The Future of Automation, AI, and Universal Basic Income with InfoQ Founder Floyd Marinescu

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and I am thrilled, excited, overjoyed and lost. Little overwhelmed, honestly, because I have such.

A great guest today. My name.

Your name is Floyd Marinescu. I don't want to say it wrong. Tell me how to say your name right.

Marinescu. Marinescu. I got it right. Well, look at that.

Floyd and I met at 212 recently. It's a really great conference. 65 influencers set the four seasons in Denver. It's invite only and it's just a wonderful time. I mean Tim Ferriss goes and all these really great people and Floyd and I started geeking out about. He was wearing a great shirt about basic income. Right ubi. And we started chatting about that and I'm like, dude, I got to have you on the podcast because you're just, you're a futurist, you're in AI, you run events, you're just a smart, smart guy. You're in Toronto and I want to connect you with people there, but also I just want people to learn what's in your head. So let's get you, let's get you spun up like a top. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, well, I've been running my own business for the last 11 years. We do a tech. It's a tech conference for software engineers called QCon. It runs in New York, San Francisco, London, or in China or in Brazil. Also we have a News website called infoq.com it's a software engineering community. News sites like CNN for programmers. That's been a lot of fun. It's also really fun because it's fully remote. We're a remote team of 45 in 10 countries. Great culture. So I like to talk a lot about that whenever people need to know. I'm actually shocked that there's not more. All remote companies out there. And about myself, yeah, I've always been on this personal learning path. I think a lot about how to think about life and been a lifelong meditator, a kung fu guy and yeah, just kind of always interested in a lot of different things. Just always enjoy continual learning. Bit of a digital nomad at times. And yeah, Toronto is basically where I was born and raised and very glad to be here.

Thank you so much. And I think we share that. Right. We have a lot of diverse interests. You know, I'm really geeking out about the crypto and blockchain stuff. We talked about that a little bit. But the personal development side and running your team, what do you think some of the common threads between all these things are that really light you up or that really excite you or are they totally disparate?

Yeah, there's a common thread I think about a lot. I would say it's community building, collective evolution, working together to get cool shit done. Kind of one of the unique things that I've done in my career is actually getting people to work together on areas that are a bit unusual. For example, on our news website we got over 50 programmers who part time write journalistic style news. They all learn how to write journalists, literally proper journalistic pyramid and everything. And it's a peer to peer model where they write for each other and for our events. That's all curated by a committee that are also just cool people doing awesome stuff in the Valley and elsewhere, choosing and curating speakers. So I was able to run a multi city, huge conference that serves thousands of people at one point with only a quarter of my time because I was working, doing my work by facilitating committees. So kind of, at least for me personally, maybe one of my gifts is sort of facilitation and the culture side, particularly in a remote environment. But overall kind of a unifying theme has always been just things that will push humanity forward. And with my work it has to do with technology. And in my personal life it's other things, whether it's meditation, spirituality, or I'm really passionate about these days outside of work, which is the idea of universal basic income, which I think will be a major, kind of a next major emancipation for humanity beyond all the technological progress we're experiencing.

Yeah, and Floyd, you and I are very much aligned in that regard. I think where I want to see you make more marvels one day is something that kind of does that for people. It brings the resources, the people, the systems, the cooperative aspect together for bigger and better systems that serve more people. And you're already on that path. And I like this idea. You have this community and that you build, but there's also consensus among the community. So you don't have to use all your brain power or think you have the right answers. It's allowing the community to come in and say, oh, these are going to be the speakers. These are the ones we vote up. This is the code we want to create. This is the project that serves us best. Is that kind of in your experience or was that how.

That's how it works. I mean, it's a unique process that I facilitate. I used to facilitate where literally we have some experts together. We meet once a week for several months and through a lot of spreadsheet wizardry, we organize like idea collection, dot voting to rank ideas up and down, debating the outliers, voting again. And that's really fun. It's actually one of those fun experiences and literally just like pulling out knowledge from everyone's brains and having them collaborate with each other and vote to actually see what's the truth, what is the truth among them. And then they all align. And so it is a bit of a lot of consensus that works well in small teams, doesn't always work well in large companies. Comes getting big enough now that we can't do things by consensus anymore. It's a bit painful to navigate that transition because I'm kind of a low D on disk. So I like managing from consensus, but that won't get you. That won't get you all the way. That's some part periods of revolution. But yeah, consensus is a big theme and yeah, it's been remarkable actually because in my own career I started as a computer scientist but I'm not technical anymore. So I have to work through the committees who are still technical, still doing cool to and mining their knowledge and their consensus.

I love that you just mentioned the disc profile because that's a Tony Robbins property and something that I've taken. I'm high di and it comes apparent when you talk to me more. But to be low D means you're probably also on the Lord kind of numbers process systems like for example, use the word fun and spreadsheets in the same sentence, which for me is like, you know, I would rather put a bullet in my head sometimes than look at a spreadsheet and people say, oh, just look at the spreadsheet. I want to like, you know, ring their neck. So what are some of the other things that you noticed about yourself and the way you manage versus maybe like a more natural, like a Jack Welch ge, Meg Whitman type of or Sheryl Sandberg type of tech founder or leader that, you know, creates a different type of managerial style and what have been some of the, you know, the key learnings there that I think other people such as yourself who are really great at the data side do to lead people, Manage people?

Yeah. Wow, that's a good question. So I've been obsessed a bit with disk and also with strengths finder. I kind of use them both internally to understand staff members and have you.

Taken wealth dynamics yet or no, I haven't done that. I'll send you a token. Just remind me.

Okay. And yeah, I've noticed that on the creative side, kind of the high I's or high D's will get things done. They don't want to be bogged down by process, they want to move things ahead. They want to live in a kind of ideation zone. But when it comes to management, sort of the people are on low I spectrum. What will manage for metrics and track systems. And high C obviously is very systematic. So yeah, I've noticed it's good to build a kind of a complementary teams. Really depends on the roles. I mean if you have roles that are operational nature, this is maybe my own personal experience, but purely operational roles kind of having having low I's. High C's are great because it's all about systems. High s repetitive, exacting perfection on the systems and areas that are more entrepreneurial, that are more like fly by the seat of your pants. Things are always changing. That's where you want more high I's, high D's for example, in sales and because those people kind of thrive off of that kind of energy. And it's, it's fascinating because I think that these different profiles might also apply to different companies or different team sizes. I think maybe as companies get larger you definitely need visionaries who will come in with a strong vision and take bigger risks. I am visionary but I'm not really a huge risk taker. And so you need that risk taking element. I think once a company is big enough. But honestly, it really depends on the culture. I'm probably babbling now, but here's an interesting case study difference between me and my partner in China. So this is one of my best friends in China. I hired him in the second year. We launched to launch a Chinese version of our events and our online site. And he's super high I. He's basically the opposite disc profile to me. And he builds teams, gets done, doesn't get involved in details. More Richard Branson esque and takes big risks and now his business is quite large. He ended up buying us out a few years ago because my conservative style was holding him back. And China was just exploding. Right. China's never seen a downturn yet. So when everything's going up and up, being managed by a more Western conservative style that's seen 2002 and 2008 can be a bit. Can hold you back. Versus my style is like, you know, I want to see spreadsheets, I want to see plans, I want to see some risk assessment and. Which maybe works well for the kind of business I'm in. I'm in media, right? Media is very. Is fairly low margin. You need to like what you're doing. It's very repetitive, systematic. It's very. Depending on how you run it, you have to really like what you're doing. So my profile works well for the business I'm in, I guess. But his profile in China, he's launching a bunch of new stuff. And I'm kind of envious in some ways. But he's also envious of our profit margins because we run a lean ship and very exacting and always dealing with a good customer experience and repetitive excellence and stuff like that.

I think this is a fascinating case study and I wish you guys would publish it if you haven't already, because I'd love to read it, certainly, and just kind of dig into like, okay, you guys have the same business model, right?

