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Hi everybody, welcome to the Jimmy Dore Show.

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We have a special guest with us:

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the founder of The Zeitgeist Movement
and author of this new book

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'The New Human Rights Movement,'
it's Peter Joseph is with us.

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Say hello to Peter Joseph. Hi Peter!
- Hey, how you doing there Jimmy.

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- Now first of all, I read this book,

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I'm not a good reader
so I probably missed a lot of stuff.

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It is a great book and, for me

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what I took away from it, you really examined

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capitalism and the effects of capitalism

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on societies and people's psyches and

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there was so many mind-blowing
things in this book

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I can't- I don't even know where to
start so let me just ask you Peter

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you could maybe tell people what this
book is about and summarize it for us.

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- Sure. So the New Human Rights movement -

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the NEW human rights movement, how dare I?

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What was the OLD human rights movement?

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The focus being we have to
take kind of a broader

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sociological structural view of society,

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to think about all the interplays
that produce human behavior,

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that produce our social systems,
our institutions moreso.

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Like what has fomented all of this,
how have we gotten here?

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And that is a public health debate.

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That is an issue of what defines
public health, what defines

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actually, progress as we know it,

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has to be defined in terms
of actual health regards,

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not necessarily what we're
producing in society,

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not how much productivity we have or

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the extent of GDP or how
many people are employed,

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but how happy are we?

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And this is the core of it
as a public health treatment.

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And I put it in the context of human rights

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because I feel that when people realize
that we have a structural problem,

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and when I use that word "structural"
I mean that there's larger order things

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that are happening that
influence our behavior,

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just as there are biological things
that influence our behavior.

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So structuralism, sociology effectively,

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it's an interdisciplinary
kind of study, which means

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you have to take a lot into account to figure
out what the hell is going on in the world.

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And that's really what this is about
at it's very core is that approach.

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And what I conclude in the text is that with

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this old economy that we have,
you can call it

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market system, you can call it capitalism,

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I think of it more broadly, I say
it's an economy run by market forces;

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that more gets to the point of it.

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Market forces embodies all
the motivations people have,

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it generates the infrastructure so
to speak, the procedural dynamics,

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all the things we have to do
to game in this reality to survive.

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And then you have all these
people, suddenly 7 billion of us,

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pulling levers on a giant machine

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and we're not paying attention to
what this machine's actually doing.

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We're getting our little treats and
we're throwing it in our mouth

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and our little stupid rewards, and we
keep going on our short-term interest,

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and yet this machine is a big train that's
flying straight off of a cliff into oblivion.

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And until we get our heads around that we're
gonna have a serious public health crisis

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in terms of socioeconomic inequality,
one of the most destructive forces

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on the face of the earth,
shattering human trust,

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'social capitalists' they call it,
we don't trust each other anymore.

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We have disparate groups that
are going out of control,

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we have a whole new level of
insurgencies and terrorism.

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The United States of course is the
forbidden example of all of this,

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the forbidden experiment I should say.

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Sort of like when you lock a kid in the closet,
and you don't look at them for 10 years,

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and they come out and they're all
deranged with this kind of primalness,

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that's the way I see the United States
experiment at this point because

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look at the violence, look at everything
that we're doing, look how weird

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the culture has become,
look at the political system.

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It's become this amalgamation of
so many things that in my mind

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is indicative of the worst outcomes,
the most predictably at worst

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peak outcomes of the kind
of social system we have:

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the capitalist market-force-driven system.

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So that in combination with
the ecological crisis,

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again those levers that we're
pulling on the machine.

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- So let me just stop you at the market forces.
- Sure, yeah.

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- So, your critique is talking about
that this "free market system"

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first of all isn't a free market system, that

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it's really manipulated by the people

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with the most money which means
they're the most powerful

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that manipulate a "free
market" into their favor.

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Correct? Would that be correct?

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- As would be expected, so here's one
differentiation that I want to make.

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So a lot of people say this,
they'll bring up this debate

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"Well, if we could only have
a more robust free market,

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if we could stop the 'crony' capitalism,

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if we could stop all the apparent
things that are anomalous!"

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But they're NOT anomalous.

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They're part of the
competitive gaming strategy

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of group versus group.

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And capitalism is the embodiment
of that primitive behavior

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coming from again, eons of evolution
of our most core and base instincts

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of keeping your tribalism together
and not caring about the external,

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and it's that very problem that in our
high-tech society is again flying us off

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of the cliff, so go back to your point -

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What we have in terms of the free market,

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everything you see around you,
this is it: this is the free market.

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It's the free market that buys
politicians just like you buy pizza.

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It's the free market that takes and

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gouges people in the medical community
to get as much as they possibly can,

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to extract for the self-interest
of one group or corporation.

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It's the free market that lobbies, that does
everything that you consider to be unethical

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but within the game of competition
there really aren't any lines anymore.

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I mean it just depends on what
corner you're backed into.

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- And so, because,

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so now why is it that some places

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institute a form of free markets
or capitalism, say like Denmark,

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which they have a very
strong social safety net

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and they're now the happiest country in the
world I'm pretty sure or one of the top.

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- Finland and Denmark, yeah.

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- Okay. And they have less income
inequality than we have here.

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So why does it seem that our version
of capitalism in the United States

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is so much more brutal
than places like Denmark?

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- First of all I'm glad you bring that up
because that goes back to

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democratic socialist policies
and with Bernie Sanders and

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the very simple public health issues that
he's brought up in terms of comparing

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our society and what we can do in
terms of increasing public health

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and say "yes it can be done, it's
already been done in these countries."

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And that is absolutely important
information that everyone listening

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should look into because it proves

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when you look at the happiness
indexes, when you look at

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the way they go about their lives,
their public health metrics,

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they are doing so much better than we are.

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And that is amazing information.
Now why can't we just superimpose

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that type of capitalism upon the United States? (- right),
is a great question.

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The difference is that we
live in the global society

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and the fleeting middle class
of the United States is like

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the fleeting middle class
of Denmark and Finland,

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and the Gini coefficients are still rising
amongst all of these countries as well

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as more stress on the planet,

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the more social stress, the more
tensions between nations increases.

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So my point here is that you can't just look
at the United States as some isolated bubble

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and then look at Finland
as an isolated bubble

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and say that this policy
should just be implanted here

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without regard to the evolution
of ALL the countries,

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the colonization that has produced the landscapes
that we see, the borders that we see,

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without the globalization and the
power of transnational corporations.

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Sweden might be a very happy country.

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One of its biggest exports are
massive military war machines.

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So there's a synergy to all of this that,

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my analogy is you drive down the middle
class [neighborhood] in Los Angeles.

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"Oh, look at these people, there's
a dentist there's a doctor.

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These people are doing great, they like
their jobs, they have their nice home,

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they have their family,
the ideal American dream."

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But yet what's on the other side
of that middle-class neighborhood?

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Extreme slums, and extreme wealth.

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And that's the way the world is.

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So that's why Finland and Denmark exist
in the class middle-ground that they do,

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because of all the extremes around them.

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- Okay. Oh I see what you're saying.

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So you look at them,

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they're like the middle class of
the world (- exactly) in a sense

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so you can't extract that ...
So you look at it as one whole.

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- Now that's not to discount the important
information we learn from them.

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We should be looking at these countries
to see what's working in terms of

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increasing public health and ecological stability
because some of these countries and even

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in areas of Germany and so on, they're doing
robust things to create more sustainability.

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But they still exist in pockets,
and as long as the empires

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maintain themselves as they do
(China, the United States, Russia)

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their gravity - what they actually do -
will continue to affect the entire planet

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and the extremes of their behavior

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are gonna make a lot of the stuff that's happening
in these other smaller countries kind of moot,

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especially in terms of
development of sustainability.

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- Let's start with how- I don't
think people realize, I think

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people individually realize
how tough they have it

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and how hard it is to tread water
and we can say things like

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gofundme's number-one
campaigns are for medical expenses.

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You have a great statistic,
you have many great statistics

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that are great examples of how bad things have
gotten with our system, our economic system.

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And one of those things that I've been
repeating ever since I read it was:

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63% of people in the United States
can't afford a $1,000 emergency.

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And so this is the richest
country in the world! right?

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and the history in the world.

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And yet 63% of its population is poor,
it can't afford a thousand dollar

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emergency, 50% of people
are poor or low income,

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50% of all wage earners are $30,000 or less.

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So do you have any more of these great
statistics to show how our system has failed?

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- I should have made a statistic list,
but look at the debt.

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It's from a couple years ago but
if I remember correctly 43%

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of people live beyond their means every year.

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- Here in the United States?

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- Yeah, not because they're just greedy
people that want their new TVs.

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There's an element of social inclusion
that's inherent to us as a species

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where yeah- people want to be included in
what the society as a whole is doing.

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So that's what poor really, to be poor,
really means: you're not included, right? (- Right.)

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If we lived in Mexico (kind of an aside),

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if we lived in a rural area of Mexico and
everyone has great happiness indexes out there

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and they have good public
health but they're poor!

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But they don't KNOW they're poor.

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It's like the public health research in Cuba.

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When they're isolated and they're not
experiencing this massive wealth divide

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and the feeling of kind of marginalization

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because they don't have certain economic
means or certain elements of inclusion

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and they can't go out and do this-or-that
that other rich people can do,

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this creates sickness when people
experience that and if you don't have that,

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and this gets to the heart of what
it means to have relative poverty

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and why socioeconomic
inequality is so destructive.

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If you go through epidemiological research,
any peer reviewed studies, just look at it.

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I encourage anyone to do this,
look at what economic inequality

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correlates to in countries
that have the most of it.

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The United States: off-the-chart violence.

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- So the correlation (- drug addiction...),
you use the term precondition, that capitalism

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is a precondition for violence, murder,
could you explain it that way?

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- Yeah. From a public health standpoint a
precondition is something that comes before.

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So a precondition to
getting a certain disease

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is to have exposure to
certain things, so to speak.

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You could also say a precondition to driving
a car is to get the license and so on.

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But the point being is if you have

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a certain foundation in your
society that you can correlate to

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(which has been statistically done)
to numerous outcomes then

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that state becomes a
precondition, predictably so.

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(I didn't explain that very well.)

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A precondition - here's a better example -
to getting cancer would be to smoke cigarettes.

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Not everybody who smoke cigarettes
gets cancer I should say.

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But there's a statistical probability

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that people that are involved in that
exposure are going to have that problem.

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And that's where we are with say American
economics, the American zeitgeist as it were.

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So a good percentage of the population

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is going to turn into
really hideous materialists

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or is gonna become more authoritarian
since the rise of Trump,

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or is going to condone really
brute policies in the Middle East

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and all of this, again, this
exceptionalism in America.

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So the idea of a precondition means something
that comes before and if you want to

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get rid of all those caustic outcomes
you get rid of the precondition.

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And that's my whole argument in the book is

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we have to do something different with our
economy; it is the foundation of everything.

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The Neolithic Revolution
happened 12,000 years ago,

226
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it set the stage for agriculture, settlement,

227
00:12:11,617 --> 00:12:14,148
cities, trade, exchange,
labor specialization.

228
00:12:14,250 --> 00:12:18,400
Suddenly the entire architecture of what we know
as our market economy was built

229
00:12:18,560 --> 00:12:20,725
from that point on, and we've been in this

230
00:12:21,720 --> 00:12:26,131
this disputed groupistic in-group out-group

231
00:12:26,542 --> 00:12:27,977
warring machine ever since.

232
00:12:28,085 --> 00:12:30,782
Now keep in mind, before that,
99% of human history:

233
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:32,737
no money or markets; we lived egalitarian.

234
00:12:32,885 --> 00:12:35,485
So anyone that gives you that
human-nature argument

235
00:12:35,640 --> 00:12:38,902
"Humans are just mean!" you know,
the whole Western philosophy,

236
00:12:39,422 --> 00:12:43,874
from John Locke to Adam
Smith, to any of those folks,

237
00:12:45,251 --> 00:12:48,628
to Thomas Malthus of course, they
all look at human society as this

238
00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:53,131
this mean cruel thing, that
we are just these beasts

239
00:12:53,342 --> 00:12:56,074
and that this is the way it is
but that is absolutely debunked

240
00:12:56,337 --> 00:12:57,645
by the historical record.

241
00:12:58,217 --> 00:12:59,788
- So another way of saying that is

242
00:13:00,154 --> 00:13:03,090
people who advocate for selfishness
(- yeah), right? correct?

243
00:13:03,314 --> 00:13:05,485
and you make that point in the book that

244
00:13:05,697 --> 00:13:10,125
that's not actually a good way
to form an economic system

245
00:13:10,274 --> 00:13:12,034
based on self-interest, right?

246
00:13:12,491 --> 00:13:17,474
- I would say that because of
the determinism that happened

247
00:13:17,630 --> 00:13:23,108
when we created agriculture,
we created this warring machine

248
00:13:24,354 --> 00:13:27,490
that before that time didn't actually exist.

249
00:13:28,020 --> 00:13:29,234
I'm trying to put this in terms that are very-...

250
00:13:29,342 --> 00:13:32,300
- So there was a time when human beings
were hunter-gatherers. (- Yes.)

251
00:13:32,440 --> 00:13:34,971
And then they made the switch to agriculture.

252
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:40,091
- Yes, and that set the stage for all the,
I call it geographical determinism,

253
00:13:40,217 --> 00:13:43,480
which is, I hate to sound technical
but ultimately what it means is that

254
00:13:44,620 --> 00:13:47,405
you have all the characteristics
that you define of our, so let me-...

255
00:13:47,931 --> 00:13:49,297
We have property rights in our society.

256
00:13:49,460 --> 00:13:51,148
Obviously if you do something
you want to protect it,

257
00:13:51,257 --> 00:13:53,140
or someone else might steal it
that doesn't have the resource.

258
00:13:57,331 --> 00:14:00,314
You have security issues, obviously,
it's similar to property rights.

259
00:14:00,748 --> 00:14:04,177
You have capital, which is
that engine of creation

260
00:14:04,285 --> 00:14:08,565
that's done mostly through money
but also relates to labor and so on.

261
00:14:08,982 --> 00:14:11,005
And all of that was codified
at that period of time.

