like they're trading a plus for like,

Speaker: an F. It's not that dramatic.

Speaker: They're trading A plus for like a B or a B plus or even just a B minus sometimes.

Speaker: And that's not the worst, but as that goes on, you're going to get the whole institute because right now it's just spattered with it.

Speaker: So it doesn't really bring down the whole, like the, let me say the whole quality of it.

Speaker: But as it goes on, yeah, you're going to bring down the whole quality of it.

Speaker: And so I would say that I think eventually, yeah, the bell will toll, but I don't think we're there yet.

Speaker: But on that same thing, what I was saying is that I think this is the reason, and it kind of goes with like the whole milieu of how things are going with everything, moving towards decentralization.

Speaker: is that as the top talent gets kicked out or kicked down from these things, you're basically taking a certain amount of talent that always used to go towards the top and it's going towards more like startup isn't the right word, but like upstart institutions, whether it's like an investment bank or it's like a, I don't know, a music company or it's engineering or,

Speaker: And you're seeing a lot of this.

Speaker: And I don't think this is entirely invalid in so many things.

Speaker: And that because they're not going there, they don't get that opportunity.

Speaker: They go elsewhere.

Speaker: They kind of find more unorthodox ways to do this.

Speaker: So I think it's kind of shaking things up because you're getting ways.

Speaker: Or this was like another one, man.

Speaker: It was a girl that I knew that was like, she was like Hispanic, but she was white passing Hispanic.

Speaker: So it's just like, that's, by the way, I know it's not like a, like a really a closed secret, but most of the people that benefit from those diversity, like one girl I knew was like, you could throw her in any Midwest, any like,

Speaker: Any red state in the whitest area, no one bad not.

Speaker: No one be like, oh, this is a person of color or whatever.

Speaker: But because she, her grandma is Iranian, which is also...

Speaker: I think one part I would say is white.

Speaker: Because of that, she gets to claim Middle Eastern, and her parents are worth $100 million.

Speaker: She's struggling.

Speaker: She's underprivileged.

Speaker: Oh, dude.

Speaker: Yes, seriously.

Speaker: Or there was another one where, again, a white-looking dude, gone to school, super Middle Eastern.

Speaker: You see him, you're like, this is this guy?

Speaker: And now he's Muslim.

Speaker: They're just regular white.

Speaker: I'm a Christian dude.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So those are the kids that benefit from that.

Speaker: But no, so I think long, short, like eventually you're going to get there.

Speaker: But also, like I said, that's creating other dynamics.

Speaker: Yeah, it's the edge cases.

Speaker: It's the ones that tick the boxes on a technicality that are reaping the most of those benefits.

Speaker: So is, is the mood over there from what you saw, and maybe this has changed since then, but like, is it more like I'm with her neoliberal, like corporate diversity training type ideology, or is it like actual, like pink hair commies?

Speaker: So I think we touched on this a little before and that depends what you talk about or who you're talking to.

Speaker: I would say the broad majority of the true believers that are real hard left, mostly diversity.

Speaker: It's mostly – and insert diversity in how you want, but whether it's people of color, whatever.

Speaker: I hate that term, but just the Hispanic, whatever it is.

Speaker: Those are the ones that go the hardest on it.

Speaker: Most of these people are just self-interested and it just so happens that a lot of these things just help their self-interest.

Speaker: There is the true believers, but I don't think –

Speaker: Maybe like 1% of all the people were people that like, like I remember one straight white dude that was like super into the hard left stuff.

Speaker: But like, other than that, that was it.

Speaker: He's kind of a little bit of white knight type stuff.

Speaker: But like, other than that, man, it's like the more people that are, if they're kind of like semi incompetent or middle of the road or lower middle of the road, they're going to be like true believers, hard, whatever.

Speaker: And then if they're like, if they're kind of that, but they get the opportunities, they're going to be more neoliberal.

Speaker: But then if you get the competent ones that are also white, those are mostly going to be neoliberal.

Speaker: So I would say broad swath is like, I'm with her neoliberal.

Speaker: And then the rest of it, like the small, small cutout of that is like the real shrew.

Speaker: I don't know if you've heard of the term bio Leninism, but there's a, there's a theory basically that, that if you are a mediocrity,

Speaker: one of the ways that you can distinguish yourself to the system is through loyalty and obedience and root and ruthlessness.

Speaker: Like I'll do whatever the system demands.

Speaker: Like you want me to kick a baby?

Speaker: I'll kick a baby.

Speaker: I don't care.

Speaker: And, and I think that you definitely see that at the upper echelons.

Speaker: And I, I want to talk about this too, because like, these are people who, you know, barring, barring some like real sort of effortless genius,

Speaker: that you do find occasionally.

Speaker: A lot of these people have sort of been groomed for this from very early on.

Speaker: They had their extracurriculars dialed in, you know, they were doing all the right things.

Speaker: I'll see it's, it's, it goes, dude, it goes deeper.

Speaker: It goes deeper than that.

Speaker: They go, they go to, I show you not,

Speaker: they have like feeder middle schools and elementary schools that then feed into, no, I'm not even joking.

Speaker: Which means that they've only ever been around that type of kid too.

Speaker: Like it's not just that they're weird.

Speaker: And this is what I'm talking about is that they can't change, they can't change their thoughts because they'd have to change their entire life.

Speaker: Like, this is what I mean is that like, it's, it's so I guess it's a white pill and a black pill and that there are, yeah, the entire system has taken over, but at the same time, like,

Speaker: if things were to go a different way, I think a lot of people would just throw down their arms.

Speaker: Like, they wouldn't... I don't see a huge spot of these people that would die to, like, defend these types of ideas.

Speaker: God, no.

Speaker: I don't think they'd die to defend anything.

Speaker: Yeah, there's a very clear opportunity for a preference cascade where everybody... And, you know, honestly, I think to some extent you're already seeing, like, cracks in the dams

Speaker: where people are starting to look around at each other and be like, you know, how, how hard are we willing to go on this?