Yes.

He came in, you hired him to run your business in China. And sure, there's differences between those two economies, but, you know, solving for that, you know, a different type of leadership management created this grow, grow, grow, grow, grow system in a rising market, but not a lot of profit margin, whereas you're profitable, you're lean, and you know that your business is sound. It's not a unicorn, it's a zebra, so to speak. And I just really love that. So thank you for that kind of distinction. Because you wonder what would play out and you wonder what these pieces that kind of tie it all together are. You're looking for these first principles, these core first principles like Elon Musk talks about, like Ray Dalio talks about with his intractable people problem. You know, you can't run an investment culture and a people culture the same way. Right. And this idea of meritocracy is really difficult for people to swallow, but he manages to do it through actually personality typing tests. So I just sent him an email because we live in the 80s of the Internet and this little device in your pockets, a supercomputer that can connect you to anybody in the world. I sent Ray an email. I said, have you checked out Wealth Dynamics? I feel like that's like the piece of the puzzle that a lot of these guys are missing. And they're cobbling together other tests, like, you know, disk and Strengths Finder and mbti and they're all valuable, but I don't think they quite get it for entrepreneurship yet. I don't think they quite nailed it. And I feel like Roger James Hamilton really has pieces of the puzzle that nobody else has. And having taken all these tests myself, I can and use them in my, in my business. I'm always apt to geek out about this stuff and really excited about it.

Oh yeah. You know, there's another model and system I would layer over this that I found a lot of value with. I got this from the insartup conference last year. It's actually, it's an older model. It's called the Three Horizons of Corporate Innovation. And it's the idea that Horizon 1 is all your existing lines of business that are where you're, where the focus is. Profit, efficiency, you manage through metrics, it's repeatability. Horizon 2 are growth businesses that have been proven in a small and now you're investing to grow. And then Horizon 3, rather is where you're discovering new ideas. So the mode there is discovery and trying to do lots of experiments. And that's where you don't want to be bogged down by too much, well, what won't work, too much metrics and dashboards and stuff like that. So actually, each of those three horizons, I realized, has a very different management style and even different personality types will lend to them, themselves to them. So having like traditional managers that you definitely want traditional managers on your Horizon 1 assets, because you don't want that stuff to change too much. You want it to be, to be run well. You want people who thrive off customer service and thrive off feeling that thrill of, like, seeing something execute really well just for its own sake. And Horizon three is you where you want the impatient ones, the ones that might not work well on a traditional team, the ones that might even get fired from companies that are trying to do things by the book and following lots of rules, they thrive in Horizon 3 and the reverse isn't true. People that like things to be systematic and repetitive will enjoy Horizon 3 stuff to a point, but could find it exhausting and tiring. So that was actually pretty, pretty useful for me because most of our businesses, I would consider Horizon one and I was wondering why we have so much difficulty doing new stuff, at least in my business, not the Chinese business. And it's because, like, a lot of us are just imbued with that way of running Horizon One businesses, which is great if you're a customer coming to our events, you have an amazing experience, but it's harder to launch new things and to reason about how much you should invest. So this whole idea of discovery skills on three versus execution skills on one and Horizon two is a mix of both. I found that with regards to corporate management to be very useful.

I love that, Floyd. And where can people learn more about that? What's like a great book to kind of outline the whole idea?

Just honestly just Google the three horizons and layer on top of that Lean Startup principles. I think Lean Startup principles apply to Horizon 3, not one. The traditional side. So that was actually discovery. Lean Startup plus the three horizons together is a very good model to think for. Thinking.

I like it. And that's Eric Reese's book the Lean Startup. If you guys haven't read it and I'll put a link to the show notes for the three horizons. We'll do a little Google magic on the back end. But yeah, I'm always looking for better models, better systems. Depending on who you kind of follow, you'll have different things that work for you and different reasons. And I know our managerial styles are probably very different. I'm kind of fly by the seat of my pants and I'm very people driven and you're very numbers and data driven and I think it'll work.

Yeah. So actually my co founder Roxanne, she's our VP of sales, she's the opposite. I'm the low I, she's the high I. And you know, just very, very different on the spectrum. And, and she's great. We're completely different. She's, she's very spontaneous, creative in the moment. I'm very much always my mind's in the future. She, she gets excited about crafting new visions and I want to like, I want to validate them and think them through. Like I like to actually think a vision through almost to the end and then start working through it versus she'll just let's go get into it, discover it as we go. And it's good to have those, those energies complement each other in any team because if everyone was just like me, then we wouldn't, we probably wouldn't move fast enough, you know, and we'd be too cautious. So it's good to have the energies mixed. Good.

And I want to kind of transition out of this only because we could really go down the rabbit hole on all these different managerial styles and company styles and personalities and it's kind of an endless solution. Right. It's like there's so many different layers to lay on top of it. We'll keep learning more. I really wanted to bring you on the show today because I wanted to talk about what you kind of envision for the future and how you're working to create better systems that serve more. And specifically with ubi, some of the smartest people on the planet are talking about this is like, I believe that we're truly living in end stage capitalism. There's an old Winston Churchill quote. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I think the same could be said for capitalism. It's the best economic system we have until there's something better that could supplant or replace it. So what do you see that looking like, what can we do now to help create a better system? Serves more people. And since you are a person who thinks things through all the way to the end, what do you see as some of the challenges that we're gonna, you know, kind of face with UBI and how can we maybe head those off at the past as well?

Oh, yeah, there's some good questions. The last one is stuff I've never really talked about publicly before, but so, you know, I'm kind of an unusual figure to be talking about UBI and working on a talk. I'm talking about it wherever I can. I go to very expensive business events wearing my basic income T shirt. That's how we met. Basic income is not left or right. It's forward. And, and yeah, I mean, I'm devoting a lot of my spare time and spare imagination to this because I really want to live in a world where we can have a thriving, capitalist, innovative society with all the innovation that this kind of economic system brings. But yet everyone's boats are lifted at the same time. And we're actually preserving the cycles that are maintaining the vigorousness of this system in the first place, which is a lot of buyers, a lot of consumers, like people, you know, people to satisfy demands. You know, there's this myth that's perpetuated that rich people create jobs and create all innovation. We only hire people when we can predict upcoming demands. We don't hire people because we like people. In fact, most entrepreneurs I know want to have as few people as possible because people just create more. Complexity does not make sense. So we hire when we predict demand. And what I'm seeing happening due to a variety of factors that just the amount of money in people's pockets, you know, the bottom half of society, bottom 47% of Americans right now, can't find $400 in case of an emergency wealth Incomes have been stagnant since the 70s. Meanwhile, most of the gains have gone to the top 1%. You know, if you just look at over a trillion dollars of annual income used to go to working class and now is going to shareholders and 1%, and that's a fact, I mean, compared to the 70s to now, and imagine if that trillion dollars was still going to wages, what would have happened? How much bigger would our economy be? Would it be twice the size? All that buying power, you know. So I envision a society where we have freedom, we have democracy, we also have no poverty and the working poor are not desperate and are not stuck in situations because of desperation. It's kind of bizarre that our economy, economic system runs on fear. It's kind of weird, right? Like kind of depressed to think about it. It literally runs on fear like work or die and, or work and. Or face humiliating circumstances in the welfare trap, which is, you know, and possibly also die, depending on what your medical conditions are. Right.

You see it in the media more than anything. Right. People are hitting that fear button all the time to drive forward commerce. Right. They're afraid and therefore they buy. They're disconnected and they feel unsatisfied and therefore they buy. And that drives the economic machine.

