How Will Life Change After COVID-19 | Part One w/ Jesse Elder

Jesse Elder, welcome back.

Here we are.

All right, I just gotta jump in because I've. I have been burning to ask you a question.

Okay.

And I gotta get out of the way now. Are you ready, please? What the is happening in the world?

All right, great question. How far back should we go?

Well, in 1694, in the last six months, Jesse, the world's kind of begun restructuring. It feels like it's a good way to put it. There are times that I feel like I can make sense of it, and there are times I feel completely crushed by everything that is changing. And the thing that is causing me the most angst is that I don't feel like I can predict anything, and therefore I can't make decisions in the moment. Now, of course, all of us are unable to predict anything in the future, but I feel like for the first time, I am having a hard time making appropriate decisions in the moment because I can't see what's happening next. And so the thing that I love about you is you. It seems to me like you are ahead of most people and being able to synthesize what is actually going on. And so I'm just craving for you to tell me what the real story is, or at least what I should. Can tune into to allow me to be more appropriate in the moment. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And. And I think the. The fastest usable tactical answer to that is what's happening right now is a total shedding of everything that's not actually sustainable and real. And we're seeing this happen in business, we're seeing it happen in government, we're seeing it happen.

Socially, and we're seeing it happen at the level of individuals. So anybody, to put it bluntly, anybody who has been faking it up until now and has been trying to outproduce or outperform their own.

Insufficiencies, they won't be able to continue to outperform. They won't be able to produce enough to make up for a rotten core. And I don't mean that judgmentally towards another human being. But we've all heard or seen the effects of imposter syndrome, and it's a huge deal with entrepreneurs, right? Feeling like, you know, who am I to have this dream? Who am I to speak this message, and who am I to start a business? And I think that this is a very much a forced reckoning of that question, because the central question is, who am I? The offshoot of that question is, who am I to fill in the blank and so for the people that have taken the time and invested the energy in answering the root question, who am I? Those are the ones who are able to more comfortably and successfully surf the chaos that we're actually, I think just now in the beginning of. We're in the very beginning of this. And so that's what's happening. The chaos that we're seeing is, is on an emotional level, on a human level, is people's inability to deal with change because they've never really gone deep into that question.

So the way that I'm hearing that is that if you are taking your security or your sense of who you are from Q cues of the outside world. Yes. That in the outside world changing causes unrest.

Yes.

Causes internal chaos.

Yes.

But those who have their guiding light from internal that is not affected by.

The outside world, the outside world becomes increasingly irrelevant.

And yet you become even more able to.

Succeed, to become effective. Yes. And to iterate as rapidly as the conditions are changing.

Well, what I'm realizing about myself as I say this and listening to you is that the times I have felt the most chaotic are when I'm paying attention to the outside world. I remember the first maybe four weeks of quarantine, I felt frickin great. And the thing that was different was I just decided not to listen to and I decided to get real quiet about what was going on with me. My content started to get really good. I started to sleep more, meditate more, and actually recharge in a way that I hadn't. And then I started to come out of that feeling really good. But I also was paying more attention to the outside world. And the times that I have been the most unhappy are when I'm really diving into how other people are reacting and posting and spinning and, and as I call it, faking sense of everything that is going on.

So good.

So. So what? And, and I was telling somebody that here in Texas we're almost going back into quarantine. We're starting to have like a reverse opening because we opened, we opened early and now we're starting to close again. And everything in me is like, no, I don't want to, I don't want to. But I'm also kind of getting the sense of I need to get this lesson again, I need to go back internal because I obviously missed something the first round because I'm starting to pay attention to the outside world again. So all this to say, I'm hearing you say that from an emotional and personal level. The shift that we're seeing is one that is paying attention to the external world. That's how we've, how society has basically been run to. One that is forcing us to go very deep internally.

I think the choice is more magnified. I don't think that it's necessarily forcing people to go within because many people obviously aren't. And.