262
00:14:11,114 --> 00:14:13,790
I want to make sure this point is very clear,
I apologize if I didn't explain it very well.

263
00:14:14,148 --> 00:14:17,742
We are on the trajectory we are because
of the Agricultural Revolution,

264
00:14:17,982 --> 00:14:21,497
and we have to get out of this
trajectory and reorganize our economy

265
00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:24,428
if we expect there to be any
kind of harmony on this planet

266
00:14:24,697 --> 00:14:28,560
and if we expect to maintain ecological
stability or homeostasis with the habitat.

267
00:14:28,937 --> 00:14:31,405
This is where we are at this point in time

268
00:14:31,771 --> 00:14:36,794
and how we organize that is going to be
the defining feature of the next century.

269
00:14:36,970 --> 00:14:39,274
Because as of right now,
not to jump to the end here

270
00:14:39,382 --> 00:14:40,897
but I just want to make
this point before I forget,

271
00:14:41,234 --> 00:14:43,622
with the advent of the pollution crisis,

272
00:14:43,811 --> 00:14:47,760
with everything that's happening in terms
of resource overshoot, biodiversity loss,

273
00:14:48,050 --> 00:14:49,314
about 30 years from now

274
00:14:49,422 --> 00:14:53,274
the refugee crisis is gonna go from 65
million to probably about 200 million

275
00:14:54,320 --> 00:14:59,194
as the climate change starts to dry out more
regions in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia,

276
00:14:59,450 --> 00:15:02,754
while the other lush regions start to
flood because of the rise of the oceans.

277
00:15:02,862 --> 00:15:03,902
So what is that going to mean?

278
00:15:04,028 --> 00:15:07,954
All of our ponderances of democracy
and so on become rather moot

279
00:15:08,177 --> 00:15:12,491
when the Western society in Europe is gonna
have an influx of people from these regions

280
00:15:12,600 --> 00:15:13,885
that have nowhere else to go.

281
00:15:14,348 --> 00:15:16,988
- And this is because of climate change

282
00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:20,897
getting not only the encroachment of the sea

283
00:15:21,177 --> 00:15:23,502
but the reduction in topsoil, correct?

284
00:15:23,630 --> 00:15:25,908
- There's a whole litany of
things and I want to point out

285
00:15:26,154 --> 00:15:28,291
it's not because of those things,

286
00:15:28,400 --> 00:15:32,342
it's because we have an economic
system that [has] absolutely no regard

287
00:15:32,542 --> 00:15:34,154
for any balance with the environment.

288
00:15:34,434 --> 00:15:37,325
Here's the paradox of our market
economy in the 21st century.

289
00:15:37,530 --> 00:15:39,045
We have a system based on scarcity,

290
00:15:39,154 --> 00:15:41,720
which justifies our political
nonsense so it's politicized:

291
00:15:42,131 --> 00:15:45,440
"Oh we can't have health care for the American
public because we can't afford that!"

292
00:15:45,590 --> 00:15:48,297
Then we can go bomb a country with
trillions of dollars into infinity.

293
00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:51,422
So the contradiction is immense,
but that's the argument: scarcity.

294
00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:54,217
But then what do we do?
We promote infinite consumption.

295
00:15:54,405 --> 00:15:58,354
"Go out and buy everything! Keep buying
and consuming because that fuels jobs."

296
00:15:58,491 --> 00:16:01,520
That fuels again GDP and
everything that denotes survival.

297
00:16:01,754 --> 00:16:05,885
So we have this backward system that is
completely antithetical to sustainability

298
00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:09,205
and in many ways antithetical to any kind
of group harmony and social justice.

299
00:16:09,380 --> 00:16:13,331
I firmly argue that, you look at the
whole world, all these movements,

300
00:16:13,742 --> 00:16:16,811
you look at all the people that want to see
balance, they want to see fairness, right?

301
00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:20,491
That's the whole drive of
our progress as a species,

302
00:16:20,634 --> 00:16:23,908
to see fairness: gender fairness,
creed fairness, ethnicity fairness,

303
00:16:24,354 --> 00:16:26,748
national fairness in the sense
of immigration and so on.

304
00:16:26,890 --> 00:16:28,765
But no one, very few stop to say

305
00:16:28,874 --> 00:16:33,410
"Well, what about economic fairness or
economic democracy?" Everyone stops short

306
00:16:33,645 --> 00:16:36,090
because they know they're gonna get that
label as a communist or Marxist. (- right)

307
00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:39,320
They're gonna be a NATIONAL socialist and
suddenly they're compared to Hitler!

308
00:16:39,460 --> 00:16:41,388
I've had these comparisons made to myself. (- Really!)

309
00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:44,990
Seriously it's unbelievable how the
propaganda, as you know very well Jimmy,

310
00:16:45,251 --> 00:16:47,982
the nonsensical polarization left-right,

311
00:16:48,205 --> 00:16:51,537
Republican, Democrat, Marxist,
communist, socialist.

312
00:16:51,820 --> 00:16:55,194
Instead of thinking about it in terms of
that let's think about what actually works.

313
00:16:55,674 --> 00:16:58,960
Instead of looking at our
system of economy as some,

314
00:16:59,550 --> 00:17:03,342
some part of a dyad of "ooh is
it socialism, is it capitalism?"

315
00:17:03,485 --> 00:17:06,045
well how about we just ask the question
"does the system even work?" (- does it work?)

316
00:17:06,160 --> 00:17:07,914
That's it! It doesn't goddamn work!

317
00:17:08,290 --> 00:17:10,434
- I mean you can look around
it's not working, right? (- No!)

318
00:17:10,542 --> 00:17:12,380
So all those statistics that we just gave,

319
00:17:12,720 --> 00:17:16,731
it shows you and the question that I've been
asking since I started reading this book

320
00:17:17,080 --> 00:17:19,954
is what do you call a system that takes
the richest country in the world

321
00:17:20,057 --> 00:17:22,617
and renders half of its
population poor or low income?

322
00:17:22,851 --> 00:17:26,622
You call that a failed system!
And no one talks about this so

323
00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:30,180
let's just talk about the
system a little bit more.

324
00:17:31,485 --> 00:17:34,337
So automation, everyone's
talking about automation:

325
00:17:34,440 --> 00:17:36,662
we're gonna have driverless
cars, driverless trucks,

326
00:17:36,845 --> 00:17:39,040
no cashiers anymore.

327
00:17:39,490 --> 00:17:43,011
Automation, you say in the
book, it spurs inequality

328
00:17:43,760 --> 00:17:46,994
and the fruits of... is that true?
- Well keep going.

329
00:17:47,120 --> 00:17:51,211
- And that the fruits of
robots go to the upper class.

330
00:17:51,531 --> 00:17:55,245
- As in the current system, absolutely.
I think in fact [since] the big

331
00:17:56,354 --> 00:18:00,577
since the great crisis, the Great Recession
whatever they call it 2007-2008,

332
00:18:00,891 --> 00:18:03,760
and then you had the recovery, right?
And it's been well acknowledged that

333
00:18:03,900 --> 00:18:08,748
90, 95% of that recovery money went straight
to the upper five... - Right! Went straight to them.

334
00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:12,428
- So that money really,
that wealth is actually

335
00:18:14,102 --> 00:18:18,990
output by the process of automation
and industrial efficiency.

336
00:18:19,240 --> 00:18:21,377
(that's a slight aside)
In other words

337
00:18:21,485 --> 00:18:25,680
all the automation and technological
progress we've seen in industry and business

338
00:18:25,931 --> 00:18:28,120
has gone to the upper five/one percent.

339
00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:32,954
That is unfortunately where the driving
force of rapid inequality is coming from.

340
00:18:33,130 --> 00:18:37,091
Why? Because we're not using automation
in the way that we should as a species

341
00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:40,948
and that is to replace monotonous and
boring labor to free people to enable

342
00:18:41,371 --> 00:18:43,805
people to actually have creativity
and to do things that they want to do.

343
00:18:44,137 --> 00:18:46,245
So that's because of the system
that we have, the inequality.

344
00:18:46,380 --> 00:18:49,605
Automation itself is the ultimate
contradiction of the system at this point,

345
00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:53,350
the 21st century because, how are
you gonna keep people employed if

346
00:18:53,605 --> 00:18:55,857
you're gonna be replaced by machines?
what do you do at that point?

347
00:18:56,010 --> 00:18:58,000
It means you have to find another
way to compensate, hence

348
00:18:58,230 --> 00:19:00,078
the dawn of universal
basic income promoted by

349
00:19:00,188 --> 00:19:02,060
Elon Musk and other people
that are aware of this.

350
00:19:04,180 --> 00:19:07,845
- Yeah and I was gonna say what
people don't realize, when they say

351
00:19:07,950 --> 00:19:12,651
"Oh well if those McDonald's workers want $15
an hour just replace them with a robot."

352
00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:15,937
What those people don't realize
when they say that is that

353
00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:18,017
when a McDonald's worker gets paid

354
00:19:18,131 --> 00:19:20,788
they take that money and put it
right back into the economy.

355
00:19:21,017 --> 00:19:25,125
When a robot at McDonald's gets paid
it does not go back into the economy.

356
00:19:25,250 --> 00:19:28,668
That money now gets actually
extracted from the economy

357
00:19:28,820 --> 00:19:31,777
and it goes into a bank account
probably offshore somewhere

358
00:19:31,914 --> 00:19:34,474
or it goes into the pocket of a
millionaire or a billionaire

359
00:19:34,657 --> 00:19:36,834
who already has all the
stuff he needs to buy.

360
00:19:37,005 --> 00:19:41,497
So that creates this emptiness
inside of our economy,

361
00:19:41,685 --> 00:19:46,034
and the way I heard someone else
describe it, I think Mark Blyth said

362
00:19:46,142 --> 00:19:48,982
"The problem with robots is
robots don't buy stuff."

363
00:19:49,297 --> 00:19:52,371
And our whole economy is
based on us buying stuff.

364
00:19:52,508 --> 00:19:56,497
That's why after 9/11 George Bush
said go out, go out shopping,

365
00:19:56,600 --> 00:19:58,297
and go to your destinations, right?

366
00:19:59,068 --> 00:20:01,765
And so- because this is what
our whole economy is based on.

367
00:20:01,874 --> 00:20:05,902
If we're afraid to shop,
our economy will constrict.

368
00:20:06,182 --> 00:20:08,611
So automation is gonna mean constriction

369
00:20:08,771 --> 00:20:12,971
and all that extra money being saved by
robots is not gonna go back into our economy

370
00:20:13,090 --> 00:20:15,554
but go back to the 1%, right?
do I have it correct?

371
00:20:15,660 --> 00:20:18,182
- You do absolutely and of course
the pundits will say "Well,

372
00:20:18,765 --> 00:20:23,628
if you give more money to the business class
it will just trickle down as it always does," right?

373
00:20:24,748 --> 00:20:26,205
- But that evidence is in, right?

374
00:20:26,314 --> 00:20:29,291
We've tried this trickle-down
economics now going on 40 years,

375
00:20:29,565 --> 00:20:32,868
and by the way just the sound of that:
"Please sir, may I have a trickle?

376
00:20:33,154 --> 00:20:36,000
Is there a trickle of money for
me please sir? a trickle!"

377
00:20:36,154 --> 00:20:38,320
That's what that sounds-
that's exactly what it is!

378
00:20:38,554 --> 00:20:41,034
And we're living in the- it doesn't work!

379
00:20:42,491 --> 00:20:44,085
One more thing I want to just-

380
00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:48,302
I've heard someone talking
this morning about

381
00:20:48,417 --> 00:20:51,100
the reason why Trump may
get reelected in 2020

382
00:20:51,217 --> 00:20:53,491
is because we're very
close to full employment

383
00:20:54,310 --> 00:20:55,651
and that

384
00:20:56,548 --> 00:21:01,165
just by sheer economic force people
are going to start getting raises.

385
00:21:01,577 --> 00:21:05,720
And the reason why Bill Clinton
was so popular in the '90s

386
00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:07,697
even while being impeached (which he was!)

387
00:21:08,537 --> 00:21:12,965
was because that was the first time in a
long time workers saw a raise in pay.

388
00:21:13,325 --> 00:21:17,297
It hasn't happened since and it
didn't happen before since 1980,

389
00:21:17,580 --> 00:21:19,862
and so it might happen right now with Trump

390
00:21:19,977 --> 00:21:22,851
because we're in very
close to full employment.

391
00:21:23,222 --> 00:21:26,377
And is that- what do you say
about that, is that true?

392
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:32,250
- Since the end of the Obama administration and
the Trump administration's beginning to now,

393
00:21:32,645 --> 00:21:35,977
90% of those new jobs are gig economy jobs.

394
00:21:36,274 --> 00:21:39,474
They're not real jobs with benefits,
they don't have health insurance.

395
00:21:39,580 --> 00:21:40,382
- What does that mean, gig economy?

396
00:21:40,497 --> 00:21:42,148
- It means that they're
just freelancers. (- yeah)

397
00:21:42,257 --> 00:21:44,640
Freelancers that have no liability,
they can be fired at a whim.

398
00:21:44,820 --> 00:21:46,531
- Like an Uber driver or a Lyft driver.

399
00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:50,142
- Absolutely, and I think it's really
depressing that we hold up this statistic.

400
00:21:50,394 --> 00:21:52,125
Well first of all as you
know there's a whole,

401
00:21:52,240 --> 00:21:56,200
there's a massive percentage, probably 12-13%
of people that are off the grid so to speak

402
00:21:56,480 --> 00:21:57,600
when it comes to unemployment.

403
00:21:57,850 --> 00:22:00,720
They're just not even in the system
anymore because they don't try.

404
00:22:00,930 --> 00:22:02,542
And they live in the outskirts,

405
00:22:02,725 --> 00:22:05,714
and they do complementary
things in their neighborhood.

406
00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:07,297
So unemployment's actually
a lot higher than ...

407
00:22:07,731 --> 00:22:09,480
- So the REAL unemployment,
what would you say?

408
00:22:09,590 --> 00:22:11,348
- I'd think like 14 percent.
- Really!