Yeah. And there's too much fear in the world. I mean, fear has been, I think, is the cause of Brexit. Fear is the cause of electing populists. And I can't think of anything that would scale as well as a root solution to so many problems as universal based income. If we had, if everyone in the country was receiving, say $1,500 a month, unconditional, regardless of what other income you make or don't make, imagine the decrease of fear that you would have. You would have no more. Poor people that are working in entry level jobs have this cushion. Even rich people have this cushion. Even for me, I could lose everything tomorrow. I could make a big mistake. The idea that I could have this insurance policy, this foundation to stand on makes me feel like I want to take more risks. How many people are hoarding money because they're just afraid of losing it one day? If we have the sense of abundance that will come from the sense of, well, I know I'll never starve, then I think it's gonna just change society and we can. It's amazing that we, we have the resources to create a basic income. It actually won't cost a lot of money. Most people think it will, but it won't. They're doing the wrong calculation in their heads. So we can have a compassionate capitalism right now. We could have had it 50 years ago. In fact, this idea almost passed. It passed the house in the US in the 70s under Nixon. It actually passed like it could have, it could have gone all the way. But we can have a compassionate capitalism where nobody needs to be poor or desperate and meanwhile we can all still be rich and still be on entrepreneurs and have a much bigger economy. So that's what I want. I want to live in that world, not this one.

And I think there's a lot of pieces to this, so I'm just going to break down a few of them. A lot of the detractors will say something like, well, if everybody makes $1,500 as a minimum, wouldn't that just raise the prices and everything and make it as if they were impoverished again? And what do you say to people like that? The other piece that's really important to kind of talk about is, you know, we live with fiat currency as the primary form of currency. And the ability to print money is not something that's tied to anything most people don't understand. Like the Federal Reserve and central banks and private corporations, privately held, and they work in tandem with the Fed, I'm sorry, with the treasury of various countries to create more or less currency, but usually more currency, especially in this inflationary society we're living in post major financial collapse. And most of those dollars get flooded into the market and go into asset holders pockets because they can't print stocks and they can't print houses and they can't print yachts as fast as they can print money. So knowing all of that, what are some of the economic forces that will control a UBI system or keep controls on the currency issue or the prices rising? And then additionally, do you see technologies like blockchain that have deflationary possibilities as a solution?

Sure, yeah. Great question. So a few answers to the inflation question because it does come up a lot. Most of the. So people are already well off, are not going to take their 15,000 and go spend it. I mean first of all, the people that are making a lot of money probably would have paid it back in tax anyway. So you'll get it, but you'll end up paying it back in tax. But probably if a government was to implement a basic income, they would probably have to choose a particular salary, let's say it's 65,000 and then make small tweaks to the income tax system such that for every dollar you make less than 65,000 you start to gain more of, you keep more of your basic income instead of paying it back. And eventually if you get, you have zero, you have 15,000 and every dollar over 65,000 you're paying it out. And that's how it would be done. Right. So the size of the actual population that would be spending more is really mainly the bottom third of society in terms of earnings. And what do these people buy? What do we buy? When you don't have a lot, you buy consumables. And guess what, the last 15 years consumables have been in deflationary position thanks to China, thanks to globalization. Literally if you look at non durable consumable goods, it's been at -2% deflation for decades even though the official exchange rate is higher because the official inflation rate consists of more things than just consumer goods. So I can't imagine that China can't scale, Walmart can't scale and Amazon can't scale to the needs that people have buying more daily things. Right. I mean the only band and even like properties like most of these people, they live somewhere, right? This EBI is not a policy that's only for people on the street. It's policy for like the bottom half of society to like live a little bit better. And everyone already lives somewhere now. So it's not like people are going to start, most of them are suddenly start moving up to better accommodations. Maybe there might be some demand on a band of, let's say if you're making like 20,000 now and suddenly you're making 30 with your basic income, you don't get all 50 and some of its tax back. Yeah, maybe you want something a little bit better. So maybe that narrow band of rental and stuff that you can afford when you're making around 30 a year might see a bit more demand. But I don't see anything changing in terms of consumer goods and food and stuff like that. We can scale. And coupled with the fact that technological change is all the kind of exponential technologies are predicted to create even more deflationary pressure. Right. Imagine we can get $5 test tube, I mean 3D printed meat, you know, like all the changes happening to the food ecosystem, to the 3D printing, the way production happens, everything is pointing to deflation. So I don't see inflation being a problem except for maybe a very small band of the real estate market which I'm sure will adjust or maybe we won't see an issue there at all. So I think I just don't see the inflation as being a problem.

So let's break it down for somebody that's never heard of UBI before. So where does the money come from? How does it distributed? What is it in replacement of or an augmentation to is does welfare state stay or does it go or, you know, because I've heard numbers thrown around about how, you know, global poverty could be eliminated for X dollars and we spend that on like a really nice jet or a nuclear bomb, you know, like. And it's like an absurd amount of things that we could fix. And I don't know that the incentives are aligned and I don't know that people understand that it's a possibility to fix these things. So I just love to hear the math, like, what are the mathematical certainties behind these? You know, sounds like a good idea, but how do we actually make it happen?

All right. It's important to know that the cost of a basic income is the net cost, not the gross cost. So your gross cost, you might think a lot of people make the mistake saying, okay, well there's 300 million people in the U.S. if everyone gets $10,000, that's trillions of dollars. That's not how it works. It would be again what I said earlier, the net cost. So let's say you draw the line in the sand that people will make 60,000 a year. That means everyone who makes below that will get net more. And everyone above that will pay out a bit. Will pay out a bit more. And so the cost is only what it costs to have a basic income, let's say, for a certain segment of society, even if everyone gets it, because you'll just play some tricks with the income tax rate so that it pays back. And actually Carl Wilderquist is an economist and co founder of the Basic Income Earth Network American economist. And he projected that a basic income of this type would only cost, I think he said net $300 billion in US and that's in a revenue neutral manner where all you're doing is small income tax tweaks and not much more. I've seen a similar projection for Canada, where I live, where in a revenue neutral manner by canceling some tax loopholes, making some adjustments to income taxes, folding in some current welfare and Social Security programs that are no longer necessary. It could be done in a revenue neutral manner from the government's perspective. And for 1 percenters, they'd only pay $10,000 more out of pocket, which is not a lot. I would pay 10,000 more in tax if I knew that there's no More poverty in my country. So there's three general buckets where money would come from. One bucket obviously is some income tax tweaks, but it's not as much as you'd expect because again, if everyone gets it, you can make these small adjustments so you pay it back. I mean like I Projected it'll be 300 billion and change the other way. Place is smaller. You could actually cancel a number of existing entitlement programs that are inefficient. For example, I heard that. I think there's a 30 or 40% overhead with food stamps, but with cash transfer programs there's only 2% overhead. So trillion dollars a year is being spent on 126 anti poverty programs in the US you could probably cancel half of those or more that would be replaced by direct cash transfer program like this. So a lot of money will come from smaller government savings on existing programs, greater efficiencies. And then there's a third category which may not be necessary, but a lot of people are talking about it. I don't have a firm opinion on this. The idea of taxing collectively owned resources. So in Alaska they have something called the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund. So oil revenues in Alaska have been shared with Alaskan citizens for decades now. So the average family in Alaska gets $2,000 a year or the average person or family just for a share of oil. Right. Like Exxon didn't put the oil in the ground. It's there to begin with. So who owns that? Right. So we all own it in a sense. Republicans have proposed a carbon tax. Elon Musk says that when you dump carbon in the air, it's as if you put garbage on your street and you expect it to be picked up for free. No, but you're putting it there. It has a cost. The cost is just not visible to the consumer. So a carbon tax would capture the actual accurate cost of pollution. And then you know, who owns the air? Well, we all do. So Republicans are saying let's just pay it back to everyone in the country. And there was $35 a ton of carbon emitted. You could actually pay every American. I believe that the figure was I think three or four thousand dollars a year in direct cash transfer. So if you take that argument a bit further, well, what else do we collectively own? A lot of things. Right. Bernie Sanders Group supports a financial tax on financial speculation. So that could raise $100 billion a year. Who owns the stock market? It was created. Right. You know, another thing is, I don't know how I feel about this one, but I've heard people say, well, the Internet, the Internet was created by society, by government, by taxpayer money, but, but it's free to use and people are making billions off of it now and they didn't have to do any work to create it. I mean, it's just kind of there, right? Is it maybe it's kind of odd that Internet, Internet, billion Internet companies can pay the same tax as brick and mortar when the Internet was actually is free basically for their use. So I mean, I don't really think we should tax the Internet, but the point is that there's a lot of different, these things that we commonly own, both natural and human made, that could, could from a libertarian point of view, be taxed because you choose to use it. So if you choose, you pay tax. And that's why a lot of libertarians support that idea.

