Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion analyzing some of the most common anime tropes and what they reveal about Japanese culture and desires. They explore the prevalence of high school settings, "isekai" fantasy worlds, unusual relationships, slice of life, and more. The hosts share their own theories on how these tropes represent escapism, surrogate parenting instincts, and a cultural lack of meaning in adulthood. They also recommend their favorite anime series and studios.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: I know, same time. Well, hello, Simone. So we were talking about something and you spontaneously had this idea. Which just enchanted me because I think you might be right. And sometimes when we're looking at the world, there's these little nagging questions which persist beyond reality.Where it's like, what on earth is going on here? You know? You're talking about a big one with sexuality. I'd say is, why is it that... Gay males and straight males are more likely to find the opposite gender repellent than gay versus straight females.That's where we can say something is going on here and we can use these sorts of persistent differences or unusual patterns to suss out deeper things that are going on within a population.Now [00:01:00] in anime, there are actually many of. And in Japan, there are many of these, so our audience may not know this, but my wife was born in Japan, and she spent a lot of her childhood going to Japan to trips and stuff like that, you know, for her, it was sort of like her home away from home, and her middle name is actually Haruko so even has a Japanese middle name and, bye. One, so we're going to go over a few different questions that we've seen sort of persistently in anime, and I'll go over the three that I know we're going to cover, and then we might come up with some others. The first one is, why are, hmm, what's the way to say this that won't get the video? Why do females who phenotypically present as youth appear in specific situations within anime where if they were [00:02:00] presenting that way in live action within most Western countries? Everyone would literally immediately be arrested. Yeah, it would be super illegal. Why is this such a normalized thing within anime?Would you like to know more?Malcolm: That is question number one. And I would point out thatAs time has gone on I have seen this more and more within high production anime.To the point now where it's just almost totally normalized. Mainstream. Where it would be almost a little weird if it didn't appear even once in an anime. It, it would be like an anime without a, an episode where they go to the, Beach or onsen. The onsen, or the hot springs, or the, a beach episode, you know?It's just a thing, right? If I, if I saw a harem comedy and one of the characters wasn't, Ooh, you know, I'd be like, okay, what's going on here? Oh, note here. A harem comedy is anime where a number of [00:03:00] women are all interested in one man. It does not surprise me why anyone would find that interesting, but that's, that's nothing.anime?take place in high schools? This is a very interesting question because you do not see any other art form across any other culture I'm aware of. Almost all of it only takes place during one stage of an individual's life. Right. Yeah. And, and especially none where it's their high school age. And then the final question is What is going on?This actually came from an a comment. I, I personally wouldn't find this to be that interesting a question, but it may have interesting answers. What is going on with all the Eizoukei anime? That's anime where people are transported to another world. Why is this a popular genre right now? Alright, so let's go to the first question.You had an idea that sprung to you one day, and I think it may be accurate.Simone: Yeah so we were watching an anime in which there's a dynamic like this basically where like a, [00:04:00] a salaryman wakes up in... Fantasy video game world and then, you know, ends up in one of these relationships and it, you know, you, you expect these relationships to be, can I, is it okay if I say Lolita?No,Malcolm: youSimone: cannot say that. Okay. So, you, I think most people make the least charitable interpretation of these types of relationships and why people are interested in them. So, last, last night we were watching this anime called My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even At Level 1, where this salaryman basically wakes up in a video game world and starts befriending people, and his Before we goMalcolm: further with the anime explanation, I want to explain what makes it such a unique anime, from a, from a watching it perspective.Yeah. And it is so clearly a just a desperate fantasy of what if life wasn't terrible? Yes. In every single angle of the anime, that it breaks down many [00:05:00] ideas to much more simplistic tropes than they would normally be broken down into. It's not a particularly good anime or anything like that, or funny anime or anything like that, but it is.Notable in its simplicity, and honesty was what it's trying to do. So continue with what you're saying.Simone: Right, so the main character immediately makes a friend, and the friend he makes is phenotypically very...Malcolm: Phenotypically presents as a young human female.Simone: Yes. And you expect to make the least charitable interpretation of why viewers would be interested in this kind of relationship which is precisely why you expect if this were all to be live action, that it would be highly illegal.However the more we watched the show and we saw like the dynamics of their relationship play out. The more I came to realize one, this show is the fantasy of a beleaguered salaryman. I mean, careers in Japan are, [00:06:00] are famously brutal, the hours you're expected to work, the unpaid overtime you're expected to work, the long nights drinking.It is, it is a toxic work culture. And this is the fantasy of not being in that work culture and also being appreciated for your work and being really good at your work and getting things done all the time. It's sort of just this fantasy of everything but. The, the, the Japanese work culture that still pervades the nation.And when you look at what's happening in his life it's to me a picture of what people, what humans in Japan would like life to look like. And it's not this untoward type of relationship. I think people would expect it to be. I think it's actually. Cosplaying as a parent, but that Japan lacks the cultural shorthand for a man wanting to be a parent.And so it's instead, it manifests as this perverse type of relationship or, or is kind of implied to be that perverse type of relationship when like really maybe [00:07:00] the trope that is being played out in many of these animes with these phenotypically what is it? What, use the word, use the word that's safe forMalcolm: monetization.Phenotypically, youthfully presentingSimone: females. Yes. Maybe all the animes with these tropes are really more playing on the audience's. Desire to be a parent and to take care of young people and to raise people and, and experience the satisfaction of taking care of someone who loves you and appreciates you and admires you.Malcolm: And that reminded me a lot of an anime. I think it's called something like. Lotte, L O T T E, where one of these characters that you're talking about is a succubus and... SoSimone: you would also totally not charitably interpret that because they're a succubus. Well,Malcolm: no, and it's clear that, that...The relationship is, yes, well there are like, obviously it's a very questionable relationship but [00:08:00] it is very focused on fathering her. And there is actually sort of a sub genre of, I'd call it, father animes where it's about a guy, Who either somehow gets attached to a young girl or takes on a fatherly role.But often these have to me, slightly questionable things going on in them.Simone: Oh, like the anime in which the, the guy's hand becomes a little girl.Malcolm: Wait, which one is that?Simone: I'll look up the title for it. You don't know about this? No. Hand becomes girl. This is, I swear to you, this is a thing. But this sort ofMalcolm: pure dad is, being a dad is awesome show is not one we have in the U.S.Simone: Yes. So the series is called Midori Days, which follows Seji Samawura. Who one day finds his right hand replaced with a girl named Midori Kasugano. [00:09:00]Malcolm: So, what I think is going on here, and so I'm gonna say I don't think that every show that has a character like this is doing this. Agreed. I think that there is a broad differentiation.When it's a harem comedy, that, or, or, just a harem show, I guess you could call it. Where the conflict or plot is primarily around a large group of girls dating a guy. It appears that it is actually about. The bad thing. The bad thing. However, when the core relationship of the show is one of these types of relationships, it's often played out much more...About we're talking about like the instinct, it's masturbating, it is being a goodSimone: father. Yeah, it's parenting. And this is what I actually think. I think it may be that Japan has become such a parenting and child devoid culture, essentially such an antinatalist or a natalist culture. That many of the people actually creating these animes and, and, and playing out these relationships.think they're doing the bad thing. [00:10:00] Like they think they're pandering to the bad thing, but subconsciously they're pandering to a desire to raise children and be able to deeply sad. Yeah. They, yeah. But no, doesn't it kind of resonate? Doesn't that kind of make sense?Malcolm: And here's another thing that I've noticed in the genre of shows where a dad.It has to be a good dad to a girl that, you know, it's always that the girl is thrust upon him almost never in any of the ones I can think of that he has her biologically. Yeah. Usually that he got her through a marriage or through who he was dating or randomly was abandoned by her family. A great recent example of one of these shows is Spy Family.Yeah. AlthoughSimone: keep in mind, again, in Japanese culture, the parenting culture is also very toxic and typically in their culture, the mother does all of the child rearing, just all of it. So also I think it's, you know, if, if a man wants to actually raise a kid, there is no existing cultural trope for that.Like they have to be foisted upon them in some strange situation because there would be no [00:11:00] normal situation in which they would be involved in child rearing.Malcolm: Yeah. I think you're right. You're right. And I think that, and also it can be like, there's certain things that people don't want to admit to themselves, given their cultural norms, it might be that wanting to be a dad is actually a harder thing to admit to oneself, like wanting to be a good father and failing at it, either because you were stuck at an office all day.Yeah. Or because you were never able to find a partner. Yeah. Failing at that is harder to admit to oneself than failing to, you know, secure one of these bad relationships.Simone: It is also so high stakes. Wanting to become a dad, if you screw up, if you don't do it right, it's, I think it's a much scarier thing even to aspire to, frankly, because of, this is a human life.You can screw up pretty much anything else, a marriage, a career, and in the end. You're not that bad of a person, but if you screw up an entire additional human's life that you created, like anMalcolm: entire additional [00:12:00] human life. I mean,Simone: it's true,Malcolm: though. So I, I like the theory. I don't think it's right everywhere, but I think it's right a number of times.Because I definitely see it like in the enemy that we were talking about the first one that we're watching right now, their relationship isn't really sexualized at all. Like sort of background is implied that they're like dating or something like he invites her to live in his house immediately.Remember? Yeah, well, ISimone: don't, yeah, again, I think what's going on is creators assume that they're doing the bad thing. But what they really want is the good thing because also consider how asexual Japan is. So it's it's both like really sexual and that there's prostitution and there's you know, obviously like all this, this anime with fan service, like it is, it is obviously a very.It's a much more sexually free nation in some ways, but then also it's a very sexless nation. So I think that many people think, they just assume that some feeling they have is a sexual perversion instead of a like wholesome instinct. Again, I think that's what's going onMalcolm: here. [00:13:00] The anime's core thing that it is masquerading in an individual is just somebody appreciates me for the work I'm doing.AndSimone: admires me and I can do goodMalcolm: work. Yeah, I'm doing work to support. This surrogate family and they, and, and, and the work when I put effort into it actually yields reward.Simone: Yeah. Like itMalcolm: actually works. It actually works. It yields rewards. I come home and the family appreciates me and gives me homemade food.And you really don'tSimone: need that much to be happy. And we're not even getting that.Malcolm: Well, it's so sad that that's the fantasy that this is this impossible. Otherworldly fantasy and, and this actually might bring us into why Iseke shows are popular more broadly, and I think that you can see that from this anime, is, and it's, it's sort of spelled out explicitly in this anime, that in our world, in the real world, working, he wants, he's,Simone: Hold on.Go back to in the real world and start again. In the realMalcolm: world. [00:14:00] He can work as much as he wants. He can end up, you know, falling asleep at his desk, doing overpaid work at his office every single night and he may still be randomly fired. He may not get a promotion. He may, you know, there's, there's no assurances.It's, it's like you're grinding like you would in a game, but there is no payoff and everything is systemically unfair. You know, you try to do the good thing. There's opportunities to do the good thing in an office you know, take responsibility for something for some other person not being punished, but you don't do it because realistically, you know, you're just going to end up getting punished for that.The other person really has a no position to help you because you help them. It's just an unreciprocal society and it's a society that doesn't care about you or value. When you get home, you've done all this and you have a family who It's like, why are you home late? You know? And in video games, which is often where people go in easy case video game worlds their worlds with rules, [00:15:00] you do X and Y happens, you do Z and the F happens every single time.Or no die roll modifier attached. Yeah. It is a world that feels. Fair in some way and I think in the U. S. Japan is just further along Civilizational collapse than we are exactly where we're gonna be in 10 years or whatever, right? Yeah Yeah, if we get there people feel their lives there are just much less meaningful and so this sort of return and reward is for work is deeply meaningful to them.But I think that there's other reasons why this, this form of anime has become popular. I think that the biggest is unfortunately a pretty boring one. So occasionally when there are shifts in media or how the USA receives anime the animes that are popular within that exact cycle of anime.[00:16:00] Become quote unquote classics even if they're not particularly better thanSimone: other anime or something you're saying isekai animes Because of their genre are just more likely to be globally popular.Malcolm: I'll explain. This takes a bit of explanation. Historically in the U S if you're talking about really famous animes that became popular because of this, you could say, what were the first animes?that were really translated and distributed in the U. S. You are looking at Dragon Ball Z, and you are looking at Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon, yeah. And those are both seen as like these really important big animes, but it's really just because they were animes that came out when the very first animes were being translated.So, a lot of people were engaging with it. What anime was the big anime the first year where you had crunchy roll and streaming being big in the U. S.? This was, this was in the early days of all this, where people were really getting into streaming. Well, this was an anime called Sword Art Online, which was an Izakay anime.And because of [00:17:00] its popularity, many people engaged with anime. through the lens of this genre and it artificially inflated the popularity of the genre. I hate to say it, but that's what's going on there.Simone: I don't necessarily agree, but goodMalcolm: theory. Good, okay, okay. But there's another thing that I think is, is, is really important with this, which is also that it is a very good genre for getting across So, so it's a very, just a good genre for a few reasons in terms of storytelling.One, it makes it very easy to explain to people who are in our universe, you and me, the rules of a different universe, because they are getting to figure out these rules through another individual. And that makes perfect sense. Okay, you want to explain rules in a way that someone in our universe could understand.Well, Isekai anime would be a perfect way to do that. [00:18:00] Two, they often last over an individual's lifetime, or they're much more likely to last over an individual's lifetime than other types of anime. Often, this comes with the death, birth, growth trope and yet that's actually pretty rare in a lot of other formats of storytelling, yet it can be pretty impactful when you see major life milestones of an individual and you get to know them better.By the way, if anyone's wondering what my favorite Isekai anime is... It is The Familiar Zero. That's a great anime. But anyway, so, What was I gonna say?Simone: I think, I think, I disagree in terms of what has made them so popular. I just think people hate the real world. You know, the same reason why in Japan you see all this izakay.Isekai anime is for the same reason why you see all this escapist zombie apocalypse stuff in the United States.Malcolm: But why not just do generic fantasy then? So in the U. S., when you're creating a fantasy world, you don't often have somebody from [00:19:00] our world randomly put in. Yeah, but it's, it'sSimone: super an American form of escapism is doomerism and prepism.It's like culturally our thing. Whereas in Japan, escapism is, is like through digital means and video games. I just think it's like sort of the outlet that we go to, the de facto outlet.Malcolm: I would argue more Americans play video games and would identify themselves as gamers than preppers. I will say that you are right that an American genre that is much more popular here than in other countries due to our culture is the fantasy of the world falls apart and you are prepared and dealing with it.Yeah but and that is that is not as popular in other actually really interesting.Simone: I also think Japan is more in terms of the games that you see coming out of it. Although I'm way less well versed on this s**t. They are more. Japan produces more fantasy games, whereas like. Stuff like Fallout and, and first person shooter games are more likely to come out from American game designers.So I think you're also, again, you're missing yeah, video [00:20:00] games are big in America, but they're also survivalist, Doomerism War zombie apocalypse videoMalcolm: games. Yeah, I was also thinking to what you were saying when you were talking about zombie apocalypse, where even the fantasy of a zombie apocalypse is often quite different in Japan.Zomb 100, right? That has much more of an IsekeSimone: fantasy. Are we, are you talking about the one where the guy The guy is anMalcolm: office worker and he'sSimone: Okay. Yeah. We're yeah. So yeah. So yeah. In Japan, zombie apocalypse is, Oh my God, I don't have to do my job anymore. What's my bucket list now that we're in a zombie apocalypse?I'm going to go on a road trip. I'm going to go to an onsen. Whereas like in America, it's Oh, we got to survive. We got to like reinforce. We got to move to family. You know what I mean? Like it is, I think it's a cultural thing. I think I'm right here.Malcolm: No, I mean, I, I think you are right as well. A, okay.Okay. Okay. So the next question is. What is going on with all the high school shows? Why is anime so frequently told through the perspective of a high school? Yeah,Simone: yeah, it's [00:21:00] like you would think that, that in Japan... There are no adults, it's just children in high school, always. Yeah, I, I think a lot of that's because life after high school just sucks so hard in Japan and lacks like meaning and, and cultural celebration, which I think also plays a role in, in, in antinatalism, you know, and that like adults aren't really celebrated.All adults really do is work and then die. What's the point? Whereas high school has a lot of weight in Japan and is also very heavily culturally celebrated. I mean, one, there's a huge amount of investment that goes into children's education. So, at every stage in life, if you're a parent, you're, like, obsessed with your kid's education.If you're a kid, you're obsessed with your education because you're forced to be. And then... You know, there's this just like the narrative arc around it is so meaningful, but that the exams you take in, you know, in, in middle school to get into high school are so, so fricking important. And then your life in high school is so [00:22:00] important because the exams you use to get into