Speaker: How, like, how far are we really willing to take this?

Speaker: You know, because there are some elements of, well, like, like you said, how it's, how it's sort of, they're losing a lot of really great talent because of, for ideological reasons and the best writing, the best thinking, the best comedy, the funniest people, the people who should be, you know,

Speaker: on TV and famous for being funny, they are on Twitter.

Speaker: I mean, that's who's making people laugh and everybody knows it.

Speaker: And like that system cannot expel all of its talent indefinitely.

Speaker: Or else it'll just be the mediocrities and they won't be able to keep the machines running.

Speaker: And I don't just mean from a, like, engineers blowing up planes or anything.

Speaker: I mean the social machinery.

Speaker: They won't be able to hang on to their narrative because they will be literally too stupid to defend it.

Speaker: I mean, if you want to get a little morbid with it, I think one of the things I think about a lot is I used to be a lot more into graphs and all the data in years past than I am now.

Speaker: But there's a lot of things that's stuck.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: I am the science.

Speaker: I don't know if you saw that today with Fauci.

Speaker: Like, I am the science or whatever.

Speaker: His word is law.

Speaker: Anyways, oh, yeah, he's what I call a medical drug dread or something like that.

Speaker: But vaccine judge dread.

Speaker: I remember looking back and like if you look at across the political spectrum, like it like rates of mental illness, I think about the one and it's like hard left women is just like off the fucking charts.

Speaker: And then you have like, hard left men is like way up there.

Speaker: And then it kind of, as it goes, it gets lower and lower.

Speaker: And so like, if you want to be a little morbid, I think at some level, whether it's suicide or drug abuse or whatever, they're weeding themselves out.

Speaker: I mean, that's always been happening, but I think there is a certain, and some people go so far to say demonic.

Speaker: And I don't think that's entirely like out of the question, but I don't, I don't ever like to go that like everything is demonic.

Speaker: I don't like going down that route.

Speaker: Cause that just gets a little weird to me, but that's definitely there.

Speaker: And then I also think that you have just like, people can be bad all on their own.

Speaker: And that is, yeah, that's the tactic I like to take.

Speaker: There's like people can be evil, you know, maybe with a little help, but they can do it all on their own.

Speaker: And so you kind of get that and people and institutions, they poison themselves.

Speaker: They just poison themselves.

Speaker: And like you said, it kills the people, kills the institutions, kills the social circles.

Speaker: And I...

Speaker: They're not getting better and they're not sending the rest.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Well, and it's, it's, you know, people, people act as if that can continue indefinitely and it just can't.

Speaker: And I've, I've always been kind of an optimist about that.

Speaker: Like, like it's good that redacted is no longer.

Speaker: the arbiter of like who's capable and who's elite quality.

Speaker: Like it's good that a lot of those people are morons and a lot of the people outside are geniuses.

Speaker: Like, cause that requires us to think more carefully.

Speaker: Do you know what the legacy acceptance rate, do you know what the legacy acceptance rate for Harvard is?

Speaker: No, what is it?

Speaker: It's like 30%.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: So if you, if you have a parent who went there, you have a 30% chance of getting in.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Versus if you were just regular population, it's like three.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: Yeah, so I would disagree a little in that while they're not still the arbiter, you and I both know that if you're going to harbor it doesn't mean you're smart, but they're still, and to her credit, the one girl I was referencing previously, even though she was the beneficiary of this, she knew that this was not...

Speaker: Like you said, it's not an arbiter, but what they were was a power broker and they still are.

Speaker: They're a hedge fund power broker and they give you the rubber stamp of like, yes, the regime approves of you.

Speaker: It's like essentially, I mean, like it's not quite like that, but like more or less it is like, okay, you are –

Speaker: and we talked about this a little, like when you have a background from one of those fancy schools, people automatically assume you're smart.

Speaker: They do.

Speaker: Like even, even today they're just like, Oh, this guy's smart.

Speaker: And then you would just have to focus on kind of impressing people.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like not even impressing people and like that you're smart, but like making them like you, it takes, it takes,

Speaker: It's like most people are fighting with one hand tied and with this you get to use both hands.

Speaker: It's way lower escape velocity to make something happen.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: You can get your foot in almost any door, but the secret that no one tells you is that that alone will not keep it there.

Speaker: You have to be competent to stay in competent places.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Which sounds self-evident when I say it out loud.

Speaker: Well, I mean, it's not necessarily self-evident because it just depends on how much incompetence you believe these institutions will tolerate for ideological reasons.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because clearly the answer is not zero.

Speaker: Like, there clearly is a significant amount of incompetence and absurdity that they will tolerate in the interest of...

Speaker: not looking bad or even not seeming to sort of question the orthodoxy.

Speaker: So you mentioned something that I think is a good question.

Speaker: We have our memes about spirit cooking and blood drinking and interdimensional psychic pedophile vampires.

Speaker: And you went to school with some of these people's kids.

Speaker: And maybe you spent some time in their houses.

Speaker: Did you see anything that struck you as like actually dark and creepy or are they just rich like goofs?

Speaker: I hate, I hate to like to burst the bubble on this one, but like, no, I didn't, I didn't see, I didn't see any, like, it's not, you know, I like, so here's what I'm going to say.

Speaker: Is that stuff probably there?

Speaker: Like, yeah.

Speaker: But like, is it there in a capacity that even though I was like,

Speaker: even though I was in, let me put it this way.

Speaker: If it's there, there is kind of a hierarchy within the school where like, there's mostly like the general, I'd say the lower half, like socially.

Speaker: And then there's kind of like the next 25% that kind of like gets to hang out with the upper 25%.

Speaker: And I was at least in that, like the people get to hang out with those people.

Speaker: Like I wasn't one of the cool, cool kids, you know, I don't, I don't vacation in the Hamptons or whatever, stuff like that.

Speaker: But I at least got to hang out at their parties and do whatever.

Speaker: And if it's there, it's within the small rung of the upper rung.