You mentioned something that is key to this conversation, which is where do people derive their sense of security from? If people derive their sense of security from the outside world, meaning your social status, your money, your relationship status, your standing in the community, your trust and faith in your particular political party or your particular religion, or your particular drug of choice or whatever it is, whatever it is that people go, this is how I know that it's a good world. Well, when all of that starts to shake and starts to shimmer and starts to blink in and out and starts to disappear entirely, you are mentally free. Because all of a sudden everything that you were led to believe or you allowed yourself to believe is the source of your security, all of a sudden it's gone. And there's this brings up for somebody who, and I don't mean to sound so, so judgmental and to generalize so much, but, but I think all of us have, have these aspects inside of us. Every, every one of us has a little scared child that is afraid mommy and daddy are going to disapprove. And if they disapprove too much, then they will create the ultimate disapproval, which is abandonment. And so everybody has that fear of abandonment. Some people have learned to deal with it and alchemize it and turn it into something cool. Other people never dealt with it at all. So what a lot of people are experiencing right now is a massive.

Shaking of their sources of external certainty. And for a lot of people, that is the government. For a lot of people, it is their business, it is their going to church on Sunday. Going to church on Sunday, Yeah, all of these things. And so for people that have, have historically sought peace and meaning and certainty in those external things, they're craving for those things more than ever. And so when the previous source of their security, government, says in order to be safe, here's what you have to do. And people will put our mask on immediately whether or not they've taken time to see if the science actually makes sense to them, whether or not they've cross referenced all of the scientific studies that they can find, whether or not they've studied the origin and the possible maybe bias of the people reporting the numbers, possibly whether or not they've looked at the differences between Covid related deaths in liberal states or conservative states. General Just saying whether they've done this or not, if they've sought security from Mommy, daddy, the big authority. Thank you. That's a much better way to say it then whatever authority is now telling them to do, they'll do. And then that creates a very interesting dynamic because when someone who is operating out of fear is taught and told that their fear is now a worthy virtue, anyone else who's not also displaying that fear is actually attacking their source of security.

That felt really true right there and easy to observe as well.

We'll probably get into masks and Covid at some point. I personally don't have a problem with it. I mostly just want to avoid the conflict of getting into the debate about it. I'm not afraid to get Covid because I'm not afraid to die. But I, you know, I don't have a problem wearing a mask. I don't really think much about it. But what I'm hearing you say through all of this is that we're seeing people's source of security removed from the external world and they're clinging to all authority. And so what I'm kind of thinking you might be moving into is that we're in an interesting place where there could be more authority. Like there, like people's, people are demanding more authority and there could be more authoritarianism that comes as a result of that demand.

Strong.

There's a need for security or a demand for security.

It's a strong possibility and the possibilities themselves are multiplying. And so this, this whole, you know, doomsday stuff of, you know, we're just going to end up in a big brother society and we're going to end up just like China and all this kind of stuff. I highly doubt it. I don't think that that's a likely outcome. I think it's a possible outcome. But there are enough psychographic factors that are very active in the United States right now, down to the level of the individual and the level of community. And I just don't see that coming to pass.

You don't see which piece coming to pass.

The full authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist or communist state where everybody just is, is, you know, there's, there's robots patrolling the parks and there's all this kind of stuff that might, that part might actually happen. But what, what people are being confronted with, to loop back to the beginning of this conversation, people are being forced to look at the choice of where does your security come from? Does your security come from a job? Does your security come from your business? Does. Does your security come from a PPP check? Does your security come from the news? Does your security come from all these things? Or has someone developed their own mind and developed their own body and even their own heart to be completely at peace with uncertainty? Knowing that uncertainty is the only thing that's guaranteed.

You know, what you are saying is actually bringing something, some compassion into my experience. Because when I was 19, I started questioning my religion.

Yeah.

And I was indoctrinated in my religion, going to school to be a pastor, believing that this was my life path, my life purpose, my reason for being, what, what I was going to do with my life. And so I started to question that and it was very painful to do that. And that then over the course of about six or seven years, deconverted or decided that that wasn't the path I wanted to go. And I didn't. I rejected the story and it was very, very painful, which took a ton of courage.