409
00:22:12,542 --> 00:22:15,337
- Yeah, there's people that
track these metrics every year,

410
00:22:15,588 --> 00:22:18,262
and I'd say, it may be a little less
than that now but it's close to that

411
00:22:18,390 --> 00:22:21,051
because they're not counting these folks;
these people live on the outskirts,

412
00:22:21,165 --> 00:22:23,891
they're off the grid literally,
they're not metrically denoted.

413
00:22:24,460 --> 00:22:26,731
So getting back to the gig economy,
okay yeah so we've had,

414
00:22:26,851 --> 00:22:30,211
we apparently have more people employed
but they're employed in terrible jobs

415
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:31,525
that don't have any future.

416
00:22:33,274 --> 00:22:36,720
- Just to speak to that,
44% of homeless people have a job.

417
00:22:37,580 --> 00:22:39,725
So what does that tell you
about the jobs in America?

418
00:22:39,830 --> 00:22:40,674
- Exactly.

419
00:22:42,108 --> 00:22:44,702
Obviously that's not, just like GDP,
it's not a metric of progress.

420
00:22:44,890 --> 00:22:47,548
You have to go deeper (- right!),
you don't just throw this stuff out there.

421
00:22:47,891 --> 00:22:51,502
And of course Trump being the-...
whatever he is-

422
00:22:52,130 --> 00:22:54,234
he'll give you the superficial everything (- yes)

423
00:22:54,342 --> 00:22:56,060
as the Republican Party
will to support him.

424
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:58,908
One thing I want to say about the
unemployment thing, just to make a point,

425
00:22:59,017 --> 00:23:01,674
a broad social point not
to distract, is that:

426
00:23:01,788 --> 00:23:05,285
what has been the greatest driver of oppression
on this planet since human history?

427
00:23:05,394 --> 00:23:06,685
and that is oppression of Labor.

428
00:23:07,045 --> 00:23:10,674
So the automation thing, if we
can allow it to have fruition,

429
00:23:10,994 --> 00:23:15,360
will create an amiable society, if we can
start to remove the need of labor for income,

430
00:23:15,660 --> 00:23:18,708
we will remove that pressure that
has been the most oppressive force

431
00:23:18,810 --> 00:23:22,062
from abject human slavery, up into the 60-

432
00:23:22,497 --> 00:23:26,434
what is it, the 64 million slaves in
the world today based on UN standards?

433
00:23:26,914 --> 00:23:29,085
I apologize if that metric's not current,
I think it's like 50 million, yeah.

434
00:23:30,571 --> 00:23:32,685
And they're being manipulated through

435
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,480
the sex trafficking or through
domestic house trafficking.

436
00:23:38,594 --> 00:23:40,142
Like I'm sure you heard about
the people in Washington,

437
00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:42,902
political leaders that basically
got slaves doing their laundry.

438
00:23:43,300 --> 00:23:45,182
So all of that could go away

439
00:23:45,365 --> 00:23:48,445
if we start to reorganize our economy,
just that simple notion of

440
00:23:48,982 --> 00:23:52,630
generating a new social construct where we're
not constantly at war with each other,

441
00:23:53,028 --> 00:23:55,205
employees aren't at war with other employees,

442
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:56,805
companies aren't at war with other companies.

443
00:23:56,910 --> 00:23:58,948
That's what I talk about the end
of the book, is you can do it.

444
00:23:59,250 --> 00:24:02,377
- So yeah you do say, in fact I wrote it down:

445
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:04,790
"Everyone can enjoy a life of leisure

446
00:24:05,514 --> 00:24:08,257
if the wealth created by machines is shared."

447
00:24:08,502 --> 00:24:11,222
- That's actually what Stephen
Hawking said, I quoted him.

448
00:24:12,325 --> 00:24:16,180
He's absolutely right, even in his general
intuitive brilliance when it came to social issues.

449
00:24:16,820 --> 00:24:18,640
It makes perfect sense if you-...

450
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:22,891
Here's one thing that I think is
worth bringing up before I forget,

451
00:24:23,257 --> 00:24:25,171
is that we have this infinite wants culture.

452
00:24:25,331 --> 00:24:27,954
We have people that think
that we're insatiable, right?

453
00:24:28,085 --> 00:24:30,388
"Humans are insatiable,
they WANT the ten Lamborghinis,"

454
00:24:31,411 --> 00:24:34,737
they want the room with the 700
rooms, the mansion, whatever.

455
00:24:34,965 --> 00:24:36,188
- So it's all not true, right?

456
00:24:36,850 --> 00:24:40,091
- It's preposterous on its head
to say that that would be true.

457
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:41,685
I think it's a burden

458
00:24:41,860 --> 00:24:44,531
to see that anyone would even want
to have that kind of liability.

459
00:24:45,780 --> 00:24:48,897
It's a value system problem that's
been generated through our status,

460
00:24:49,011 --> 00:24:51,874
market-driven status system,
that says you are what you own

461
00:24:51,982 --> 00:24:53,937
and you are how much money you
have in your bank account.

462
00:24:54,291 --> 00:24:58,691
But back to my core point though is that,
that value system - if that's true -

463
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:00,731
then we might as well just slit
all their throats right now!

464
00:25:02,340 --> 00:25:05,211
This is what mainstream
economists, political economists,

465
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,302
philosophers of economy
have been saying forever.

466
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:08,948
And it's held up by all the libertarians like

467
00:25:09,100 --> 00:25:12,588
"Oh you can't have any kind of
balance or equal distribution.

468
00:25:12,690 --> 00:25:16,171
You can't do that because people are irrational
basically, and they have infinite wants!"

469
00:25:16,405 --> 00:25:19,680
And that is absolutely preposterous
that this idea, this myth-

470
00:25:19,874 --> 00:25:22,080
- In fact there was a study done

471
00:25:22,702 --> 00:25:25,182
(you could probably remember
the name of it, I don't but)

472
00:25:26,514 --> 00:25:29,771
the numbers that I remember
being in the study was that

473
00:25:30,102 --> 00:25:33,697
they tried to figure out your level
of happiness as relates to your income.

474
00:25:33,810 --> 00:25:36,240
- Oh right, the $75,000...
- So talk about that.

475
00:25:36,350 --> 00:25:38,485
- So that's a good metric,
I think that's a little loose but

476
00:25:38,594 --> 00:25:42,090
based on the polls that they did, once
you reach a threshold of $75,000 a year.

477
00:25:42,380 --> 00:25:44,005
I'm not sure what region
they're accounting for,

478
00:25:44,110 --> 00:25:46,748
assuming they're compensating
and averaging it out.

479
00:25:47,610 --> 00:25:51,937
- Like real estate would be a bigger factor
in Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco

480
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:53,680
than it would be in Des Moines.
- Exactly.

481
00:25:54,045 --> 00:25:55,690
- So roughly there's a number

482
00:25:55,840 --> 00:26:00,725
and they said it was 75,000, I'd say if you
live in LA it would be probably $100,000.

483
00:26:01,590 --> 00:26:03,690
- You're right. Or New York.
- But after that point-

484
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:06,702
- After that point it doesn't influence
their happiness. (- you don't get happier!)

485
00:26:06,820 --> 00:26:09,754
They become probably more confused. (- yes!)
You might like in my book how

486
00:26:09,868 --> 00:26:13,020
I denoted all that what happens to rich people
as they go up the economic ladder ...

487
00:26:14,130 --> 00:26:16,800
where it talks about all the
studies that have been done,

488
00:26:16,910 --> 00:26:18,731
a lot of them (- oh yeah) from UC Berkeley,

489
00:26:18,940 --> 00:26:21,462
how people when they get
more and more wealth (- yes, less empathy)

490
00:26:21,582 --> 00:26:23,097
they get less empathy,
they can't recognize empathy!

491
00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:25,434
- They can't even-... they don't talk about...

492
00:26:26,430 --> 00:26:30,720
- They don't donate to anything but
like museums (- yes!) and churches

493
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,880
or colleges, universities
for like higher education.

494
00:26:34,340 --> 00:26:37,400
They never contribute to poverty-...
(- that's the greatest part of the book)

495
00:26:37,510 --> 00:26:38,571
The poorest people of our world

496
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:41,497
(especially the United States but
statistically denoted across the world)

497
00:26:41,725 --> 00:26:43,691
are so much more kind!

498
00:26:44,060 --> 00:26:47,040
because they have an actual
identification to common folk.

499
00:26:47,434 --> 00:26:49,394
But the more you get wealthy,
the more you separate yourself,

500
00:26:49,508 --> 00:26:50,702
the more you become like Trump!

501
00:26:50,977 --> 00:26:53,182
the more it becomes some
kind of weakness to care.

502
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,685
And these people, as denoted in the book,

503
00:26:56,050 --> 00:26:58,828
a whole litany of things that
would just make you cringe.

504
00:26:59,410 --> 00:27:01,600
It seems counterintuitive,
like you think you get more and more,

505
00:27:01,731 --> 00:27:02,880
the more relaxed you become.

506
00:27:03,017 --> 00:27:04,940
It's not what happens to these folks
(- no!), they become much more ...

507
00:27:06,310 --> 00:27:10,542
I'd say socially Darwinistic (- yes!), Malthusian,
in the sense that they feel so entitled

508
00:27:11,308 --> 00:27:13,980
and they relay that, and then
what happens not to disrupt you,

509
00:27:14,137 --> 00:27:15,714
what happens? where do those people go?

510
00:27:15,908 --> 00:27:18,422
They go into politics,
and they go into lobbies. (- yes!)

511
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:21,051
So then we wonder "Oh well,
how did we get here?"

512
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:25,342
Well because the sickness of
elitism driven by money and wealth

513
00:27:25,690 --> 00:27:27,902
is what runs the government and
most governments of the world

514
00:27:28,010 --> 00:27:30,400
and that's why we are in this
paralyzed state that we're in.

515
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,902
- Yes, so in a sense, being wealthy

516
00:27:34,017 --> 00:27:39,045
starts to impact you in a mental health
position in a negative way. (- It does.)

517
00:27:39,308 --> 00:27:42,257
You start to lose empathy for other
people to the point where you can't even-

518
00:27:42,822 --> 00:27:45,211
They did- those studies
are awesome where they

519
00:27:45,942 --> 00:27:48,805
they couldn't pick up on social cues.
(- right.) The richer you got

520
00:27:48,948 --> 00:27:53,194
you lost your ability to pick up on the people's
social cues from their face! (- Right.)

521
00:27:55,188 --> 00:27:59,131
They've done other studies where they've
even played games with Monopoly.

522
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,965
And so they would give one person
way more money at the start

523
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,440
and then when that person won
at the end they would say

524
00:28:05,550 --> 00:28:08,280
"What did you think, it was fair? and they go
"Yeah I think I played better than everybody."

525
00:28:08,485 --> 00:28:10,605
So people who end up winning,

526
00:28:10,714 --> 00:28:13,360
even when the game is rigged in
their favor and they KNOW it,

527
00:28:13,577 --> 00:28:15,154
still think they deserve what they got.

528
00:28:15,262 --> 00:28:18,017
- Now relate that back to the
sickness of the billionaire class.

529
00:28:19,091 --> 00:28:22,062
Here's what I look for whenever
I think of a billionaire,

530
00:28:22,170 --> 00:28:24,291
may be positive ones,
there's always something

531
00:28:24,508 --> 00:28:29,074
philanthropic that has its role that we
should commend, some nuance,

532
00:28:29,390 --> 00:28:32,417
commend some element of their
behavior but, here's the clincher.

533
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,731
If you're a billionaire, and you don't admit

534
00:28:36,060 --> 00:28:41,057
that there's something very wrong with a
system that allows you to be a billionaire

535
00:28:41,554 --> 00:28:45,040
then you're kind of off the moral
radar as far as I'm concerned.

536
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,617
You can go out and promote all the
things that you think are positive,

537
00:28:47,725 --> 00:28:49,422
you can be the Elon Musk humanist,

538
00:28:49,731 --> 00:28:51,982
or the Richard Branson or
the Bill Gates or whatever.

539
00:28:52,297 --> 00:28:55,045
But if you're not acknowledging the fact
that it's wrong for that to even exist,

540
00:28:55,154 --> 00:28:57,497
just like it's wrong for there to be
a homeless person on the street,

541
00:28:57,857 --> 00:29:01,560
those extremes should not exist in human
society and they do nothing positive.

542
00:29:01,940 --> 00:29:05,485
Anyone that justifies this in terms of
the innovation and so on (- right!),

543
00:29:05,628 --> 00:29:07,142
that's another conversation we can have.

544
00:29:07,502 --> 00:29:09,822
No single person innovates things.

545
00:29:09,982 --> 00:29:11,640
Everyone builds upon everything else

546
00:29:11,782 --> 00:29:14,245
laterally in terms of our
communication actively,

547
00:29:14,451 --> 00:29:15,880
and through generational time.

548
00:29:16,114 --> 00:29:18,457
So this whole idea that "you get what
you work for," well if that's the case

549
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,594
then every single person should be
born into a blank space (- right)

550
00:29:21,700 --> 00:29:23,080
with no streets or infrastructure;

551
00:29:23,194 --> 00:29:25,891
they'd have to build everything
themselves to get what they work for.

552
00:29:26,091 --> 00:29:29,257
So these preposterous philosophical
notions, they need to be shut down.

553
00:29:29,508 --> 00:29:33,880
- You make points about the
charity-giving from billionaires

554
00:29:34,045 --> 00:29:36,800
and it's really interesting about

555
00:29:38,005 --> 00:29:40,520
they don't want their tax
dollars to go to the government

556
00:29:41,422 --> 00:29:44,080
so like there's these
billionaires; I met one of them.

557
00:29:45,260 --> 00:29:46,051
And they have this,

558
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:49,108
I forget the name of the project but they're
gonna give away half of their wealth

559
00:29:49,210 --> 00:29:50,925
or something like- do you know about this?

560
00:29:51,034 --> 00:29:55,600
- Supposedly, right? Are you referring
to the old billionaire pact?

561
00:29:55,725 --> 00:29:56,994
- Yes! Talk about that.

562
00:30:00,582 --> 00:30:03,005
- So Bill Gates and Warren Buffett,
a bunch of billionaires got together,

563
00:30:03,234 --> 00:30:06,360
and it was a response to Occupy Wall Street
by the way, it's just a big PR move. (- Yes!)