Speaker: And I didn't know.

Speaker: So if it's there, I didn't know about it.

Speaker: But, you know, I'll tell you this.

Speaker: These people, and they don't even have to be the rich ones, I think they get very callous and, like, things get very...

Speaker: I don't know if numb is the right way, but because of the way they've been brought up and lived their lives, like shit, man, you're a kid going to an Ivy league school and you got these crazy career prospects lined up and you're kind of on top of the world.

Speaker: And like, I, there was a few moments of just callousness towards like people's, like literally towards people's lives that like, I wasn't prepared for, but like, yeah, a little bit where you're just like, Holy fuck, man, what the hell?

Speaker: What do you mean?

Speaker: What is this?

Speaker: Like just some, some party stuff where like, ah,

Speaker: Like a kid, I remember one time without getting too into details here, let's just say people got a kid like way too drunk, like had to go to the hospital drunk.

Speaker: And like after discussing it later and discussing steps to make sure that no one else would get in this way.

Speaker: again at a certain place.

Speaker: Nobody wanted to do anything about it.

Speaker: And not even like, oh, they don't want to be a part of it.

Speaker: Literally just like, doesn't matter.

Speaker: Not my responsibility.

Speaker: Don't care.

Speaker: I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me?

Speaker: You almost fucking killed a kid.

Speaker: And people are just like, oh, whatever.

Speaker: I'm like, no, I'm not...

Speaker: not, not cool with this.

Speaker: So it was, uh, yeah.

Speaker: So, I mean, there's that and it goes on a lot of the plate, like a lot of those other places there too.

Speaker: So that's, I don't know.

Speaker: It's a little vague.

Speaker: I can't get too into details with it, but like, let's just say it was, yeah, it was not, not the best.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, uh,

Speaker: I think that there is, you almost have to become acculturated to the idea that your decisions are going to impact people negatively.

Speaker: So if you're planning to be one of the lords of the universe and govern millions of people or write laws that affect millions of people, part of that deal is like,

Speaker: what are the odds that this regulation gets somebody killed?

Speaker: Or, you know what I mean?

Speaker: Like you're just thinking at this huge scale that like the human brain is not really built to function at.

Speaker: And so, go ahead.

Speaker: I think it goes back to something a little simpler, to be honest with you, is that like, it's not, it's not even anything as far as I remember so grandiose as that, is that these people have, because I get to go back to like these people being brought up in the feeder elementaries and then the feeder middle schools and the feeder high schools, like,

Speaker: it's not even anything so complicated as like that it's training like that it's more so that these people have such a disconnected idea of what like middle america is like you know the shrinking the shrink both both literal in the socioeconomic context and literal in the literal context of like what's between the coastlines um that they they just have no idea and they had this like crazy almost caricature of like really what it is yeah and um

Speaker: I think that is what more stems from it because they think they're better than you and they think they know more than you and they're smarter than you.

Speaker: And that like, look, man, to a degree, you take the average IQ of like kids at Harvard, like, yeah, it's going to be two, three standard deviations higher than the average, like the nation.

Speaker: Like that's, that doesn't mean they're better than you.

Speaker: Like that's, that is, that's just a fact on that.

Speaker: But at the same time, like I, well, that's ultimately, that's ultimately why we can't have honest conversations about IQ.

Speaker: It's because the,

Speaker: the mainstream understanding of that is that being smarter makes you better.

Speaker: Like, because it does, it does make you better able to delay gratification, better able to control your impulses, you know, and, and those things,

Speaker: There's no divinity to confer sacredness on human life per se.

Speaker: It's like, you know, the difference between a 140 IQ person and an 80 IQ person is

Speaker: and a chimpanzee is just a matter of degrees.

Speaker: It's just a spectrum.

Speaker: And so like, are you more important?

Speaker: I mean, you get a smart chimpanzee.

Speaker: It might be smarter than the AD IQ group.

Speaker: I'm not sure.

Speaker: Well, so what I'm saying is like, there's nothing, there's no way of saying like, we all share a common dignity.

Speaker: And so they just, because their worldview has no vocabulary for that kind of conversation, they just have to run from the whole question.

Speaker: But they don't in terms of their personal life.

Speaker: In terms of their personal life, they know that they want to be hanging around the high elves, the super smart elites who'd make all the culture and do all the beautiful things and build all the beautiful things, or at least have the capacity to.

Speaker: And so...

Speaker: yeah, it's, there's, there's a, there's a massive amount of hypocrisy around that.

Speaker: That's, that's almost, you would need like, kind of like you're saying, you would need a different worldview to break that hypocrisy.

Speaker: There's no resolving it internally.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What's they, they just literally have no, they have no concept of like any idea what it's like.

Speaker: They, they think they still think that it's, well, this is kind of where some of the narratives like clash is that a lot of them think that all of the people that aren't doing well, still because of, and like,

Speaker: here's where I'll add a little addendum to this is that like, they still will say, and they will confess that it's all socioeconomic faster still.

Speaker: And that whether this is, whether it's white or black or Asian or whatever, they like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

Speaker: They still think that's,

Speaker: part of the thing.

Speaker: And so that goes to their things that they, oh, well, if we could just give these people a life like I had, they'd be the same as me.

Speaker: And like, that is kind of the other part that they haven't come to grips with where it's like, no, they wouldn't.

Speaker: And that's also okay.

Speaker: It's like, not everyone has to be like that.

Speaker: Like you need farmers, you need

Speaker: line work is the factory.

Speaker: You need people slinging a shovel, man.

Speaker: I've sling a shovel before.

Speaker: There's times where I'm doing my nerd shit all day and I miss doing that.

Speaker: I just like to give me a big pile of gravel and I just want to move it from one another.

Speaker: Not even gravel.

Speaker: Fuck that.

Speaker: Give me sand.

Speaker: Move one spot to the other.

Speaker: It's way harder when that's all you can do.

Speaker: Oh yeah, that sucks, dude.