I mean, it took a ton of.

Courage and time and exploration and asking deep questions and being comfortable not knowing the answer, which was the hardest part. Part, because I believed that I had the path for my life, for what happens when you die, for a reason for being here. I had a way to explain everything.

Right. And what feels so good when you're that certain?

It feels great six years later.

Yeah.

But six years of what happened, of just having feeling like I had nowhere to turn except finding the answers on my own, which is like liberating once you're through it. What I'm experiencing through the words you're saying is that I had my opportunity to get comfortable with insecurity and develop my own.

Belief about how the world works.

Yes. Yes.

Most people have never been given that opportunity. Most people have never had their structures crumble around them, their beliefs, systems crumble around them to the point where they have had to do the hard work of going internal. And when my structures were crumbling, I became angry, I became judgmental, I became sometimes nasty. My mom would be like, why do you have to say these things publicly about the church? Like, why do you have to attack my faith?

Right.

And there's is like part of the process.

Sure.

And that would kind of explain why a lot of people are more angry right now, are attacking one another right now because their security structures are crumbling in every sense of the word.

Yes. Really well said. And I love the analogy that you created there of many people have never had the opportunity and that's such a strong, useful word. The opportunity to have their belief systems crumble around them. When people see their systems of security and safety and all of this crumble around them all, hardly anybody sees it as an opportunity. Even those of us that have gone through it by default or by some design of our own or maybe something bigger don't always see new crumbling structures. We don't always see new uncertainty as the opportunity that it actually is. But with enough practice and really just dialogue like this, anybody can pop out of this cause and effect reaction that's happening so fast millions of times every day. If this, then that. If this, then that you can step out of it long enough to just take a breath and then go, okay, who do I want to be within this? Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? And the words that I feel so compelled to share, are these even my words? Or is this what's trending right now on Facebook or Parlor or Twitter or wherever else it is? And just ctfo, man, take a step back and like, all right, what. Where's. Where's me in this? First of all, and that's what's so exciting about this time, is that people will.

Have better have. Have more opportunity than ever before to choose who they want to be. And if somebody's going to be a follower, freaking awesome. Like, the world needs that. The world needs people who are visionaries, and the world needs people who are doers. And the doers aren't always visionary. They just, give me a hammer, give me a computer, give me a. Give me a 3D printer, give me a mill, give me something that I can make with. Tell me what to make and I'll do it. And that's their fulfillment and their function on this world. And there's others who are visionaries who can see it, but if you put a hammer in their hands, they'll decapitate themselves. So it's like everybody's got their own specialization. And I think that those specializations are going to come to the forefront as, and we've talked about this before. Used to be that, you know, like our parents, certainly my parents had like a career, you know, my dad was a schoolteacher most of his life. Had some odd jobs when I was younger, but most of his life is a school teacher. And now it's something like six careers is the average. That was before COVID So what is it now? It's going to be like the career of the year. Like, turn the tables, man.

You said that you think that we're just the beginning of the chaos, 100%. I need you to keep talking.

Okay.

What does, what does that look like or mean to you?

Okay.

I'll preface what I'm about to say with a very strong belief that I have, which is some sort of weird love child of intuition and a couple of decades of study. So these feelings that I have, which are very strong, are based on both some sort of metaphysical time piercing precognition and 25 years of studying everything I can get my hands on around long cycles and the birth and death of political nation state structures.

So let me bring that into down to where I live, which is that you're in tune with your own internal knowing because you, you have done the work of being in tune with who you are and you are operating from a context of reading about how societies grow and crumble and what historical cycles look like.

More. More reading. Yes. But so much of my desire to travel and to see the world and to be a nomad and to really have conversations in back alleys in Ethiopia with the oldest person that I could find and have my translator ask him questions about what it was like when he was growing up. I mean, these are. To me that's much more valuable than a book.

Totally got you.

Yeah, yeah. So including books, but. But very much not limited to that. So I believe that we are on the cusp of the most prosperous time that human beings have ever seen.