564
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:08,742
They say "Oh we're gonna set up this fund

565
00:30:08,851 --> 00:30:12,045
and everyone's gonna make an agreement
to give half if not more of their wealth

566
00:30:12,194 --> 00:30:13,811
to charity when they die."

567
00:30:14,582 --> 00:30:18,582
And this is their poetry, and that's all
it is, because no one's really done it.

568
00:30:18,828 --> 00:30:21,845
And if they do they do it to their own
private foundations! (- That's it.)

569
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:24,251
So Bill Gates is like "I gave
away all my money!" No he didn't!

570
00:30:24,500 --> 00:30:26,811
He started a foundation and
dumped his money inside of it

571
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,137
with numerous tax loopholes
to benefit off of.

572
00:30:29,291 --> 00:30:30,988
Not to say that he doesn't mean well,

573
00:30:31,194 --> 00:30:34,491
but it's part of an elitist narcissism
that these people actually think

574
00:30:34,657 --> 00:30:37,622
they're more important in their views:
they can influence countries,

575
00:30:37,771 --> 00:30:40,822
they can change the health care like
the Gates Foundation in some country

576
00:30:40,937 --> 00:30:43,651
without any democratic presence at all! (- Right!)

577
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:47,148
That is totalitarian philanthropy
and that's just wrong.

578
00:30:48,028 --> 00:30:51,160
- That's it. So, these billionaires,

579
00:30:51,370 --> 00:30:54,577
they don't want democracy
in their philanthropy...

580
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,342
- And that's why they keep money out of
the government, they keep it offshore.

581
00:30:57,497 --> 00:30:59,605
They do everything to keep it in
the pocket of their little crew

582
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:01,725
because they're always libertarian,
like people like (- yes)

583
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:05,210
Peter Thiel, have you heard of this guy?
- Yeah. - The founder of, oh my god!

584
00:31:05,550 --> 00:31:09,160
He is the poster child of just everything
ideologically wrong with the way-

585
00:31:09,330 --> 00:31:12,360
He's the one that started the idea of 'seasteading,'
have you heard of this thing? (- No.)

586
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:14,942
Well this is great. He wanted to,
(he talked about this years ago)

587
00:31:15,057 --> 00:31:19,120
he wants to build artificial islands off the coast
in international waters because there's no law.

588
00:31:19,577 --> 00:31:22,034
And he wants to create
basically an "Ayn Rand utopia"

589
00:31:22,142 --> 00:31:25,382
where you can have your libertarian
values, there's no government,

590
00:31:25,617 --> 00:31:29,531
everyone's just gonna be trading and
it's gonna be a utopian market system!

591
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:32,222
Absolutely unbelievable
what I read about that,

592
00:31:32,337 --> 00:31:34,411
I couldn't believe how delusional
you could possibly become.

593
00:31:34,954 --> 00:31:37,034
Only if you're a billionaire could
you do that obviously. (- Right.)

594
00:31:37,148 --> 00:31:39,030
Like if it's a whole island
of billionaires that's great!

595
00:31:39,220 --> 00:31:41,982
But if you set in motion, I'll say this,
if you set in motion on an island

596
00:31:42,180 --> 00:31:46,531
the mechanics of this system in and of
itself with no regulation, no government,

597
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:48,900
it would self-destruct in a matter of moments

598
00:31:49,062 --> 00:31:51,731
because you can't have a warfare
system without regulation.

599
00:31:52,011 --> 00:31:54,942
There's got to be something without it self-destructing,
in other words warfare meaning-...

600
00:31:55,582 --> 00:31:57,580
The market externalities of this,
not to change the subject,

601
00:31:58,388 --> 00:31:59,370
I just wanted to just bring this up.

602
00:31:59,697 --> 00:32:03,028
What this system does is create
externalities in the form of poverty,

603
00:32:03,508 --> 00:32:06,908
in the form of war, in the form of
insurgencies, in the form of terrorism,

604
00:32:07,577 --> 00:32:09,830
of course in the form of
pollution and climate change.

605
00:32:09,994 --> 00:32:12,765
All of these things are things
that the system can't account for,

606
00:32:12,910 --> 00:32:16,771
so it just dismisses them into the ether
as things that aren't related.

607
00:32:16,885 --> 00:32:19,840
And when people argue for the system
(you know, the pro-libertarian folks),

608
00:32:20,137 --> 00:32:22,160
they always think that those
things are anomalous.

609
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:26,342
"Oh! it's the state government that messed
up the free market and now we have poverty.

610
00:32:26,457 --> 00:32:28,580
It's the state government that's
not doing their job right,

611
00:32:28,737 --> 00:32:30,342
and so now we have pollution." No!

612
00:32:31,770 --> 00:32:35,382
The government exists in a middle ground between

613
00:32:35,550 --> 00:32:39,834
trying to organize and stop the anarchy of this
system of self-interest and competition,

614
00:32:40,314 --> 00:32:45,880
and it's also a tool of differential advantage
for the most privileged of the business class.

615
00:32:46,182 --> 00:32:47,582
Point being the Koch brothers.

616
00:32:47,794 --> 00:32:51,885
Koch brothers are right there influencing
government as you would expect them to be

617
00:32:52,090 --> 00:32:53,925
while at the same time there
are people like Bernie Sanders

618
00:32:54,034 --> 00:32:56,171
that are trying their best to
stop this kind of behavior.

619
00:32:56,382 --> 00:32:58,560
And that's the dynamic.
And who's gonna win?

620
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:01,405
Who's gonna win in that circumstance?
- The money's gonna win. - Yeah!

621
00:33:01,548 --> 00:33:05,314
So I always joke, I say "Well if you
have a whole society based on money,

622
00:33:05,754 --> 00:33:07,462
self-interest, profit,

623
00:33:07,737 --> 00:33:11,108
you know what? The Koch brothers
SHOULD own and run America!

624
00:33:11,490 --> 00:33:14,594
That would be consistent with
our policy as a philosophy

625
00:33:14,730 --> 00:33:16,588
in general in this country, and the world.

626
00:33:16,850 --> 00:33:20,468
So why do we object? It's just hypocrisy
in my mind when people don't see that.

627
00:33:22,794 --> 00:33:26,274
- I want to stay one more, just one
more moment on this charity idea.

628
00:33:29,460 --> 00:33:31,468
There's a real, that to me seems like

629
00:33:31,577 --> 00:33:35,040
a real nefarious reason why these
billionaires like Bill Gates

630
00:33:37,142 --> 00:33:41,120
want to have control over
their own charity functions

631
00:33:41,234 --> 00:33:43,531
with their money, right?
Instead of having to pay

632
00:33:44,388 --> 00:33:47,380
a reasonable amount in taxes
and then have democracy

633
00:33:47,617 --> 00:33:50,280
distribute that money where
it's needed in society,

634
00:33:51,062 --> 00:33:55,040
they don't want that; they don't want a
democracy to decide where their money goes.

635
00:33:55,217 --> 00:33:57,811
They want - just like they do
in their own corporations -

636
00:33:57,930 --> 00:34:01,142
(you know Richard Wolff talks about this,
Professor Wolff, 'Democracy at Work')

637
00:34:01,260 --> 00:34:04,491
there is no democracy at work where you
spend most of your life, (- good point)

638
00:34:04,910 --> 00:34:07,977
you're in a totalitarian system which
is what a corporation is, right?

639
00:34:08,085 --> 00:34:10,468
It's a top-down, totalitarian system.

640
00:34:10,605 --> 00:34:15,291
There's no democracy, you're not
voting to who's gonna be on the board.

641
00:34:15,620 --> 00:34:18,651
The people with the money do, so ...

642
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,897
Instead of- they don't take their money
and do charity like

643
00:34:25,011 --> 00:34:28,520
"hey we're gonna go solve homelessness"
which Jeff Bezos could do like that. (- yeah!)

644
00:34:28,740 --> 00:34:31,565
Jeff Bezos is worth around $120 billion.

645
00:34:31,777 --> 00:34:36,445
It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness
in the United States yet he doesn't do it!

646
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:40,005
- It would cost $30 billion (- to end
world hunger!) and extreme poverty, yeah.

647
00:34:41,937 --> 00:34:44,925
- He could end world hunger and
homelessness in the United States

648
00:34:45,034 --> 00:34:47,537
and still have about $70 billion left over

649
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,902
which would still make him one of the richest
guys in the world, yet he doesn't do it! (- nope)

650
00:34:52,422 --> 00:34:56,828
And to me that's because people
like Jeff Bezos are megalomaniacs

651
00:34:57,108 --> 00:34:58,165
and that's a real thing.

652
00:34:58,274 --> 00:35:01,240
- You know the statistic regarding
people of high business power

653
00:35:01,350 --> 00:35:06,394
are almost - not always but a very high
percentage of them - are psychopaths (- yes)

654
00:35:06,508 --> 00:35:10,057
by the very definition of how, what it
takes for them to get to where they are,

655
00:35:10,251 --> 00:35:12,200
the type of gaming mentality
and indifference.

656
00:35:12,390 --> 00:35:14,480
They actually have medical
psychopathology. (- yes!)

657
00:35:14,611 --> 00:35:16,754
And that's a well-established statistic ...

658
00:35:18,468 --> 00:35:20,880
Just go back to the values of the
president and the corporate concept.

659
00:35:21,222 --> 00:35:24,760
He approaches his work as a president
like he's the CEO of a country! (- yes!)

660
00:35:25,030 --> 00:35:27,611
And that shouldn't be a surprise.
But one thing I will say, remember

661
00:35:27,874 --> 00:35:31,742
Thomas Piketty, he wrote the great
book 'Capital in the 21st Century'

662
00:35:32,131 --> 00:35:34,742
and he criticizes the wealth inequality.

663
00:35:35,045 --> 00:35:37,788
And Bill Gates made a big
article in rebuttal to it.

664
00:35:37,977 --> 00:35:39,194
And what does he say? He goes

665
00:35:39,348 --> 00:35:42,817
"You shouldn't want me in with those
people that just buy a bunch of yachts.

666
00:35:43,890 --> 00:35:46,074
I want to use my money for good."

667
00:35:46,210 --> 00:35:51,262
And he implies that it's his right to make
the decisions for the world effectively

668
00:35:51,370 --> 00:35:53,514
in an undemocratic way
(-that's right) to do that!

669
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:56,005
And that is definitely a sick state of mind.

670
00:35:56,170 --> 00:36:00,520
- So what people like Bill Gates
and Jeff Bezos end up doing

671
00:36:00,820 --> 00:36:03,731
is they don't go end homelessness
or give money directly to help,

672
00:36:04,011 --> 00:36:06,577
they'll go "I'm gonna fund
a law school for women"

673
00:36:06,771 --> 00:36:10,165
and "I'm gonna ..." you know,
that's the kind of stuff they do,

674
00:36:11,525 --> 00:36:14,680
and we don't get to decide how
we need the money used so

675
00:36:14,937 --> 00:36:16,451
that's really an interesting ...

676
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:20,257
People don't realize that; they go
"Oh well they're rich, they deserve it,

677
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,137
they should be able to do what
they want with their money."

678
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,331
Just like you said, they weren't
born into a blank space,

679
00:36:26,450 --> 00:36:29,228
they were born, they're standing on
the shoulders of giants. (- exactly)

680
00:36:31,245 --> 00:36:35,291
And because of our system,
the way it's been so rigged

681
00:36:35,531 --> 00:36:39,148
in the powerful people's favor,
meaning the people with money,

682
00:36:39,380 --> 00:36:42,080
the way it's been so rigged is that
someone like Jeff Bezos can now

683
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,851
be the richest person in the history of
the world including Pharaohs. (- yeah)

684
00:36:46,245 --> 00:36:50,571
And at the same time the people generating
that income for him are on food stamps. (- yep)

685
00:36:50,970 --> 00:36:54,474
And what kind of person does that?
a megalomaniac psychopath. (- yep)

686
00:36:54,582 --> 00:36:57,582
And people don't realize that
Jeff Bezos is a psychopath.

687
00:36:57,811 --> 00:37:00,537
Yet, he owns the Washington Post,

688
00:37:00,685 --> 00:37:03,874
he's into bed with the CIA
to the tune of $600 million,

689
00:37:04,148 --> 00:37:06,674
and he also sits on the
board of the Pentagon!

690
00:37:06,982 --> 00:37:10,800
So the richest man in the world
who literally looks like Dr. Evil

691
00:37:11,142 --> 00:37:15,828
owns the newspaper of note, is in bed with
the deep state intelligence community,

692
00:37:16,028 --> 00:37:19,537
has all your information stored because
we live in a surveillance state,

693
00:37:19,702 --> 00:37:23,194
that's why the CIA contracted
him to store your information,

694
00:37:23,308 --> 00:37:26,874
and then he sits on a Pentagon board
and we're living in an endless war!

695
00:37:26,988 --> 00:37:31,114
We are living in an Orwellian
nightmare of perpetual war right now.

696
00:37:31,240 --> 00:37:34,017
Right now we're spending
40% more on our military

697
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:36,857
than we were at the HEIGHT
of the Afghanistan and Iraq war!

698
00:37:37,137 --> 00:37:39,994
40% more! And we never had
a meeting about that,

699
00:37:40,188 --> 00:37:42,445
there was never a town hall,
there were no op eds.

700
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,211
They just spent that money,
and you make the point in the book

701
00:37:46,388 --> 00:37:48,731
that it's because rich countries

702
00:37:49,240 --> 00:37:51,840
can spend as much as they want. Why is that?

703
00:37:54,262 --> 00:37:57,028
- If you're an empire, which
the US is the cliché Empire,

704
00:37:57,137 --> 00:37:59,020
but China's an empire and Russia's an empire,

705
00:37:59,300 --> 00:38:04,902
you have so much dominance in the
way that things unfold that

706
00:38:05,022 --> 00:38:08,980
when you take loans from other countries like
the United States does as a debtor nation,

707
00:38:09,577 --> 00:38:12,062
it's not expected that they're
ever gonna pay this stuff back

708
00:38:12,194 --> 00:38:13,840
as long as the US dollar is strong.

709
00:38:13,954 --> 00:38:15,502
Now you saw Iran recently ...

710
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,502
... applied the euro as opposed to the
dollar for petrol trade and other things.