Speaker: That's the worst.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: So like, yeah, it's, it's, uh, to, to, to do it recreationally is very different from like, this is how I have to eat.

Speaker: It's true.

Speaker: I have to, I have to shovel sand or I don't eat.

Speaker: But so I found, you know, when I was in school and I was in a world that was somewhat similar to this, it helped a lot to have like a buddy around for when they got into the woke stuff.

Speaker: So I could just kind of give them a look and we could suffer together a little bit.

Speaker: So did you have people like with you on the inside or were you basically like all by your lonesome?

Speaker: A little towards the end.

Speaker: A little towards the end.

Speaker: I had like, like I had one girl that I knew that was kind of like a normie

Speaker: Also a fellow like normie tier conservative that works like, oh, this is brutal.

Speaker: But other than that, honestly, man, not really like you.

Speaker: I was it was alone for like a long time.

Speaker: And like mainly what I do is I would just hide those to like either people I would talk to back home or like even just like my girlfriend at the time or stuff like that.

Speaker: And yeah, so no, I didn't did not have much support, which did not.

Speaker: But at the same time, like I was still able to like.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I feel like there's ways, I don't say ways you can catch your language, but like there's still ways you can talk freely without like always having to like tip your hand.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: And so I got real, I got real good at that as far as like being able to talk as much as you can without being like, Oh, hello.

Speaker: I am entirely different from you.

Speaker: But so you get to do a little bit of that, but to, Oh, let me say that's the point I remember before was that the one thing I've thought about this a lot since I've left that, that I always want to hopefully,

Speaker: someday could emulate is that like there is definitely no more fucking noblesse oblige of like uh to like no seriously that's like that's no it's it's now it's plunder and pillage stage man even even all those people know that too where it's just like get as rich as you can well you can yeah and uh i don't think there's any illusions about that all the people something like 10 of every class of the school anyone goes into consulting at the big three

Speaker: And then, or just like similar management consulting types.

Speaker: And then the other 10% went into like, like investment banking.

Speaker: So like a bulge bracket or like, you know, some little market shop.

Speaker: So like you got a fifth of the class right away.

Speaker: That's just going like, yeah, give me the money.

Speaker: Give me the money right away.

Speaker: When you can have an honest conversation about hierarchy, then you can, you can conceive of yourself as an aristocracy that owes something to the whole that you are in this together.

Speaker: And we just totally aren't.

Speaker: Because it's a quote-unquote meritocracy, we're supposed to believe that at least the white people, like the poor white people, are there because they're stupid and make bad decisions.

Speaker: Lazy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, and so like, how can you like, how can you owe anything to them?

Speaker: How can you have a responsibility toward them?

Speaker: How can you even be like countrymen?

Speaker: Like the same people?

Speaker: You can't.

Speaker: Funny, funny you say that about like that.

Speaker: And not even all of them were white, but like I found myself being more friends with the people that were like workers at the like at the school.

Speaker: And I like not they were like my friends, but like I was I would bullshit more with them.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I knew most of them like in where I was at, like first day basis than I did with like I would say with I would say I bullshitted a lot with them, had some of the most honest conversations with them.

Speaker: And so that was like where I worked at the time was the guy that was like, I think it's like, I never pinned this down, but like, because I feel like he told me he spoke like a bunch of languages, but he was either like black from like South America, black, like that northern corner or like from...

Speaker: like Western part of Africa.

Speaker: I can't remember to be honest with you.

Speaker: Cause he had like Spanish name too.

Speaker: So like, don't figure.

Speaker: But like, anyways, me and him would bullshit like a lot of just like all the insanity that was going on at the time.

Speaker: So definitely had some of that, but nah, man, like that, that was something that always struck me was that being able to talk to those people.

Speaker: And it was like you, it was almost like you were teleporting and that I would,

Speaker: like teleport back to the real world, like have a talk with these people.

Speaker: And then I'm back in like highfalutin intellectual world with like sitting down talking about whatever.

Speaker: And like to their credit, everyone there is super smart.

Speaker: The way that I always put it is that like every one of these schools is a normal person with something extraordinary about them.

Speaker: Like you talk to one kid that like I'm smashing beers with and we're shotgun.

Speaker: And then, you know, the next day I find out he's like top 10 in the world for like his age group for mathematics or something like that.

Speaker: And so it's just like everyone is normal to a degree, believe it or not.

Speaker: But like, and this kind of goes back to, to like when we were talking about like, you know, thinking that everyone above you in these positions is always has to be competent.

Speaker: I think the way that I put it is that,

Speaker: And why most people think that they deserve these things that they do to a degree or that like people that, you know, aren't always from these strata, whatever, all that bullshit.

Speaker: What I'm saying is that like, it's probably a small portion of the time that you actually have to be that smart to stay in that job.

Speaker: But when those times come, you fucking need to be that smart to stay in that job.

Speaker: But most of the time it's shit that like an average person could do.

Speaker: Like, like you said, you're doing, you're doing spreadsheets that like you get the columns and you check them and they check themselves.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And like, so it's not a huge deal, but then there's those few moments where the model has to be right, or this has to be right, or you really have to like use your fucking brain.

Speaker: And like, not everybody can do that.

Speaker: And like, I don't know.

Speaker: I don't know where I'm going with this, but that's... It's so critical to the functioning of the system because our ability... Basically, the way that we produce things is we produce them with machines and with data and with...

Speaker: There's a massive cognitive load on all the ways that are the most productive in this society.

Speaker: And so, and so IQ, so Moldbug had a really interesting point that really cracked things open for me.

Speaker: He was talking about ancient Greece and how in ancient Greece, they essentially viewed physical strength and prowess the way that we currently view intellect.

Speaker: Like, that was what made you like, like the, for us, the idea of like connecting muscles and height with like being a good person doesn't make any sense.

Speaker: It's like, what's the correlation there?

Speaker: But for them, like that was the guy who accomplished the most, who could, who could save you in a battle, who could carry you off on his shield, who could be the hero.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, you know, he would, if your ox got lost, he could bring your ox home when nobody else could.