college, you're going to determine which social class you're in and your entire life for the, you know, everything after that, it's just so weighty.And there are all the narratives around that. So then it's, it's just hard to even create a story around post high school life because there is no focus. There's no cultural obsession around that.Malcolm: Yeah. I'll be honest when I see animes that are about post high school life, they're usually pretty depressing.Yeah. Usually the focus of them is how. Well, yeah.Simone: If, if, or, or they're the isekai anime where. It's just about Oh, I'm not an adult anymore. Like I'm a kid.Malcolm: I'm an adult. That's an interesting point. Iseke animes often take people who are adults. So another thing that I would note about this that I think is really telling is, when I look at Western shows, and we talked about this in our episode of you know, you already live in the perfect world in the Western concept of a fantasy, you are typically working was like a meaningfully the first group of people [00:23:00] to in some way, save the world or prevent the world from collapsing to do something that matters.And we have tropes where we understand what it is like to do something that matters. I wonder if in Japanese society, there isn't even a trope of an adult living a life that matters unless they were born of like a specificSimone: caste. There is. Yeah. If you're a samurai, if you're a ninja. Oh, andMalcolm: they do a lot of shows around that.But if you're not like a samurai or a ninja. You can'tSimone: like, basically, if you live in the modern world. No, I mean, I guess in oh God, what was the one about the, oh, death note, but like everyone's kind of a kid still, even though they're like, well, but isn't, I mean, I mean, yeah, they are like, well, they're, but they're working for police departments, except for theMalcolm: one really smart guy, but he's highSimone: school aged.Yeah yeah, I guess because the otherMalcolm: [00:24:00] characters I think like they even find it at a high school or something. Yeah Hold on. I'm gonna check right now cuz I'm pretty sure you're wrongSimone: about that. I'm really oh Okay, I guess there are also like fantasy anime Like what about the one with like police and ghosts or something that you were watching the otherMalcolm: day?17 years old is how old they are. He's 17Simone: Almost an adult But what about the one about like police that you were watching the other day? I'm trying to think. SoMalcolm: it's, it's people, this was something about exercising curses and curses were like represented as demon things. I was just watching the background.Simone: So I guess again, only fantasy worlds are only historical. This is high school. Samurai.Malcolm: They, they, they are drawn a bit older looking, but yeah, they're still in an academy. Oh wait, soSimone: wait, wait, even in this like adult police force world where they're putting their lives on the line, they're still in high school.Malcolm: Yeah, they're in a school. They're in a school for killing persons or demons basically. And yeah.Simone: You can't have adults be adults unless they're leaving their adult life. Yeah. I just, I just think, you know, life. [00:25:00] Sucks that hard. As an adult in Japan, which I don't know I think Japan is awesome. I love it.I love the food. I love the culture.Malcolm: Oh, well, I'll give some other anime recommendations here. I've loved. So another is a K that I, I, I thought was pretty good was shield hero. I just really identify with the main character in that, which is if you go through hardship, you sort of end up over leveled when you then meet with people again, who are supposed to be gifted or privileged.Simone: I thought you really liked what Demon Slayer as well, right? Was that what it was called? Goblin Slayer? The really dark one. Which one? About the guy who just killsMalcolm: goblins. Oh god, I love Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer, culturally, no anime speaks to me as much as that. I'm like, this is my culture represented in anime.I, I have never felt so spoken to.Simone: Personality wise. No anime no anime speaks to you as much as Food Wars. [00:26:00] Which is just personality wise, the most Malcolm anime. Oh,Malcolm: personality wise, that's definitely my favorite. My favorite anime of all time, my favorite show, media piece of all time, might be Food Wars.Though I also really like Demon King Domino. That one, I really feel a lot of kinship with the character. That's the one where the guy... He wants to be the Pope but he is foretold to be the Demon King,Simone: Oh, that one's cute. Well, and you also really that anime where everyone's way too smart and the man's really sad.Oh, IMalcolm: love that one. That one is called Code Geass.Simone: Code Geass. Yes.Malcolm: Gurron Loggin, though, I also really like. So, these are, these are a few.Simone: Code Geass. Shout out to who's that really sad character.Malcolm: Oh, gosh, the one who just killed Rufo or something, it's like heart or something, or he's like a bad guy, but then he becomes obsessed with the main character and he can stop time.Simone: You just feel really bad for him. You just feel reallyMalcolm: bad for the bad guy. Yeah, you just, you feel terrible. Remy. You just feel terrible for everyone in Code Geass, but I, I, I like it generally.Simone: Miserable smart [00:27:00] people, the movie. Oh, and byMalcolm: the way, anyone who's watching Code Geass and thinks this is all you need, it's a ripoff of Dune, by the way.For people who don't know that. You really thinkSimone: it's a ripoff of Dune? It's more fun, because it takes place in a high school. Maybe it's betterMalcolm: in high school. But he's clearlySimone: You know, if Dune were all in high school, I bet it would be better.Malcolm: I mean, the answer at the end of the show, spoilers by the way, is the God Emperor of Dune answer.Which again, is what we talk about in our world as well, that that's, the virus that's controlling society right now is acting like a God Emperor that is uniting all of these factions that never would have united before.Simone: Yeah, well, well, we're curious to know if there are any anime that we should be checking out.Let us know in the comments because we, we basically are too cheap to pay for any other subscription. Yeah, weMalcolm: don't have Netflix, we don't have HBO but we do have Crunchyroll. Yeah. So, please, help us. Please. And, and this, this pains me because I know I'm funding the people who made What was that?Simone: We love them. It's fine.[00:28:00]Malcolm: No, Crunchyroll is really, they made this thing where they put all the money that people were giving them. Sorry, I gotta remember this.High Guardian Spice.Simone: I've never heard of this before.Malcolm: Well, because they tried to hide that they had done this afterwards. Where they told people that they were sending money to anime creators, but they actually hoarded the money and then used it to create a western animated show that was like the most woke show in the world.Everyone working on it was like a 500 pound woman with blue hair. You know, it, it was the worst and it showed how little they regarded their fans. People can say well, why aren't I pirating things? Because we like watching it on the TV at dinner. Okay. Yeah. We haveSimone: one of those evil TVs that only allows you to go in through like legitimate logins.Malcolm: Because it was not that I would pirate things. I'm not saying I would ever do that. I need to be very clear. You would never. You would never. Because I wouldn't consider it. Of course,Simone: of course. Obviously, yeah. But yeah guys, let us know, and yeah, I enjoyed this conversation. Who knew that watching anime [00:29:00] would lead to so much contemplation about culture, but...Yeah. I guess we all knew that. Yeah,Malcolm: well, and I think it can help us be grateful, you know, even watching this anime where the escapism is that he comes home and he has a grateful woman there who has made food for him and cares that he has gone out and worked during the day and that is something that I already have.So I already live in his weird fantasy heaven and now I'm in the post game and I appreciate that you have created that for me, Simone. Genuinely, I do.Simone: By the way, it's Rolo. Shout out to Rolo. I'm so sorry, Rolo. Someone loves you,Malcolm: Rolo. He was evil, though. He kind of deserved it. No, he didn't. You knew that the show was going to let him suffer.Simone: Someone needed to put him out of his misery. But yeah, poor Rolo. Yeah, alright.Malcolm: Oh wait,Simone: you love you didn't even mention that one studio Studio Trigger that you love. [00:30:00]Malcolm: Oh yeah, I love a lot of things. Panty, stocking, and garter belt is a great, one of my favorites that they've done.Simone: And what about horse, pretty derby?I don't think I'd careMalcolm: that much. If I was going to give another anime recommendation, it'd be High School of the Dead. I think it's the best zombie thing ever created.Simone: But I just, I think there needs to be a special shout out for anime that has just ridiculous... Premises and pretty derby, which is an anime aboutMalcolm: a bunch of entertaining.It's like fine. It'sSimone: not, but the fact that, that someone was like, you know, it would be a great idea. Let's make an anime in which girls are horses. There are horse girls and they run in races and they're like based off of real horses. And therefore we can't like, well, that'sMalcolm: why people might not know this, but it's actually pretty rare in Japan.To see so what they they created this anime based on real famous racehorses and it's actually pretty rare to see. It like h made of it and the reason is [00:31:00] is because some of these are like dead like real horses from horse racing and many of them are owned by the yakuza who have an emotional attachment to the horses that the characters in this show are based on and so you would not risk CR creating anything.You, you do not sell that.Simone: Yeah, you can't, you can't rule 63 the yakuzas favorite horse. And so,Malcolm: but I was gonna have one recommendation for what I think might be the best pizza media ever created. It is food wars. We talked about it before. I suggest people start on season two. It's, it gets into the good stuff better,Simone: like immediately.Yeah. Just to let people know. The premise of food wars, of course it takes place in a high school. But it is a high school that is very prestigious and is a food academy. And the primary like plot point of the academy is food challenges. So just think Iron Chef. But with students and with fan service.It's sortMalcolm: of like the Naruto arc where it's a school and they're fighting to show how good they are. Except the whole thing is done with creative foodSimone: battles. Yeah, like My [00:32:00] Hero Academia. Yeah. But the food battles are great because there are two things that are great about them. One is people are making really genuinely gourmet food.And you're learning a lot about really obscure culinary practices. So, you're actually getting really good at cooking. And very informed as a gourmand as you watch the show. But then second. The reactions that characters have. To eating very good dishes involves a lot of fan service. And for those not familiar with anime, fan service is where people jigglypuff,Malcolm: the humor, it tugs at you.Like I, I laugh and cry and almost tear up atSimone: the episodes. It, no, it definitely, like it, it, it gets so much betterMalcolm: than ratatouille. It's like ratatouille of ratatouille is good. Oh, actually another one that I had forgotten. Beastars is fantastic. Beastars is like Zootopia, but if there were actual systemic differences between the analogs for people of differentSimone: ethnic groups.Yeah, and if you wanted to come away from every episode feeling like life is pointless and you want to die. You gotMalcolm: sad. It's sad. [00:33:00]Simone: Yeah, I need food for us. We have to move on, Simone. I love you, Malcolm. I love you!Malcolm: Have a great time! You too! This is a public episode. 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Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion about the controversial internet personality Andrew Tate. They analyze his worldview, intelligence, backstory, masculinity, cultural influences, differences from their own perspectives, and more. The hosts find Tate to be smart and logically consistent overall, while disagreeing on certain issues like treatment of women. They explore how he appeals to young men lacking direction, the roots of his philosophies, and debate toxicity vs pragmatism. Ultimately they conclude that different cultural groups can productively co-exist while optimizing differently.Simone: [00:00:00] I think he doesn't maintain frame. He is the frame and I do feel like he is a method actor who's had a psychotic break and is now. In the fantasy.He is. And like, you can see it. You can see it when he talks. He is 100 percent genuine and I think he wakes up in the morning and he growls to himselfWould you like to know more?Simone: IMalcolm: want to start this episode. So Andrew Tate did a thing on how all of the world problems could be solved if every man had a sword in his house. And so he has this Honestly, it's a smaller sword than mine that he keeps in his house for one of the examples is if if your woman goes out and she learns about something from the news, like, some disease is supposed to be killing people and she's all panicked.You just point your sword at her and say, don't be scared woman, and then we won't have problems anymore. And so we're beginning our Andrew Tate episode by showing this sword that's been in the, the back. Oh, I got to swing it around like an ultra nerd. Yeah. [00:01:00] Sorry. I can'tSimone: actually. You're going to, you're going to damage some seriousMalcolm: lights.Inside and I am a dad. Which means that I may have swords in my house, but I'm a nerd because I do it. I'm not mad. In fact, I would argue every man who has swords in their house is just a nerd. Like I don't, I don't know how he thinks that makes him look tough. I, I think it The last question I got on this, somebody saw it and they go, Oh, you must be really into D& D.And I'm like, well, you know. Ha ha ha ha ha. But I don't think that's my takeaway from him.I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not a commander. I'm a commander. You know, like when you command the troops into battle.I guarantee you. I do. Sorry. I looked up the video. The sword video and i found this and i just love he's like you don't walk around your house with a sword. i'm like yeah yeah, yeah. actually i do but um i don't i don't go around doing it feeling like i'm a commander i understand that walking around your house with a sword [00:02:00] and as a grown man is a sign of being a nerd and i accept that about myselfMalcolm: Which actually brings me to a point. Which is interesting and important. That's why we need people like Andrew Tate. So I often go through the comments when I do guest appearances on other podcasts and stuff like that.And there is one type of comment that we just get, like, really, really regularly in these videos. Especially me when I appear, which is, look, I love the stuff he's saying, but he just looks like such a poindexter, you know, or I can't stand his voice, like he sounds too nerdy, or you know, like, I, I, like, I like it.Like he's, he's saying important facts that we need to know, but he is like in some way repellent because of how nerdy I appear. And this is actually really interesting because the two places where I've gotten these comments the most, one was when I did an appearance on the Jolly Heretic where, [00:03:00] and then the other was when I did an appearance with Ruby.He's the guy who does What If Alt Hiss, but he has a separate podcast. Great podcast. And, you know, we should have them on sometime. But both of these guys are like objectively significantly nerdier looking than I am. And yes,Simone: but you look young and Unabashedly enthusiastic, which is to say, like, you gesticulate, you bring a lot of, like, character and, like, goofiness into your, into yourMalcolm: mannerisms.I, I think another thing it could be is I am nerdy, but I am also hot. Like, I, I know I'm hot. And it could be that I represent a nerd who is sexually threatening.Simone: Well, but here's the other thing. I mean. Who is the other, so most people who are hot and funny and passionate and like physically like they gesticulate a lot and make a lot of like Uh, funny facial expressions.It's, it's the gays. The [00:04:00] gays. So that's also why I think you get a lot of accusations for being gay. Is because you're like, you're attractive. But also you're flamboyant. And like, like expressive. And humorous. AndMalcolm: goofy. And that is not an accusation that I get as to why they can't listen to me. And this is really interesting.Yeah, it's the nerd thing.Simone: It's the nerd thing.Malcolm: of men who genuinely have trouble consuming information from men that they don't see as one within their tribe into physically superior to them. I think this is why you look, you look at like some of the top like intellectual male influencers right now, and you're looking at people like Chris Williamson.You're looking at people like Joe Rogan. You're looking at people like Andrew Tate. Touche. They, they, they genuinely struggle with a man who is in their eyes, physically weaker to them, being in a dominant position to them. And this is why we need people like Andrew [00:05:00] Tate, because I can communicate this message as much as I want.But if I communicate it And it's not getting through to people because of whatever this filter is. Well, then I need it to, you know, I need some Chris Williamson's or some Andrew Tate's to watch our podcast and regurgitate what I say in other environments. Well, no, it's just true. And you look at the pictures that the no faces are showing within the conservative movement.You know, you, you look at the pictures that are chosen by people likeSimone: By anonymous posters, you're saying people who do notMalcolm: show their faces. . Bronze age pervert. Yeah, Bronze Age pervert, you know? It's like a masculine manly man, right? You know? He's, he's, he's, it's so guys can...And so we can get through this, but I'd also point out that I'm not the only one who, who has this, one of my favorite things is that Simone was asked after me to appear on the trans maxing podcast and they go, you know, I really think it would help with viewership if you could present feminine and I like, like present as a woman [00:06:00] and I love Simone's you're like, I thought I was always presenting as a woman, like that's like the most underhanded thing like I've ever heard.And I love it because I love how you know, sort of masculine you've become through this, this relationship. And see, I've got my sword here. So everyone knows I can defend myself. I don't think swords equal defense but no, so. I really want to get to Andrew Tate because I think that, one, he does help distribute important parts of a message that people need to hear, and two, I think that it is very easy to underestimate his intelligence.If you would look at just the clips that people use to attack him, You can look at him and think this guy is a bit of a dullard, right? But if you look at his holistic content, what you realize is he is baiting them intentionally with those clips. He is actually a fairly high processing human being in terms of like.I think [00:07:00]Simone: he's a member of Mensa. I mean, he's a, he's a certifiedMalcolm: like, yeah, I was going to say, like, if I just look at his content, I can tell that he's much like, just like biologically smarter than somebody like Eliezer Yukowsky. Like he is actually an intellectual powerhouse. And keep in mind, if you look at our model of intelligence, have you succeeded in multiple different domains that weren't that tied to each other?I would say, yes, he succeeded as an influencer and he succeeded as a business person and he succeeded as a kickboxer. And he comes from a smart family, like, should it be surprising? Right? Like, but I, I, first I want people to not discount him, but then we need to talk about like where we're different from him, because this also gets interesting.You know, if we're doing a video on him, we're not going to do a video sucking his dick. Right? Like, but also I want to point out here because this is something a lot of people haven't contextualized about the Andrew Tate story. Andrew Tate made his initial money the same way Ayla made her initial money, which is pretending to suck guy's dicks online.So if you look in his own words, the way [00:08:00] Andrew Tate, so we had this moment where he had lost all this money. I think he was in debt to some people and he's like, Oh s**t, what am I going to do? And so he got his girlfriend's cause he's like, that's my asset. Right. And I'm going to use them to go online.And chat up guys, right? And then what he realized is the most efficient way to do this was for him to have the girls act as the face of the conversation and pretend to be typing. But he would be the one actually chatting with the guys because he understood the male brain better from us.No, I actually think way to hustle, man, like hustlers university. Now this is a hustle,Just, give me a chance.Alright, I'll trust you. But only if you... Will perform oral sex on me. What? Right here, right now.