711
00:38:22,970 --> 00:38:26,651
That's a good sign in terms of
deflating the power of the US dollar,

712
00:38:26,891 --> 00:38:29,914
not necessarily for us because
it's all systemically related

713
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:32,954
but in terms of the broader
kind of moral view.

714
00:38:33,405 --> 00:38:38,577
So the United States, it's been
estimated across the world that by 2040

715
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,240
60 to 70% of all nations will be
bankrupt by their own metrics.

716
00:38:42,674 --> 00:38:45,217
The United States isn't susceptible to that
because it just makes its own money. (- yeah)

717
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,451
It has this arrangement with the central
bank which is just a fraudulent show,

718
00:38:52,170 --> 00:38:53,194
a sleight of hand! (- yes)

719
00:38:53,300 --> 00:38:57,514
It's a sleight of hand between this big banking
cartel that makes money out of nothing

720
00:38:57,628 --> 00:39:00,851
in exchange for bonds that we make
out of nothing in the Treasury,

721
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:04,091
and so suddenly all this fake debt
is made between literally just,

722
00:39:04,868 --> 00:39:07,297
it's just one big group of
people that don't really care.

723
00:39:07,702 --> 00:39:10,108
The Federal Reserve doesn't care if the
United States pays its money back.

724
00:39:10,348 --> 00:39:12,268
It just needs its cartel to be respected

725
00:39:12,422 --> 00:39:14,765
and the power of the financial
class and the financial system

726
00:39:15,720 --> 00:39:18,457
to be as strong as it ever has been
which is why you see Goldman Sachs

727
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:20,885
sitting next to the president,
across every administration.

728
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:24,137
- So, please let me stop for a second.
- Yeah, sure.

729
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:25,617
- So let me explain what you're saying.

730
00:39:25,730 --> 00:39:29,074
So a poor nation goes to
the IMF, gets a loan.

731
00:39:29,754 --> 00:39:31,468
Now, they're immediately in debt.

732
00:39:31,965 --> 00:39:33,805
Now they can't pay that debt back.

733
00:39:34,150 --> 00:39:36,137
The IMF goes back to that country and says

734
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:39,045
"Now you have to sell off some of
your public space to our corporations

735
00:39:39,154 --> 00:39:41,262
so you can pay your debt,
because you're in debt!"

736
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,891
Now the United States is in debt to
the tune of $19 trillion right now,

737
00:39:45,005 --> 00:39:46,314
we're never gonna pay that back.

738
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:49,771
And it doesn't matter because
as you say in the book,

739
00:39:50,451 --> 00:39:52,370
money is made out of thin air and

740
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:55,811
they only care about regulations and
the public perception. (- yeah)

741
00:39:56,451 --> 00:39:59,760
And that any dominant country
meaning the United States

742
00:39:59,954 --> 00:40:01,880
can extend debt to infinity

743
00:40:02,097 --> 00:40:04,251
moving the goalposts as they go along,

744
00:40:04,388 --> 00:40:08,531
and by 2050 you say 60% of the
world's countries will be bankrupt,

745
00:40:08,691 --> 00:40:10,165
but we'll never be bankrupt (- yeah)

746
00:40:10,868 --> 00:40:12,434
because we print our own money.

747
00:40:12,668 --> 00:40:14,182
- Well other countries do that too mind you,

748
00:40:14,308 --> 00:40:18,125
but the difference is those countries aren't
empires, they don't have the strength-...

749
00:40:21,948 --> 00:40:25,177
80% of all the major transnational
corporations are US-based.

750
00:40:25,537 --> 00:40:29,422
So, all these huge companies- they don't
really care about nations anymore

751
00:40:29,540 --> 00:40:30,931
as you can imagine, the
trade agreements, the TTP.

752
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,140
- There are no nations!
There's only corporations.

753
00:40:33,257 --> 00:40:37,594
- But there's still some grounding
to US policy and US favoritism

754
00:40:37,708 --> 00:40:39,725
and of course US political power,

755
00:40:39,897 --> 00:40:41,954
because US political power is
really global political power.

756
00:40:42,060 --> 00:40:46,737
So the "nest" of the US Empire is alive
and well when it comes to the merger of

757
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:50,480
politics, geopolitics and of course business,
trade agreements and all that stuff;

758
00:40:50,834 --> 00:40:53,108
that's why the US is so untouchable.

759
00:40:53,870 --> 00:40:55,394
The joke you know, every couple years,

760
00:40:55,497 --> 00:40:59,170
"Ooh! We're gonna shut down the government
because we have to increase the debt limit!"

761
00:41:00,137 --> 00:41:03,548
It's a complete comic routine -
what are they gonna do, not do it?!

762
00:41:06,022 --> 00:41:09,920
So that's the point there, but other countries,
just like the poor of the world that suffer with debt,

763
00:41:10,171 --> 00:41:13,828
they DO get screwed. So they're the ones that
get their resources taken through austerity

764
00:41:14,050 --> 00:41:15,057
and through different trade agreements-

765
00:41:15,165 --> 00:41:17,937
remember the IMF in the World Bank
are basically Western institutions.

766
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,171
They are an extension of Western hegemony.

767
00:41:20,822 --> 00:41:24,410
Their interest IS the neoliberal interest,

768
00:41:24,611 --> 00:41:28,862
which goes back again to
a think tank years ago in the '70s

769
00:41:28,988 --> 00:41:30,628
that was trying to counter communism

770
00:41:30,788 --> 00:41:33,354
that said "We need something to
counter communism to start to

771
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,668
end any kind of socialist
ideology across the world,

772
00:41:36,822 --> 00:41:39,748
so neoliberalism is our new philosophy

773
00:41:39,931 --> 00:41:41,674
and we're gonna put it out
there like a religion,"

774
00:41:41,857 --> 00:41:43,560
and that's what all these institutions do.

775
00:41:43,674 --> 00:41:46,200
Which is why you can't
have any country such as

776
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:49,251
almost all the Latin American
countries that have been overthrown

777
00:41:49,485 --> 00:41:52,182
as they tried to do something different
throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s.

778
00:41:52,451 --> 00:41:57,040
One thing I recently did a talk of, was a
man named Salvador Allende, from Chile.

779
00:41:57,314 --> 00:41:59,817
Salvador Allende was democratically elected,

780
00:42:00,097 --> 00:42:03,554
he was a stern - not a Marxist
in the traditional sense,

781
00:42:03,660 --> 00:42:05,474
he didn't like the bureaucracy
of the Soviet Union,

782
00:42:05,582 --> 00:42:06,914
he wasn't supported by the Soviet Union -

783
00:42:07,251 --> 00:42:09,674
but in Chile he said "Okay,
I'm gonna turn this around."

784
00:42:09,780 --> 00:42:13,165
He was so sick of the US transnational
corporations taking all the resources,

785
00:42:13,274 --> 00:42:15,660
owning all the land, US-based, as they did.

786
00:42:15,771 --> 00:42:17,960
(I'm sure you know people like John Perkins,
he talked about a lot of this stuff.)

787
00:42:18,580 --> 00:42:20,942
And so he said "I'm gonna nationalize
these industries and I'm gonna set up

788
00:42:21,862 --> 00:42:23,971
a new system of economic organization."

789
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:25,622
Now this is an important tidbit of history

790
00:42:26,148 --> 00:42:29,450
in terms of the kind of solutions I
talk about at the end of this book.

791
00:42:30,148 --> 00:42:33,080
In the 1970s a man named Stafford Beer -

792
00:42:33,194 --> 00:42:35,451
he was really famous in systems engineering,

793
00:42:35,725 --> 00:42:38,605
all about how to make systems work,
be viable as he would call it.

794
00:42:38,710 --> 00:42:41,828
What does it mean to have
a working engine, that's self-contained?

795
00:42:41,930 --> 00:42:43,588
What does it mean to have
a working economy?

796
00:42:43,691 --> 00:42:45,331
What does it mean to have
a working social system?

797
00:42:45,570 --> 00:42:48,908
How do we approach that subject
scientifically, and this is what

798
00:42:49,130 --> 00:42:51,097
the work of cybernetics, Stanford Beer,

799
00:42:51,702 --> 00:42:53,720
Ross Ashby, all these guys
that no one's ever heard of,

800
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:56,342
but actually very important in history.
- Is this called Systems Theory?

801
00:42:56,445 --> 00:42:59,697
You can call it that but, they call
it cybernetics, for many years.

802
00:43:00,022 --> 00:43:01,971
Basically it's an interdisciplinary view

803
00:43:02,188 --> 00:43:05,634
of how things work in both
science and humanities.

804
00:43:05,817 --> 00:43:06,788
It's very deep. (-yes)

805
00:43:06,890 --> 00:43:11,925
And it also relates to sociology and
social constructs as we would imagine.

806
00:43:12,817 --> 00:43:14,257
These are systems, they have properties.

807
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:17,388
Systems have properties that are shared
throughout the universe, in fact.

808
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:19,930
No metaphysics needed there;
there's certain things that

809
00:43:20,337 --> 00:43:23,171
that are inherent to your
body that can be emulated

810
00:43:23,330 --> 00:43:27,548
in the way we organize society: biomimicry.
But I won't go too far down that road.

811
00:43:27,651 --> 00:43:29,817
But anyway in the 1970s he
was called up by Allende,

812
00:43:30,114 --> 00:43:32,788
he said "I want you to develop
a new system for my country

813
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:36,777
to figure out how we can organize
and optimize our economic flows

814
00:43:36,885 --> 00:43:38,571
with my new nationalized industries."

815
00:43:38,720 --> 00:43:40,485
Because the companies just bailed

816
00:43:41,125 --> 00:43:43,617
and Allende was considered the
enemy of the world at this point.

817
00:43:43,725 --> 00:43:45,611
Because you don't do that in a capitalist society.

818
00:43:46,691 --> 00:43:49,422
You don't knock out your corporations
and start nationalizing.

819
00:43:49,548 --> 00:43:51,062
- Because then they're
gonna call the Marines!

820
00:43:51,571 --> 00:43:54,410
- Exactly, which is what they did; he was
overthrown and he died in the overthrow.

821
00:43:54,525 --> 00:43:59,062
But before he died for 2 years he had this
amazing project called 'Project Cybersyn.'

822
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:02,977
Cyber-Syn. So cyber and then
"syn," people can look this up.

823
00:44:03,382 --> 00:44:06,400
It's a tidbit of history, it's been
propagandized, they put a big

824
00:44:06,731 --> 00:44:10,782
thing in the New York Times:
'Chile now run by socialist computer.' No!

825
00:44:11,017 --> 00:44:13,702
What they did is they tried to
figure out how to take into account

826
00:44:13,817 --> 00:44:18,091
all the dynamics and variability
of a robust, national economy

827
00:44:18,285 --> 00:44:20,520
and figure out how to organize it as a unit,

828
00:44:20,770 --> 00:44:23,040
not in the bureaucracy of the Soviet
Union; these guys hated that.

829
00:44:23,154 --> 00:44:25,820
Allende hated it, Stafford Beer
the organizer of this, hated it

830
00:44:25,971 --> 00:44:28,771
because it was just this big horrible
bureaucracy, it was extremely inefficient,

831
00:44:28,965 --> 00:44:32,428
and didn't have real time information;
it didn't work, as we've come to find out,

832
00:44:32,630 --> 00:44:34,520
in the way that it needed to work.
- You mean the communist system.

833
00:44:35,620 --> 00:44:39,068
- Yeah. So this was the only attempt in history

834
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:43,125
where the actual scientific approach - things
I advocate in this book - was applied.

835
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:45,742
And it almost, almost got into fruition

836
00:44:45,885 --> 00:44:47,982
if Allende wasn't overthrown by the CIA.

837
00:44:48,630 --> 00:44:49,640
It's one of those moments in history-

838
00:44:49,754 --> 00:44:51,800
there's actually a guy that wrote a
whole book about it, it's in Spanish.

839
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,851
He wrote a book, sci-fi book,
to describe what happened

840
00:44:55,102 --> 00:44:57,302
if it actually would have
worked; I want to read it.

841
00:44:58,462 --> 00:45:01,657
- So you're saying that in Chile he was

842
00:45:01,908 --> 00:45:06,068
trying to institute what you
are prescribing as the fix

843
00:45:06,262 --> 00:45:07,651
to our current system.

844
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:12,182
- An interdisciplinary approach to
economic management that's democratized,

845
00:45:12,500 --> 00:45:13,960
and we have the technology to do that.

846
00:45:14,074 --> 00:45:17,137
Back then they used telex
machines, they had one computer,

847
00:45:17,411 --> 00:45:19,245
they had to engage very crudely

848
00:45:19,411 --> 00:45:22,720
with all the people that were organized
in different areas of industry.

849
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:24,817
It's a big thing, I won't
go in the details of it.

850
00:45:24,980 --> 00:45:27,931
But what I advocate is that we
have all this amazing technology,

851
00:45:28,045 --> 00:45:30,460
we have the ability to communicate instantly.

852
00:45:30,617 --> 00:45:34,234
We have the ability to track what we're
doing to say be sustainable; imagine that!

853
00:45:34,342 --> 00:45:38,605
Imagine if the industries of our world
actually cared about tracking say

854
00:45:38,891 --> 00:45:41,611
rain forest depletion or biodiversity loss,

855
00:45:41,822 --> 00:45:45,560
and then they stopped their behavior based
upon those limits when they're reached.

856
00:45:45,740 --> 00:45:47,971
We don't do that. We don't
have any contingency plan,

857
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,230
which is why we're again flying
off that cliff on this train.

858
00:45:52,988 --> 00:45:54,714
And we could talk about the five things,

859
00:45:54,822 --> 00:45:57,588
remember I talked about five different
transitions at the end of the book.

860
00:45:57,954 --> 00:45:59,360
The application of automation,

861
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:01,565
the move from property to access

862
00:46:01,674 --> 00:46:04,651
which we've already seen trends of
that occur with say Uber and so on.

863
00:46:04,857 --> 00:46:07,874
People don't need to own one of everything,
they need access to what they need,

864
00:46:07,980 --> 00:46:09,171
create a more communal environment.

865
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:12,885
- So you're talking about like, that's like
when you see zip cars, things like that?