Speaker: And so it's that sense of like, these are the people that the society can't function without.

Speaker: And we impart moral significance to that.

Speaker: So I think there's a couple of ways to look at that, that actually this makes me think of, is that like,

Speaker: two ways and the first one that came to mind was that like and i don't know who said this is definitely not my original thoughts but like we've definitely moved on from like the warrior archetype being the ideal to like more of the the magician or the shaman to where like now it's that you think about like this the witness hit me was like i it was i was watching rick and morty and it was like in a weird window see i mean it's i i i hate it and i love it it's you know it's entertaining you're in a safe place it's all right

Speaker: There's still things I hate about it because it's still paused, but it's also still kind of cool.

Speaker: I will say, at least the first three seasons, I gave up after the first three seasons, but they were legitimately really funny.

Speaker: Funny.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like really funny.

Speaker: But if you look at Rick, Rick is the quintessential like shaman magician type where like he solves, he's, he's stick thin.

Speaker: He's not strong, but he solves every problem with intellect.

Speaker: Like even the most dire situation is because of his intellect.

Speaker: And that is the ultimate thing.

Speaker: And this has been going on for a while.

Speaker: I mean, like you can almost see the transition where like, look at back to the future where like, you still had a bit of that, like good looking and like Marty McFly, but then doc again, this is basically like, it's basically like Rick.

Speaker: It's basically Rick.

Speaker: But, like, Doc is, again, the magician who solves every problem, like, with his intellect.

Speaker: And so I think that's number one, but number two, I think it also could be connected to the fact that like back in Greek times, they were most dependent on the people that were the strongest.

Speaker: And nowadays we're most dependent, well, I guess you can make arguments, but like the upper echelon and the wheels of the system are most dependent on like the brain people.

Speaker: And so because of that, that is what is most venerated.

Speaker: Now, whether that was done intentionally or that happened naturally, I don't know, haven't really thought about it that much, but that's definitely where we're at in that like the magician shaman,

Speaker: how smart are you is the ideal now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I mean, there's, there's, it's, it's really hard to argue with results and that can even become absurd.

Speaker: Like I was thinking about crypto and NFTs and I have encountered guys who are bazillionaires because of crypto, who frankly, you talk to them a little while and you realize, you know, he probably just got, probably just got lucky.

Speaker: Like maybe not dumb, but like,

Speaker: super weird or like probably just, you know, you just made the right call one time and it worked out for him and that's good.

Speaker: But at the same time, like I would find myself like soliciting advice from those people just because there's something magical about the fact that he had, he's a bazillionaire.

Speaker: So he must have something figured out.

Speaker: Like it's hard for me to, it's hard for me to consciously reject this intuition that like, ah, he knows something.

Speaker: I need to be around this guy.

Speaker: No, see, I can speak, I'm not, not that I'm a gazillionaire, even I really, I need substantial wealth, but I, I think the majority of the time that I mined Ethereum and when I was like buying it personally, it was probably between the prices of like 80, 80 and $300, right?

Speaker: So like very early, like very early.

Speaker: And I mean, obviously not like $3 early, but like early, relatively now.

Speaker: We're sitting at, what, 4,500 a day?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, same thing.

Speaker: I'm no different.

Speaker: And people used to give me shit about like, hey, how's your internet money doing?

Speaker: Like, you know, three years ago.

Speaker: And like now they're like, oh, what crypto do you think?

Speaker: I'm just like, dude, of course, no.

Speaker: There's not really like a good answer.

Speaker: Just wait until the next cycle.

Speaker: Like it's going to top.

Speaker: Like I don't, just cause most people like you, you know, I can't, you can't give someone a one-off like quick answer of anything that's, that's worth giving them.

Speaker: You can't just be like, all right, like you, you'd have to sit down and be like, all right, here's what you buy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, cause you don't realize you sit there doing research for like fucking three years, probably spent hundreds or thousands of hours looking at this.

Speaker: You don't realize how much you've like taken in and you start getting into where like, I know you've had this phenomenon.

Speaker: Maybe you try to show family or friends like a

Speaker: And then you realize that it's like a seventh level meme.

Speaker: You have to explain like four more memes into it.

Speaker: And like, so it's, it's the same thing with crypto where you're like, something small happens or something.

Speaker: You're like, oh dude, this is, this is game changing.

Speaker: And then you're like, wait a second.

Speaker: I can't explain this to anyone without explaining like six other things.

Speaker: And so it's really difficult.

Speaker: Cause like, yeah, I'm no different.

Speaker: I'm the same person, but now people look to me and they're like, oh, do you, I do that?

Speaker: I'm like, dude, I don't know.

Speaker: Do what you want to do.

Speaker: I can help you if you want to do it, but I'm not going to make that decision for you.

Speaker: Cause that's mostly what people are usually just looking for is like, they want you to just make the call for them and be like, Hey, yeah.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Touch, touch my, uh, touch my project and turn it to gold.

Speaker: Like, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Basically.

Speaker: Uh, so, so to get back to this sort of social situation that you were in,

Speaker: Tell me a little bit about like dating in that world.

Speaker: Could you have a conversation with these women?

Speaker: Like, it seems like some of them had to have been interesting, at least outside of the ideology part where, where there areas where you could connect.

Speaker: Oh dude, absolutely.

Speaker: A hundred percent.

Speaker: Um, I would say that like in the same way that we talked about the confidence correlation, competence correlation with like the ideological competition, uh, correlation, um, definitely same thing here with like attractiveness to where like the ones that, I mean, it's pretty common.

Speaker: Like at what, at what,

Speaker: What do you want me to say?

Speaker: At this point, it's just how it is.

Speaker: The ones that were more attractive.

Speaker: However, there was something, though, and without getting too doxy, there was something, though, that we talked about of the girls at school, if they were a six or a seven, they thought they were an eight or nine.