And the other thing to consider with the carbon tax especially is that it would actually incentivize people to produce less pollution. Yeah, right. So if you were putting a measurable dent in the carbon footprint of the world and you were paying as a result of that for that pleasure, so to speak, to produce that pollution, well, you would probably start to look at those bills that are going out every year and say, hey, how can we lessen our carbon emissions and do things more green? And I think Elon's onto something with that. And you raise a lot of good points as far as what could be done, what is being done, who is succeeding in this? And then how do you, how do you present this in a way where people who don't really. You know, it shocks me how little politicians really understand about all of the little ways that this economic machine works and how all these cause and effects relationships play out. You know, they mostly end up not beating up on them. They have a very hard job and they have a lot of constituents to deal with and donors and getting elected and all these things that take up their time. They can't be expected to know everything. But they're not economists, certainly, and they don't really understand it at a high level. And even economists, as Ray Dalio so gladly points out in his book, if you check this out yet, if you haven't checked it out, I recommend it. I've been talking about it almost every podcast so far today because it's front of mind. There's no incentive for them to learn because they don't lose money if they don't know. Right. When Ray has an opinion about the economy, if he's wrong he loses money. If he's right, he makes money. So there's none of that incentive to really learn. So I'm wondering, like, how do you put this in a way because I want to solve this problem. How do you put this in a way where everybody who needs to sink their teeth into it and get behind it can sink their teeth into it and get behind it.

There's kind of three major vectors on that that I've thought of and it really depends who I talk to. I might go take one or the other, you know, one is fear. In short, we're heading towards kind of a bit of, I think we're heading towards a collapse if majority of Americans no longer have, can afford to buy stuff and are becoming more impoverished. That kind of inequality historically has always led to wars, revolution or plagues or worse. And it's happening. Just look, you can look at all the graphs we're moving towards. If the current trends of gains being earned by 1 percenters compared to everyone else being stagnant or losing out and getting poorer and poorer continues, that's going to lead to something that resembles a feudalism and eventually you're going to have a revolution. Because we're beyond that, we move beyond that. We're past those times. So like, you know, from an economic perspective I'm really concerned as a business owner, I'm really concerned because maybe it's not my current customers, but my customers customers or their customers, customers are getting poorer even while a certain segment of society gets richer due to innovation, technology and all those things. And I don't think that the deflationary opportunities that new technological innovations bringing is going to be enough. People can't eat their iPhones to a certain point. Like you know, we just, people can't participate fully in democracy when they're just worried about living. Check to check. So one direction is fear. Like literally the economy is moving in a direction where the majority cannot participate, majority don't have the freedom to participate in a practical means. And you know, I find interesting that, I mean a lot of libertarians I know seem more concerned about the freedom of people to pay less tax, the freedom of majority of the population to actually participate and be able to afford stuff and, and you know, actually have a good life and make decisions that are long term based and not based on what you need tomorrow. It's a very strange perspective on freedom that those particular friends have. And so one direction is fear. And legitimately I'm afraid, right, because we just haven't seen this level of inequality it's getting much, much worse. And, and the trends are pointing it to accelerating, you know, automation, AI. We haven't talked about that about that yet. You know, a lot of credible institutions are predicting that half of all jobs will be gone the next 20 years. I think the speed of that will be so fast that we're not going to have new jobs replacing it fast enough. You know, there's going to be a generational shift until there's enough new jobs, if there's ever going to be enough new jobs. Because a lot of people are saying that repetitive work simply will be taken out by robots permanently and there's just not going to be enough. None. There's not enough creative work. Not everyone can be a book writer or a graphics artist. There's not going to be enough work. So there's not enough work. What happens to the morality we've had about working to be a good person and everyone should have a job and the concept of full employment and what happens to that morality of work if there's not enough work? And already in the last 30 years there's not enough good paying work. Why? Because we're also competing on a global scale where there's 2 billion new people entering the workforce that can do all the same Internet jobs we can. And you know, my company exemplifies that. That's kind of what got me really interested in basically initially is that, you know, I hire people all over the world when you're remote, doesn't matter where you live. So I hire as many people as I can in emerging economies because I can afford to hire more people and my company is bigger and I can be more competitive. I do hire in Canada and us, I hire in UK as well. But the majority of our company is in South America, Eastern Europe because we can. And most of the entrepreneurs I know have virtual assistants in the Philippines. Like the single entrepreneurs. Like why would they pay someone local 3, 4 times the salary if they can avoid it? So this is the world we're living in. It's not just factories, textiles moving to Egypt and in fact and iPhone production moving to China. It's thinking work too. And people don't get it. It's like literally like there's so much competition that people in their 20s today I don't think will have the same upwards mobility as they had in the past. And not everyone can be an entrepreneur despite the hype. So like, I'm really worried that AI is just going to. An automation is just going to accelerate that trend. And you know, Imagine, you know, just truck drivers alone accounts for like a few percent of the whole U.S. workforce.

Yeah, I think it was like 3%.

All jobs or driving jobs or connected to driving jobs like truck insurance mechanics, truck stops, all that stuff. What's going to happen? So, you know, I'm worried it's gonna get a lot worse before people snap, wake up and realize our old assumptions just don't hold anymore. We can't just assume everyone who's hard working can get a job and if they can, sure, they're gonna be working on minimum wage. Minimum wage is a bizarre concept. So what relevance does minimum wage have when you're in a globalized world? So I think basic income is the best solution, is a better solution than minimum wage. Because people can have, can have their basic needs met and they can negotiate from a position of power because they just, they know they can move somewhere else instead of, instead of needing minimum wage, which in some ways creates more pressure on business and actually can, can make people want to automate and globalize even faster. So I'd rather see a basic income than any of the old laborist solutions so that people can actually have power, negotiate on their own. So to answer your original question, how do you present it? This one present one vector I just gave you is the fear vector. We're in trouble if we don't. Another vector is the opportunity for humanity vector. Like imagine if everyone had the power to take a long term perspective. You know, like I talk a lot to wealthy business owners about UBI and I say, you know, the real wealth that we have is not money, it's long term perspective, it's absence of fear. We can actually make decisions for the long term and not worry about tomorrow. Imagine if everyone had that. How many more people would find themselves in the real vocation they should be in the real thing that lights them up, gives them passion instead of being in a certain job just because they're worried or scared. You know, Mark Zuckerberg said in his Harvard address that if he had to worry about feeding his family instead of learning to code, he wouldn't be where he is today. I wouldn't be where I am today. I actually bought, I bought a rental property in my mid-20s and gave myself basic income effectively. And because I had that regular annuity stream coming in from rental income is why I had the confidence to quit and start my business. I might not have quit. I might have stayed in my exact job that was doing really well at the time because it was safe. So imagine everyone can Take that long term perspective. Imagine emancipation capability benefits for people that are in abusive situations. I wish my mother had a basic income because she would have had a stronger leverage point with my dad. And I grew up and there was a lot of tension in the household and I wish it would have been a bit more loving. There's already evidence from the basic income trials in Kenya that marriages have been improved because the women are more emancipated and have more freedom and more say Guy Standing who ran the basic income trials in India, he noticed that the villages he was visiting over the three year trial, women were wearing less and less of the facial coverings typical of the cultural background. And he asked them why and he said, well, the elders no longer have sway on us. We can do whatever we want. So women stopped wearing veals. So, you know, so imagine if like, you know, you could leave an abusive job or an abusive personal circumstance because you're not afraid of how you're going to eat or how you're going to feed your children.