[00:09:00] You can't be serious. Oh, I am serious.Okay, let's do it. Here we go. And, go.You are dedicated.Malcolm: But it means that Andrew Tate got his business start by pretending to suck off guys online and calling them daddy and, you know, you know, stuff that I don't think is congruent with his current image. But if anything, it makes me respect him more because it shows that that when it comes to the hustle, there is nothing.That he won't sacrifice to getSimone: it done. We're doing this without you! Now hold on, team. Gary has already proven to me that he is 100 percent committed to the team. He proved it last night by sucking my cock.[00:10:00]Alright. Come on, team, we gotta find that stage!Simone: I think a big part of his narrative is that he is better than most people. That most men indeed are very pathetic. That they are slaves in this modern world. That they are worse than him. They're uglier than him. They're weaker than him. They're shorter than him.They're poorer than him. They're dumber than him. And he has very little respect for them. He, you know, he says he's never, you know, he doesn't use supplements. He doesn't eat healthy food. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't have aspirin in his house. Because we did. Right, right. So like, but, but he sells supplements because I think he, you know, to a great extent and, and his, I think many of his consumers kind of like this, that like, he doesn't respect them because they're so pathetic and they want to be awful like him, but they know they have to like earnMalcolm: it.No, no, no. He's very open to people that you can become like me. No, no, no. Yes, you can.Simone: But, but, but until you, until you were trying and until you acknowledge that he is better and smarter and everything else he will happily exploit you and happily, Think that you're pathetic and, and that's, he's not shy about that.So I don't know if [00:11:00] that's incongruous. I don't, I don't think that himMalcolm: exploiting it may not, it may not be my weakness. See, but the point I'm making is I wanna be clear that we're going to be positive on him. But if, if, if you look at this video, you know, we are also not filtering because we're talking about Andrew Tate, we are trying to give a whole honest perspective on who he is.And, and there's some stuff that is very in ous with the image that he does. So one of the things I can say and I've mentioned this on previous episodes and I'm going to put on the screen here a picture, which will show because my background is in biology, like human biology. It's something that I'd be really attuned to.You can tell how much testosterone someone was exposed to in their developmental period in the developmental period of their bone structure, etc. By looking at their facial structure. It's very, very obvious. He is almost the human. Cliche of someone who was exposed to very, very little testosterone and that's fine.That's not a problem.But wait,Simone: You need to explain that it appears that he was exposed, that [00:12:00] his testosterone levels were not extremely high. throughout his youth because he has, he doesn't show that the physiological signs that are common with that, which you see on the hairline and jawline. I'm going to, I hearMalcolm: what you're saying.I'm going to post pictures so guys can see. But peopleSimone: don't necessarily know that that's the sign of testosterone. It willMalcolm: be very obvious if you look at the pictures. And I saw some people when I pointed this out in the past. There's like, there's other things that could cause this facial structure there.Like, it could be that he had very poor nutrition growing up and he grew up incredibly poor, but Andrew Tate did not grow up in destitute poverty. So no, it wasn't a nutritional issue.Simone: Just, I, so I was recently listening to a podcast he did like earlier this summer with his brother where the YouTuber more plates, more dates actually did a detailed analysis of like.How he might be. Using steroids or testosterone or you know, how he's not because he had posted his blood work online to prove that he [00:13:00] didn't because he finds it very offensive that the world would believe that he uses any form of supplementation to make himself more masculine. What his initial blood work did reveal was that his overall testosterone levels were very normal.which somewhat fits with what you're saying, but his free testosterone levels were very high, which, which he argued is a product of his lifestyle, which I totally agree is a product of his lifestyle because of the way he lives. He lives with, you know, two other men in a very competitive environment, you know, his brother and his cousin.There's all these women around him. He's not exclusively this female partner testosterone. So yeah, high free testosterone, but again, what his blood work showed was that he does not show higher overall total levels of testosterone, meaning that. Like you say, he's not someone who throughout his life was just like born with insane levels of testosterone.Malcolm: But I think that this is important to understand his story. So first I want to expand on what someone was saying there because it might not be immediately obvious to the audience, but it's obvious that someone was like biological training. So, if you are [00:14:00] sleeping with a lot of women it actually increases your level of testosterone.If you feel like you are like a boss guy, like, like you're in charge of everyone, like if you're a boss versus unemployed, like unemployed people have lower testosterone than non unemployed people. If you are in an environment with competitive males, this also increases your testosterone. Everything he's doing right now in his life would increase his exogenous level, like, like it would increase his endogenous level of testosterone without him needing to take supplements. The important thing to note, because this is part of his narrative and it actually makes him more impressive that this is the case, is that he naturally does not have high levels of testosterone.And when he was growing up, when his brain was forming, when he was beginning to understand the world, he did not have high testosterone levels. And I think that this is really fascinating because if you contrast me with him, like you look at my bone structure and, it's very important to note that yes, so Andrew Tate did grow up poor, but he grew up in England, right? He grew up in an environment where he was not that poor and in [00:15:00] England, so no, it was not a lack of nutrients that led to his bone structure. He, you can tell he grew up as a guy with naturally low testosterone who threw his hard work and effort became a guy with high testosterone.But I think in some of this stuff, like he has this belief that he's just so innately great that he sells and that's part of the simplistic message that people can underestimate the true arc of what he went through, which is also very interesting. If you contrast, it was my arc. If you look at my bone structure, I'm almost the epitome of.As high testosterone as a male can be like, I hide it with these glasses, but it's like, look at my forehead and profile. I look like a freaking crow magnet. If you look at my bone structure, my high cheekbones, all of that. I look like my very defined jaw. I look like the epitome. of somebody who grew up with very high testosterone, but I admit openly on this podcast regularly, I have very low testosterone.Now I haven't gotten it tested, but [00:16:00] I'm sure I do because I'm in a long term monogamous relationship and I have lots of kids who I play a large role in nurturing. And all of those things lead to much lower testosterone rates. And I can feel it. I can feel it in terms of my libido. And I like this. I assume you and Tate areSimone: like the inverse, which is really interesting.Although you and Tate are so similar in many ways too. Like you're both extremely smart. You both Are very extra like you're both extremely genuine in yourselves and you're confident in yourselves and, and you, and you just love, you love being you both of you love being youMalcolm: well, he's smarter. So, so let's talk about how he approached religion because I think this is very interesting and it gives you an understanding of how he thinks.So you can look at how we approached religion. Well, like, we're like, okay, well, How do we create a religion that can intergenerationally survive and thrive in a technological environment? If you look at the videos explaining why he converted to islam vis a vis growing up christian He said islam does a better job of enforcing their value system [00:17:00] on populations that they control The Christians and Christian countries aren't even Christian anymore that you can live in a Christian country and people can mock God and people won't follow the value system.But intergenerationally, Islam is very good at enforcing its value system. And that actually almost fits within the framework that we put out in the pragmatist guide to life as a reasonable reason to convert to a religion. Now, why wouldn't we convert to Islam? Because culturally we are so different from it, but and this is really important with Andrew Tate the big areas where we're different from Andrew Tate mostly have to do with cultural differences cultural differences around our relation to women Cultural differences around our relation to ourselves our relation to other people in our environment And so this is something like a lot of people they'd look and they'd be like, oh you must hate the way Andrew Tate talks about women and I'm like, no, I don't.Not at all. In fact, I would say within many cultural [00:18:00] groups and within many Muslim cultural groups, and I think it's another reason why, I mean, he doesn't mention this, but why he converted is the way that he relates to women and other people in his life is very much the way some Muslim cultural groups do.And that is nothing to denigrate. That is just what works for their culture. However, and people can be like, well, then why wouldn't you want that? Like, why wouldn't you want your wife serving you hand and foot? Why wouldn't you choose a culture like that? One, I find that incredibly unattractive. Just naturally it might be due to my upbringing.It might be due to who I am, but like the idea that my wife. Treated me that way or treated other men that way in the past. I would find repulsive. In fact, I would find a woman who slept with a guy like that. When we talk about body count, like sleeping was one guy who treats a woman that way it's worth like 50 in a body count to me, it is, it makes a woman like immediately disgusting because it shows.That she has a genetic predilection to be willing to do that. And [00:19:00] that is something that I would find disgusting in my daughters. And I think that this is really important when people fantasize about the way they want their wives to treat them in the role they want to have vis a vis their wives. They're also thinking from a cultural perspective, what do I want my daughters to want?in a man. Well, they should be thinking that. From my cultural perspective, I would be disgusted if one of my daughters was in a relationship where the man treated her the way Andrew Tate claims to treat the women who he's with. That said, Andrew Tate wouldn't feel that way. And that's fine. These are different cultural optimizations and different cultural perspectives.And we can live in a conservative ecosystem where both of these value systems can exist side by side and understand that we are fighting, you know, what he calls the matrix, what we call the virus against the same thing. Okay. Do youSimone: think that he would feel differently about women if he had a daughter?[00:20:00]Malcolm: I know I don't. I think he would want his daughter to have a strong man who treated her sternly, and he would teach her how to accept orders from that type of strong man. I think, absolutely I do. I think that you are underestimating how much he believes what he said. You know, you said something really interesting about Andrew Tate, which I think is sort of true.Because I don't know if he was always this way. You described him. During one of our morning walks at the method actor who sort of got lost in the role and then became like crazy , and believed he was the character that he was playing. Can you speak a little bit to that?Simone: Well, you can see it.I mean, he, I think it was in the context of us talking about like, if he ever gets tired of the way he lives or it's not sustainable for him, but I, I just don't like, I think he doesn't maintain frame. He is the frame and I do feel like he is a method actor who's had a psychotic break and is now. In the fantasy.He is. And like, you can see it. You can see it when he talks. He is 100 percent genuine and I think he wakes up in the morning and he growls to himself and does his, you know, 90 minute workout and does his whole thing and [00:21:00] like, none of it, none of it is disingenuous. It is 100 percent him. That is like, you know, he ends up in some kind of refugee camp.He ends up in jail. He's going to be the same. And that's just who he is.Malcolm: No, I think you're right. He is somebody who is a hundred percent who he is. He's the real deal. Yeah. But there's, there's some things that I want to talk about with him, which I think it's pretty interesting. One was, so I've listened to a lot of his videos and a common thing across some of them is the belief in a conspiracy that has active players that is targeting him or targeting men.So, an example of this can be buildings are ugly now because they don't want you to have an attraction to the space that you live in, and because of that, you're easier to not defend where you live, and not have pride in where you live, or defend your cultural traditions. Or, another one would be, The reason why the world is so out to get him is like he's a boss and he wouldn't want people telling his employees, like he wouldn't want [00:22:00] one of his employees telling the other ones to revolt against their boss.So like, of course the boss of the world, the people who secretly run the world are against him. And both of these believe in these sort of like active agents. You are controlling the society where if you look at us and again, I'm focusing on where we're different in our philosophies because that's what's interesting to talk about.It's not interesting to talk about all the things I like about his philosophy. I mean, obviously he says a lot of things that I think break through the filter. And I think everyone who breaks through the filter sees many of the same things. But you would say, like, if you're like, why are buildings ugly now?Simone, I think, You would say it's due to supply lines. It's due to construction techniques.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. It's due to what sells well, what is easy to construct. That's, that's it. Yeah.Malcolm: It's due to economic concerns. I mean, the reason religious buildings were beautiful in the past is because they were constructed differently from everything else inSimone: their area.They were often funded by the most wealthy people in the city who knew that the building represented them and they had a reputation to maintain. That is not how it's done now,Malcolm: but they also weren't torn down, which is important to [00:23:00] know, whereas all of the same townhouses were torn down, you know, so, so we can look at some of the same things that he does.And this is 1 thing I would have a criticism with him. Is this level of. Projecting in the belief of like the single people who control everything has a certain level of self victimization to it. Like, you could say he is a warrior fighting against the world, or you could say he is the victim of everybody piling on top of him.And I think that he presents a very interesting thing, which is even if you persistently self victimize yourself, as I believe he does, portraying himself as the victim in this global conflict where he's the one voice standing up and telling the truth and everyone's attacking him, he doesn't perceive this victimization as disempowering.Instead, he perceives it as empowering.Simone: I also think that he furthermore is economically incentivized to, to tow the, , they, , [00:24:00] powerful people doing bad things line because, , one of his big selling propositions for the war room, which is his most like high, probably high margin.Like his sort of men's club is that, , you are a slave and until you join our special men's club that teaches you how to make money and it gives you a support network you will continue to have these forces arrayed against you and, , it's just harder to sell an almost 8, 000 product.When you don't have, , a very strong narrative and also like the marketing around it, , makes it sound like it's a resistance movement underground, etc. So, like, again, this is an economic thing. This is not him viewing himself as a victim. Again, Tate is the real deal. .He sees himself as a chosen one of God. Shown to be a light in a dark worldMalcolm: I guess if I was going to take any nuance in what I'm saying, I would say that while he sees himself as a victim, he doesn't contextualize victimhood the way other people do.Yeah. He contextualize it as an opportunity [00:25:00] to fight for what's right. Yeah. Yeah. And in so doing, he negates the stereotypes that are negative about being a victim.Simone: Yeah, he's a, he's a victim in so far as he's a warrior.Malcolm: Another thing that I would say is, is, is really interesting is the number of men from cultural groups, which I think are incompatible with the lifestyle that Tate is recommending that move into this lifestyle, right? That then see it as aspirational. And when you point out to them, well, if you treat your wife's this way, then you are setting your daughters up to be treated this way.Are you okay with that? You know, your sons are going to treat their wives this way, their daughters will learn that. And they're like, no, whoa, gross. I don't want , my daughters to be treated this way. And he's appealing to them specifically because they don't see any iteration of masculinity to which they can aspire within the cultural groups that they have access to.And it's because [00:26:00] they want an iteration of masculinity that solves their immediate issues. So what Tate does is he shows somebody who is both older and somebody who sleeps around with a lot of women. Whereas within most cultural groups, that is not what they want when they get older. When they get older, well then they go out and they...Attempt to like solve major problems in the world in a very, I call it like a much more wholesome format. You know, we had played on a recent video, a Steve Irwin quip with, with the way his wife is looking at him. When he's talking about how much he wants to save the world and I'll put it here cause apparently it didn't get us demonetized. I want to save the world. And you know money? Money's great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm gonna buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what, Charles? I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate.I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land.Malcolm: But I think it shows this is the way that I want to attract a wife. This [00:27:00] is the way that I want to attract a partner because I see us as partners. In fighting the system like equal partners, and I want her to like me for what I aspire to fix in the world and be a part of that. You know, if you look at my cultural ancestors, you know, we've got a kid called Thorson, right?Like the word stone, right? Like, that's my wife's background, right? Like, like Viking ancestry and, and, and actually Viking ancestry because she has a, Nordic last name, but it's from England, not the pussies who stayed at home. But well, I'm sorry I think one of the reasons why Nordic cultures are so pussified is they had a constant genetic selection where every one of them With an explorational spirit left the country and only left the ones who didn't want to, but what we need to remember is what family structures were like in this cultural tradition, which is not a man took care of a wife who stayed at home and did nothing.The wife protected the farm. She knew how to use weapons. She grew [00:28:00] the food. She did the manual labor, and the husband's role was to go out and move the family up in status, you know, gain. Additional wealth and jewels and stuff like that and bring it back and move up within the system And when we talk about it, we've talked about this before, the wife is the shield and the husband is the sword. And they work in perfect unison to defeat the forces against them. I, in the previous ones, I said, like, shadow knight and shield knight.This model for building a family assumes that the wife is going to be the source of consistent income. And the husband is a source of potentially moving the family up and stuff like that. It's a very different way to relate to a woman, but the way that you attract women in this is not by putting them down because you're looking for a woman who is a competent warrior and producer, because.You believe that strong women make strong sons, whereas if you look at the way that he wants to create strong sons, it's very interesting, right? It's much closer to the Jordan Peterson model, which is, I am going to be very strict [00:29:00] on these boys. I am going to be very. Regimented in how they're raised and this can create warriors, but it doesn't create kings.If you create a son to efficiently obey the orders of somebody who is bigger than them or has more power than them. Well, then you're creating a kid who's going to obey, hopefully, your cultural group, which is why it's pretty smart that given that these are his inclinations, that he would move into the Islamic cultural group because if he raised a kid this