In this 2018 talk, Royston G King argues that humanity faces a cascade of systemic crises—outdated infrastructure and transportation, a broken monetary system, dysfunctional politics amplified by social media, harmful food and medical industries, and an accelerating climate emergency. He contends that these problems stem from antiquated structures and a loss of shared purpose, leaving many people disengaged and exploited by technology. King proposes that entrepreneurs, driven by belief rather than traditional financial incentives, are the catalyst to rebuild society. He introduces the concept that belief is the new currency: startups succeed when founders, teams, investors, and users align around a shared vision. He illustrates how this dynamic is already evident in companies like Facebook, whose erosion of user belief threatens its viability. Looking ahead, King warns that automation will displace most jobs, pushing humanity to rally around purpose‑driven work. He calls for a shift from passive observers to active "doers and believers," urging everyone to harness technology to amplify humanity’s best traits and solve the world’s most pressing problems.
Chapters
We need to be using technology to bring out the better traits of humanity, not the worst traits of humanity. Not the addiction, not the anger, not the hatred, not the disconnectedness, right? The connectedness. Okay, so entrepreneurs are designed to fix the problems of the world, and we have many, many problems in the world today, and I'm gonna outline some of them, right? And these are going to seem fairly obvious to you. So we live in structures and systems that are decades old, and in some cases hundreds of years old. The zoning, the structures, even the way that we get around and the things that we do are just antiquated, and there's not a lot of innovation happening in the very ways that we live. And because we live in such a crazy, disconnected way, many of us are traveling half an hour or an hour just to get to work in crowded and crammed transportation systems fueled by fossil fuels that are just known to be destroying the planet. The whole system makes no sense, and you're not— despite the fact that we can electrify and make every mode of transportation vastly more efficient, just a small fraction of a percentage has been upgraded and transformed. And it's due to some visionary entrepreneurs facing massive setbacks without a lot of people by their side helping them make change. And then, not to make it any better, the environment that we work in doesn't engage us. Okay, why do you think the whole crypto revolution exists? Well, crypto is a direct result— the cryptocurrencies, the ICOs, all of that. We have alienated a whole generation of millennials that don't want to go and work in any of our existing businesses. They're not entertaining, they're not interesting, they're not doing meaningful things in the world. So they have rebelled and started a whole new world for themselves because we cannot provide them a structure that makes sense. It barely makes sense for us. And then the monetary system, speaking of crypto, is just crazy. There are people homeless around the world who want to work, who want to contribute, who have skills, who have value to add, and they are disenfranchised and abandoned, and then we have people doing near robotic tasks that could be automated, the whole monetary system is not properly distributing the resources. In fact, it's concentrating the resources, oftentimes in the hands of bad actors, who have no real intent of doing anything for society, and then years and years after their productive period has ended, they start donating money in weird ways that often make no sense to the rest of us. The monetary system is broken. And then, if we just want to continue, the political system is no better. The rise of social media has fueled an electoral, has broken the democratic system, allowing right-wing nutjobs and incompetent people to rise to power, narcissists in many cases, to rise to power who are now the representatives of us in this democratic world. How does that make any sense? Do people think that these individuals represent our best interests and are going to make the world a better place? Probably not. I think you can look at the sort of disgust and horror on the woman's face in the background there, and it says it all. And then if that were not enough, we're producing food that we know kills us and selling it and encouraging people through advertisement and other things to buy and eat it when we know that the very things within it are carcinogenic in nature, right? And we've become so disconnected that many of us don't even know how to grow, harvest, or eat anything healthy. Most people don't even know how to cook anymore. And then to cure the diseases that we create, we have this one-size-fits-all medicinal industry that is mass-producing drugs, oftentimes very addictive in and of themselves, that create as many side effects as they do solutions, with a completely broken medical system around it, optimized for profits rather than the well-being of the very consumers and, and patients that they're trying to treat. And all of this has led to massive environmental destruction, right? Where the world— I mean, it's snowing in Barcelona. Do I need to say anything else? I mean, it's not exactly every day that it snows in Barcelona. I don't think it's a good sign for humanity that it is snowing in Barcelona today. Basically, the world's climate's on fire. And then