And these are the problems that stem from, you know, decoupling economics from humanity when economics is really just the best we know about human decision making. It's always changing as things shift, right? And just understanding that when you make an economic decision based on cold hard numbers, you ignore the human element from which it derives and which it affects down the chain. Like you're creating more problems that are more expensive to solve. You're making a bad economic decision by making a good sound economic decision. I use bunny ear quotes to kind of frame that. But how do you get people who are really moving the needles to see all these cause effect relationships at, you know, first, second, third order consequences of what their actions are.

Yeah, well that's tough. So I think if this ever moves politically, it's gonna have to probably be more moral arguments or more fear based arguments. But what you're saying is definitely much more enlightened. You know, like I like to think of a world where people in their 20s can take more time to figure out what they really want to do. I mean rich kids can, they can do whatever they want. They can take time to figure shit out, other kids can, they have to go and start working on whatever they can to keep the families fed, you know, so just imagine a society where like the, everyone was on the same page with regards to upwards mobility. So you know, another argument I hear a lot is, is the value of work. Why do we only give value to paid work? What about unpaid work? I saw surveys that, that this this actual narrative works well in the UK that a lot of people are working right now, but they're not being paid their fair share. If you're caring for someone, if you're doing volunteer work, you're not being paid, you're not being paid. If you take care of your, your ailing grandmother, maybe you, by you taking care of it her, she's less of a drain on, on the, on the system overall, on the government for other kinds of benefits. But, you know, we don't think about that. There's a funny saying I heard some French philosopher said before, before I married my maid, she was contributing to the economy. After I married my maid, she's not contributing to the economy, you know, which is the same work, right? So like, what the heck, like, or like, you know, you can, if you walk your own dog, you're not being contributed to the economy, but if you hire someone to do it, you are. It's the same work. So, like, imagine if people could, if we could be decoupling the idea of work from pay, or let people do work that is unpaid and basically be paid because of basic income. What would happen to volunteerism, to civic engagement, to the strength of our society, to the sense of collective responsibility that we have? And that's why a lot of libertarians like Charles Murray, his vision basically come, is very extreme. He wants to cancel almost the entire government, just give everyone money instead, because he thinks that will bring back this sense of civic, civic collective duty and responsibility and that kind of national spirit.

Light a match and start over with the government. You know, it got me thinking while you were kind of talking and you're a brilliant man. I just want to acknowledge you for your brilliance and for sharing with us. And I'm grateful on behalf of everybody at make more marbles for you doing that. But I just had kind of like, I'm like, let's, let's just hash out a thought experiment here, okay? So now we have new technologies which can track things and sense things in ways that we never have before. So it would be possible theoretically to begin to log time doing tasks that are not necessarily valuable from an economic standpoint, or people aren't lining up to pay for, but are still necessary and create a third and fourth order consequence, which is a net positive benefit, right? So I'm not talking about, hey, you know, went grand Theft auto and beat up a bunch of rival drug dealers, and that's how you spend your time, and that's therefore valuable. I'm talking about, like you said, the People who take care of their grandma and she's not as much of a drain on the system as a result. And how do you track and log that time and maybe derive a benefit from just being a good person or whatever we kind of all agree would be a real help. And then using sophisticated models of supply and demand allow people to do more work that is beneficial but not in high demand and take the onus off of them selling their services as much, you know, by using collaborative consensus, consensus and real time demand models. And then maybe the blockchain or some model where we could all verify and transact in that way, allowing people to then be ultimately paid or derive some benefit in exchange for that service to the society that they live in.

Well, what you're saying is already happening economically through the gig economy, but you're talking about something much grander and more futuristic. But, but the gig economy is another lens we haven't taken yet, which is like a lot more work is becoming fragmented. The idea that someone starts in a career, does the same thing and grows throughout whole life is just not true anymore. Especially young people are getting in gig jobs. So when you're in a gig job you also don't have the safety net of employment and all the employment taxes and all that stuff. So you're kind of left in a very precarious solution. I will come back to your point, but this is an important point to make. There's a. One of my heroes in the basic movement guy standing says that there's actually a new economic, There's a new class called the Precariat that didn't exist before. The Precariat is below the proletariat, which is the old working class. The Precariat is people in a precarious working situation where they don't have really any long term security. They're doing a variety of different things to kind of get by. They're hustling, you know, maybe like 20 something entrepreneurs. You know, they're in the Precariat, they don't have the protections from the state or that typically you have in a long term profession that you would do. And the Precariat is precarious. And there's kind of two halves of the Precariat. There's the old working class that have been made obsolete that are going to vote for the most right wing populist view. And you have the more left leaning younger people, highly educated, who are going to make less money than their parents because there's just not enough Opportunities around, and they don't come out and vote because no one's speaking to their needs. And, and that's why you have elections where, where a lot of things are moving to the right. It's, it's kind of driven by, by fear and lack of opportunity. So I think, you know, the prokaryote is, Is an emerging issue we need to think about. So. But at least into the gig economy. So, yeah, I mean, we're creating apps and systems to gigafy almost everything, and it is being paid. And. But what you're saying is something far, far beyond. I, I think there's, there's a, there's a tinge of means testing. And what you're saying, means testing is a term from, from, from welfare, that you only get the benefit if you prove you did some work. Right. And one of the principles of basic income is bringing more trust into society where we trust people, trust that people will do the right thing. Great point.

Yeah.

With the money that they're given. So let's not move towards another, another, more fancy versions of means testing. And Yeah. I mean, because when, you know, say one person's garbage is another person's gold. Right. Who decides what something is worth? But I guess you're gonna say the blockchain does or whatever. Yeah.

I just don't know. And I'm not here to say I have the answers. I'm here to have great conversations with really smart people who think about these problems. So, you know, don't ever take my ideas as anything more than just literally spitballing in the moment. And if they tend to be genius, then you can say, oh, Brad came up with that. But, you know, every once in a while I get. I strike gold.

Well, here's a, Here's a crazy idea. I think about this once a week. So Eric Weinstein, who's one of the top advisors to Peter Thiel on Peter Thiel's like, investment foundation or something. I hope I got the right name. There's an article interviewing him. You can Google it. Called why Capitalism Needs Socialism. And it's actually not really about capitalism socialism, but it's about Eric's crazy views. He's saying, like, what if you look at the entirety of human history, it's a brief blip of time where maybe it was a coincidence that for the last century, which is again, a blip in human history, there was the conditions where there was enough work, at least in some countries to make where people can have enough wage, that would happen to be more than what they needed to live and actually have a good life. What if that's a coincidence? It's kind of scary to think about, right? But it might be a coincidence. So if that's true, then we might go to into a future with Eric says that is both hyper capitalist and hyper socialist at the same time. Because we might end up in an environment where there's just crazy amounts of innovation, technology shifting, but there's just not enough money for wages for people to actually live and participate in society. So what happens? Do you move to a dystopian future like in, like in Hunger Games or you know, in movies like that, like Aliens, where like it's, it's the corporations sending people to space and people back home are all like dying in gas pits or something like they saw in those movies, like crazy stuff. Or do you move to a future like Star Trek where we've moved beyond money and work is no longer about money, it's about meaning. Meaning. And it's about exploration and discovery.

So I think Buddy's needs are met. Yeah, that's, that's basically the premise is in Star Trek everybody's needs are met at a high level already. Basic needs. And it's just. Yeah, basically that's the thing that they.