way within the Christian cultural group, then they're just going to end up being a simp to mainstream society. I think that people who are unfamiliar with this style of parenting can misunderstand what we're saying in it. We are attempting to stoke the fire of our children's wills as much as possible. Some cultural groups attempt to stamp out. Their children's wills and get them to fit. A very narrow conformed set of rules. And then other cultural groups see it as their goal to increase the [00:30:00] size of their child's willsFor example, if I believe that one thing is just, and my child believes another thing is just, or they don't understand why I have given them some rule and they have logic behind why they don't understand why I have given them that rule. It is not success for me. Two. Break their will and force them to follow a rule that they don't understand. That makes no sense to them. That is me having failed. As a parent. Because that's not who i want them to be as an adult i don't want people who are bigger than them or stronger than them or have more power than them to be able toforce them to follow rules that they feel are unjust because one of the things I've noticed in the world, you know, when we interact with young people is the core thing that seems to relate to their ability to actionably affect the future. Is the size of this internal flame inside them, which I can almost immediately sense when I meet someone. How big. And bright. Is your [00:31:00] will.Malcolm: Yeah. So, ISimone: mean, yeah. So a couple, a couple thoughts here. Like when you look at American history and you look at groups that sort of took these two different approaches, you had the Cavaliers in the South. Who did raise people the Andrew Tate style, like women were very much disempowered. Men were very much sort of like, yeah, like do your thing, be super man, manly.And what, what has happened, you know, from the South, how many, you know, like it's, it's not been the best outcome. We're more Scots Irish. I don't know if we've, you know, the Scots Irish have done much better. I mean, I think they're, like you say, arguments to be made for both sides.Malcolm: They've done very well in terms of wealth. In terms of innovation power. But they've done very poorly in terms of fertilitySimone: rates. Yeah. And then another thing, I think that the differentiation that you're pointing out between the Andrew state, the Andrew Tate model of masculinity and the typical adult male model of masculinity is the Andrew Tate model of masculinity to me.And, you know, obviously, yeah, I guess it works in an Islamic format, but I would say it is the epitome of toxic masculinity because it is all about resource acquisition. It is all about using [00:32:00] and exploiting and making money and spending money. But I don't see anything being built. I don't see, and he talks about, you know, beautiful buildings and all these amazing things, but I don't see his people, you know, the people he trains, or him talking about like, let's get us off planet, let's build new medical interventions, let's like, you know, move society forward.I don't hear that. Because it's all a status hierarchy. Yeah, it's all about status, it's all about women, so I see, you know, like, and that is a big part of masculinity, right? Like that, you know, that is a big thing, but it is also for, you know, Young men who have yet to establish themselves. And I feel like true masculinity is, is not about that, that flailing signaling, which is really something that should be done as like.A, a, a signaler to good partners that, that you are a good investment. Like that's, that, that is for the earlier point in your life. I think for, for adult men, real masculinity is settling down is having a family is raising them in a strong culture and setting them up for success, but also building like building the [00:33:00] next, the next step.I mean, I think Elon Musk exemplifies real masculinity, which is literally build the thing. Literally.Malcolm: So I think that you're being dis, I think that you're being un charitable unfair to say real masculinity. Okay. This is what our cultural group values. Our cultural group values people who do s**t.And that's why people from our cultural group do s**t. Do s**t. Yeah. He values people who appear high status. Who acquire, acquire s**t. How Signal other men. Yeah. He views his life value from the aesthetic that he portrays onto reality. The important thing is he is doing that well. He's doing thatSimone: as well as a human can do.Yeah, he uses diamond watches and his Savile Row suits and his Bugatti in his private plane for sure. Yeah.Malcolm: What's important is that when you're choosing who you take advice from, and when you're choosing who you model, you need to look at the outcomes of choosing these two different value systems, okay?What happens to cultural groups who choose his value system? What happens if you choose his value system and how you find a wife? Hmm. [00:34:00] It's not, it will lead to your kids turning out the way the people who have historically chosen that value system have turned out. What happens if you choose our value system?It will lead to, now we are trying to, because as we've pointed out very clearly, our value system leads to people who end up changing the world, but who are low fertility, who end up having a high economic success. Who end up having high political power, but who are low fertility. So we're trying to tweak it.We're trying to improve it. He could do the same thing. He could say, well, I'm from a group that doesn't have a fertility problem, but that has an economic power activation, making the world a better place problem. The, problem is. Is that he's done a very bad job at tweaking it or he hasn't actively tweaked it in any way that I can see He's just repackaging it a bit for a modern audience, but I should note People when they look at andrew tate They look at him and they're like, Oh my God, he's so [00:35:00] misogynistic.This is because, and keep in mind, Andrew Tate converted into this cultural group. You know, he wasn't born into this cultural group, but it is, it is because you have blinded yourself to the truth of the cultural group he's from. And if anything, he's an incredibly sanitized iteration of that cultural group.Treats women in his life. dramatically better than the average person of this cultural group dramatically better. He sees them as dramatically more human. And he does say, you know, he wants women in his life to feel cherished. Always. He wants them to feel like Queens always. He just doesn't want them to have agency because women to him, and he is right about this from his cultural perspective are a status symbol. And I should note here.The type of women who are attracted to a man who acts like Andrew Tate, like that's their thing. That's what they want from a cultural group. I don't know the nice way to say this. But they would often be very.Disagreeable. As partners to men who did not [00:36:00] treat them the way that Andrew Tate teach them the type of women who are attracted to men like that. Often need to be treated like that. To be tolerable to be around for men of any cultural group. He's not taking women off the table who, if they had met a guy like me, he could have been people like my wife. and I think that that's important to remember. When he says, women need to be treated this way to be tolerable. He is speaking from personal experience because the type of women who settled for a man like him need to be treated that way to be tolerableMalcolm: And urbanized.far earlier than our cultural groups, our cultural groups were raiding barbarians for much longer. And so women had to work much more. And when our cultural groups, when the world industrialized, we moved, you know, your family moved to Chicago to the edge of the world. My family moved, you know, to, To the Carolinas and then further to Texas, then your family moved further to [00:37:00] Carol, California.And even your dad, you know, when he came of age, he went to Japan, right? And my dad, when he came of age, he went to start a company in South America. And then what did we do when we started our first company? It was in Peru. Like we have this. It's predilection to always be on what we would consider as close as we can get to the edge of civilization, because it is not a culture that is optimized for stability, or social stability.So in many ways, and I think this is why preparism is so big in America, because so many people in America are descended from cultural groups that just are really not optimized for social stability. They know it, they're excited, and in a world where systems begin to collapse, Americans are going to do like, Stupidly.Well, because they're just a lot of them are from cultural groups that are optimized around that cultural groups where women are just totally disempowered and treat it as status symbols is a sane strategy. If you have a totally safe home base where women actually can stay at home and not worrying about the need to defendSimone: themselves.I don't know. I just I think it [00:38:00] becomes in that scenario in those societies. It just becomes a much more hostile and. Vicious society where women immediately become real currency, if you know what I mean.Malcolm: Well, I think that's a result of the stability of those regions intergenerationally. Yeah. The areas where those cultural groups have come from have been some of the longest civilizationally stable areas in the world since Babylon.You know, like, yeah, I mean, anyway, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And I, I guess what I'm just saying is, is, is it's not, he's not acting wrong. And neither of us has a culture that actually historically completely works and we should both be attempting to tweak it in ways that can ensure that our descendants thrive.But I don't think that a necessary one of those tweaks is that he treats women better. I would never [00:39:00] treat women that way. And I, and I, the thing I really worry about. It is men, young men, who see the way he's acting and is like, Oh yeah, I was in my young social circle, I want to be treated this way. Yeah, but do you want to be an 80 year old bragging about how many women you're sleeping with?Like, do you understand how gross that is? Like, he's on the edge of it getting pretty gross. And it's important that you understand... What's actually being sold here and what that means for your descendants if you optimize around that strategySimone: for what it's worth He seems to be moving away in his content from talking about women,Malcolm: which is good.Yeah, it's still intrinsic I mean, I'd love it if he could because women I won't say there it's not like women are the problem but but securing women And building relationships that are stable and have stable gender dynamics in a world where all of this is falling apart is an important thing to note and to work around.As is the way you contextualize yourself. I really love his radical [00:40:00] personal responsibility stance. Which is something that we really promote. And I'd actually say that we probably agree with 90 percent of what he says, but I think that 90 percent of what he says, isn't what you think if you're only listening to theSimone: The crazy stuff that the news covers.Malcolm: And I actually think that he is internally logically consistent, you know, as I said it was like Yeah. Yeah. The antinatalists who are like the David Benatar variety, I'm like, look, you guys are just not logically consistent. This is not impressive to me. But of the efilism variety, I'm like, look, I think you guys are terrible.These are the ones who want to kill all humans. We have a video about that. I can like do it at the end of this one. But you're at least logically consistent. Yeah. And, and that's what I say about him. I think he's both smart and logically consistent, but not what I would want for my daughters toSimone: marry.Not our style, but they style. And yeah, I mean, one of our core cultural tenants is that we very much celebrate the fact that there are lots of people taking approaches that we wouldn't take because we would like for a maximum number of different [00:41:00] approaches to be taken.Malcolm: Absolutely.Simone: Yeah. So Tate, you do you, doing great.Yeah, you'reMalcolm: doing it. You're doing a good job and I think you are on the whole, maybe making the world a better place. We'll see how it plays out.Simone: Maybe not. Keep it up, buddy. We'll see. But yeah, power to the people.Malcolm: But I can tell you, I suspect our cultural group to dramatically out compete his, given at least what I see right now, but I guess I wouldn't be in it if I didn't.Simone: Yeah, right. So time will tell.Malcolm: But you, everyone should have a sword. It's very important. It'll solve all of your problems.Simone: You know, I think everyone should have sword sponsorshipsMalcolm: eventually. AsSimone: shown in that scene in Indiana Jones, do not bring a blade. To a gunfight. All right.I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not a commander. I'm a commander. You know, like when you command the troops into battle. That's me.[00:42:00]Malcolm: And that's one of the problems with a lot of these cultures that, that, that see masculinity as like buffness and everything like that. And we're like, okay which cultural group is stereotypically the least buff of all cultural groups in the world, least athletically inclined.And the stereotypes would say, Oh, that's the Jewish cultural group, but they're the cultural group that's cleaning up in our world today. You know, fertility rate economically. Which I think shows how pointless it is to overemphasize on this meaningless signaling of masculinity over competence and competitiveness.Well, especiallySimone: in an age of technology. Yeah. Technology is the new masculinity, we sayMalcolm: I had to choose a religion for myself other than the one I'm trying to create, it would not be Islam. It would be Judaism. But anyway.Simone: Well, the anti Semites are going to love that one. Yeah,Malcolm: yeah, yeah, yeah. We can't we can't talk about the ongoing conflict [00:43:00] because Simone said my tweets would get us in trouble.Yep. So... Mouth shut, Malcolm. We won't. I'll keep my mouthSimone: shut. But please don't.Malcolm: I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying a single word, am I, Simone? No. I'm keeping my mouth...Simone: Yep, we're going to... Heat up the hibachi, make some fried rice tonight. Yeah. Want to do a cook off? Oh yeah.Malcolm: She got me a hibachi grill for my birthday and it is amazing.Cultural appropriation right there. Mrs. BornSimone: in Japan. Highly insensitive, but that's what we do. Wait, I was born in Japan. No, that doesn't give me the right. Well, you may also like our hibachi grills even.Malcolm: So ethnicity isn't a real thing. Oh, right. You were born in Japan. You are Japanese culturally because ethnicity doesn't exist.Right. I forgot. So how else could you be Japanese other than being born there and having the name Haruko?Simone: One has to wonder. Yeah. There you go. I love you. I love youMalcolm: too.[00:44:00] Oh This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone discuss the dangers of hedonism, importance of 'delusions of grandeur,' why suffering is essential, why we're not all equal, playing your role, taking on the burden of humanity, and developing real confidence. They talk about speccing characters for success, the allure of passion and dreaming big in relationships, genetic predispositions, societal influences on skills, and the path to success through delusions of grandeur and responsibility.

Michael Gibson shares insights on identifying extraordinary talent in young people from investing in them early via his VC fund 1517.He explains how classic predictors like test scores fail to capture entrepreneurial gifts like courage, initiative, and "insider-outsider" status. Homeschoolers often excel as they're self-driven. Malcolm notes EA types who use funds practically tend to thrive.They discuss why cities lack on-ramps for talent, risks of attaching to "smart" identity, and how youth's fluid intelligence enables conceptual leaps elders miss. Overall Michael concludes talent ID is tough, but development is key - we must cultivate qualities like grit young.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which invest in young people typically before they've gone to college,Malcolm Collins: how do you judge the competence of somebody who's young,Michael Gibson: yeah, we learned a lot. Well, when we started the fellowship, we had an application a lot like colleges. We asked for test scores, GPA, what school you went to. And that was good at, certainly signaling cognitive ability, but we quickly learned it was not a strong predictor of success out in the wild. And so we had to start looking for other things . There were even negative correlations that were surprising.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello. Today we are joined by Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which is game changer in terms of venture capital investment, because they invest in young people typically before they've gone to college, sometimes during but he also wrote a book that I've enjoyed very much called paper belt on fire, which I really encourage you to.Simone Collins: Yeah. Check out, but we're not going to be [00:01:00] talking so much about the book today. We really want to get into Michael's work with the 1517 fund with how he spots young talent with things he's learned from his investments and the people he's worked with and the people he's found through this fund, because I mean, Oh my gosh, the talent you're meeting, it's, it's insane.Simone Collins: So we're really excited to dive into this and thank you so much for joiningMichael Gibson: us. Yeah. Thanks for having me.Simone Collins: So the biggest thing that I'm really curious about, cause it's been a while now, you know, you're like, you've been, you've been doing this for years at this point. And you've done a lot of hustling.Simone Collins: I mean, like sleeping on couches, staying up all night, going to these crazy young person parties. I couldn't do this, you know, like young people stay up late and I'm like, my bedtime's at eight 30. you're doing these. IMalcolm Collins: went, I, sorry, I got to take a little detour here. So I went on this trip to, I don't know, somewhere in Central America.Malcolm Collins: With a bunch of Peter Thiel fellowship kids and they like they went out like I, I hadn't gone to a party, like a club in years, but I was like, maybe it's gotten better. Maybe it's not as bad as I remember. And I get there and I'm [00:02:00] stuck there until 1 30 in the morning and it's loud and it's sweaty and it's gross.Malcolm Collins: And it was just as pointless as it always was. And you have to deal with this stuff. I think professionally. It's all about how you. Get these young geniuses interested in working with what you guys are doing. How do you sell yourself to them?Michael Gibson: Man, well, that is certainly part of it. Yeah, it's funny is it's such a slippery, tough craft that we're constantly reexamining the foundations of what we do.Michael Gibson: And, and one of the I guess, two different problems that we constantly wrestle with, or, or, you know, we, I guess we're trying to figure out which problem we're, we're. Operating in one is if you are a fisherman, is it better to be in a well stocked river? Our pond. So it's you're one of those bears just grabbing salmon cause they're flying in your face where in this case, the fish are, you know, talented people building startups or is it better to focus on the craft [00:03:00] of fishing, like being the best, you know, it's like you could identify the one fish that's in the stagnant pond and find it and fish it out.Michael Gibson: You know, that's, so this is like the two problems we struggle with. We're like, okay, which one is it better to be? Is it better to find the location where just talented people are and then figure out what they're working on? Or is it better to, you know, hone your skill pattern matching skill at okay, does this person have the right stuff and just, you know, go out there, you know, looking for that.Michael Gibson: And so, so, so that is a trade off. Or, you know, I can't, I guess I'm saying it's two problems. It's just one problem. It's which one are we in? So to that end is yeah, I've been in hacker houses. I've lived in ecosystems and, you know, tried to go native to the extent that I can, but now that I'm getting older, I've lost the steps.Michael Gibson: So maybe I, like you said, it's. It's tough to keep pace with a 21 year old.Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about what a hacker house is, because our audience may not even know what this is. And I think for young people who don't [00:04:00] grow up or maybe live in like more rural environments, it's useful to know that this other world exists that they can then move into, which is a quick path.Malcolm Collins: to move up. Hacker houses are houses where near tech hubs, because it's often too expensive to have a house yourself. A number of young people get together and put together a house. Now, hacker houses have variable levels of prestige. And so you want to make sure you get into a prestigious hacker house, which typically means you're gonna want to find someone in the hacker house ecosystem and ask them in the city you're planning to move to typically San Francisco or New York.Malcolm Collins: If you're moving into hacker houses or London, I suppose. Which are the most prestigious hacker houses right now in this area? My brother and his wife actually ran a hacker house for a long time in Silicon Valley house. It was one of the high, high prestige ones. Yeah. Yeah. The icebreaker was probably the one that everyone knew about during thatMichael Gibson: time period.Michael Gibson: Yes. I, that was on the boat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. SomeMalcolm Collins: people got, so hacker houses are usually pretty weird. So they would the icebreaker, what they did is they got an old icebreaker, it's like a Norwegian icebreaker and they [00:05:00] converted it into a house that was on the pier by San Francisco and people would have parties there and stuff.Malcolm Collins: Can you talk about some of the more modern hacker houses you've seen? What they're like? It's interesting.Michael Gibson: Yeah. I wish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be great if they had some intelligibility, meaning you could, you know, find a list of hacker houses. You could find an ordering of okay, here's what you get out of these.Michael Gibson: But I, it's, it's much more underground and not widely publicized. I guess you got to hear about them through word of mouth or some Reddit chat group or something of that nature. Yeah, they come and go too. And and, and, and, and they're driven by the people who are managing them. There was one in the mission.Michael Gibson: That we helped start called mission control mission, San Francisco. Yeah. What they didn't know, I guess, God, it's funny. I think there's like a sex club or S and M shop called mission control. They didn't know that for them, but yeah, it was more about these guys are all software engineers that type of hacker.[00:06:00]Michael Gibson: There were 10 people. At a time living in the house and sometimes people work at companies. Sometimes they start companies. They tend to be very creative. They're, they're almost like a studio artist studio in a sense of yeah, building things. Some people are working, they change, they swap, they come in and out.Michael Gibson: So yeah, we, we, we, I know of a few in different places. We're starting to see more now like in, at the university. Oh, they tend to also be associated with universities. Like it'll be a university town where you see these things pop up. And there were some students at the university of Michigan recently who started a house devoted to brain computer interfaces that issue.Michael Gibson: So I thought that was cool. Cause it wasn't just, you know, yeah, you know, like me today. I'm so San Francisco. I've got the It was not the coding you know, the code monkey wearing a hoodie. It's they're actually working on some on hardcore science, which, which is cool to see. So it's tough for me. I was like, I do want to know about these places cause they can be gravity wells for [00:07:00] talent.Michael Gibson: But on the other hand, they're not well advertised. So you got to hear about them through word of mouth. Well, andMalcolm Collins: another thing that used to be a real gravity well for telling I don't know if it still is is maker spaces. Sure. Yeah, I would also look up if you have a city. So they're called hacker spaces, Baker house spaces, or you can look for biohacker like labs, which cities, which will have most of the equipment you need to do this sort of more advanced science stuff.Malcolm Collins: And they're typically sort of like. All of our guard, the one that I was really into back in the day was the hacker dojo. Yes,Michael Gibson: I was just going to say the hackerMalcolm Collins: dojo. Yeah, I used to hang out there every, every party, every week. It was fantastic. It was really basic. If you've ever seen the movie hackers, like the 19.Malcolm Collins: So. I don't think that that movie was based on a real culture that exists, but I think it's generations of nerds grew up with that movie and they basically recreated a funny thing when you were mentioning about, Oh, this is the name of a sex place. I was like, yeah, but a lot of hacker houses do have regular.Malcolm Collins: What's true. Yeah.Michael Gibson: Well, they tend to be very [00:08:00] countercultural. They have that. That's so funny. Yeah. Hackers. Was that the Angelina Jolie movie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well worth a watch. It is one of the things I love in movies about. And computer engineers is they always face the problem of how to dramatize or visualize what it is to work on a computer.Michael Gibson: And that one was great because it was like, they're actually running through like a street of code or something. That's like aMalcolm Collins: city. And Hacker Dojo, by the way, for people who didn't know, for the old version of Hacker Dojo, there's like a new version that's really corporate and boring, but the old one, what they had bought was an old stained glass show factory, because it was where they were trying to sell stained glass.Malcolm Collins: So like the whole thing was like weird and designed and like hanging platforms and everything. It was nuts and big mechanical beasts that they had beat that they would take out to maker fairs and stuff. But, okay, so next, tell me about the type of person that you're looking at, because when you're talking to young people, how do you judge the competence of somebody who's young, and how do you know when they're, like, too arrogant, and can you give me any of the weird stories you've [00:09:00] had dealing with these young geniuses?Michael Gibson: Yeah, we learned a lot. And I guess it is a lot like pattern recognition as it relates to, let's say, computer vision or deep learning. In the sense of you have a data set and then your algorithm has to train on that. There's deep learning. It operates in a black box. So oftentimes it's It's shooting out answers, and you can't figure out why it arrived at that answer.Michael Gibson: Well, I think human expert intuition is quite similar because you're building up a algorithm across this data set. So what's our algorithm? Well, when we started the fellowship, we had an application a lot like colleges. We asked for test scores, GPA, what school you went to. And that was good at, certainly signaling cognitive ability, but we quickly learned it was not a strong predictor of success out in the wild. And so we had to start looking for other things . There were even negative correlations that were surprising. So one of them, the funnier ones to me was like the [00:10:00] winners of the Intel science award tend tended to fare poorly.Michael Gibson: As entrepreneurs and why? Well, okay. It's because to win those awards, you have to be a good like ESG salesperson, not a innovator. You know, it's just who, who can, you know, signal the most virtue for a committee rather than actually build something. So over time, yeah, we started to develop our rules of thumb.Michael Gibson: Certainly the traits we look for can't guarantee success, but they, they became contributors to success. Like one of the weird esoteric ones is something we call insider outsider. This is from Peter Thiel's work with Rene Girard. So Peter studied philosophy or literature with Rene Girard.Michael Gibson: He's a French literary theorist who became a. Bit of an anthropologist and historian and Gerard was obsessed with crowd dynamics, witch hunts, mobs and scapegoats, and he has a monograph on the scapegoat in which he canvases the world mythologies and religions [00:11:00] and examines all these episodes where the crowd picked a scapegoat.Michael Gibson: And sacrifice them or, or, you know, sometimes what's interesting is that the hero is often a scapegoat who has resistance sacrifice. And so for Peter, this became a way of looking for founders, a trait to look at for founders. And people to hire and what Gerard found was like the people that the crowd doesn't just pick a complete foreigner to sacrifice because if there's a social crisis at hand and they need to blame someone, you can't just grab a foreigner who couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.Michael Gibson: Yeah, on the other hand, you can't. Pick the king's right hand man. You know, that's just too close to the center of things. So oftentimes that scapegoat is, is this boundary figure who somehow paradoxically is both an insider and an outsider, and you can see this. I mean, think about Christ, you know.Michael Gibson: Classic scapegoat story is he's he's on the one hand Jewish preacher and on the other hand, you know, excommunicated [00:12:00] by the Pharisees and so on. You can see this in the myth of Oedipus where, or the, the play Oedipus where, you know, Oedipus is. He is, there is a plague that is destroying the city and he, he sets out to discover its cause.Michael Gibson: He is the king. He thinks he was born in a foreign country. Actually, he turns out he was born in the city. But, but because he came from somewhere else, it's like he's both an insider and an outsider. So Peter looked at the, you know, when he examines. When he's looking at a founder, so when he's always looking for some kind of insider outsider story, one easy, clear example is, let's say immigrants.Michael Gibson: So immigrants who come to the United States, there's long tradition of creative immigrants in Silicon Valley who have done great things. And I think it's this insider outsider dimension where on the one hand they are U. S. citizens or green card holders, but on the other, they are outsiders. You know, they're new to the country.Michael Gibson: They might see things in different ways. Maybe I myself am an insider outsider and, and[00:13:00] I, I was working towards a PhD. I spent many, many years in grad school. I've seen the insides of the temple of academia. And, and and yet I, I left, I, I, I Dropped out and became a heretic. So maybe that's, you know, possibly why Peter hired me.Michael Gibson: So, so that insider outsider thing is something we're, we're always looking for. And, and, and I like talking about it because it's just so weird. Cause it comes from French literary theory. And then the other thing is, yeah, you got to have the know how, theMichael Gibson: IQ and EQ to work with customers and co founders and so on. But no one thinks about, you know, that dimension. So that's why, you know, I think it's worth meditating on. What's reallySimone Collins: interesting is I, goMalcolm Collins: ahead, Malcolm. Well, I want to provide an alternate theory as to why insider outsiders do so well. Okay, great.Malcolm Collins: What you're actually capturing with insider outsiders is to, to be an insider, to be a competent or move up within the inside system. That's typically a measurement of just general like EQ, IQ, everything like [00:14:00] that. To be an outsider, to be willing to outside yourself when you have already risen within a traditional power structure to any extent, you have to have enormous initiative, a willingness to take calculated risk, confidence in yourself.Malcolm Collins: And belief that you understand something about the way the world is working that the insider system doesn't see yet. And so, you know, this is seen with immigrants, right? To be an immigrant, you have to have an enormous amount of individual initiative, individual belief in yourself, everything like that.Malcolm Collins: Well, to be an immigrant with... It could be, look,Michael Gibson: that could even be a genetic... Selection effect, right? I mean, one theory about the American frontier is that it was filled by people who had that risk loving gene to just set out to the frontier and face nature. Or, and we haveMalcolm Collins: another episode on this called genetic vortexes.Malcolm Collins: And we talked specifically about Silicon Valley and we say it's probably not a surprise that Silicon Valley, as we understand it started that venture capital started in the same area that people were coming to during the gold [00:15:00] rush, which was selecting specifically for. High risk, high reward focused individuals,Michael Gibson: right?Michael Gibson: Yeah. And then, and then, okay. To move on to another trait we look for, sometimes I call this edge control. And which I take from skiing, snowboarding, motorcycle racing. Cause there is a, there look, there's a there's a mode, there's some amount of courage that's necessary to want to do something new and different.Michael Gibson: And to challenge the status quo and majority opinion. But the, the thing is it's not just like an extreme sport though, where you jump out of the airplane once and get that adrenaline thrill. It's an everyday day after day. Are you prepared to, you know, negotiate that boundary between chaos and control on a daily basis?Michael Gibson: And I think it takes a certain type of person to do it. It dawned on me that also that. You know, I say I like edge because that signifies danger and risk control is okay, but you gotta keep everything in order. And so [00:16:00] with the skiing example, you can't just go down a black diamond, like the fastest skier doesn't win olympics and to.Michael Gibson: Olympics. So there's some Italian phrase that's you know, the best skier isn't the fastest skier because that person crashes and breaks a leg and has a career ending injury. So they don't get to participate in all the races they could have after that. So it's like the best skiers, the one who goes as fast as possible while surviving.Michael Gibson: And I think there's something to that in startups where there's, there are people who, who push the edge of things, but not too much where they blow up the company. And on the other hand, they're not so conservative that they don't experiment or do anything at all.Malcolm Collins: So what I really love about what you just said, because it reminds me of something I've seen, and I consistently seen this in people who end up being successful is you don't want to be Gosh, what's the word?Malcolm Collins: It's from the family guy episode of South Park. You know, those are something pushing balls, right? AndMalcolm Collins: they, they stopped working whenever you would take a single idea ball out of the tank.Malcolm Collins: And then, oh, right, right,Michael Gibson: right. Yes.Simone Collins: Oh, manatees, right?Malcolm Collins: Manatees. Yeah. You don't have the manatee [00:17:00] we say because the manatees in this episode, they would stop coming up with ideas. They'd stop producing episodes. The moment you took one idea ball out of the tank, the people who I find who I think.Malcolm Collins: Represent the highest likelihood of like actual success, especially I'm talking about young people is they love surfing on the edge of controversial issues, but they never go over the edge to the point where they would get canceled or anything like that. Understand the game that they're playing, and I'm gonna be honest, this isn't a game that we really like to play in our videos, I think people see it.Malcolm Collins: A great example of an individual who's doing this more and more now, and I think we're gonna see great things for him in the future, he's actually, I think you guys identified him, he might have been a Teal Fellow, or he might have been something else, but is he? What if his guy? He runs another? Oh,Michael Gibson: yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Definitely. And he definitely is really good at getting right up next to how controversial it might be without ever going over the edge. And I think that that is a really good [00:18:00] indicator of somebody who has a like of living on the edge, but doesn't actually ever want to do real risk. And that's what's true.Malcolm Collins: I think about good entrepreneurs. It's been said entrepreneurs. Are risk mitigators, they take an idea that is big or something like that, and then they say, how can I mitigate all of the risk associated with this idea? Right?Michael Gibson: Yeah. They're, they're not just going straight down the mountain as fast as they can and crashing into a tree, right.Michael Gibson: There's a way to, or to climb the wide, I don't know the analogy, but there's something where there's a plan. You know, actually one book I, I recently, I read this week just came out was the new Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. Oh,Simone Collins: I'm in the middle of that. It's soMichael Gibson: fun. Yeah. God, it's great.Michael Gibson: Yeah. Really fascinating. I love how you know, Isaacson just had so much access to, to Musk. So. Insane. Yeah. All the, all the. You just see Musk for everything he is at work and in his personal life, which is wonderful. But, but there's this I noticed, I guess, in production meetings or some, you know, whenever [00:19:00] they're discussing assembly lines, Elon Musk has this thing he just calls the algorithm, these 5 steps about the processes.Michael Gibson: And one of them is. Is to constantly delete unnecessary superfluous things, but how do you know if it's, if it's necessary? Well, you got to delete it and if the thing's not working then you bring it back.Simone Collins: Yeah. And if you're not adding at least 10 percent back, you're not doingMichael Gibson: it. So if you're not adding 10 percent back, then you're not deleting enough.Michael Gibson: And that to me is a good example of like how to negotiate these boundaries of the known and the unknown is like you're going to have to go back and forth. And if you're not doing some amount of deleting and then bringing back, you're not doing it enough. And likewise, I think flirting with controversial ideas when you're getting up on the edge of these things, it's like you're it's it's so hard to maintain the balance and hit that edge.Michael Gibson: So you like, sometimes you go a little too far. Sometimes you're coming back.Malcolm Collins: The personal assistant story. That's from Elon Musk, right? Simone. What personal assistant story? I think it was a story, it was one billionaire anyway, where his personal assistant was like, I want [00:20:00] some more money, like I want equity.Simone Collins: Oh, that was from the 2015 biography of Elon Musk. No, no,Malcolm Collins: no.Michael Gibson: It's not from the new. The Ashley Vance.Malcolm Collins: But it is, it is a good example of what he's talking about, where they're like, I want equity in the stuff you're doing. And he goes, well, you do seem to provide a lot of value. Okay, let's try this. How about you stop working for me for a month and I see if I miss you.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Yes,Simone Collins: it is smart. It is smart. And she also didn't have a job when she came back. It is, it is. I mean, I like that ruthless optimization. I also love this way of looking like these little. Weird corollatory details. It oddly reminds me of autism diagnoses. Cause there's like all the stuff that they do to diagnose people with autism.Simone Collins: But then there are these like weird hints that like, Oh, that's a sign. If a kid lies on the floor and they like move a car back and forth, just look at the wheels and just do that for a long time, they're like, that's a sign. Or if you take off their shoes and they walk on their tiptoes, they're like, that's a sign.Simone Collins: I've seen the tiptoe thing. [00:21:00] And so it's, it's like you have the autism cues for brilliant talent. One thing I worry about though, like with, with talent is there's, there are many people that we even know of now, like who, who have grown up in our generation who like were the wunderkind of their time.Simone Collins: Yep. And then they, they flamed out, like they, they, they fell in a wrong direction. They, they just sort of got indulgent. They stopped working. Have you found any predictors for that grit that just keeps people working at it? Maybe MaybeMichael Gibson: something else. Yeah That's the one of the challenging things is with the receiving applications and trying to judge people I often use the metaphor that it's like fruit you Starts off fresh and gets stale or rotten fast.Michael Gibson: Cause it's here's a snapshot and then maybe they change or do something else that can be positive or negative. So what we decided is we just, the best thing we can do is try to get to know people over time. And if we have multiple interactions with someone. On some [00:22:00] level, we'll get a better sense of do they execute?Michael Gibson: Do they push through? One thing we do at the, on at 1517 now is we give out 1k grants to people. If someone says they want to build a prototype, but they just need to buy some parts, we'll kick them a thousand bucks. Oftentimes that turns into nothing. But what we get out of it is a chance to interact with someone over a short period of time, could be two months, three months, they get to work with us.Michael Gibson: And that gives us more information about, okay, do they follow through with what they say they're going to do? Other than that, you have to rely on stories, but those can be, those are like college admissions essays. They all follow the same pattern. Oh, you know, I, I had this tragedy, I had this setback, and then I dug within during the dark night of the soul and came back and found the answer.Michael Gibson: Yeah. So those aren't as believable. It's best if you can actually see over time, which is tough. I'll give youMalcolm Collins: some pattern recognition I've seen from the group that we were in. Because I was mentioning in the other interview we did that if you look at this old early EA, Less Wrong Rationalist group many of them grew into very influential people in today's, at [00:23:00] least scientific and economic ecosystem.Malcolm Collins: I think the biggest thing that I saw as a predictor, which really aligns with what you're saying that they are going to spin out and do nothing, even if they're known as very smart, is are they task oriented