Much more prosperous than most people right now have the cognitive ability to even comprehend the abundance that is coming. We are not equipped to perceive right now how amazing it's going to be. We just don't have the capacity. So that being said, we go back in time a little bit and around 15, 12, 15,000 years ago there is a. I'm sorry.

So excited right now because I have no idea where you're gonna go with this.

Good.

But I love the pre frame of the abundance.

Yeah.

Is just amazing.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, keep going.

Well, I'll be here if you need me.

Well, we've been practicing as a species and, and we're going through growing pains right now. Like humanity's in the terrible twos. You know, we're bumping into things, we're awkward, you know, we're our pants. It's just like not pretty. But it turns out it always works out. So going back a few, few millennia, just prior to this point, 12, 15,000 years ago, humans existed in relatively small numbers. Dunbar's number has been touted and then disproven. But whatever it's still a pretty decent number. 120, 150 people. Humans evolved through a very unique thing called specialized exchange, where Matt Ridley talks about this brilliantly in his book the Rational Optimist. And so specialized exchange basically means that everybody has some purpose or function that they're better at than others. And so people, people grew in these sort of harmonious little tribes and villages and clans and enclaves. And the concept of property really wasn't a thing because in order for you to have property.

You had to have a place to put it. And these are nomadic bands. They had no reason to stay in one spot. Everything's shifting too much. Game is moving, seasons change. So this group of people, thousands of these groups of people would just kind of shift and go where the opportunity was. So these were the hunter gatherers. So around 12, 15,000 years ago, something happened that shifted the course of human history forever. And that was the agricultural revolution, which is very interesting when you study where and how this happened. It all happened with an incredibly narrow window. So within China and within the Fertile Crescent, in the Middle east, through Africa, all these different spots, within something like a thousand, two thousand years of each other, agriculture just showed up. Okay, cool. I don't, I have theories about why that is. We're not going to talk about that. Irrelevant at this point. We know that agricultural happening, agricultural revolution happened. Then within a few generations, something new happened with the advent of agriculture. Agriculture creates surplus. And for the first time in human history, there's more food than people need it. Not to suggest it's this lush, abundant place where everything's like whole foods and you're just like shopping around and grabbing everything. There's still, you know, famine and mortality rates were super bad.

You have, you just have some leftover at the end of the meal, you.

Have just enough leftover. And the human body is very smart. All sentient beings, especially mammals, will procreate like crazy when there's an abundance of food. So you take any closed structure, whether it's mice or rats or take any closed structure, especially mammals, introduce extra food and within a very short time you're going to have more animals. That's no different for us. So agriculture creates surplus, surplus creates the population. So the population is growing. Then you have more farmers and then this is just taking off. This is when the human population just hockey sticked. So with this introduction of this thing called surplus, right away became a new phenomenon in the human experience called property. And now you actually have property. You have this land, you have the infrastructure, you have the aqueducts, you have irrigation. You. Now you're starting to develop something that you can't take with you.

You're tied to it. Which is also the biblical reference to the. The expulsion from Eden when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden because evaded the true. The fruit of. The fruit of. You know what I'm saying?

They were. They were cast to the earth and tied to the earth. And that's what happened to humans. When the agricultural revolution happened, humans became tied to the earth.

So now they're stationary.

They are stationary.

Now. They are. Now they have a very specific activity which is producing more and more and more.

So they have a vested interest. They've got all this sunk cost. They've got generation within a couple of generations. There's now people growing up who don't know anything else other than this farm.

It's a big shift in culture.

Massive, massive, massive. And here's where things get super interesting. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna do. We're gonna do a quick sidebar. Our brains are very good at conceptualizing things. Also very good at extrapolating based on our known experience. Our brains are terrible at taking into consideration something which is outside of our personal experience. Experience. So, for example, and I was thinking about this on the drive over here, because this is a. This is a very important part of. Of. Of. I think, this dialogue. You have had an experience called becoming a father that I haven't had. No matter how much I try and empathize, understand.