Want to go after. Yeah, basic needs. So you asked your question earlier in this call about how could this go out if I envision the roadmap for this to become true. Well, what's happening right now is that there are, there are a lot of pilots happening. So there's a pilot. Y Combinator is privately funding a pilot in a couple US States. It's launching this year. They did a test pilot last year. So they see what's coming. Give Directly is a New York based charity that raised $30 million to do a pilot in Kenya for 26,000 people, which will have three cohorts. One cohort will get money over 12 years, one will get over two and one will get it immediately. That I think is one of the most important pilots because the 12 year cohort will be most reflective of a basic income because you can make long term decisions with that money. Ontario, where Toronto is based, is having a pilot that launched a few months ago. 4,000 people will get a basic income in three towns. Barcelona announced they're going to do a pilot. Scotland's going to do a pilot. The government in Vancouver said they're going to do a pilot. The Hawaiian legislature passed a law that they're going to explore basic income. They haven't announced any pilots yet. There was a pilot in India. There was a pilot in Canada in the 70s. This is one of the most well cited pilots called the Manitoba Minimum Income Pilot, which showed positive outcomes. People didn't stop working and health outcomes were improved. People had less hospital visits. They made a big deal. It was, it was a big deal. In Finland. There's a pilot running right now. The pilot in Finland is interesting because what they're trying to see is they're giving the money only to people that are currently on welfare to see if people actually start working. Because welfare creates a perverse incentive. If you start working, you lose it. With basic income, you don't lose it. So you want to work. Who doesn't want more money? Right? So like, so there's a lot of theories that basic income would replace the welfare state and actually incentivize work because you just have more. So Finland is focusing on that. So I think what's happening now is that all these pilots are interestingly timed because two years from now they'll be real credible data and analysis based on these pilots. Two years from now is the next U.S. election. So there's going to be real credible information that can be part of the debates that we just didn't have. We don't even have now yet. Now there's a few studies there, but there's one in India and there's one in Canada from the 70s. But there's not actually a lot of studies with a real basic income. So, you know, let's assume those pilots go well because the early ones went well. They all showed positive outcomes. They didn't show people stop working. The ones in India didn't show people going and buying booze and doing nothing. The actual people worked more, not less because they started investing in entrepreneur, their own entrepreneurial capabilities because they had a chance to do that, especially in the poor villages. So those pilots, I think they're going to turn out good. We're going to learn a lot from them and then hopefully there's enough public interest in it by then the people start lobbying the government that we should explore this. And if it doesn't happen due to positive reasons, I think it'll happen due to negative reasons because the economy is only getting worse with regards to buying power of most of the society. And I think Brexit and Trump again are just early warning signals of that. The Occupy movement. So, you know, inequality is just becoming more and more of a mainstream media discussion these days. So hopefully doesn't get too bad before it gets better and people implement something like the basic income and then you know, because I like the futuristic stuff. But let's say that the things that the AI people are talking about come true and like the fact that there's actually not going to be enough work and we move to this post work society. Well, probably Eric is correct. We're going to have to redefine what all of our ideas around wealth, around livelihood, around work. If you're really in a society where there's just not enough work, there's really two options as we mentioned earlier. I mean you either go to the feudalism of like most of humanity where like you pledge allegiance to your local chief or rich person for protection, your local monarch and give your freedom, or you move towards more of a Star Trek society where you know, people have basic needs met, you see your needs met as being a fundamental rights, not, not something that you have to earn by working. And then people can still get rich and do cool shit by launching companies and that's okay. But I mean our views of wealth will have to change. So for example, if we accept one day in the future that wealth is not necessarily our own, it's something we get to hold for a period of time due to the merit of our innovation and we have to recirculate it in the system through taxes because otherwise the system will fall out from under our feet too. I think we'll have to get to that point. If we don't get to that point, we're moving in a dystopian future. A utopian future I think is one where we go back to like what we had in the 50s and 60s where we pay top marginal rates because we understand that this is what's needed to have a healthy, vibrant society where everyone can participate and people can still buy our ship. You know, where we pay, for example, what Thomas Piketty talks about, which is a wealth tax, he believes that we will avoid all future economic cycles that have caused massive human disruption. If we just have a wealth tax like of say, you know, like maybe if you have more than 10 million net worth, you pay half a percent of your net worth per year regardless of your income. If you have more like a hundred million, you pay 2% or maybe have more than 500 million, you pay 5%. Do you need to have more than $500 million? Pay 5% back to society of your, not to government or the state, but back to your fellow man because they're providing the conditions for you to be rich. Right? And I think long term their views of wealth will have to change and. Yeah, go ahead.

No, there's a couple pieces that I want to dive into a little bit sooner or a little bit deeper. And do you mind just going over a few minutes? Is that okay?

Let's do it. Yeah.

All right, cool. So, perverse incentives. So this is a conversation I've had privately with a few of my really wealthy and influential friends. For example, Ryan. I love Ryan Moran, capitalism.com, i think he's a brilliant entrepreneur. And we talked about the ideas of. He's obviously a big fan of capitalism. He owns the domain. Changing some of the incentives around. And you started to kind of dig into the perverse incentive of, for example, welfare keeping people from actually going out to work. And when they don't feel that pressure anymore to not be on welfare or to be on welfare so they don't lose their benefits, then they go out and start working because now they can have their cake and eat it too. So what are some other ideas in perverse incentive that you see in society that need to be shifted around? That's my first question. And then I would also like to really dive into this wealth tax and some of the other models that have either been tested or tried in addition to ubiquitous.

Okay, your first question. Wow. Can you ask it again?

Yeah, absolutely. So these perverse incentives, right. I believe that a lot of incentives in society are out of whack for a lot of different reasons. Right. People ultimately, they want to increase their own selfish means and benefits. And it's really difficult to see past maybe first, second, third order consequences. And it takes a really, I think, aligned person, a person who has kind of seen both sides the argument and can kind of be really empathic towards others that the average person just isn't going to get or really even agree with. They're going to worry about, you know, how can I make my experience of life even better as a result? And the incentives to do that, you have to almost kind of pre think through how can we align an economic incentives to not only help the individual, but also help the whole.

Right.

And then kind of build into the system rewards for doing so. So when you talk about perverse incentives, I want to know where the other pieces you think are, are kind of hurting us more than they're helping us when you consider the grand scale. Because evolution, and Ray makes this point in his book, you know, it doesn't really optimize for the individual. And when the individual optimizes for himself, they typically get push off to the side by evolution. Evolution's Theory is what's the best and highest good for all concerned. And nature is an example of this. You know, nature is always self selecting for decisions that ultimately benefit the whole and not the, not the individual. So you could call ego versus spirit, you can call it a lot of things. But what are some other perverse examples of incentives that just aren't in line with the greater good?

Wow, okay, this is fun. Well, I mean, we already touched on welfare. It is a perverse incentive. It's also humiliating because people have to jump through hoops and, and you know, do the tango to like prove that they need, need the money in many cases. And you know, we, I've heard people talk, I mean, I heard people talk bad about people that are, are faking insurance pains to make money off insurance, you know, but the system set up that way, you know, you get a lot of money for, for pretend, for acting. It's kind of terrible. So let's do away with all that. Let's trust everyone, let's be partners in everyone's growth instead of being paternalistic and judging people and saying, you get this only based on certain conditions. So we already touched on that. What's another perverse incentive? Well, there's all kinds of tax credits and loopholes to special interests. Those are perverse incentives. I would say campaign financing is a perverse incentive if, you know, there's a lot of movement towards public financing. So it takes out the special interests. But you know, if billionaires can buy elections and honest people can't run because they can't afford to run or just don't have the access to billionaires, then what happens to democracy? So I think, you know, private financing of campaigns is perhaps a perverse incentive. Yeah, what else?