with money that's given to them? If somebody gives them a lot of money and then they use it to write a Harry Potter fan fiction, they're probably going to end up doing nothing with their life and just degrading AI research for an entire generation.Malcolm Collins: But I don't mean to be too spicy, but what I'm saying is I noticed this repeatedly is that some individuals, when they would get money or when they would get leeway, they would, they would spend it on sort of not exactly what they had originally envisioned while the people who were very task oriented, especially if they were willing to be task oriented on boring ish ideas, like it might not be like, Oh, I want to make shipping freight, you know, like marginally less expensive or something like that, even if they didn't succeed with that project, they typically eventually succeeded withMichael Gibson: something. That's a good point. [00:24:00] I think 1 thing we noticed too, was the people who could set their own goals. And. Home schoolers were best at this right away.Michael Gibson: They could schedule their day, they could, you know, move in and out of the world, make new friends out in the, in the real world. Whereas people who were even high achieving students at Ivy League schools, since their whole life has been structured for For 16 years and they've received the assignments and they've completed them.Michael Gibson: Well, it's a whole nother world to just step into Hey, what do I do with my day? I have no schedule. How do I organize this? And, and I saw some people get paralyzed because there was a transition period where they didn't. No, how to set their own schedule and goals or didn't feel comfortable doing it in the same way that a homeschooler would, do youMalcolm Collins: feel homeschoolers are better?Malcolm Collins: Like within your program? Do they have an edge over the HarvardMichael Gibson: kids? Yeah, we haven't done an account in a while, but I do recall in the early days of the fellowship that the homeschool or at least people who had some period of homeschooling. So it wasn't just like the full education, [00:25:00] but you know, it could be 2 or 3 years, especially in the high school period.Michael Gibson: Those people tended to be high performing. Yeah. There, there was a strong correlation there. Of course, I don't know. We didn't look at all the homeschoolers in the world, so I don't know, but the ones who applied for sure were very strong candidates. That's so,Malcolm Collins: so parents homeschooling still has high marks for the people who are the world experts on judging.Michael Gibson: Well, you know, to go back to the point about courage and grit you know, schools don't teach that stuff. I don't, I don't know. Maybe we don't even know how to impart that. Like, how do you, how would you run a class on? Challenging the status quo and majority of the opinion or disobedience. If you had a class on disobedience, the first lesson should be, you don't show up.Malcolm Collins: I love that you get, you get, you grade them based on whether or not they show up.Michael Gibson: If you show up, you let them know you've failed. SoMalcolm Collins: I actually, so one thing I'd love to close this, this particular interview is, is [00:26:00] the craziest story of an entrepreneur or something like that, that you encountered.Malcolm Collins: That only could have happened given the age of the people that you were interacting with.Michael Gibson: Hmm. Well, one thing the young have that's just a general advantage is that I've seen is that they have no big duties and obligations that older people accumulate, like mortgages, pets, 22Michael Gibson: year old who can just sleep on a couch and work. Night and day weekends that, that, you know, gives an advantage of speed and hard work. So that's just independent of that. But in terms of, let's see you know, some people I've worked with, I don't, I think there's just also something to. People don't want to admit this, but there's a biological life cycle to our creativity and our fluid intelligence.Michael Gibson: And I think some of the people I've met are [00:27:00] certainly far ahead of the curve on, on IQ and creativity, but they, they, they have to accumulate some amount of knowledge in a field, but they still have fresh eyes when they come to it. And they've got that speed of mind. And so they're able to, to see things that I guess, you know, more established people aren't.Michael Gibson: Aren't seeing. So, you know, the example of that could be Vitalik Budin or Austin Russell. You know, they, I don't wanna say they discovered what they discovered 'cause they were young, but certainly they had the energy and, and, and the fresh mind to see things that, that, you know, the more established people in their field weren't thinking about or, or in the case of the blockchain, I mean, maybe there's something where younger people are willing to experiment more with weird stuff and think about it.Michael Gibson: That, that's very. Very strange. But to back to the larger point, I think it is true. You look at the psychological research on achievement, especially as measured by things like in the arts, it could be, you know, how many masterpieces someone has or in, in science, how many papers they publish and what papers win them [00:28:00] the Nobel prize and all of that.Michael Gibson: And there's pretty clear. You know, there's a rise in the twenties and a peak in the, in the thirties, and then people taper off in middle age. And, and each field has different averages, but it's pretty constant that people are very productive in their youth. It was that they aren't later on. And, and I, I'll just say, I hate as a society that we don't admit this.Michael Gibson: Because,Malcolm Collins: because we were in his twenties, you know, in his twenties when he came up with all this. Yeah.Michael Gibson: In the same way that I guess it's like feminism told women, you know, they could have it all or or they could wait and then There's just this biological reality that it becomes harder and harder to have kids in your 30s and 40s.Michael Gibson: So, you know, I think it's a disservice to tell women that they can, they can wait. They should really think about that. I think it should be something. Okay. They don't, I'm not saying everyone has to have kids, although it would be great. But on the other hand, they should know Hey, there's this window where this is [00:29:00] possible.Michael Gibson: And, you know, unless we invent new things. It's something you have to reckon with.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's why I wrote all our books when we were still young. But yeah, no, I, I actually, there's a concept that we have brought up in some of our work before that hasn't been talked about in the mainstream society. But I think it's a way that you can sort of test this.Malcolm Collins: We call it the concept of brain rot, and it seems to happen to some individuals as they get older. It seems to happen to everyone eventually, but the core sign of it in an individual. That we use to measure how much brain rot somebody has is in a social situation when they're interacting with you, how much of the time or how many times do they bring up the self narrative?Malcolm Collins: So people with a high degree of brain rot. Will constantly be in self narrative loops, like this is what I was doing, or this is who I am, or this is the type of person I am. Whereas people without Brainwot are typically focused on efficacious ideas, like what's happening in [00:30:00] society and how do I affect it.Michael Gibson: Yeah, yeah. Huh. I'll have to pay attention more. I think, yeah, that's interesting to brain rot. I think this is part of the longevity research. I think no one is really approaching enough or tackling or scratching on enoughMalcolm Collins: is well, they don't want to. I mean, I'll give you know that we're pretty against life extension.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. It's an inevitability, not just of our biology, but of the way that ideas sortMichael Gibson: of begin. We think it's a feature, not a bug. Okay. Yeah, you just accumulate all these categories and concepts and frameworks. And then it's tough to, once they're set in at 70, you're not, you're so resistant to new concepts.Simone Collins: Well, and you're also incentivized to encrench yourself in more power. You're not as distributed to begin new yeah, onto what you have. And you're going to resist anyone who's trying to change the world order. And that wouldMalcolm Collins: also be my self narratives that are important to them. Because if they're in this position of power, they need to constantly reiterate self narratives that reinforce this position of power they have.Malcolm Collins: Right.Michael Gibson: Yeah, so one counterexample [00:31:00] of peopleSimone Collins: We've met people in their 20s who have brain rot. Yeah. And we've met people who in their 90s don't. And I think with aging, which is so underrated. With it's just use it or lose it. Like it's shown with cognitive performance, it's shown with like different like organs.Simone Collins: I don't think it's true.Malcolm Collins: I think it's just I think, I think it's that people who don't have it aren't using it. And so you, anyway, Michael was going to sayMichael Gibson: something. Oh, the one counterexample people bring up when it comes to productivity in late age is the mathematician Paul Erdos. He's this God, he's like the Kevin Bacon.Michael Gibson: They're mathematicians. Erdos number where it's like, how many people are in the network? Are you away from a paper from Erdos or something? I forget exactly how it's the index works, but at any rate, he apparently was very productive into his eighties, maybe even his nineties. But what stands out about him is that he was fearless when it came to dropping a field in mathematics and then just moving to a new one.Michael Gibson: Late in life. So he reached, you know, I [00:32:00] guess he hit the point. He knew when, when his mind was saturated in a particular topic and then he just let it go and he had beginner's mind all over again and something new. And so I think there to the brain rot is like, there's this clutching at identity. Like you're known as this, you know, string theorists or a macro economist.Michael Gibson: And there's no way. 55, all of a sudden you're going to give up macro economics and suddenly start working in some other field where you'll have to be a beginner and suck again. Yeah. MaybeSimone Collins: this is also why parents are now so strongly dissuaded from saying anything about children's character. Like now everyone says.Simone Collins: Never say, Oh, you're so smart. Just say, wow, you tried so hard. That was so clever what you did. Because if you have a child who starts to identify as smart, then they're more likely to not even try to do challenging things because the challenging thing might disproveMichael Gibson: their smartness. That's right.Michael Gibson: There's a complacency and a protectiveness that, that gets attached to that identity. Yeah.Simone Collins: That leads to ossification. So any sort of like attachment to [00:33:00] identity is very dangerous.Michael Gibson: Yeah, very much so.Malcolm Collins: Well, this conversation has been spectacular. I am so glad you joined us.Michael Gibson: I know, we can keep going on time flies.Malcolm Collins: My understanding of things is a lot. I, and it, it, it, it caused me to reflect on a lot of things that I hadn't reflected on in terms of how we look for students and what we try to optimize for withMichael Gibson: our own kids. Yeah. And, and one of the things that I'll leave with, I guess, is like talent identification is hard.Michael Gibson: It's something we've been doing, but what I wish we knew more about was development is like back to that courage question. Okay, how could we inculcate courage and young people? Cause it just seems like it's really hard to do and no one's doing it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and, and to that end, if we have young viewers.Malcolm Collins: Listening to this, you know, do you look into local hacker spaces? Do you look into moving to a hacker house for a while? Do you look into reaching out to your heroes? Because they're often a lot more receptive than you would imagine. And it's a good way you know, it, [00:34:00] it, it is this sort of immigrant mindset, which is, okay, this thing is crazy and would change everything for me, but I'm going to go out and do it.Malcolm Collins: And I would encourage, cause I think sometimes you grow up in an environment where you don't even realize that's an option. And then it's you know, you could just email them. You could, you could just move to San Francisco. If you actually are competent, you will start being invited to these parties very quickly.Michael Gibson: Absolutely. A lot of long ramps in San Francisco and cities that other cities don't have, like as great as Austin and Miami are I think they lack. A lot of the on ramps that San Francisco hasSimone Collins: like that. Nobody goes to Miami thinking, I'm going to work hard and build my future.Malcolm Collins: I want to be clear. It doesn't have as many on ramps as it used to.Malcolm Collins: Now, most of the on ramps I've seen to this cultural group are actually online on ramps. Yes. Discord threads of like nerds and stuff like that. That is where I see the actual on ramps occurring. But it is, it used to be that San Francisco was where you would go [00:35:00] to do this. Yep.Michael Gibson: Yep. Anyway, enjoyed the conversation.Michael Gibson: Thanks for having me.Malcolm Collins: I loved it too. And let's hope San Francisco can ascend from its desiccated state right now. I don't know if it ever will, butMichael Gibson: it might. Well, we can only hope. Let us pray.Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, Michael, thank you so much. And everyone, please make sure you check out 1517. com and also paperbell on fire.Simone Collins: Oh, and you're also on Twitter. But you're not Michael Gibson. You are William underscore Blake. So check them out on Twitter as well. Right. Thanks. Bye. . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We are joined by author Richard Hanania to discuss his controversial new book "The Origins of Woke." Richard argues that modern woke ideology stems directly from changes to civil rights law in the 60s and 70s, not broader cultural shifts. He traces how pursuing equality of outcomes rather than opportunity put quotas and disparate impact front and center, leading to impacts on testing, HR, and more. We debate whether wokeness may also have religious origins. Richard details the role of government in racial classification, Title IX, and mandating practices at universities. We discuss potential government action to combat wokeness, and whether running for office with an unorthodox approach could drive change.Simone Collins: [00:00:00]Hi, today we are joined by a very special guest, the author on Substack and Twitter, Richard Hanania. Really awesome work. We love following him and we love talking with him even more.So we're so excited he's coming on the podcast .Malcolm Collins: Well, so an interesting thing is, is. with our audience, you're hitting an audience. It's going to be great for your book. The origins of woke. But it great in an interesting way because we are so interested in the same type of stuff.We actually are going to have persistent disagreements about the types of questions that normal people have literally no vested interest in. Exactly. I am so interested. And I know our audience are interested. Here your theory on the origins of woke presented in like the short version that will get them excited for the book.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Richard Hanania: So the, the basic argument, if you're going to send up, you know, you're going to sum it up in a sentence is that wokeness is caused by government policy through via [00:01:00] civil rights law. And it's a strong claim and it's not, you know, it's a very, it's a claim that can you know, it could be misinterpreted and of course it doesn't explain literally every single thing that ever happened.Like, it doesn't explain like Z's or pronouns or, or whatever, but the basic outline of like, all policy is racist. If it has like a disparate impact, how we classify race in this country. You know, the fact that our institutions have HR departments that and DEI offices that are obsessed with race. It's like, That is ultimately traceable to law.There's a fascinating history there and it can potentially be undone by law too.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, so I mean, you've gotten fairly in the weeds in your book into like how this first was introduced into law and why it wasn't stopped as it was happening. Can you talk a little to that?Richard Hanania: Yeah, so this is a history book.I mean, I want to say origins of woke. I mean, my background is in political science. I'm trying to like, meet the standards of like, a good social science argument of like, how we got here. And so that requires a lot of history. And yeah, I mean, the civil rights movement. I [00:02:00] mean, that's the basically every school children know about it.It's, you know, the idea that, you know, there was there was a sort of this moral sort of wave in reaction to Jim Crow laws in America in the 1960s that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And what happened after that is that the people, you know, who were involved in that movement didn't just pack up and go home and embrace that she wasn't solved overnight.There was, you know, pretty much immediately within, you know, within You know, within literally years there was a move towards equality of outcome rather than equality of results. And what happened, what happened from there was you had to start pushing, you know, quotas or quasi quotas onto private institutions.You had to start going after standardized tests. And later the same civil rights act and other, you know, associated laws, smaller less important laws were used to go after free speech through hostile work environment and, and harassment and all these things really led to the rise of HR really led to like a institutional homogenization.And so it's sort of the genesis of how we got here. SoMalcolm Collins: can you talk about [00:03:00] when really the moment happened when it moved from equality of opportunity to equality of outcome, like in the legal system? I mean, thereRichard Hanania: are, you know, there's so many sort of, you know, there's so many sort of, you know, steps on the way, but I think the Greggs decision in 1971 was, you know, pretty much the ratification of it by the Supreme Court.