I'm. I don't know what that's like.

I'm reminded this every time one of my dude friends sends me texts like, want to hang out tonight? I'm a dad. I don't really do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's just such a. Such a sea change to your entire. Not just your life, your identity, and the way that you've navigated that and grown into that is just. I mean, I. I weep sometimes. I'm just like. I just love this so much because of how you lean into it and because of the dad you are and because of the man that you are.

Thank you. And first of all, for anyone who is not named Jesse or Ryan and is listening or watching this. Jesse was, like, the third person I called when I thought I was gonna be a dad. I was like, I don't know what to do. I was freaking out. So thank you for that compliment.

Yeah, man. Yeah. So I don't have that experience. And. And nothing that I do in my life can prepare Me or can show me and really have me feel what that's like. I can think it all I want, but until I have the experience, I don't know. So that's just. That's an example of how ill equipped our brains are to understand something that we haven't experienced. So when I was in my late teens, I was. I was competing a lot in martial arts. I was a bouncer at this little rock and roll nightclub in San Antonio. And one of the things that happened at this nightclub is they started having these fight nights which were no rules, no time limit, no weight limit, no safety equipment. It's literally just two guys get in there and fight until one person can't fight anymore. And I was very.

I was very confronted by this because I've been teaching martial arts since I was 15 years old, training since I was nine. It was a huge. It was my life. Martial arts was my life. And I thought I was a good fighter. I'd had the experience a couple of months prior to these fights, starting to be thrown in this bar where I was actually got my butt kicked at some little house party. This guy jumped on me, and I realized in a heartbeat, I don't know how to fight. I'm a good competitor, but I had no idea how to actually fight, fight. So a few months go by, I start training jiu jitsu. I start adjusting my approach, realizing that I either have to stop teaching martial arts because I'm a fraud, or I have to figure out if I really know how to do this stuff. So I started entering these fights, did really well, lost some great ones, won most of them. But that was a baptism in reality. Same way as becoming a father or becoming a parent is a baptism in reality. And I realized after my very first match, there's no going back for me. I can never pretend that all these beautiful art techniques, which are wonderful as an art form and great physical workout and all of this, but I can never lie to myself again and say that that will work in an actual street fight, because it won't. The reason I'm giving this whole. This whole parallel or this sidebar is because human beings cannot comprehend the realities of violence unless they have been in a violent situation. And here's why this is so important and relevant to this part of the conversation. Remember that humans for millions of years have evolved along lines of specialized experience, change. And humans specialize their abilities according to opportunities. Whether the opportunity is a herd of bison, whether the opportunity was. Was a woolly mammoth.

Agriculture shows up for the first time in human history you have surplus. Surplus creates the concept of property. And for the first time there is a new asset. And along with that asset rose a new form of specialist. These were the specialists in violence who put all of their energy, all of their resources, all of their focus into developing the skills of plunder. Prior to agriculture and property, their skills would have been useless. What are you going to go do, kill 10 woolly mammoths? That was actually one of the few crimes that was punished, punishable in these small hunter gatherer tribes. If you kill more than we can use, we'll kill you like you're, you're a cancer in our society. And they would literally eject them. But now you have property and you have surplus and you have this asset called a farm or a village. So these, these specialists in violence can come in, wipe out everybody on the farm who are defenseless, take over the farm. And it is the evil money they've ever made. This is pre money. It's the easiest kill they've ever made. Then they realize that's actually counterproductive to their purpose. What's actually more productive is, let's go into the farm and let's just stand there with our clubs and our spears, maybe bop a couple of them on the head so they get the message and say, we have a deal for you.

You give us 80% of your crops every, every year, we'll let you keep 20%, which is really all you and your, and your family need to live on. And in exchange for this amazing deal, we won't kill you.

Not only that, but we'll protect you against the other specialists who are roving around.

So this is, this is like the birth of serfdom.

This is the birth of government.