So far we've obliterated the, we've obliterated the tax tranches. We get a flat tax, we got basic income. You've got no campaign financed by private corporations or wealth. And you start to kind of paint a picture of what's possible when you just level the playing field across the board. Everybody gets a certain amount of money, everybody pays a certain amount of tax, everybody contributes in a certain way. And then ultimately everybody who is really benefited from that system gives back in a mandated way to the people at the bottom that are still getting started. And it's a way to just invest directly in their growth completely.

I mean, monopolies are a perverse incentive. I mean, there used to be an ethos in western democracies that monopolies should be broken up or, you know, because they do antitrust BE type behaviors. But once you're a monopoly, then should you still be capitalists? You know, if you're a monopoly, you're no longer necessarily serving the needs of society. Capitalism works best when there's vigorous competition. Right? So like there's some argument that, that, you know, why maybe monopoly should be taxed more because either tax more or somehow encourage innovation. Because once innovation kind of moves in stages, right? Once something is late stage laggard stage innovation, I mean, that's when you have companies that have consolidated and are just milking the cow and they're not actually offering a lot more value. Right. Versus early stage trends where actually there's a lot of vigorous competition and healthy marketplaces forming. I think there's a really good book called the. Oh, it's. Oh man, it's by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu. Nick Hanauer is one of my heroes right now.

Is he the guy? No, it's Bostrom. I'm thinking Nick Hanauer is the guy who invested in Amazon early on.

Right.

And then the Plutarchs, the pitchforks are coming for us or whatever.

Pitchforks are coming.

Yes.

Yeah, that's right. He says, beware fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming. And his book with Nick, with Eric Liu, it's called the Gardens of Democracy. Very good book and very stimulating when it talks about the role of the economy, the government and people. And he kind of cuts through left and right arguments and talks about how, you know, a good role of government is to maintain. See the economy as a garden and the role government is to be a good gardener. Which is like, you know, set the vision, set the long term direction, don't pick winners and losers, but just kind of set what the game is. Make a good game that's challenging and gets people engaged. And because if you don't garden, if you don't garden well, the weeds will take over. The weeds will grow at their own pace. They don't know what the system's trying to accomplish. Right. So they see a different vision. It was a really good book. So yeah, he mentioned in the book that monopolies are not necessarily good for the economy. So maybe that's first incentive and you.

Actually just hit on. My point is that the game is set up so that the people who play it well, they generate more wealth.

Right?

But the game is not set up to incentivize everybody to win and collaborate together to win more. It's set up to compete. And end stage competition is AI robots and a different Society, which could go either way, you know, but what we do know is that, is that competition for the individual human is already becoming almost a joke. Right. How are you going to compete as an individual with Amazon? And they would say, oh, you know, create another startup or disrupt them. Yeah, sure. But that's not a solution that scales to all the people. That's a solution that scales to the 1 in 10,000 actually gets it right. And compete with Jeff Bezos at his own game, you know, as a, as not an incumbent, but as a upstart.

Yeah. And when typically I think when I look at a high level, a lot of innovation has happened, a lot of the disruption has happened is because there's been new, new games. Effectively the Internet was a new playing field. Right. And like, you know, in Canada, Sears, which is one of most iconic old retailers shutting down and you know, they were just an old school fancy retailer and you know, so like when there's a new game, a new, a new arena to compete in, the old monopolies are still very profitable in their area. And they don't see this new arena, new people go in that new arena. But those are like generational changes. Those don't happen fast. Right. And so yeah, this is an area that I'm not, not, not that the verse in.

Yeah, it's, it just kind of, it gets you thinking about solutions and not problems. Right? Yeah, we can see the problems, we can point out the problems, but what, how do we create a better game? Serves more people right. It's fun to play, it's equitable for everybody and it's not a participation award.

Right.

There's still benefits and upside for people who want to work harder, do more, add more value, whatever. But also we don't miss and have everybody die as a result of not being able to feed themselves.

Well, I think we need to get back to the compassionate capitalist ideals that were prominent in, let's say 80 to 100 years ago. Remember, it was not long ago that we were worried about being nuked by Russia when we were in the Cold War. And that was a time when capitalism was not about dog eat dog. Right. We had a strong sense of community. Again, it was Nixon's Republican administration that almost passed a basic income in the 70s. It seems that now that this big evil enemy is gone, now we've forgotten and now capitalism has become all about dog eat dog and the 1% getting everything. But that's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be a better system than communism. To create wealth for everyone and raise humanity together. We seem to have forgotten that. So we need to find a way, in the current context of automation and globalization, to make capitalism work for everyone. Again. I can't think of a solution that scales better than basic income.

Yeah, I like it. And I also, you know, food, energy, water and shelter we already have the ability to provide possibly if we were to line up our incentives with that. Food, energy, water, shelter, healthy, basic, you know, not jets and mansions and, you know, all that for everybody, but, you know, just the basics for everybody in the world. We really do have that. Like, I think the statistic is that we produce enough food in America to feed the world for a week every day.

Wow.

Just in America, right. Our capacity to produce is insane. But our morality, distribution systems there is the morality there. And does the individual actor or consumer even have the possibility to make a decision that is a better decision? And I really would like to see a world where people are aware of that fact and they're actively working to create these distribution networks and incentive networks and better games that ultimately serve more people. And again, I don't know the answers, but I want to have the conversations. I want to keep asking the questions until the smart people get on board with this idea about, okay, you can win, you're smart, you can win, we get that, and you're going to continue to win, we have no doubt. But let's create a world where everybody can win.

And that's going to require something that a lot of people just seem to shy away from. A lot of people, especially in the crypto community, when you say the word tax, they just like, they think you're the devil. But it's really funny because, like, you know, let me rewind a bit. No, I pay more tax now than I ever dreamed of. I'd even make in salary. And I'm. And the way I became okay with that is because I look around the world and look at any country that's worth living in and you all have income taxes that are somewhere plus or minus 10% from, from, let's say a baseline of 30 or 40. Right? That's, that's what it takes to have good middle class, to have a good society with, with free education for your neighbor's children, to have cleanliness and, and you know, the things that you'd expect. And the countries that don't have taxes that rate or even higher are like Afghanistan and like places you wouldn't want to live where there isn't this, this, there isn't A civil society. There isn't a sense of safety or they're the parasites on the system, which is the tax havens that are just leeching off of like, you know, the wealthy who live here. So like, whatever, whatever we do, it's going to require a different relationship to sharing. And sharing is caring. And like, you know, there was a time when taxes were much higher here and the middle class is way better off than it is today. And you know, we succumb to some ridiculous arguments that taxes reduce innovation and wealthy people create jobs. It's just not true, hasn't been proven. It's a religion, it's an ideology, it's a cosmology. You know, I think entrepreneurship is more of an, is a natural resource. There's people who just have that drive to like, let something out that's they need to get out and do. It's driven by inspiration. It's not driven by efficiency and tax savings. People will achieve their dreams regardless if they have to pay 60% tax one day when they become mega wealthy. So this thing has to end because it's not working now. We're in a bad direction.

There's a great Warren Buffett quote. Somebody told him, hey, if taxes were aggressive and the more you earn, the less you paid in tax as a function of percentage, people would work harder. And he says they are and they don't. I pay less in taxes than I've ever paid before. And guess what? There's not a whole lot of people up here where the air is rare. You know, they're just not going and striving and doing that. It's just, it's a fascinating system. I would really love for more people to just be aware of what's possible and have a deep desire to make it more fun. Like, who wants to be on top of the mountain and be alone the end of the day?

Yeah, totally.

It's a lonely experience to be mega wealthy and successful and just have nobody to share it with. And you don't really get there. You don't realize that until you get there. And now looking back on your life, I'm sure you've had your entire social circle shift around as a function of creating great wealth. And you're doing a lot of great things for many people. But hasn't your life changed from what it was when you were kind of just, you know, figuring it out? And isn't some of the magic gone?

It's changed a lot, but I'm very happy, fulfilled that I still have my friends from grade Six. And we still hang out, and that hasn't changed.