on top of that, the way we treat our natural environment, the way we treat our fellow animals is abhorrent. And this is the world that we have built. Okay? This is the world that we have built. This is the world that you have built. This is the world that I have built. And I don't think any of us are proud of it. And if you are, you should be ashamed. And so while the problems of the world are many, the minds of the world are bright. And so I'm going to be talking with you about how we get out of this, because I believe we can fix the problems of the world and we need to start now. I believe that you can fix the problems of the world, right? I believe that everyone in this room right now can start on a journey to fix the problems of the world, because it's never too late to start. This is the most important thing of our time. There's nothing else that matters right now, right? We are on the edge of a precipice that we have made, and we can make our way out of it, but we are asleep, okay? Most of us are asleep. We've been dopamine-tricked into looking at our smartphone, watching Netflix or whatever else we do, and we're not paying attention to what's going on. And today, most of us fall into this denier/observer paradigm, and what we need to do is move to doer and believer. Right? We need to believe that we can make the world better. We need to believe in that original vision for technology to enhance humanity and get us eating good food and get us in a good political system and addressing all the issues that we ourselves have made. And we need to move there. And entrepreneurs are the catalyst. And I'm gonna explain how this all works, and I'm gonna introduce some new concepts. So entrepreneurs believe in a new future. They believe in something. And startups therefore become a collection of people with aligned beliefs. Okay? So when you set out and you say, hey, I'm going to launch a rocket, or I'm going to fix transportation, or I'm going to inspire entrepreneurs, or I'm going to, you know, improve the food system. The initial people that come and work with you as an entrepreneur, you're not paying them enough money. You're not, you know, putting them in some 401(k) plan that's going to take care of their children. What you are doing is you're giving them a belief that they agree with and align with, and they come join forces with you to pursue that vision. So you create this team working with, not for, working with you to change the world, to realize that vision. And this is a very important concept I want to dwell on for a moment. The modern world is not a world of working for, it's a world of working with, right? And it's a world of working with other people around these shared beliefs, right? The more people that begin to believe, the stronger the startup becomes. So the initial team members believe in the vision, Then maybe investors believe in the vision. Then the users believe in the vision. Then more users believe in the vision. And even the craziest visions, the crazy, crazy things can become very, very large multi-billion-dollar businesses if people believe. Right? Does that sink in? So belief is the new currency of success. Alright? This is probably the most important thing that I'm gonna say to you today, and so I want this to sink in. A lot of you have misconstrued views of the modern-day startup, and I wanna take a tangent on this as well. So robots are eliminating the blue-collar jobs. AI is eliminating most of the known white-collar jobs. And the two are converging to eliminate most of the jobs in the middle as well. So within 5 or 10 years from now, Every kind of job that we currently take for granted as something we might do with our life, or that you grew up thinking might be there forever, is going to be disrupted, all right? So what is humanity going to do, right? They're going to align around beliefs. They're going to work on things that they believe in. Work on solving problems that they believe need to be solved, right? Fixing things that they believe need to be fixed, introducing ideas and things that they believe are needed to make society better. And we will rally around these beliefs, and these beliefs will take hold. And so the future success of an entrepreneur And the future success of a company will be based on belief. And I want to talk about how that's manifesting itself today in a company, let's say, like Facebook. So people believed that connecting with people, that having a unified area for their friends to get together would make the world a better place. And Facebook abused that belief by making the product addictive, by taking advertisements and other things that were false and derogatory and fake in nature. And it's eroding our belief in the product, and ergo, it's struggling now on many different fronts to maintain the growth and success that it's had. And it's not a crisis of product, it's not a crisis of PR, It's a crisis of belief. And if it does not— if someone like a Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get up and apologize for the horrendous damage that he and the company he created has done to society, that company will start to fail and die because it cannot and will not continue to maintain our belief that what they're doing is good for us, it's good for our children, and good for our friends. So belief is the currency of modern-day success on a startup level and even on a big company level. Everyone needs to get people to buy in to what they're trying to do and believe that it's the right thing.