And for the last 15,000 years, the specialists in violence have gotten better and better and better and better. Because for the last 15,000 years, violence has been the single most profitable human activity. There is nothing on the planet more profitable than violence, which is why governments are the only ones that allow themselves to have a monopoly on violence. Imagine what would happen if Amazon had an army, or if Apple had an army. It would be the most efficient, effective, well managed, creative, like. So there's no way that's gonna happen. No way. Not yet. So since violence has for millennia, violence has been the most profitable human activity. It's always been a balance between the controllers, those who wield violence, and the controlled. And, and so we've seen nobody listening to this podcast, but for the last 12,000 years, there have been so Many iterations and evolutions of power structures from fiefdoms to marches which are these overlapping areas where nobody's really in charge, where the citizens there are treated like tourists because each side is afraid to scare them into the other side and lose the income producing assets. We've seen dictatorships, we've seen communism, capitalism, democracy. We've seen. And those are just the modern ones.

I feel compelled to point out that there's also been a benefit to this too. Oh, massively outsourcing our violence has allowed us to flourish. Because now I have someone, I have, I have less of a threat of my neighbor.

100%. Right.

But I also give up something to a much bigger, bigger entity. And so the entities get bigger and.

Bigger, which for the last couple. There's a great, great shift here. For the last couple hundred years, especially in the United States, it's been an overwhelmingly positive move.

Yeah.

Because the United States has been this, this place, this experiment, this incubator. Let's see what happens when you just let people be people more than any other place in human history. It's an incredible, incredible actually and along with that, these, these, the harmony between the controllers and the controlled has always been sort of precarious because if you control too much then they die or they rebel and you're screwed. If you don't control enough then they kind of take you over and then there's elements within there that want to control and then you have a coup or a revolution and it's just always changing, changing.

And I think it's important to point out that since most of us are so bad at seeing things outside of our own context, like we're talking about 250 years of history, which is nothing. Which is nothing. And before, before the founding of the United States you had much more of what you're describing as violent governments and forceful governments and governments that were standing and taking 80% of what was created. And then the government's getting unbelievably wealthy and rich as a result of it. And then us comes along and pioneers. A completely different.

Yes.

Or model.

And, and going back about.

70 years. 70, 80 years here in this country. If anybody, anybody watching this, listening to this, if you, if you're not familiar with Century of the Self, check it out. I mean it's, it's a really good, good intro into how consumer consumerism was created as a way to direct the attention of the masses. Edward Bernays was history's first PR man. He was Sigmund Freud's nephew and he was hired by the US government to aim the attention of the population. They knew fascism wasn't going to work. So Freud told his nephew Edward, he's like, hey, get people to need things they don't need and you'll, you'll get them, they'll do whatever you want.

Interesting.

Yeah. So me, I mean, that's a whole other sidebar. But consumerism went like this, which meant production went like this. And now people became so into status and the American way and, and affluence. And we've seen this repeated like when we go to Romania and you see the buildings are still decrepit.

Yeah.

But everybody's got nice cars because no more people see you in your car than see you in your building. So it's, it's fascinating. So violence has been the most profitable thing for 15,000 years.

The reason why democratic capitalism and communism has, have always been kind of like at each other for the last few decades is because they're actually both the same system.

Skepticism.

Yeah. I'm just talking purely economically here. I'm not talking about values or lifestyle or ideology.

I'm listening. I'm just the founder of capitalism.com. i'm ready.

Check this out though. Well, here's why what you're doing, and this is not to try and make you feel better because you're your own grown ass human being. But the idea of capitalism in its purest form is the only sustainable way that humans can live.

Correct.

When it gets subverted through predatory taxation. Which is what democratic capitalism does. It's, it's cancerous from the beginning. Correct. So communism starts with all the assets and then doles it out to the people. Democratic capitalism says go for it, gives everybody a head start and takes it all afterwards.

Right.

And so you know, the communists. This is a terrible, it's a very rough metaphor. But communism eats the seeds.

Democratic capitalism sows the seeds, they grow and then takes 80% and then blames.

People who planted the trees.