Speaker: And the few handful of actual eights or nines

Speaker: I don't know if there's any true like tens there, but like the handful that there are, are already taken by like Chad, Chad, Uber, Chad, uh, who, you know, has, whose parents are with whatever.

Speaker: And he's going to come, like, he's already got his associate's job at Goldman or whatever it is.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like there are, are you gonna, how are you gonna, because she, she needs you to be higher status than her.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: How are you going to be higher status than her?

Speaker: That's a tough sell.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If she comes in already at the Mercedes level and she used to be the Rolls Royce of the Aston Martin, like,

Speaker: you're tough shit, man.

Speaker: But, uh, so like, so no, so that's definitely a thing.

Speaker: But what we did was, um, like there was, there was a good amount of schools nearby.

Speaker: And so we would just kind of farm out.

Speaker: Like that was, that was the most common practice.

Speaker: And that wasn't, no, I mean, like you laugh, like it's, you just call whatever school, like, Oh, Hey, like that.

Speaker: Now you just need to farm out.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So that was, but like I said, could you talk with them?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I would even go so far as to say is that like, I met, ah, let me see it.

Speaker: Again, it depends.

Speaker: I met more average looking normal girls there than I did like average normal dudes there.

Speaker: Let's say that much.

Speaker: Like there's, it was like, you kind of get the thing where like a lot of the dudes are like,

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I don't say a little weird, but like, yeah, they're really like an athlete or like, well, not like, not in like the negative, like, oh, they're all weirdos.

Speaker: That was a cool guy.

Speaker: Like, no, like they're all just weirdos that when you guys, guys get smart and they get obsessive, you get a little autistic and you get a little weird.

Speaker: Like that's, that's just what happens, dude.

Speaker: Like, so, so you have to imagine there's like a huge swath of guys like that.

Speaker: And they're like the world's foremost knowledge on this tiny little like subject or whatever.

Speaker: And we get a little fucking weird.

Speaker: Charles Murray actually has a hypothesis about that, which is... So if you read the book Human Diversity, it's a really interesting read.

Speaker: But one of the things that he talks about is...

Speaker: that men tend to have a wider distribution of outcomes.

Speaker: Two men tend to be more different from each other cognitively and behaviorally and everything else.

Speaker: I've always heard it put as that, like, you're going to get more genius men and more like retard men than you are like either of women at all.

Speaker: Like that's, so yes.

Speaker: So yes, but that's true across the board for like behavioral, like it's, it's not just cognitive, it's everything.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: not only that, but internal to an individual man, he will have greater diversity of competence than women.

Speaker: So like a woman who is super smart will tend to also be just competent at everything and attractive and thin and, you know, across the board.

Speaker: And a man who is super competent,

Speaker: can be like a total mess in every other aspect of his life, which I think that's intuitively something that we all kind of.

Speaker: It's the mad genius.

Speaker: Like you think about the scientists in his lab and the papers and everything everywhere.

Speaker: And he's got that board scribble all over, but he's like super fucking smart, but his life is also a mess.

Speaker: Like, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, and, and, and Murray's thesis is that it's because women have the two X's.

Speaker: And so like that washes out some variance, but it also covers some redundancies.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then because you've got the X and the Y, it's like, well, if you didn't get the gene for like knowing how to tie your shoes,

Speaker: Like, sorry, dude.

Speaker: Like that's, you just don't get one.

Speaker: Anyway.

Speaker: So, but that's neither here nor there.

Speaker: Like, but that totally makes sense that you would, that you would see that particularly in the extremes with the smartest people.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, and my, my, my last question that I wanted to ask is given the,

Speaker: You know, everything that we've talked about, given how this ideology is baked into their social circles and the way that they're raised and almost everything else about them, and given how sort of hostile that ideology is to upwards of half of the population of the country, do you think that there's any hope of like reconciling as a country or people just pretty much ready to go to war?

Speaker: Like, do you think they'd come around if the political winds blew a different way?

Speaker: I mean, to be honest with you, I think it depends on how that happens because like if it's something where, whether it's swift or gradual,

Speaker: that all of a sudden CNN is like, hey, like, let's not have immigrants.

Speaker: Like something like that.

Speaker: Like, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker: I mean, like, that's a very small, that's a very small example, but just project that onto every, every other single issue.

Speaker: If that started happening, it happened like a gradual measure.

Speaker: Do I think these people would come along?

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Because these people, like I said, the racehorse metaphor, that's a really good one because racehorses will, I mean, I don't know that much about horses, but

Speaker: pretty sure racehorses will like go where you have them go for the most part.

Speaker: They're just the best at getting there in like, in that fashion.

Speaker: I think that's the same with this and that you mentioned that a lot of these people is just what they do, right?

Speaker: Especially the women.

Speaker: Like they don't, they don't really think about why they're doing it.

Speaker: They're just doing it.

Speaker: But believe it or not, I think that's a big portion of these people.

Speaker: They're the people that are actually like,

Speaker: and say non-NPCs because these people are very smart, but they're still NPCs to a degree.

Speaker: But the amount of people that stop to think of, I'm doing this because X, because Y, and they all have a story.

Speaker: Don't get me wrong.

Speaker: Oh, I'm doing it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Do you feel like there was any real like decision behind that?

Speaker: Like, no, for a lot of them, you don't.

Speaker: You're just like, oh, cool.

Speaker: Like it makes sense.

Speaker: And it's great.

Speaker: It's the same way when you're a kid, you say, I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever the hell.

Speaker: It's a socially acceptable thing to say.

Speaker: So same thing with these people.

Speaker: If this happened gradually, do I think a lot of people would come along?

Speaker: Absolutely do.

Speaker: I think a huge spot of them.

Speaker: I think, oh, I think you're seeing, I hate to, I hate to put it as well.

Speaker: Yes and no.

Speaker: I think a lot of it would also depend on racial lines.

Speaker: I think whether, even though a lot of the nation is going this way, I think a lot of the upper echelon is still incredibly white.

Speaker: And so like, I think in the same way that Wisconsin or Iowa or, you know, Michigan can vote red one year and blue the other year, I think those people, because they're predominantly white, they think more of the issues.