That's awesome. Okay, so your experience of wealth creation has been different than mine. Maybe that's why I'm so screwed up. But, you know, I had an experience where a lot of money came into my life in a very short amount of time, and it changed my entire social circle. And I managed to work it out since then. But I was just curious what your experience was.

But, you know, now I get to go to events like 212, which aren't cheap, and meet cool people and. Yeah, I couldn't do that, like 10 years ago. Now, you asked a question earlier about the wealth tax, and I think you're asking about how that might play out. I think.

Right, yeah.

This is.

So I've heard that name thrown around and I've just never heard of a practical way to describe it. In this system of if you have X amount of wealth, you pay increasingly large percent of it in tax every year. How does that kind of break down? And has anybody tried that or piloted it like they piloted ubi?

Yes. So this was more popularized by the French economist Thomas Piketty. He wrote a really important book called capital in the 21st century. It's been called one of the most important economics contributions to economic thinking in the last 50 years. And he analyzed with the latest data and latest techniques, like the last several hundred years of demographic economic data from all the major Western economies to see how inequality and wealth and economic growth all relate to. And he sees that we have these huge cycles where extreme inequality will lead to cataclysm, wealth, sorry, war, revolution, or worse. And he found a certain relationship ratio. He said when R is greater than G, it leads to greater inequality. R is growth in R was growth towards wages. So when R is greater, so R was investment, investment in new things, which effectively means investing in people and machines is greater than G, which is the return on assets. So if you have a lot of money, you throw it into an investment. If you make more money through passive income than you do by actively investing, then the economy is going to trend towards oligarchy and extreme inequality and wealth gets concentrated. And that's happening now. There's so much news. You may have heard headlines about all these share buybacks happening. Companies are recapitalizing, are buying back their shares instead of investing in new products and projects. So we're now in a situation where R is greater than G. And if you look at some of the graphs in Piketty's book, it's moving in a very Quickly in a direction that resembles the Victorian times and the times of most of humanity, where you had the mega rich and you had the peasants, and that's where it's going. So he believes that the best, the most scalable way is a global wealth tax where countries all cooperate so that you can't hide your money in some tax haven. And it can be very small. It could replace property tax, for example. Property tax is kind of weird because you pay it even if you have a mortgage on your property and you don't actually have the equity. So do away with all that. No more property tax, none of that. Instead just tax net worth. And maybe it's like I think half a percent for every dollar you have over half a million. And maybe it's 1% over your net worth of a million and 1.5 over 10 and 2.5% if you have more than 50 million in net worth. This is implemented in Spain and in France. Spain's is actually higher. I think the top marginal net worth tax is 3%. I haven't really been able to understand if it's worked or not. A lot of the articles about it are not in English. In France though, it's raised, I think, 5 billion a year, not as much. And I think 800 mega rich left the country because after they implemented it, and which is why Piketty believes it needs to be worldwide. So, you know, so because they'll always.

Play the shell game and if there's not an incentive to like a fearful incentive. So there's got to be a carrot and a stick, right? There's got to be a benefit to them and also, you know, a big penalty if you don't. I mean, rich people can fight legal process all day long and still stay rich. And it's not something that most people could do. You know, if, if the average person doesn't pay their taxes, they're going to jail. If the mega rich don't pay their taxes, it's, you know, suffice to say that they could probably get out of it.

So, you know, it seems it's controversial in some circles. Libertarians will call it like, you know, forced appropriation or whatever, but that's because we still believe, and I don't think this belief will last next 50 years, that wealth is, is belongs to someone. You know, they owned it and they earned it and they grew it. But, but today, any business that gets started today is built on the shoulders of our past generations. You know, I didn't invent the Internet and I became wealthy from an Internet business. So, you know, like, could Zuckerberg have created something to the scale of Facebook 50 years ago when there was no Internet? Of course not. You'd have to create the network first. Right. So like the idea that our wealth is only is our own and we built it with our own hands, it's just not true. Our wealth is community made. And I think at some point we have to accept that a moderate recirculation on an annual basis is healthy and the system needs it. And it's not like someone stealing our money at the gunpoint, which like libertarians like to like to like deposit it for some reason. It's just a way to keep the system healthy. And there is an interesting twist with the whole blockchain thing. There are libertarians who have said that they would agree with a land value tax because, you know, the land is owned by everybody. So if you buy land or property on land, well that's your choice. So you should pay tax on it and the amounts would be significantly higher than property tax. I actually think that if the vision of a lot of my cryptocurrency friends comes true and governments lose control of monetary systems, it's all blockchain and bitcoin, then probably income tax will have to stop and then you'll have to go to a land value tax because you can actually measure land. You can't argue about that. There's either land or there isn't. So, and it's possible one day that through blockchain type stuff, you could have a net worth tax that's based on physical assets. You could categorize every device in the world with put a value on it and you pay a net worth tax based on that. It's all system generated and maybe there's no more income tax at that point. I mean, that's a different contract, right? Make your money faster, but then pay based on your net worth afterwards because the system needs to survive. Might happen.

Yeah. It's actually a really interesting thought. I've gotten so much out of this conversation. I know the people listening have as well. But this is the Make More Marbles podcast. And as grateful as we are for you sharing what you know and for allowing me to pick your brain for so long, we also want to give back to you.

Right.

We want to know. We call it crops.

Right.

Connections, resources, opportunities, people, systems. How do we connect you to the things that you need to move your mission forward faster?

Hmm. Wow. Well, I mean, in terms of my business, if you know any developers, tell them about QCon and check out infoq.com if you're a programmer. But yeah, I mean that's a very different niche from probably the listeners of this podcast. And you know, kind of in my personal philanthropy now is advocating for basic income. So if I never spoke out of TedX before, if anyone wants to suggest me to their local TEDx and also say if you're moved, if you want to live in a world with basic income, consider donating to some of the advocacy efforts going on right now. If you want to make a big game. Yeah, there's a few in the US if you want to have. The economic security project was funded initially I think by Chris Hughes, the former Facebook co founder and a few others. That's almost like a VC fund for other basic income projects. They've, they've disseminated their endowment to a number of different basic income projects of all sizes. They gave Y Combinator money for their pilots. They're finding people on Patreon who are writing about it at all levels from big to small. They're actually helping make basic income happen at a grassroots level. So you give them money, then you know that it's going to be spread in the right way. There's a project called Bootstraps. This is actually amazing. This is two film producers that are personally creating their own basic income experiment. Every dollar you give them will be given to other Americans that are in unfortunate circumstances and they're going to film them and two years later they can actually release a documentary about basic income. And the reason they're doing their own pilot is because the other products won't give them access to their people because then it's going to change the pilot so they're actually finding their own people. So if you want to have a big impact on a small project, get in touch with the Bootstraps folks, tell them that you heard about it from me and, and that's cool. And they're really nice people. I'm actually angels. I'm blown away the amount of personal time energy those two are putting in Conrad and Dale. If you're outside of the us if you're in Canada, Basic Income Canada Network is where to donate worldwide. Donate to the basicincome.org which is BIEN. Which is the 30 year old organization that's been pushing this. Yeah. And or Give Directly is a good one too. They're funding the Kenya trials. So yeah, my ask is consider funding those. Help me get more speaking gigs on this and champion it yourself.

Thank you for having a clear and concise vision on how we can help too. That actually really helps out a lot. And I'm going to ask you offline a couple things just to clarify and verify, but thank you. Thank you, thank you. Floyd, thank you so much for being here and I knew from the moment I met you that you were a brilliant man. I just had no idea how brilliant, how much you thought about all he said. So I'm grateful. On behalf of everybody at Make More Marbles, thank you for being here and thank you for running over. I know your time is valuable and we appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life in your health, wealth and relationships, whatever that means to you, head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of unity entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or Google Play wherever you listen to your podcast and please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.