Yeah. Which has created a welfare state which then ensures the passing along of votes and energy and power to those who will maintain that cycle. So. Which requires violence, it requires unrest, it requires, requires all this sort of strife.

Here's why all this is changing and here's why what we're currently in the middle of, I think has little to do with a virus. Yes, I think there's a virus. I'll go on record and say that there are something like 4 quadrillion strains of virus that the human body can carry.

But I think this is being used for, for a much bigger purpose. And here, here's what it is.

Around.

60 years ago.

Something happened.

That began to reverse the trend of the profitability of violence.

Around 60 years ago.

For the last 15,000 years, property surplus, surplus asset that can be taken by force. So around 60 years ago, there was an invention that came along that began to take away, began to erode the profitability of violence. And that was the microchip. Yes, exactly. Microprocessing, leading to information technology. Because what that began to do again for the first time in human history is it began to make wealth non physical. The problem for the controllers of physical wealth, the problem with non physical wealth is he can't control it because of a mathematical certainty of encryption. Now I'm not a crypto guy. I'm not like, I'm not going off on deep, deep web, dark web, all this kind of stuff. I'm just looking at the technology and what always happens throughout human history.

What brought the church to its knees in England wasn't some awakening of consciousness. The awakening of consciousness was the result of two things. Information and technology. Martin Luther nailing his 96 theses to the door at the church in Wittenberg, saying, hey, maybe there's this guy up there who doesn't hate us, you know. Now he wasn't the first heretic to come along with these radical ideas, but he was the first heretic to come along and say this stuff when somebody a few miles away invented the printing press. And for the first time in human history, you have these radical ideas that are now being copied and propagating like crazy so that within a hundred years, the church was brought to its knees. The church prior to that was bloated, sagging under its own weight, completely reviled by the public, inventing sins faster than anybody could keep up. Sound familiar? And so that's the same place that government is today in most all first world countries. And so information and technology is what shook the foundation of the church and brought it down 500 years later. We have information, which is conversations like this, and we have technology which is the Internet.

Well, I like to, I've been playing with this thought recently of if you could go back to the, just the beginning of the United States, just 250 years ago, not a thousand years ago, not 10,000 years ago, 250 years ago. And you're chatting with your buddy Georgie, George Washington, and you give him your iPhone.

And you watch what happens to this man who's, who either smiles and reveals his three teeth or is scared and runs away and his wig falls off. You know, I'm sorry, George, but watch his reaction. He would think it was devil worship. He would think he would. Or, or, or God. Right. He would, he would be completely, completely blown away by this. He would not, he might not even be able to see it because he couldn't understand what was happening. And what is, what is. What that points to is just 60 years ago, the microchip, digitizing all things and giving us more access to information that basically more information in our pockets than we've had before in human history.

Yes.

And what that is doing is basically making it no longer profitable for plunder to exist. Is kind of where I'm hearing you.

Go with this because of. And there's a couple of other links to put in here. Because as wealth becomes increasingly non physical, intellectual property code algorithm, as wealth becomes increasingly non physical.

And because of this, this mathematical certainty of encryption, that even the word encryption is very triggering for a lot of people, at least brings up, you know, thoughts of Edward Snowden or, you know, Julian Assange or, you know, Ross Ulbricht with, with Silk Road and all this kind of stuff. But really it's just, it's just a mathematical certainty that the same computational power that it takes to encode or to encrypt something requires many, many, many thousands of times more computational power to decrypt it. It just comes down to the simplicity, to the simple principles of prime numbers. You know, a child can multiply prime numbers, but the world's supercomputers choke at trying to unravel them. So because of that and because wealth is increasingly non physical and if something is non physical, it means that it can be encrypted. Again, I'm not a proponent for this, I'm not an opponent of this. I'm just seeing it like I'm on the sidelines watching the crossbow get invented and going, oh yeah, there's not going to be any more knights. This chivalry thing, this feudalism, this thing that's been happening for hundreds of years, they're going away because crossbows can take out a knight at 50 yards and basically knights are useless.