866
00:46:12,990 --> 00:46:14,880
- Exactly, but more specific, like

867
00:46:15,177 --> 00:46:18,600
I envision in the deep future where
people don't really own anything!

868
00:46:18,725 --> 00:46:21,794
They have access to what they need at all times,
it doesn't mean they don't have things.

869
00:46:21,930 --> 00:46:23,274
I mean you'll have a laptop and computer,

870
00:46:23,434 --> 00:46:26,160
or whatever your property may
be that you use it frequently.

871
00:46:26,342 --> 00:46:28,885
But imagine the freedom of being
able to get up, fly somewhere,

872
00:46:29,205 --> 00:46:33,748
and have access to the resources that you may
need whether it be clothes or technology,

873
00:46:33,891 --> 00:46:36,822
a place to stay, all systemically designed,

874
00:46:36,940 --> 00:46:40,537
and interactive and updated and dynamic,
not- we're not talking about a static thing.

875
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:42,731
I know it sounds very sci-fi
when I talk about this this way.

876
00:46:43,148 --> 00:46:45,720
But imagine that kind of freedom.
I see freedom as NO property!

877
00:46:45,834 --> 00:46:49,885
I see freedom as being a part of
this home, this planetary home,

878
00:46:50,068 --> 00:46:54,074
and moving around freely, and having
access to what you need as you go along.

879
00:46:54,977 --> 00:46:55,828
That's a hard concept.

880
00:46:55,931 --> 00:46:59,371
- That's a such super-hard concept for
people to wrap their minds around

881
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:01,634
because it's never been seen anywhere before.

882
00:47:02,462 --> 00:47:04,611
- Except before the Neolithic Revolution (- right)

883
00:47:05,051 --> 00:47:08,240
where the value systems were very communal,
the value systems were sustainable.

884
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:12,462
To the extent you want to talk
about the solutions I propose-...

885
00:47:14,222 --> 00:47:16,148
- I want to talk about
the solutions, go ahead.

886
00:47:16,310 --> 00:47:17,891
- So the five things as I mentioned.

887
00:47:18,190 --> 00:47:22,845
So automation, let's stop this ...
this tension.

888
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:25,845
We should be moving to automate
everything as fast as possible.

889
00:47:26,371 --> 00:47:29,194
I find it offensive, I go to a restaurant
these days and I see the most

890
00:47:29,457 --> 00:47:33,685
amazing person, the most amazing
culmination of the history of the universe -

891
00:47:33,925 --> 00:47:39,440
the nervous system, the human being, the most
complicated thing, this end peak of entropy,

892
00:47:39,851 --> 00:47:41,668
and they're waiting on you.

893
00:47:42,594 --> 00:47:46,650
This amazing brain and they're sitting
there waiting on you, like a slave.

894
00:47:47,891 --> 00:47:50,800
It's an offensive thing to even occur at
this point in time in the 21st century;

895
00:47:50,954 --> 00:47:53,850
nobody should be doing this,
they're wasting their lives, their potential.

896
00:47:54,220 --> 00:47:57,514
People, they retire now and they die soon after because
they don't even know what to do with themselves!

897
00:47:57,622 --> 00:48:01,211
They've been so destroyed and bankrupted,
their creativity just ruined

898
00:48:01,445 --> 00:48:05,040
by the process of market slavery
which is effectively what it is.

899
00:48:05,154 --> 00:48:07,662
So, automation needs to be
put forward deliberately.

900
00:48:08,765 --> 00:48:10,502
- When you go to a restaurant,
how are you gonna get your food?

901
00:48:10,628 --> 00:48:14,211
- You automate it! It's very simple,
just like they do in San Francisco now.

902
00:48:14,411 --> 00:48:16,217
They have these systems in
Japan, they do them now.

903
00:48:17,045 --> 00:48:19,325
There's always going to be some
kind of oversight with any system.

904
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,765
There's management, that's important,
but the more efficient you become

905
00:48:22,870 --> 00:48:24,691
with the development of
systems technology (- yeah)

906
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:27,205
like in a big factory, like a shoe factory.
These people aren't-

907
00:48:27,350 --> 00:48:29,737
they're making 300 shoes an hour! (-right)

908
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:33,531
And they're not sitting there doing it,
they're watching and managing the machines.

909
00:48:33,720 --> 00:48:37,760
And they're making sure the system is
working, and then they take proper action.

910
00:48:38,110 --> 00:48:41,422
And I think that's kind of where the roles
of humanity will end up in the future

911
00:48:41,537 --> 00:48:44,240
which doesn't necessarily
need to be paid for either.

912
00:48:44,794 --> 00:48:47,040
In a domestic economy,
people do tons of things,

913
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:50,405
billions and billions of dollars a year,
women, men do in their homes.

914
00:48:50,540 --> 00:48:53,142
They do it because they want to survive;
they do it because it's their world.

915
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,645
And this is the way it extends out to the
rest of the society and the community.

916
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:59,422
Which leads me to say localization,
so we have globalization.

917
00:48:59,548 --> 00:49:01,560
So I talked about automation,
let's go to localization.

918
00:49:01,970 --> 00:49:04,000
We've had globalization, this blight.

919
00:49:04,428 --> 00:49:07,765
The food you eat every day, travels about
2,000 miles before it hits your plate.

920
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:09,577
That's preposterous!

921
00:49:09,948 --> 00:49:13,514
And we have now advanced types
of farming, agricultural systems,

922
00:49:13,628 --> 00:49:15,320
advanced production systems, 3D printing,

923
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:19,005
where you don't need to have all
this constant dynamic and waste.

924
00:49:19,417 --> 00:49:22,714
You bring things back home and you
produce things for your - imagine that! -

925
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:25,697
you produce things for your actual community
as opposed to the globalized ethic.

926
00:49:26,342 --> 00:49:29,165
It's just too destructive. Gandhi saw this,
I mention him in the book too.

927
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:31,662
He hated industrialization;
he's like "Well you're gonna have

928
00:49:31,948 --> 00:49:34,920
a high propensity for power
consolidation and corruption

929
00:49:35,102 --> 00:49:37,257
if you go through globalized industry."

930
00:49:37,502 --> 00:49:40,497
And he talked about oceanic circles
overlapping in communities.

931
00:49:40,670 --> 00:49:43,394
Imagine Los Angeles as an oceanic circle

932
00:49:43,502 --> 00:49:46,748
within the other terrain, other
city terrain of California.

933
00:49:46,940 --> 00:49:51,268
And we've localized all of our food production
as best as we can through advanced means.

934
00:49:51,428 --> 00:49:54,308
Just that fundamental logic
that needs to be applied,

935
00:49:54,451 --> 00:49:56,194
you would reduce energy consumption and waste

936
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,382
probably by 70% almost
instantly if you did that

937
00:49:59,497 --> 00:50:02,330
because of how rampant and how
wasteful globalization is today.

938
00:50:02,508 --> 00:50:05,011
So automation, localization.

939
00:50:05,720 --> 00:50:09,531
Now there's access as I mentioned briefly
before and I'll just reiterate that.

940
00:50:09,645 --> 00:50:13,530
An access society means you move away
from property as much as you can,

941
00:50:14,020 --> 00:50:15,965
inspiring the ethic of actually sharing.

942
00:50:16,085 --> 00:50:19,140
So, like in the Zeitgeist Movement there's
people in Toronto that have a tool library.

943
00:50:19,468 --> 00:50:22,422
No one uses their tools
every minute of every day

944
00:50:22,662 --> 00:50:24,188
so they share it in a community,

945
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:27,342
and everyone accesses these tools as they
need them in a kind of rental system.

946
00:50:27,788 --> 00:50:29,742
Brilliant! A library, the library itself:

947
00:50:30,011 --> 00:50:32,171
one of the oldest institutions
of sharing knowledge.

948
00:50:32,290 --> 00:50:34,308
I'm surprised it actually
hasn't been shut down frankly,

949
00:50:34,525 --> 00:50:36,588
because it's against the market ethic. (- yeah)

950
00:50:36,742 --> 00:50:38,274
So you can take and build upon that

951
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:40,348
where you don't- no one owns a
car anymore, you don't need it,

952
00:50:40,450 --> 00:50:42,965
you have automated systems;
Uber's already on the edge of this.

953
00:50:43,182 --> 00:50:45,908
And you just extend that logic out
to just about anything you think of

954
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:47,851
depending on how much you use, you need,

955
00:50:48,154 --> 00:50:51,620
that is how much access you need
and that's where the metrics come in.

956
00:50:51,730 --> 00:50:56,245
In the book, I talk about having, there's like
257 million cars in America,

957
00:50:56,577 --> 00:50:59,360
but yet the people only use
it about 5% of the time

958
00:50:59,474 --> 00:51:02,645
as far as the ownership
of an individual vehicle.

959
00:51:02,902 --> 00:51:07,480
Which means if I remember correctly only
about 25 million cars are actually needed

960
00:51:08,891 --> 00:51:10,988
to assist anyone moving around in America.

961
00:51:11,137 --> 00:51:12,937
So if you create an
automated system to do that

962
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,045
that's a, you know, thousand
percent decrease or whatever

963
00:51:16,154 --> 00:51:17,691
of how many cars you're actually producing.

964
00:51:17,885 --> 00:51:20,108
Incredible sustainability
potential right there.

965
00:51:21,580 --> 00:51:22,891
It's antithetical to the market of course

966
00:51:23,005 --> 00:51:25,085
because the market wants you
to buy more and more and more!

967
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:27,177
So anytime you move towards
a conservative ethic,

968
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,308
anything where you're trying to do that,

969
00:51:30,857 --> 00:51:34,594
you're slamming up against the entire
driver of so-called "progress"

970
00:51:34,737 --> 00:51:38,548
which is this incessant need to buy
and consume. So that's another aside.

971
00:51:39,411 --> 00:51:41,817
So access, automation, localization.

972
00:51:41,954 --> 00:51:43,810
Okay now this is a big one: open source.

973
00:51:44,405 --> 00:51:49,240
Open source in the intellectual community
has been a godsend in their view.

974
00:51:49,354 --> 00:51:52,240
People open source things, they share
it amongst the community digitally.

975
00:51:52,451 --> 00:51:55,480
Everyone can contribute to the development
of a given idea whether it's a good

976
00:51:55,770 --> 00:51:57,497
or a software as is most commonly.

977
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,502
- So open source means to someone like me

978
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:04,450
meaning that if a company like Apple,

979
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:07,668
which they don't open source correct?
- No. - That's a bad example.

980
00:52:07,940 --> 00:52:10,154
So another company-...
explain what that means.

981
00:52:10,260 --> 00:52:12,514
- Like Tesla open-sourced [via Elon Musk].
- So what does that mean?

982
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:16,251
- It means he releases all the
blueprints and the design information.

983
00:52:16,748 --> 00:52:19,434
Now, that's a very specific thing.
- And why would you do that?

984
00:52:19,714 --> 00:52:23,017
- Well for his reasons- there's a couple
reasons for that aren't as altruistic.

985
00:52:23,434 --> 00:52:27,525
But you do that because if you share
knowledge as we've talked about prior,

986
00:52:27,885 --> 00:52:30,085
you get more minds working
on a given problem,

987
00:52:30,190 --> 00:52:33,411
you're gonna have more rapid progress,
as opposed to sitting in a boardroom-

988
00:52:33,525 --> 00:52:36,120
So imagine all the cell phone
companies, however many there are.

989
00:52:36,462 --> 00:52:38,697
Instead of this constant warfare of

990
00:52:38,811 --> 00:52:41,182
"let's design this cell phone with a
little button here that does this."

991
00:52:41,300 --> 00:52:42,925
Oh, and that other company says
"Oh I saw that button,

992
00:52:43,034 --> 00:52:44,714
let's put that button on our thing
because people seem to like it."

993
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:47,582
So you have this back and forth,
this wasteful back and forth (- right)

994
00:52:47,690 --> 00:52:49,748
that 's constantly mimicking
and creating new things

995
00:52:50,154 --> 00:52:53,180
and constantly one-upping itself and everyone's
wondering whether they should spend

996
00:52:53,382 --> 00:52:56,400
another thousand dollars on another
iPhone the next year and the next year.

997
00:52:56,930 --> 00:53:00,685
Instead of you doing that you open-source it
and you let people go on digitally

998
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:03,068
and design this stuff directly because

999
00:53:03,177 --> 00:53:05,725
with CAD, 3D engineering and
other programs now we can-

1000
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:09,662
you can crash cars digitally and have
virtually the exact same effect

1001
00:53:09,771 --> 00:53:13,342
because of how accurate the
replication of software is.

1002
00:53:13,531 --> 00:53:15,045
So you can test these things.

1003
00:53:15,491 --> 00:53:18,880
Open-source would destroy the entire
corporate industry if it was done properly.

1004
00:53:19,068 --> 00:53:21,091
Imagine a world where you,

1005
00:53:21,948 --> 00:53:23,788
say you're interested in a microphone.

1006
00:53:23,937 --> 00:53:25,920
You're like "I need a new microphone!
I like a-..."

1007
00:53:26,457 --> 00:53:30,097
You go into a web site and you are able
to look at all the existing designs.

1008
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:31,605
But you have a background in engineering like

1009
00:53:32,228 --> 00:53:34,182
"I don't like any of these, they
aren't accomplishing what I want."

1010
00:53:34,348 --> 00:53:36,285
So you go in and you actually
start to design it yourself.

1011
00:53:36,462 --> 00:53:39,228
You open-source that; everyone
else sees what you're doing.

1012
00:53:39,420 --> 00:53:41,697
And through AI systems which
are already out there as well

1013
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,822
that can do certain things to correct
analysis that people are putting in.

1014
00:53:45,937 --> 00:53:48,485
For example AI systems can now
design cars and stuff like that.

1015
00:53:48,594 --> 00:53:50,108
- Artificial Intelligence.
- Exactly.

1016
00:53:50,480 --> 00:53:53,800
That's where the future rests in terms of
really good decision making

1017
00:53:53,914 --> 00:53:57,388
because it can take in the parameters
more rapidly than humans can.