Speaker: I think they would come along strictly because as soon as it's acceptable for them to say,

Speaker: I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't really appreciate that, like, the neighborhood that I grew, well, I guess it wouldn't happen to these people because their neighborhoods are, like, 98% white anyways.

Speaker: But, like, as soon as they're like, yeah, I can't take the subway at night back from Goldman to my neighborhood.

Speaker: my $4,000 a month, like one bedroom apartment in Manhattan or whatever.

Speaker: Like as soon as they're allowed to talk about that and why they can't do that, I think things would get really different because you'll still have to remember that, especially the men, I still believe that's the men that are driving a lot of this is that like, they're still kind of autistic and like dudes, you can't, this is something that's always blown my mind.

Speaker: And then is that,

Speaker: It's so frustrating to me that you get these people that are so incredibly competent.

Speaker: They have to notice sharp changes and sharp contrasts and such little details in such large systems.

Speaker: They have to be brutally honest about it.

Speaker: They have to be like, oh, this isn't because X, Y, Z. And then they can switch over to FBI crime statistics and be like, oh, no, it's socioeconomic factors.

Speaker: And I'm like, dude, no, no.

Speaker: God.

Speaker: So that's, so like, and someday I think there's going to come a point where they're going to be like, Oh wait, maybe that's not, maybe that's not what's going on.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like that.

Speaker: I mean, they're clearly, they're clearly, it's a question that I think, like you're saying with the racehorse metaphor, I think it's a question of where they're shining their incredibly bright spotlight.

Speaker: And they have very, very strong personal and social and financial incentives to keep that spotlight as far away from those things as possible.

Speaker: And like, you know, I mean, I voted for Evan McMullen in 2016.

Speaker: Like, you know.

Speaker: Oh, you got psyoped?

Speaker: You got psyoped in the CIA guys?

Speaker: Psyoped real hard.

Speaker: Oh, bro.

Speaker: But yeah, yeah, it was rough.

Speaker: And so, and when I describe...

Speaker: how that happened and how I came around, so to speak, on some things.

Speaker: It wasn't like I changed my mind about anything that I had really thought deeply about.

Speaker: It was more like I heard a particular story in school and it seemed right enough and it didn't sound off any alarm bells.

Speaker: But then when someone said, okay, but have you really thought about that?

Speaker: Like, how do you know that?

Speaker: And then, and then I started to look into it and then I was like, oh, well, okay, maybe, yeah, maybe that's not the case.

Speaker: I mean, so like, you know, wait, what do you mean?

Speaker: Well, I had a conversation, I had a conversation with my stepdad once about, well, the subject of race.

Speaker: And, and it was like, you know, why, why is it always like this everywhere in the world?

Speaker: And his answer to me was, what good can possibly come from having the answer to this question?

Speaker: Like, why would you want to raise this conversation?

Speaker: Because it would just sort of, like, if you're right,

Speaker: And if this is just the way people are, then it would just sort of hurt them and you wouldn't be able to fix anything.

Speaker: So what's the point?

Speaker: And that actually, when I was 15 or 16, I was like, OK, fair enough.

Speaker: And when things would happen that would sort of

Speaker: ping those alarm bells again, I would just say, well, that's the way it is.

Speaker: I don't have any opinions about this.

Speaker: And, you know, and essentially what changed for me was

Speaker: this really strong counter narrative came into power, which was like the only explanation for all of these things is, is that you and your daddy and your granddaddy are monster racist.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You have to be destroyed.

Speaker: And like, yeah, that's the other one, man.

Speaker: And like, there's no, there's no, there's nothing you can say to that.

Speaker: There's no, there's no, there's no way to, for you to integrate into that worldview.

Speaker: That's a conversation stopper.

Speaker: Like you, you literally say, and like, I literally have tried to get this out of motor cabbie there.

Speaker: Cause I hate it when I see it, but that is like, what if it was switched around?

Speaker: Like, oh, oh, kill me, kill me with that.

Speaker: When I hear that, but like, but no, seriously, this is a time where this is appropriate or it's like, okay, you switch that around.

Speaker: Like that is a conversation stopper and you're probably going to jail for a hate crime.

Speaker: Like it's, it is, it's so dramatic, but then it's so accepted today where it's like, yeah, you need to be killed off.

Speaker: And all you can do in the face of that, the only way that you can challenge that narrative is to say...

Speaker: all right, let's look at the facts and let's talk about why that narrative doesn't make a ton of sense, which means you got to bring up all kinds of uncomfortable conversations.

Speaker: And that sucks.

Speaker: Like I still, I still think my stepdad was basically right.

Speaker: That like these conversations are going to hurt a lot of people and that sucks.

Speaker: I don't want to hurt anybody, but like, what's the alternative?

Speaker: Like we have to be honest.

Speaker: So here's, I got two things on this one.

Speaker: from 1965 until probably 10, maybe 15 years ago, you didn't have to answer that question.

Speaker: Your stepdad was right in that they had the luxury of not having to worry about that because we could absorb that.

Speaker: You could absorb 500,000 Africans and 500,000 people from South America.

Speaker: It didn't matter.

Speaker: And now that we're getting to the point where like,

Speaker: in order for people to maintain their lives in a way that they wanted.

Speaker: And this is what I've said for a long time, that nothing's really going to change socially, politically, whatever, until people get uncomfortable enough that the cost of, I don't know, speaking out against this is lower, or at least the same as it is to just burying it in their daily life.

Speaker: And so I think that's one thing that's going on.

Speaker: And then the other one that I was literally just talking with a buddy, and this is the way to sum up what, like, what, because you, you forget sometimes when we talk about things like this, that you, because of the way you were brought up, it's still, the program is still in there, in that, like, you still feel kind of bad sometimes.

Speaker: You feel like, like, it's, like, bad things, but at the end of the day, it's just truth.

Speaker: It's just the truth.

Speaker: And, like, you,

Speaker: How can you feel that bad about like the truth?