1018
00:53:57,697 --> 00:54:00,194
But we have a bunch of people
designing something and then you,

1019
00:54:00,731 --> 00:54:04,400
eventually you end up with the most advanced
cell phone possible at that point in time period,

1020
00:54:04,651 --> 00:54:09,017
because everyone's input democratically
is in there, and it's collated,

1021
00:54:10,354 --> 00:54:13,611
it's combined. So in this world

1022
00:54:14,737 --> 00:54:19,457
you end up with a democratic economy
where people are engaging and building,

1023
00:54:19,925 --> 00:54:22,537
and then what happens?
Where does it go?

1024
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,451
And that's where 3D printing
advents are coming to fruition.

1025
00:54:26,582 --> 00:54:30,011
So imagine instead of globalization where you
have corporations stretched across the world

1026
00:54:30,114 --> 00:54:31,805
you come back to localization once again.

1027
00:54:32,020 --> 00:54:34,377
And you're using advanced 3D printing
systems, and here's what's gonna happen.

1028
00:54:35,508 --> 00:54:38,480
R. Buckminster Fuller coined a
term called ephemeralization

1029
00:54:38,594 --> 00:54:41,660
and it means more with less.
If you look at the whole of human society

1030
00:54:41,777 --> 00:54:45,028
we're constantly being able to increase
our productivity and efficiency

1031
00:54:45,245 --> 00:54:48,222
with less and less resources.
So the first computer was gigantic,

1032
00:54:48,340 --> 00:54:50,651
weighed tons, enormous amounts of power.

1033
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:53,348
Now this chip in your phone is
a thousand times more powerful

1034
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:55,662
It's almost non-existent how,

1035
00:54:55,862 --> 00:54:59,262
how small and light and
how much power it takes.

1036
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:01,085
That's called ephemeralization.

1037
00:55:02,182 --> 00:55:05,780
Jeremy Rifkin came up with a similar term
I want to present called "more with less"

1038
00:55:05,908 --> 00:55:08,320
or zero marginal cost,
so if you have a machine

1039
00:55:08,548 --> 00:55:11,760
that produces - say it cost a thousand
dollars - and it produces its first good,

1040
00:55:11,937 --> 00:55:14,548
that first good technically cost a
thousand dollars all things being equal.

1041
00:55:14,982 --> 00:55:17,822
The second good $500, the
[fourth] good $250 and so on.

1042
00:55:17,937 --> 00:55:20,000
Eventually if you have
machine that's robust enough

1043
00:55:20,210 --> 00:55:21,720
you end up with zero marginal cost.

1044
00:55:21,834 --> 00:55:23,868
It doesn't cost anything to say make a book

1045
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:25,697
or to output even technology

1046
00:55:25,811 --> 00:55:27,925
because we've become so
advanced and efficient with it.

1047
00:55:28,770 --> 00:55:30,577
So what you're gonna end up having
as far as I'm concerned

1048
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:34,731
is a democratic economy where people are
designing in open-source constantly online,

1049
00:55:34,891 --> 00:55:36,577
creating the goods that we all share,

1050
00:55:36,794 --> 00:55:38,851
and then when they get
manufactured we have

1051
00:55:39,034 --> 00:55:42,051
very specific 3D manufacturing
systems that are localized

1052
00:55:42,177 --> 00:55:43,811
in regions to produce those goods.

1053
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:45,748
Because with that
ephemeralization process,

1054
00:55:45,908 --> 00:55:47,890
you will eventually have
systems, mark my words,

1055
00:55:48,051 --> 00:55:51,725
that will not only produce cars, they will
produce televisions, they will produce computers.

1056
00:55:51,942 --> 00:55:54,257
They'll reverse any kind of
engineering electronics

1057
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:58,354
that you can think of because that's
where it's all leading down to.

1058
00:55:58,548 --> 00:56:01,834
Not to use the ploy of Star Trek,
remember Star Trek had the replicator ...

1059
00:56:03,702 --> 00:56:06,817
It's a sci-fi fantasy but when it comes
to let's say molecular engineering,

1060
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:10,325
I guarantee you a laptop will be
3D-printed within the next 5 years.

1061
00:56:10,468 --> 00:56:12,725
Someone will develop the
technology that has enough

1062
00:56:12,870 --> 00:56:16,222
interdisciplinary, so to speak, capacity

1063
00:56:16,491 --> 00:56:19,297
where it can build the chips and
everything else in one swoop

1064
00:56:19,605 --> 00:56:20,920
at zero marginal cost.

1065
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:23,011
I mean we're already almost there;
look how cheap laptops are

1066
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:24,680
just by the general force of the market,

1067
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:27,525
through mass consumption, right?
That's how things become cheap.

1068
00:56:28,154 --> 00:56:29,577
- I buy Macintosh so I have no idea.

1069
00:56:31,060 --> 00:56:32,948
(both laughing) It's real expensive.

1070
00:56:33,057 --> 00:56:35,468
- Yeah, exactly.
- They've made it still expensive.

1071
00:56:37,068 --> 00:56:39,250
So we go automation, localization-

1072
00:56:39,371 --> 00:56:41,760
- Access (- access), open source (- open source),

1073
00:56:41,874 --> 00:56:44,245
and then the final thing is
real fundamental, it's just

1074
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:46,377
how we network information together.

1075
00:56:46,611 --> 00:56:49,257
We don't actually track
anything as I said earlier.

1076
00:56:49,460 --> 00:56:50,805
So you know the 'Internet of Things,'

1077
00:56:50,954 --> 00:56:54,205
the idea of connecting all your
devices to the Internet and (- yes)

1078
00:56:54,310 --> 00:56:56,314
I don't quite know the
merit of connecting your

1079
00:56:56,420 --> 00:56:58,862
toaster or your refrigerator to
the Internet but people are doing it,

1080
00:56:59,228 --> 00:57:01,360
but that's just pop culture stuff right there.

1081
00:57:02,194 --> 00:57:05,760
But what that actually sets the groundwork for
is an ability to in real time

1082
00:57:05,874 --> 00:57:08,342
know exactly what your society
is doing economically.

1083
00:57:08,634 --> 00:57:11,011
You track it in a very fundamental sense.

1084
00:57:11,514 --> 00:57:14,674
In our economy now money is
transferred, you buy things and

1085
00:57:14,851 --> 00:57:17,817
this metric is slowly generated
literally over months.

1086
00:57:18,050 --> 00:57:21,280
And the reports that people in the Federal
Reserve or the Treasury or the US

1087
00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:23,988
government or any of those economic entities,

1088
00:57:24,737 --> 00:57:26,611
they get that stuff months late!

1089
00:57:26,851 --> 00:57:29,914
Like it doesn't mean anything, it's not
important information at that point.

1090
00:57:30,308 --> 00:57:33,434
These numbers that we get about unemployment,
that's really old numbers actually.

1091
00:57:33,702 --> 00:57:38,645
So, when you have the Internet of Things
and digitized network feedback you have

1092
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:42,354
literally a consciousness for a
society, a country or a planet,

1093
00:57:42,588 --> 00:57:44,560
where you actually know what you're doing.
So what does that mean?

1094
00:57:44,931 --> 00:57:46,651
"Oh, well we're producing this good

1095
00:57:46,834 --> 00:57:49,394
and we're running out of timber in this area,

1096
00:57:49,508 --> 00:57:52,331
let's check to see instantly if we
have other areas that have a surplus,"

1097
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:56,171
meaning that they have natural
regenerative and we're not depleting

1098
00:57:56,370 --> 00:58:00,274
and then suddenly you have things that
are gonna self-regulate our society

1099
00:58:00,380 --> 00:58:03,840
so we don't self-destruct, something that
we don't have the discipline to do now

1100
00:58:04,017 --> 00:58:06,554
because of the drive of the market force,

1101
00:58:06,710 --> 00:58:08,428
the drive of overconsumption and so on.

1102
00:58:08,537 --> 00:58:09,411
Does that make sense? (- Yes.)

1103
00:58:09,834 --> 00:58:13,771
We need all that, and it's fundamental
economic principles that I'm putting forward but

1104
00:58:13,931 --> 00:58:18,114
how you put them together is where people
need to start to think, be thinking moreso.

1105
00:58:19,434 --> 00:58:22,525
- And if you came close to
having that actually implemented

1106
00:58:24,988 --> 00:58:25,908
they would kill you.

1107
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:28,468
- I think the powers that be

1108
00:58:28,994 --> 00:58:33,080
have a moral ... "scapegoatism."

1109
00:58:33,485 --> 00:58:36,971
So what has happened with all these other countries
that try to do something different once again?

1110
00:58:37,291 --> 00:58:38,960
What do they say? they say "Oh,

1111
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:42,240
there are human rights abuses. Cuba!"

1112
00:58:42,420 --> 00:58:46,520
Cuba did incredibly well,
incredibly well with its embargoes,

1113
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:48,377
even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. (- Right.)

1114
00:58:48,782 --> 00:58:51,980
Cuba was able to work with
what it had to build industries,

1115
00:58:52,097 --> 00:58:54,331
to take care of its people in a way-
the United States can't even do it.

1116
00:58:54,737 --> 00:58:59,080
Because it had a fundamental ethic of working
with what they had, and what do we do?

1117
00:58:59,377 --> 00:59:02,354
"Cuba is basically a cult"
is the way they present it.

1118
00:59:02,565 --> 00:59:05,902
Oh, and then the anti-oppressive
forces and oh! how dare they not

1119
00:59:06,070 --> 00:59:07,617
bring in the free market, hence that

1120
00:59:07,805 --> 00:59:11,417
"free" word that almost always pollutes
everything as though it actually means that!

1121
00:59:13,188 --> 00:59:15,102
All the history - and that's
what troubles me greatly -

1122
00:59:15,211 --> 00:59:18,560
is I think some country eventually will
follow these principles, similar ones.

1123
00:59:18,742 --> 00:59:21,640
I don't claim to have all the answers;
it's just logic to me as far as we're headed.

1124
00:59:22,314 --> 00:59:24,857
And someone will try to go off the
grid like a house does, and say

1125
00:59:25,080 --> 00:59:27,257
"We're done with globalization,
we're done with all you people.

1126
00:59:27,468 --> 00:59:30,731
We're gonna do something different
because we know we need to."

1127
00:59:30,914 --> 00:59:34,725
And that's when the big guns come out
because this country, specifically,

1128
00:59:34,930 --> 00:59:39,560
and all the other ones that are hell-bent
on maintaining the neoliberal religion,

1129
00:59:40,068 --> 00:59:44,137
they won't tolerate this, (- right!)
that's really unfortunate. (- they never have!)

1130
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:44,800
They never have.

1131
00:59:44,931 --> 00:59:49,960
- In fact, if even you read
General Smedley Butler from 1935,

1132
00:59:51,380 --> 00:59:54,708
he wrote about it, 'War is a
Racket,' the name of his book,

1133
00:59:54,811 --> 00:59:58,382
and he talked about every war he was
involved with in South America,

1134
00:59:58,725 --> 01:00:02,428
he was there at the behest of a corporation
and it was to steal the natural resources

1135
01:00:02,725 --> 01:00:05,560
from a leader who wanted to
give it to his own people.

1136
01:00:05,910 --> 01:00:07,194
And we've been doing that ever since.

1137
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:09,880
That's not stopping, that's
happening right now in Syria.

1138
01:00:10,245 --> 01:00:12,862
That's happening in- well it
happened in Libya because

1139
01:00:13,022 --> 01:00:14,491
Qaddafi went off the dinar,

1140
01:00:15,330 --> 01:00:19,011
I mean he went off the petro dollar and
he wanted to have a currency for Africa.

1141
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:21,034
We can't have that. (- No.)
You can't have that so you go

1142
01:00:21,140 --> 01:00:24,068
"Oh he's gonna kill his own people,
so we have to overthrow him." ...

1143
01:00:27,020 --> 01:00:30,394
- And it's funny how people- all this
history is there, and no one picks up ...

1144
01:00:31,485 --> 01:00:33,948
- Right now we're doing the same
thing we did in Iraq with Syria.

1145
01:00:34,542 --> 01:00:35,891
It's just unbelievable (- yeah)

1146
01:00:36,011 --> 01:00:40,020
that every time the government wants
to have a war for a corporation

1147
01:00:40,330 --> 01:00:45,674
they invent some kind of human rights-
"Oh my god, Saddam has ... rape rooms!"

1148
01:00:45,780 --> 01:00:49,360
So we have to go replace them with
American rape rooms, which is what we did.

1149
01:00:50,468 --> 01:00:52,662
Which is what we did and
nobody goes to jail for it.

1150
01:00:58,742 --> 01:01:02,662
I think a real concrete way
to fight back against this

1151
01:01:03,490 --> 01:01:08,720
"free-market capitalism" which is wrecking
the earth, environmentally and all that...

1152
01:01:09,970 --> 01:01:14,594
Professor Richard Wolff says
'Democracy at Work' coops, right?

1153
01:01:16,794 --> 01:01:19,531
That takes that totalitarian
nature of corporations

1154
01:01:19,828 --> 01:01:21,925
out and then workers get to decide,

1155
01:01:22,051 --> 01:01:23,050
what do you think about that idea?

1156
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:26,417
- I agree with it in the microcosm
of it, I think it's great

1157
01:01:26,525 --> 01:01:29,577
that there are people in Europe and the
United States that have been doing it.

1158
01:01:29,954 --> 01:01:32,400
But it takes a certain kind of
community to pull that off.

1159
01:01:32,657 --> 01:01:37,240
It also takes a competitive benefit

1160
01:01:37,640 --> 01:01:40,057
where you can maintain that type of

1161
01:01:42,540 --> 01:01:46,720
egalitarianism against other
corporations that don't.

1162
01:01:46,988 --> 01:01:50,154
See this is the problem of the competitive
system: when people try to do something good

1163
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:53,045
it tends to make them less
profitable generally speaking.

1164
01:01:53,154 --> 01:01:57,782
It tends to influence how much
market share they're going to get.

1165
01:01:58,142 --> 01:01:59,502
And it's the same argument I use:

1166
01:01:59,622 --> 01:02:02,794
people that talk about green
entrepreneurialism or green capitalism or

1167
01:02:03,182 --> 01:02:06,274
the companies that come forward
and they try to NOT use

1168
01:02:06,382 --> 01:02:10,102
slave-manufactured textiles
or chocolate or whatever.

1169
01:02:10,302 --> 01:02:11,657
But in order for them to do that

1170
01:02:12,525 --> 01:02:14,588
they have to basically increase their prices.

1171
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:16,365
And that's where the whole moral debate of

1172
01:02:16,502 --> 01:02:18,685
voting with your dollar
comes forward and so on.

1173
01:02:19,325 --> 01:02:22,485
And all of that stuff is good
but I think the real problem is

1174
01:02:23,291 --> 01:02:24,817
if you have a cooperative that does that

1175
01:02:25,620 --> 01:02:29,782
you're gonna be susceptible to the ruthlessness
of all of your competing industries

1176
01:02:29,897 --> 01:02:32,108
and I think it's why it
hasn't really persisted.

1177
01:02:32,314 --> 01:02:35,502
It's the wearing away that people realize
that they have to maintain more of a

1178
01:02:35,685 --> 01:02:40,748
cutthroat hierarchical and stratified,
and any unequal type of profit-sharing

1179
01:02:40,891 --> 01:02:42,040
in order to make it work?!

1180
01:02:42,314 --> 01:02:44,337
That seems to be why this hasn't taken hold.

1181
01:02:44,445 --> 01:02:46,382
Remember, that idea goes
back a hundred years.

1182
01:02:46,811 --> 01:02:48,514
People were talking about
that long before Karl Marx.

1183
01:02:49,940 --> 01:02:52,314
And the question is, why
hasn't it become more popular?

1184
01:02:52,420 --> 01:02:55,571
And it's because it really goes against
the natural grain of the system

1185
01:02:55,685 --> 01:02:58,885
and it's hard to maintain stability
if you're gonna operate that way

1186
01:02:59,005 --> 01:03:02,371
unless you're a small company in the Midwest,
and you don't have a lot of competitors,

1187
01:03:02,571 --> 01:03:07,331
and you're willing to build kind of a Lo-Fi,
so to speak, communal corporation.

1188
01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:10,142
But I have a very hard time believing
that that's gonna take root

1189
01:03:10,270 --> 01:03:12,902
and somehow change the system.
I'm all for it! I'm all for it.

1190
01:03:13,017 --> 01:03:15,080
but you know, it goes against the grain.

1191
01:03:15,685 --> 01:03:18,290
- So, recently Bernie Sanders

1192
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:22,085
hosted a town hall on income
inequality which I watched.

1193
01:03:23,297 --> 01:03:27,428
Why is Bernie Sanders' ideas on how
to solve income inequality wrong?

1194
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:28,965
His ideas are-...

1195
01:03:30,114 --> 01:03:33,400
first of all his ideas are to get corporate
money out of politics so we can have

1196
01:03:34,051 --> 01:03:37,948
more democracy. So tell
me why he's misguided.

1197
01:03:38,411 --> 01:03:39,954
- Well I don't use the word misguided.

1198
01:03:41,268 --> 01:03:44,931
I did a critique of that Town Hall because
I was so frustrated with the fact that

1199
01:03:45,220 --> 01:03:49,417
they didn't get to the root of the issue, meaning
the market-force capitalism that is underscoring

1200
01:03:49,525 --> 01:03:50,690
all these problems that they speak of.

1201
01:03:50,805 --> 01:03:53,468
No one brought it up. That just
frustrated me, which is why

1202
01:03:55,205 --> 01:03:58,274
I continue to push that very
fundamental structuralist perspective.

1203
01:03:58,388 --> 01:03:59,440
If people don't understand that,

1204
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:02,611
then they're not gonna be moving in the right
direction, they're gonna keep running in place.

1205
01:04:03,040 --> 01:04:06,765
But all the things he talks about in
terms of social democratic policy,

1206
01:04:08,045 --> 01:04:10,714
democratic socialism, I completely agree with

1207
01:04:10,897 --> 01:04:14,228
in terms of a step-by-step process.
But it's gonna take more than that.

1208
01:04:14,428 --> 01:04:15,811
That it's gonna take more than you know-...

1209
01:04:16,274 --> 01:04:18,600
First of all, getting money out of
politics, well good luck with that!

1210
01:04:19,314 --> 01:04:21,377
Money is what runs everything!

1211
01:04:21,685 --> 01:04:24,868
and it's like, "where do you draw
the line?" in terms of how much money.

1212
01:04:25,005 --> 01:04:27,451
If lobbying's legal which it is,
as it is across the world,

1213
01:04:27,714 --> 01:04:31,422
well, what part of that lobbying is
the corrupt part? It's ALL corrupt!

1214
01:04:33,885 --> 01:04:36,508
To me that strikes me as you
know, just kind of platitudinal.

1215
01:04:37,470 --> 01:04:41,857
But in terms of, should people reorganize unions?
Yeah, to whatever effect they can,

1216
01:04:41,965 --> 01:04:44,891
but the problem is the unions have been
destroyed in America because of outsourcing!

1217
01:04:45,417 --> 01:04:47,690
The company's not gonna sit
there and tolerate their union

1218
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:51,245
for more rate if they can go to China or go
to India or wherever, and outsource,

1219
01:04:51,354 --> 01:04:53,950
as has happened! That's why the
union movement died in America

1220
01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:57,531
and the middle class floundered
after the World War 2 finally,

1221
01:04:57,754 --> 01:05:00,457
upon like 1960s and '70s because
everyone outsourced, they said Fuck it!

1222
01:05:01,005 --> 01:05:02,825
And now we're left
with a service economy.

1223
01:05:03,017 --> 01:05:04,990
Yeah, we're left with a
service and a WAR economy.

1224
01:05:07,068 --> 01:05:09,668
The fruits of that economy don't
necessarily trickle down the way they did

1225
01:05:09,811 --> 01:05:12,600
in World War 2 where you had
wives creating munitions.

1226
01:05:12,977 --> 01:05:16,348
But the war economy is still very much
a part of the United States economy

1227
01:05:16,548 --> 01:05:19,262
in terms of just how it supports itself.

1228
01:05:20,182 --> 01:05:23,817
People say "Well oh, the money is spent
on war!" remember, that money is spent

1229
01:05:24,211 --> 01:05:27,902
into the pockets somewhere (- yes)
and it contributes to GDP somewhere.

1230
01:05:29,634 --> 01:05:30,760
It doesn't just get wasted.

1231
01:05:33,074 --> 01:05:36,354
- Let's try to conclude this way. Let's say

1232
01:05:38,782 --> 01:05:41,965
you were running for president

1233
01:05:43,331 --> 01:05:47,502
and someone asked you "Well what's
your plan?" What would you say?

1234
01:05:49,457 --> 01:05:50,720
- Yeah that's a tough one,

1235
01:05:51,180 --> 01:05:53,777
because it assumes that I would be

1236
01:05:54,325 --> 01:05:56,977
thinking about America as
a separate institution.

1237
01:05:57,142 --> 01:05:59,685
And I think that we really have
to think more deeply than that

1238
01:05:59,790 --> 01:06:01,880
in terms of the way the economic system is.

1239
01:06:02,217 --> 01:06:06,771
My plan would be to try and communicate
with the rest of the nations of the world

1240
01:06:07,331 --> 01:06:09,885
to get this information
across that what we're doing

1241
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:12,274
is only gonna lead to more conflict and war

1242
01:06:12,582 --> 01:06:15,531
and it's gonna lead to ecological
decline, and they fuse together.

1243
01:06:15,834 --> 01:06:17,980
As I said before, the refugee crisis and so on,

1244
01:06:18,445 --> 01:06:20,410
if we think it's bad that Trump
wants to build a wall now

1245
01:06:20,525 --> 01:06:22,714
wait until most of Europe
starts to think this way

1246
01:06:22,902 --> 01:06:24,977
when they start getting influxes of refugees,

1247
01:06:25,125 --> 01:06:27,017
when we hit 9 billion people by 2050,

1248
01:06:27,148 --> 01:06:30,377
and we have water shortages and everything
else that all the trajectories show.

1249
01:06:30,857 --> 01:06:33,948
I'm not trying to be a doomsday guy,
in fact I warrant against that.

1250
01:06:34,150 --> 01:06:36,280
But if you look at what the
actual statistics show,

1251
01:06:36,748 --> 01:06:38,780
there's nothing positive on the
horizon in terms of any of this.

1252
01:06:38,897 --> 01:06:42,028
The only saving grace is the
Buckminster Fuller ephemeralization.

1253
01:06:42,257 --> 01:06:43,954
We're literally in a race against time

1254
01:06:44,222 --> 01:06:48,674
between our advanced technology trying
to solve all the problems in the wake of capitalism.

1255
01:06:48,971 --> 01:06:51,388
So the market externalities
are producing this problem

1256
01:06:51,491 --> 01:06:53,542
and we're trying to counter
it with this technology

1257
01:06:53,685 --> 01:06:56,068
such as people trying to pull
carbon out of the air now.

1258
01:06:57,045 --> 01:06:58,491
So that's the race but if I was,

1259
01:06:58,617 --> 01:07:01,434
I would try to make a
global sense immediately.

1260
01:07:01,560 --> 01:07:04,194
I would try to bring people together
to realize that we are much more

1261
01:07:04,388 --> 01:07:07,885
capable as a global society
in terms of efficiency

1262
01:07:08,205 --> 01:07:11,702
and that all of the disparate pluralism,
the religious ideologies,

1263
01:07:11,874 --> 01:07:15,628
all that is back door - it's secondary -
to our economic survival.

1264
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:17,965
And if we can't get the economic stuff right,

1265
01:07:18,150 --> 01:07:22,868
which isn't some esoteric
subjective thing. The economy -

1266
01:07:23,154 --> 01:07:26,580
Greek economia: "management of a household."
How do you manage your household?

1267
01:07:27,931 --> 01:07:30,525
Do you take everything out of the
refrigerator and consume it all at once

1268
01:07:30,634 --> 01:07:32,611
and then stare at it
because there's nothing left?

1269
01:07:34,777 --> 01:07:39,874
The logic of a homeostatic existence
of the human species on the planet

1270
01:07:39,980 --> 01:07:43,554
isn't rocket science; it's just something
that needs to be properly digested.

1271
01:07:43,660 --> 01:07:45,371
And we have to get away from these "isms"

1272
01:07:46,057 --> 01:07:49,102
and just the polarization I should say,

1273
01:07:49,257 --> 01:07:51,217
where people can't even think clearly anymore

1274
01:07:51,394 --> 01:07:53,794
because they're so looking for boxes,

1275
01:07:54,028 --> 01:07:57,102
or they're so being conditioned into
thinking that they HAVE to be in a box,

1276
01:07:57,251 --> 01:07:59,565
which is the way the whole
political discourse is now.

1277
01:07:59,748 --> 01:08:02,982
So no one's thinking clearly anymore, they're
just thinking in terms of bubbles and boxes

1278
01:08:03,182 --> 01:08:06,034
and categories, and that's terrible.

1279
01:08:06,194 --> 01:08:08,405
And going back to systems
thinking you brought up earlier,

1280
01:08:09,340 --> 01:08:11,674
the beauty of systems thinking is
you're looking at relationships,

1281
01:08:11,782 --> 01:08:16,130
you're not just looking at things that
we see intuitively. This is a book.

1282
01:08:16,457 --> 01:08:19,270
Well it's not just a book it's a lot of things,
a lot of things went into the book.

1283
01:08:20,228 --> 01:08:22,600
It's made out of materials, there's a
process, there's intellectual development

1284
01:08:22,710 --> 01:08:24,977
that went on for thousands of years
produce something like this.

1285
01:08:25,280 --> 01:08:28,874
So there's a depth to everything that
happens around us that people keep missing.

1286
01:08:29,154 --> 01:08:32,154
And until we can kind of just
rediscover that sense of relationship,

1287
01:08:32,457 --> 01:08:34,491
an interdisciplinary sense of relationship,

1288
01:08:34,868 --> 01:08:38,300
we're really at a disadvantage intellectually
as a species, does that makes sense?

1289
01:08:38,537 --> 01:08:42,817
We can't think, we have a serious
problem thinking systemically.

1290
01:08:44,657 --> 01:08:46,754
A guy goes and kills somebody,
you blame the guy!

1291
01:08:46,970 --> 01:08:48,857
We don't know what happened to
that person that fostered that.

1292
01:08:48,960 --> 01:08:51,834
We don't know what his parents were like.
We don't know what kind of poverty they were in.

1293
01:08:51,980 --> 01:08:53,034
Or the terrorism thing ...

1294
01:08:55,080 --> 01:08:58,588
Cynically, I love the fact that we
still look at people that go into a

1295
01:08:58,760 --> 01:09:02,771
cafe and blow themselves up,
as though THEY are the problem,

1296
01:09:03,114 --> 01:09:05,491
as though that would be the only
thing that could possibly have-...

1297
01:09:05,920 --> 01:09:08,422
that's the causality.
That's NOT the causality.

1298
01:09:08,605 --> 01:09:11,914
Causality is a whole sea of desperation,
of ideological influence,

1299
01:09:12,034 --> 01:09:15,108
of say empires that have gone to your
land and screwed you over so badly

1300
01:09:15,210 --> 01:09:17,622
that you have nothing else to lose anymore,
and to maintain your dignity

1301
01:09:17,731 --> 01:09:21,182
you want to go kill people that just resemble
those folks that destroyed your lives.

1302
01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:24,537
All that causality, if we can
get that sense together,

1303
01:09:25,110 --> 01:09:28,234
we would be more on the right track.
It's gonna be hard.

1304
01:09:28,377 --> 01:09:31,691
- Well listen, the book is called
'The New Human Rights Movement,'

1305
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:34,182
there it is right there, by Peter Joseph.

1306
01:09:34,954 --> 01:09:37,485
I encourage everybody to get it,
it's a fantastic read,

1307
01:09:37,862 --> 01:09:41,160
all the statistics and ideas
in here are mind-blowing

1308
01:09:41,537 --> 01:09:44,428
and it's really well done,
really great work on this.

1309
01:09:44,617 --> 01:09:47,542
- Thank you.
- And there it is; check it out.

1310
01:09:47,657 --> 01:09:48,708
Peter, thanks for being our guest.

1311
01:09:48,828 --> 01:09:50,497
- My pleasure, thank you Jimmy,
I appreciate you having me on.