Speaker: The things we talk about are unpleasant, but not untrue.

Speaker: And that is the best way of putting it because it's tough to hear, especially if you've never heard it before, but you're a lawyer, like at least you kind of get it.

Speaker: It's very difficult to hear because you go, wow, like that means everything I've learned growing up and also the fate of like,

Speaker: a whole bunch of people, millions of people is basically set in, not set in stone, but it's pretty well set for at least now.

Speaker: Well, this is the one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I think, I think part of the solution to that, like I, I have, I have interacted with people who are always going to struggle to understand like their retirement plan elections and choosing a healthcare plan.

Speaker: And, uh,

Speaker: Examining a loan document, examining a mortgage, talking to a realtor, taking out a credit card, all of these sort of high cognitive load tasks that they will always struggle to execute.

Speaker: And my attitude toward those people is not like, well, you're just too stupid to function and so you're just going to be unhappy and you're just going to get took for a ride for the rest of your life.

Speaker: My mentality toward those people is like,

Speaker: we have to bring back some paternalism.

Speaker: We have to bring back this notion because unless, unless the alternative is we can either build a system of laws that accommodates the, the low IQ and, and just is a straight jacket for everybody else.

Speaker: Or we can build- It's Harrison Bergeron.

Speaker: I've never read that one.

Speaker: It's the dude that was smarter, stronger, faster than everybody.

Speaker: And they made him wear, I thought it was headphones that were just screeching noise all the time.

Speaker: Yeah, to bring the top down.

Speaker: I can't remember what philosopher, some newer political philosopher, but he was like,

Speaker: The only system you should have that adjusts who is where as far as in the class system, the only thing that is right on any sense of the way is that if you're bringing the lowest up, not bringing the top down.

Speaker: Well, but I mean, I'm not even talking about making smart people stupid.

Speaker: I'm talking about banning financial instruments that smart people could understand.

Speaker: that low IQ people are not going to ever be able to understand for their own protection.

Speaker: Oh, dude, absolutely.

Speaker: Which the other alternative is you can build, which is kind of what we have today, you can build a legal system that's built around the smartest people so that they can have maximum freedom to wheel and deal and the low IQ people just get worked, just worked all the time, constantly.

Speaker: And the only alternative to those two

Speaker: is to say people are different and they need different rules and they need, and like, and, and, and I don't know how you do that.

Speaker: Like that's a really challenging, um, this shit makes me laugh.

Speaker: Cause sometimes I, something I, something I think about sometimes to make me like, like I said, we kind of feel kind of bad about like what we talk about is that I think back to like my grandfather's grandfather would have thought basically no different, probably like more hardcore than like what we think today.

Speaker: And like the conversation you and I are having, our grandparents, our great grandparents, they would be like, yeah, no shit, bro.

Speaker: Like no shit.

Speaker: This is obvious.

Speaker: Like, and that's, that's what keeps me going sometimes is that the amount of time that things have been this way and so fucked up is so new.

Speaker: And it's so short in the grand scheme of things that like, this is definitely an aberration.

Speaker: And one thing that, that also keeps me going is that like,

Speaker: those, I hate to use this word because it got so fucked up that these days, but conservative beliefs, right?

Speaker: Those will always be there when you meet them.

Speaker: Like when things, when times get tough and you like, I'm not, not that I think it is, it's going to happen like immediately, but the power goes down and you have to send the man out to hunt or to chop wood or whatever.

Speaker: Like you're going to go back to like gender rules pretty fucking quick.

Speaker: But, um,

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Beyond that, like it's, you know, the stuff is all, what's the word for this?

Speaker: It's all a luxury right now to be able to like do all this nonsense.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But no, I think that the big thing on what you were talking about is like the hierarchy.

Speaker: No one's comfortable with hierarchy anymore because I think part of it, to be honest with you, is that the hierarchy we've experienced now is so tainted and is not a meritocracy because back in the day, like if I know someone who's more competent than me, they're smarter than me, they're more experienced than me, they're more successful than me.

Speaker: I have no problem.

Speaker: Like they can be like, all right, I need you to like go outside, stand on one foot.

Speaker: And then like, you know, flap your arms like a bird.

Speaker: And I'll be like, I don't know what you're doing, but I trust you.

Speaker: And like, it was, I would, I would go do that.

Speaker: But if there's someone above me, who's like, they're just there arbitrarily, or I can like, you know,

Speaker: You kind of have that sense that they're not more competent than you.

Speaker: Like they can tell me to do something.

Speaker: I probably know myself that I need to do.

Speaker: But even then that I'm going to be hesitant to do it because I'm like, I don't trust that you're more competent than me or should be doing this.

Speaker: So I think that's you.

Speaker: We kind of have to like, I don't know.

Speaker: I don't know how you saw that because what comes first?

Speaker: Do you like try to make your own hierarchy system that go within that?

Speaker: Or do you try to like get back to what that should be within this?

Speaker: Like basically like reform or like reconstruct.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, on the basis of what I'm doing here, I think I lean more toward exit and getting out and, you know,

Speaker: abandoning ship.

Speaker: But I think you have to get back to a hierarchy of genuine competence that people respect and recognize.

Speaker: And a lot of that, I think you're right, has to do with something has to go seriously wrong in a way that can't be papered over, in a way that can't be ignored.

Speaker: And the people who competently handle that will become legitimate authorities.

Speaker: And, and everyone will recognize that and there won't be any doubt.

Speaker: And there won't, it's not going to be this, like, you know, you're just there because your daddy, you know what I mean?

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: That won't have anything to do with it.

Speaker: Well, this has been a great conversation, Max.

Speaker: Thanks for coming along to share your thoughts.

Speaker: Anyone who's interested in learning more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.

Speaker: You can also check out the podcast at exitgroup.podbean.com.

Speaker: Follow us on Twitter, exit underscore org.

Speaker: Thanks a lot, Max.

Speaker: Great talking to you.

Speaker: Take care.