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thought it would lose that case. It actually sort of encouraged that. plaintiffs not to appeal because they thought the legislative history was so clear that you could use tests and you couldn't just say they were racist on the grounds that whites do better on them than blacks.They said, clearly that's not what the law meant. That's not what the law says. They thought they would lose. It goes to the Supreme court and there's a unanimous decision. I mean, the Supreme court would surprise people on race in a lot of ways. And during the Warren and Berger years in the 1960s and 1970s but that really, that really codified it.And then it was sort of off to the races.Malcolm Collins: So can you educate our audience on the Greeks decision? What happened in it? What was at stake?Richard Hanania: Yeah. Yeah, okay. So the greg's decision was basically a lawsuit against [00:04:00] a corporation in North Carolina company in North Carolina. I think it was a textile factory. And they had given basically a test, you know, they used to discriminate based on race you know, before the civil rights act, then they integrated, but they used to, they, they would have basically like an IQ test and they would have some educational requirements like high school degree and basically went to the Supreme Court.Somebody argued that this was discriminatory just because blacks did not do as well on the test as whites did, right? This idea of disparate impact had been around for a while. But when they passed and signed the Civil Rights Act, you know, the belief was that that discrimination had to be intentional.You had to actually have an intent to want to keep somebody out of a job. But then this was the theory of disparate impact. You went to the Supreme Court on that basis and the Supreme Court basically said, anything that has a disparate impact is basically presumptive, can be presumptively seen as discriminatory as violating the Civil Rights Act.And then it becomes on the business as a, as the burden of proving that it's actually necessary. And there's, you know, all the, all kinds of steps to determine what that means. We can [00:05:00] get into the weeds, but that's basically the idea. So when you hear something is racist, because whites do better on it than blacks, it's all from a Supreme Court decision in 1971.Malcolm Collins: Fascinating. So, question, when you look at the current, the most recent Supreme Court ruling that's, you know, on everyone's mind these days, with, with you know, tied to early colleges and admissions and everything like that I don't know what it's called off the top of my head, but is it sort of like the opposite of this?Do you think it could lead to an untangling of some of this? Or do you think it's, it's just, I don't know. It's, itRichard Hanania: is a it's a related area of law. It's not the, so that, that one was about employment. This one is about universities directly discriminating based on race. And it's a, you know, you can't do that.And it is, I mean, it is important. I think you've seen stories, even though it doesn't directly apply to employment. You've seen stories of like corporations, like sort of becoming a little more skittish about diversity. It's a signal of sort of how the Supreme Court is thinking about these issues and how.Future cases will be ruled on and you know, whether it [00:06:00] matters or you know, how much it matters in the end is really going to be determined. It's a very sort of a boring answer, but it's going to be determined by you know, who the judges are in the future. I mean, it's going to be determined by election results and who's appointing the judges and who's who's the Senate you know, confirming them because like, you Every, you know, every decision is sort of never in our legal system.Nothing is ever a final decision. Everything is just sort of shifting. You know, the goal points 1 direction or not. If 3 conservative Supreme Court justices die and are replaced tomorrow, right? That decision will go back and we'll go. We'll go even further in the other direction. So it, I mean, it matters.You see, sort of, it's sort of like, You know, like you fire, you know, artillery barrage at an enemy and they scramble for a while. If you don't follow up with any other fire, they're going to regroup and they're going to be right back in their original position. If you start hitting them again while they're scrambling, you can really change things.So, you know, how much it matters will depend on future decisions and future elections. As boring as that sounds as an answer. Well,Malcolm Collins: no, it is. It is actually an interesting answer. So what I find interesting is [00:07:00] how different our perceptions on the origins of Woke are and what Woke is, and I'd love it if you could comment, so I'll give a brief explanation of where I think our differences of perception are, and I'd love you to present an argument for, for your perception versus our perception.Ours, so, so if I'm going to characterize yours and you can tell me I'm mischaracterizing it. Wokeism is downstream of legal decisions that were originally tied to the civil rights movement, but basically ran out ofRichard Hanania: control.Malcolm Collins: Whereas our perception is that wokeism is a memetic virus much closer to a religion, and that it literally evolved out of a form of Quakerism, and that it, Instead of coming from these decisions that it actually sort of infects cultural movements, even iterations of religions.Basically kills everything they ever stood for, then [00:08:00] marionettes their corpses and claims to be them. And that it is not the civil rights movement, that the civil rights movement had entirely different goals than modern wokeism. And that the civil rights movement now is just the corpse of something that used to matter, being marionetted by the thing that killed it.So how do you,Richard Hanania: I mean, I, I hear these arguments and I talk about them a little bit in the book. How does one go proving that? I mean, what is this sort of the, the, the, the historical analysis that gives you the causal mechanism that shows you that that Quakerism is sort of the root of this.Malcolm Collins: Well, so we sort of try to trace it through time and through the educational system that was originally controlled by the Quaker movement.And then we look for weird things that woke culture does that we don't see in any other culture. I can almost think of it as like vestigial organs. So, like, an example of this would be two things that are like really weird that I wouldn't exp or three things. So three things that we only see in Wokeism and this form of Quaker culture.One thing that [00:09:00] was really common in Quaker culture was that young children would chastise adults for moral failings. No other culture in society does this yet was in the Woke movement. We have things like Greta Thornburg. Another thing that they would do is they would have a form of religious meeting where you wouldn't have a leader.But people would just stand up and talk when moved by God, which is very similar to the way meetings were structured if you look at something like Occupy Wall Street. The final one is, is that Quaker culture was famously really, really prudish about sexuality, yet like claimed to be like sexually open ish which is a weird thing you see in woke culture, which is like the idea of woke culture is sexual openness, and yet they are Extremely prudish, especially about male sexuality, which seems to go against their raison d'etre.The reason I don't think it's the civil rights movement, which I think is pretty interesting as a direct, is the civil rights movement was about creating equality. Where I think [00:10:00] woke culture's goal is to remove in the moment emotional pain, which is a very different goal than creating equality.Richard Hanania: So, yeah, as far as that vestigial organ, you know, analysis, you know, I think that, you know, I'm just trying to think, is there any historical examples where I could say, well, you know, there's this here.I mean, it sounds to me a bit like Maoism. I don't think civil rights awokeness comes from Maoism, but if I wanted to, I could say, you know, young generation denouncing the old prudish about sexuality. What was the, what was the second one? Crazy meetings that are, you know, it seems they did have that under, under Mao.Yeah. Right. Well, IMalcolm Collins: mean, could you argue that woke culture? I mean, we do know if you look at something like Antifa. So I'm just gonna make a different argument now. Woke culture is Maoism. We do know with stuff like Antifa that we had actual like communist training cells, like training these organizations, which then could have disseminated to other parts of woke culture.Richard Hanania: Yeah, so, so I think that like the, you know, the, the stronger argument for it being you know, [00:11:00] descending from the civil rights. I have the strongest argument is that it was a lot of cases, the same people. I mean, it was the same people who were preaching equality of opportunity. A lot of it was a strategic.I mean, there was a lot of communist involvement in the civil rights movement. They you know, they of course sold it as, you know, colorblindness and most of the members of Congress and the senators who voted for it were not communists or anything close to that. But then on a drop of a hat, sort of when they were, when the public attention was off of them, you know, they went and they pushed for equality of results.So whatever was motivating the civil rights movement, I think it's a combination of like. You know, going back to Lincoln, the sort of noble idea of just like race, not mattering and, you know, free markets and free labor and people living as individuals, there was, there was that it was a coalition of that and just communists, which is what it, you know, quality of results, no matter what.And sort of the, that, that latter part of the movement just sort of, took over and you can just say, I mean, it's, it's the same organizations, the NAACP, right. Color blindness in 1960, all about quotas in 1970, 1975.Simone Collins: [00:12:00] Well, it sounds like that the, the Richard explanation is like the statutory legal governing origins of it.And the Malcolm story is the like mimetic religious, like sort of intuitive origins of it. And they both totally play into each other. They just come from really different, like perspectives of. Like how, how actually they both sort of reflect on you, like both of your, your ways of modeling the world and your education, like, you know, you're coming from a very different sort of academic background.Like Malcolm is looking at this from the perspective of someone who studied psychology and neuroscience, and you're looking at it from the perspective of like politics and history and like, you know, what, what concrete things are happening. I think it's really interesting to see. Like how that playsMalcolm Collins: out.By the way, I found your arguments very compelling and they made me challenge some of my own beliefs. Like going through your book and going through you talking on other podcasts and hearing just how specifically you were able to chart things.Richard Hanania: Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think people, [00:13:00] yeah, I think people can I think I'm glad you said that because that is really sort of a strength of the book when I'm talking on social media or when I'm talking on podcasts, it's, it's hard to just because it is, it's not, it's not a long book.It's like 210 pages, but it's dense. Like, you know, I don't do the academic thing. Book author thing of repeating the same things over. I'd be a hypocrite if I did because I wrote an article about why you shouldn't read books because books are often just a bunch of fluff of people saying the same thing over and over.I only gave you 210 pages, but they're all each one is necessary. Right. And, you know, I do trace, you know, I do trace that history very, very closely. And it depends on what you're talking about. There are some things that I think I can show like, Absolutely conclusively that it was governed, like how we classify race.I mean, that chapter, the word AAPI, the phrase, didn't exist in the English language before the 1970s. It was a government classification, and then it became part of the English language. What are the odds that it, you know, was anything, it was anything else, right? I'mMalcolm Collins: not familiar with this. Can youRichard Hanania: go into this part of the book?Oh, so it's called Asian American Pacific Islander. So we have this category in America called Amer, Asian [00:14:00] American Pacific Islander. I have a chapter on how the government created new races, right? And when I have Google, I have a, a couple graphs of Google Ngrams for one for Hispanics and one for Asians.And I showed that. It does not, AAPI, Asian American Pacific Islander, does not appear in any English language book until the late 1970s. It a government category, and why it became a government category is just sort of funny. It was just because Hawaii was a state, and like, It was like a third, like native Hawaiian and like a third Asian or something.They're like, okay, miscellaneous everything. Everyone from Hawaii is just an Asian American Pacific Islander. And it became an identity. And now in 2020, you see hashtag stop AAPI hate. You see on Hulu, they say AAPI heritage month. I mean, it's amazing. This mimetic thing, which was literally just invented by the government.And now it's like, it's like race. Like the thing that you think would be like sort of primordial, right? Something that would just be very natural was just clearly so clearly created by the government. Oh,Malcolm Collins: that's also fascinating [00:15:00] because there are groups that have so little in common. Yeah,Richard Hanania: it's sort of a, it's sort of a, a test case of like how ridiculous, like you could, you could, you could just construct these things.Simone Collins: Right. I mean, it's the same with Latino though. Like, I don't know, like we, we grew up, I think insensitively, like just sort of running with it, at least like I did in California and super progressive Silicon valley society. And then Malcolm and I acquired a business with headquarters in Peru and then like a us team that had people from all over Latin America.And we discovered that like, people that would be considered Latino or Latinx, though no one wants that like, totally don't see themselves as part of a group. Of course not, because they're not. They're super culturally different. They wouldMalcolm Collins: Hold on. I can see how plausibly you could say these groups were colonized by many of the same people and stuff like that and so they had the same pressures on them, but like comparing a Pacific Islander to like a [00:16:00] Chinese person is insane.Yeah, it is, it is. Okay, okay. What are some of the other quirks you ran into?Richard Hanania: Yeah. Yeah, so there is, I mean, the Hispanic one is not as absurd as the API one, but you do see the word Hispanic Latino sort of takes off. So it's not like it didn't exist in the English language. It existed and actually Mexican American and Puerto Rican go down around the same time period.So we start think we start sort of lumping. These, you know, these groups together you know, like the, the, some things are so direct, like the title line stuff. This is more recent history. So people even might be familiar with this. But like the government and the Obama administration is basically going to universities and telling them.Hire a Title IX coordinator. This is how you judge sexual assault cases. You know, you have preponderance of the evidence. You don't have you know, beyond a reasonable doubt standard. And they're just like, and they're giving them like the feminist literature of like, you know, how to understand gender relations and telling them like who they have to hire.Right. They're saying you're going to have to have you know, the title line coordinator. And so there's very [00:17:00] direct here. Another thing. I mean, I think people will really appreciate is universities, right? So you think of universities, they're the origins of the other, the origins of wokeness, right?There are places where you know, the craziest people go and they have the craziest ideas and they're obsessed with identity. In 1971 it was the federal government that goes to Columbia University and they go, give us your data on your, you know, race and sex of your hires. And we want to see if you're discriminating and the president of Columbia University is scandalized by this.He writes an open letter. Saying, what do you talk? We're an institution of higher learning. We don't even collect that data. We are, we are so decentralized. I don't want to ask, start asking departments like which race are they hiring or if they're hiring enough women. And at the end of the note, the end of the letter, he goes you know, we have to do it to maintain our funding.And so we'll have to become a new kind of institution. I mean, you have the history of Columbia literally holding the line for merit and and you know, colorblindness and, you know, academic standards and then just being bullied into becoming something else through the federal government. And I wish there was [00:18:00] more.You know, I wish there was more research on like the history of this, because you look at, and there's not like tons of like, you know, there's not like historians haven't like really paid much attention. Yeah, you can go back and you can see the New York Times articles from 1971 talking about this. You can find the open letter.It's sort of an obscure document from the Columbia president, but, you know, there's like, you know, there's, there must be a rich history there of what was going on in these years that I don't think anyone has taken up to my knowledge, but it's just, it's just sort of, you know, it's sort of crazy how, how.Like direct, you could see the influence of government on these institutions.Simone Collins: So if it started with government, are you of the opinion that would have to end with government, that like, if people wanted to shift culture in a different direction, they would be best advised to try to do so through policy andRichard Hanania: government?I think it's the most direct way to do so. Yes. And it's not, you know, they should, they should fight the mimetic war, of course, and they should make culture and art and. Media and go on Twitter and make their arguments. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all that is, all that is great. The law though, I mean, it shapes incentives and it [00:19:00] shapes institutions and what it does is not always visible, right?If you like, if you have a law that says you have to make sure you don't have a disparate. In fact, you hire some HR person you know, five years later they do some program. Nobody traces it to the original civil rights law. Right. And so it's like going in the reverse direction. Yeah. is going to be like the same thing.You're going to be basically making these HR people, you're going to be making them less necessary. You're going to be making corporations less skittish about racial discrimination, or maybe more skittish in the case of anti white or anti male discrimination. And there's going to be downstream effects, you know, months, years even decades down the line.And so, yeah, I have a you know, my second to last chapter, it spells out the political program. There are specific things, you know, government can do. Well, soMalcolm Collins: what, what are you going to run for office? Yeah.Richard Hanania: You think I would do well running for NBC by Twitter?Simone Collins: I mean, name awareness is like the number one factor that you need.Richard Hanania: Maybe, maybe when I get to Trump's level of name awareness, [00:20:00] maybe, maybe all the stuff I say won't matter, but yeah, no, I don't think I have enough to overcome all that.Malcolm Collins: Simone went to a council thing to like teach you how to run for office because she's thinking about running in the next election cycle.And they're like, well, the first thing you have to do is delete all your social media. So no one knows anything crazy. You said, and we were like, wow, if we had a political assaulted, they would literally have a heart attack. Yeah.Richard Hanania: So what are you running for Simone?Simone Collins: We're, we're looking at potentially running for just state house in PennsylvaniaRichard Hanania: for our district.No, don't say just state house. That would, I would be impressed if you became a state rep. I would beSimone Collins: impressed too. It's, it's a, it's a, what the hell? It's, it's a, our district is very much on the edge and running as a Republican, like the, the female Republican challenger to our Democratic incumbent has lost two times in a row.So like, not, not a good sign, but I mean, we agree with you that government is. Is crucial in changing these. We also somewhat disagree with the, the philosophy that those who are elected to office are elected because they are like. Good guys with clean records. [00:21:00] I mean, Trump, we say broke the ultimate glass ceiling and prove that people likeMalcolm Collins: us, exactly.Richard Hanania: Yeah. I think there is. I mean, I don't know, like other candidates don't, there's not a lot of Trump like candidates, right? There aren't, but there's notSimone Collins: a lot of people who have the balls to do it. Here's the thing is you, you decide you want to run for office and you're serious about it, right? So like you do all the right stuff, which is you hire the political consultant, you hire the campaign manager, you hire the pollster.They all tell you to do exactly the same thing. They are not incentivized to look at efficacy. They're not incentivized to look at ROI. They're incentivized to get hired again. So they're not going to do anything risky. They're not going to do anything weird. Of course, they're going to do all the stuff that is like extremely conventionally safe.Because if they, if they do something weird and for any reason you don't get elected and there are many reasons why you could be a really promising candidate and not get elected and your district is just, you know, zoned in a weird way like they're out, so they're not going to do anything. So I think the problem is that most responsible people who care about it don't have the balls.To run for office using any [00:22:00] unconventional tactic We also think and i'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on this because you recently got a lot of press For something that most people would be terrified to get pressed about right? You you got sort of like a lot of controversy but we found personally that the most controversial coverage we get and the most hate we get also leads to the most actual reach For people who are genuinely like engaged with our message.So whenever we get positive Press were like really disappointed because it literally does nothing like nothing moves a needle. No new subscribers, no new engagement, no new followers. And then like we get hate and we just like tons more, tons more engagement and meaningful engagement, positive engagement.So I'm curious, like, and so like part of, part of our thing with like running for office is we're like, you know what, you know, leave the bad social media up. Let your, let your opponents smear you because as long as your vices are not deal breakers for the thing you're running for. And like for Trump, right?Like in the fact that he was like, that he lied about his finances and you know, let him answer. Yeah. I'm curious.Richard Hanania: [00:23:00] Yeah, so the adage, you know, no publicity is bad publicity. I think there's, there is some truth to that. The worst thing in the universe for a politician or an intellectual, you know, depending on the, on the field, but a lot of field is to be ignored.So bad press at least puts you in the arena, right? If anyone is, you know, most people are not thinking about most other people, most of the time, and most people will not leave a mark and most. Things that they try. So if they can write 10 hit pieces on you, a house candidate in Pennsylvania, that's, that's, you're at the 99.9th percentile of attention for someone running for, for that position. You know, and I did 1 thing you're getting at someone that I think is, you know, there might be something to it. Is that like the whole. Industry, you know, there's fake expertise. I've heard about fake expertise that the whole sort of political conventional wisdom is sort of fake that there was, you know, something to be said for that there was you know, the trial, the whole Trump phenomenon.I mean, if you watch the Trump, you know, the Trump phenomenon, they were always like, he can't get when the primaries, okay, he can't win the election. Okay. Now he's finished. He's not going to be the nominee in 2024. They're always, they're [00:24:00] always wrong. Right on Trump. And the market, even the markets are following sort of the conventionalism.The markets have always underestimated Trump. And I think, you know, another case, I think, I don't know how much, how close to your fall in the current Republican primary, but my, my friend, Vivek Ramaswamy is sort of doing the unconventional thing. He's not as unconventional as you guys are, but he isSimone Collins: trying to be the new Trump, like the reasonable Trump.Richard Hanania: Yeah, and I, he's got a very good sort of ear for where the base is. So it's, it is, I don't know if he's actually doing something that unusual or different, or he's just like, he's just like better than the consultants are sort of knowing where the base is and where to go. Yeah. But the ideaSimone Collins: that like, Conservatives are, but I will say he's way too, like, good.He doesn't have enough. I don't know what's wrong with him. If I cannot clearly name someone's vices, they're not doing it. Right. It per our philosophy.Richard Hanania: Yeah, I mean, people do say he's too slicker. They're this and that. I mean, you know, but he's done amazingly for someone who came from nowhere, right? The fact that he's, you know, almost in second place and some polls you know, ones that I've seen.But in fact, he's even like in the top five, [00:25:00] given he was nobody, you know, six months ago. It's just amazing. And so, yeah, I mean, I think you guys. Yeah, I mean, I, I, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a theory worth testing. I mean, you guys are not going to be like, what, what, what are your options? You're not going to become a conventional, you know, political couple, right?We can't, no. So like, you know, we'll learn something from it if nothing else. So yeah. Are you, are you is it, is it a sure thing you areSimone Collins: running? We're not totally sure yet. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: whenever I hear something like, I'm like, okay, how do we fix this? And you're like, here's how you could fix this. And I'm like, okay, then how do we do that?You know, get more sane people into office. I think is a really good goal and I, I like, well, I mean, you seem to be working on it with Ramaswamy so that's cool. Yeah, I'd love to see you run some day though.Richard Hanania: The world would have to be a lot, a lot crazier. I've sort of, you know, I just, I value my freedom a lot.I've sort of, you know, I wasn't thinking about academia for a while and then I was sort of doing a few think tank things and then finally it was just like, [00:26:00] I am, you know, I just, I just don't want to be, yeah. I don't want to be chained to anything,Simone Collins: you know, just politics is like academia. You just don't have to be competent.Richard Hanania: Well, yeah, but you have to be at a certain place at a certain time, right. You have to sort of, you know, go where they tell you. Right. I'm fine with being competent. I just, I just don't wanna, I just don't wanna have to be anywhere. I just don't , I just love my own schedule and my own, my own freedom. So, but no, you guys doing it.That, that's awesome. I mean, I, I, I, I didn't know about this. I'm, I'm really glad to hear it.Malcolm Collins: What are you going to do with all our guests trying to convince them to run for office?Simone Collins: You know, okay, well, we can do the test run, right? We'll throw ourselves under the bus, then we'll get like... It would expandRichard Hanania: my sort of, my understanding of what's possible.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Like if we were like, Oh, if you do this and here's our secret way of making it work, then you might actually get all of ourMalcolm Collins: spicy internet friends to run.Simone Collins: And many people, I think Tyler Cowen like put out a blog post about this recently, but he, he genuinely believes that, that one of the most meaningful [00:27:00] EA causes.Is to reform the Republican party because right now it's kind of, it's kind of lost. It doesn't have like, like a sort of intellectual leadership or new tone. It could really use it. And we'd love to do for the Republican party, what justice Democrats kind of did with the, the, the Democratic party where they moved the Overton window and they installed some, someMalcolm Collins: specific Democrat story or like.What's that? Justice Democrats. Are you familiar with what happened? Oh, no. I'm familiar with Justice Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, they were incredibly successful. So for the audience who's not familiar, there was this group that was like, can we change the Everton window of the democratic party by basically holding like America's Got Talent style like auditions for who would be good candidates?And then funding them to run by basically telling them what to do. And you know, this sounds like an insane idea, but this is where like AOC came from. This is where Omar came from. This is where like the squad came from. They really did move the Overton window of the entire democratic party while [00:28:00] capturing democratic Gen Z.Yeah,Richard Hanania: no, you, yeah, you're right. You know, the, the, the specifics of the Republican party though, is it's interesting because it's you know, like the, the justice Democrats were sort of, they were coming from a place where they sort of, you know, the base, you know, like the base of both parties is sort of more economically leftist.Then the parties themselves are, so they were just saying, be even more economically leftist and then also like, well, I mean, they were also more economically liberal and so that they were sort of, you know, in that place where, and it was considered like, you know, being socially liberal was sort of consistent with all the you know, I think that the, with the Republican party, it's sort of different in that, like, first it's like, it has less of an intellect intellectual elite culture and has more of sort of a podcast and sort of, and not podcasts like radio and TV mostly.Yeah. And you guys are good on radio and TV, but you know, your, your audience is, you're competing with like, you know, Sean Hannity or something. Right. Just like the mouthpiece. Right. As far as like, as far as reach and then you have like this very sort of, you know, these [00:29:00] sort of like religious sort of rural concerns, you know, you're going to have to sort of navigate that, you know, your soci, your socioeconomic class is sort of different from where the Republican voter is.So it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea. Yeah. Have you thought about like running as a Democrat? I mean, was it always going to be Republicans for you guys?Malcolm Collins: I, I do not, one, I don't think it matters to run as a Democrat anymore. The democratic party's agenda is set. There's nothing you can do to change it.The Republicans post Trump, they can be anything they want. It's really exciting. But in addition to that, I do not think we keep having people trying to start pronatalist foundations that are tied to Democrats or like that are politically neutral and they keep getting crucified.Richard Hanania: Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.The Republicans can't be whatever. I think you have to, you have to, you have to check a few boxes. I think abortion, guns, taxes, I think you have to check this and you have to be like, I love Trump. You have to just love Trump personally. Right. But you're right. Other than that. Yeah. Democrats are sort of, there's more of sort of a comprehensive agenda of all Republicans.You have, you have a lot of space.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we'll, we'll see. I [00:30:00] mean, we'll see. All right. I have loved chatting with you. This was fantastic. We'll definitely do another episode with you and thank you so much for your time. I would really encourage our audience to check out his sub stack. Like somehow if you don't know who Richard Henenia is, yet you know who we are.He is very ideologically similar to us, but much more famous and has a broader so I am surprised. Like if you know who we are, but don't know who he is, You shouldSimone Collins: and definitely also check out his book, the origins of woke really interestingRichard Hanania: book and yeah, the self stack Twitter. I'm, I'm, you know, every thought I have is basically put on one of those places.So I thought you could follow that. All right. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have an insightful debate about why some celebrities seem to genuinely enjoy interacting with fans, while others recoil. Malcolm argues niche internet stars are more likely to be themselves publicly, feeling kinship with fans who understand their odd ideas. But Simone counters that reaching mainstream fame requires compromising your true self. They discuss how public personalities reacting negatively to fans likely feel cognitive dissonance about the persona being liked. They theorize on specific celebrities, concluding Bill Murray, Donald Trump and Andrew Tate are fully themselves, while progressive influencers often put on a facade. The lesson - pay attention to how famouses engage with fans for clues to their authenticity.Malcolm: [00:00:00] he was like, Oh, I have a parasocial relationship with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch all your episodes and I feel like. I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting the way I felt about that in the moment because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend, right?Like, I immediately felt like it was much more of a two way relationship than historically I have seen. People talk about parasocial. Well,Simone: more than you would expect. Right?Malcolm: And so then I begin to reflect on the people I know when they talk about their fans, do they have. A relationship where, , they genuinely feel an emotional connection to them, even when they haven't personally talked to somebody, they just meet someone, and this one's like, oh, I'm a big fan of your work, and they're immediately like, oh, yeah, we're going to get along, or do they sort of recoil at that? So then what is your thesis on what was causing this divide?Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, I am so afraid right now. For what reason? The, [00:01:00] imagine there's like a monster or like a murderer outside, outside your room, just outside and that feeling, that feeling, or like, like your worst enemy or like your boss or something is like right outside your, your door just waiting for you.Malcolm: So this is because there is a mess outside her door.Simone: There's a mess. I can, I canMalcolm: hear it. We got all of this stuff from my mom after she died and we've been putting it away. And Simone just always reacts this way to messes. Where is this existential sort of constant hatred and dread? By the way, Simone, speaking of messes and I get added the longer we're in a relationship, I get new little tasks I have to do.So I took a shower before this podcast and now I have to squeegee the walls of the shower after I do it. Oh, heart stains don't. I don't know if this is a task that anyone else has to do for their wife. I have not heard [00:02:00] of this as a part of regular life maintenance.Simone: If you have hard water, it is hard water.Malcolm: We have a whole system to help with the hardSimone: water and it's not enough. It's not enough. It gets the glass all smudgy and gross and cloudy. And I don't want that. But yeah, anyway, we're not going toMalcolm: talk about shower count. What, what, what inspired this podcast with a particular. So we're going to be at this Natalist conference.We're, we're not the ones running it. A lot of people think we're, we're the ones running it. No, another group is running it. Actually they've got some, some canceled people among them. So it will be spicier, I think, than a lot of things that we might put together ourselves. And we were talking as one of the people who was running it, but who we hadn't met yet.And he was like, Oh, I feel like, I already know, like, like I have a parasocial relationship with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch all your episodes and I feel like. I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting the way I felt about that in the moment because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend, right?Like, I [00:03:00] immediately felt like it was much more of a two way relationship than historically I have seen. People talk about parasocial. Well,Simone: more than you would expect. Right? Like when, yeah, when someone says, like, we feel like we have a parasocial relationship with you, we're like, oh, so, like, 1, you don't hate us for our views to, like, we're on the same page with some weird ideas.Like, we've, we've, yeah,Malcolm: but I want to get into here. Simone. Why? Because then I started thinking about, you know, Simone and I, I guess with guests we've had on and stuff like that, people can tell that we hang out at circles with lots of really high profile online celebrities in, and also IRL celebrities.And so then I begin to reflect on the people I know when they talk about their fans, do they have. A relationship where, like, they really like the relationship they have with their, their, their fans, like, they, they genuinely feel an emotional connection to them, even when they haven't personally talked to somebody, they just [00:04:00] meet someone, and this one's like, oh, I'm a big fan of your work, and they're immediately like, oh, yeah, we're going to get along, or do they sort of recoil at that?And when we started doing this, Simone you came up with, like, a really good heuristic for the group that would be like Yes, I get along really well. So, so we can, we can begin to lay this out. So I think people who get along, like who had seemed to think very fondly of their fans are people like Razeeb Khan.And then when we think about our friends who are celebrities who have the most antagonism to our fans, their fans, who would like, obviously we couldn't say names because of that, but they're generally like pop celebrities, I guess I'd say like people who are really famous, but was a really, really wideSimone: audience.A wider, more mainstream audience, I would say. Yeah. So the people we know who are niche celebrities tend to be much more in sync with their fans. And if someone doesn't, if they've never spoken with someone, but someone knows their work and really gets it, like they typically get on prettyMalcolm: well. Yeah. So then [00:05:00] what is it that you, your, your thesis on what was causing this divide?Simone: Yeah. I think that, that niche celebrities are much more likely to be genuinely themselves. And that's why one there's, there it's still niche. Like, I think that when you get to a certain level of mainstream appeal you, you aren't exactly allowed to be yourself anymore. Like you have to. I'm going to push back on that, but let me, you know, make my point is, is that you're not allowed, you basically have to like, appeal to more mainstream tastes and views.Kind of like politicians being forced to go toward the center to get more electorate when they're running for office. And so by doing that, you basically stop becoming yourself. And so when someone has a parasocial relationship with you in, in a more mainstream context. It isn't actually you, because you've had to compromise who you actually are to appeal to more people.Now tell me why you don't think that's fair. No, IMalcolm: think you're totally wrong about that. So I think your first point was correct. I think your second point was just so y nonsense.So, and unfortunately I have to talk [00:06:00] around this for our audience, because Simone always gets mad if I, like, Like, Razib, I know he wouldn't care, like, we've done, he's posted pictures with us and stuff in the past, I know he wouldn't care but like, other people we know, I have to sort of talk around when I'm trying to come up with examples but we know people who have a mainstream audience appeal, Simone, that are very much themselves within that audience.Simone: There are exceptions, there are exceptions. They're unusual. Like Donald Trump, I'm sure is one of those people. He's like, I don't know Donald Trump, but like he is definitely someone who seems like himself all the time.Malcolm: Right. And he is someone who, when people go up and they're like, I am a fan of your work.You can even see it in his eyes. He may not know that person, but they light up and he feels a genuine sense of kinship with the individual. Agree, agree. Because he is publicly whoSimone: he really is. But I would say that is a minority, a Well,Malcolm: actually, now I'm going to point out a different thing that you might not be thinking about.We also know people who are niche online celebrities who hate their fans. I [00:07:00] can think of two examples off the top of my head. I can't give names, Simone. I know you can't give names. You get angry at me. Yeah, I don't want to risk it in editing or something like that. I'm just going to say there are two examples that I know for a fact do not like their fans and feel like they, they seem to get a little afraid when they meet people in public who are their fans and both of them put on fake personalities.Simone: Okay. So you just, you just, yeah. Well, okay. Well, but okay. I would also say then at least the odds. So if you were looking at a sample of a hundred mainstream famous people, and you were looking at a sample of a hundred. Here's where you'reMalcolm: making the mistake. Here's where you're making the mistake. You're thinking about historic celebrities.Going forwards, if you look at celebrities that rose to fame in the last 10 years, Yeah, they'reSimone: much more niche. But I also think that we're seeing the death of the mainstream celebrity. I don't think we're just going to see that many mainstream, like, Broad, broad for everyone. Celebrities. The reasonMalcolm: why you used to have this trend is the same thing that you learned when you went to the political [00:08:00] consulting campaign.And they're like, well, the first thing you need to do is to delete all of your social media history so no one can ever find out anything weird or unusual or particular, you know, that you've ever said. These people were catering to like the way that boy bands used to become famous and the way that, you know, any of these corporately engineered stars became famous, but today there's a lot of stars that rise to fame simply to through appealing.Directly to an audience and there's been different ways that people have done that. So one of the things that you pointed out to me and this may help you better picture, you know, famous people who really don't like their fans are like mommy bloggers where they have to put on this veneer of being very Perfect.AndSimone: not stressed and together and notMalcolm: stressed. And yeah, like nothing's going on wrong in their life. And this causes them to have cognitive dissonance [00:09:00] around their interactions with people who say that they like them. And really interestingly, when they meet someone, probably the reason why the reaction is so viscerally negative with these individuals is the cognitive dissonance they experienced with every individual who's like, I really.Feel like I have a connection to you is they don't like that. They are not the person that person has a connection.Simone: Right. Right. Right. And yeah, I think a lot of when people get angry is when they personally, at least for me, like mostly whenever you see me angry and you think it's at you, it's because I'm mad at myself.So that actually makes a lot of sense. And I also think maybe a lot of the, the discomfort with meeting fans is like, maybe they will discover it's a lie, which could also beMalcolm: terrifying. I don't even think that's it. I think it's like the fan has a connection with an avatar of yourself that is better than who you really are.Oh, so you're blinded too. Highlights your own flaws as an individual. So that's one way it could cause emotional pain. Another way is that it's just, [00:10:00] and this is the thing with our friends who are just like publicly. I, I would call like media engineered type famous. They, they typically have just completely personalities than you would expect.So when you, like, if you get to know like a generic, I'd say like, let's say boy band celebrity or something like that, right? Their actual in person personalities are often just like entirely different than what you would think from their public personality. Which is, which is interesting because like when I think about the person who we're thinking about their in person personality is actually incredibly educated and erudite and sophisticated.And like really deep into like, you know, whether it's like AI or, or, or genetics or like all of the stuff that like we talk about on this, like, like our sort of personality group. Right. And yet publicly they would be thought of as just like another ditzy celebrity. And, [00:11:00] and I think that that would cause me a lot of pain when I met someone and they were like, I'm, I'm a huge fan of yours.I'm a huge, like, I feel like I already have a relationship with you and the person that they had a relationship with opposite these other like mommy bloggers types where the person they have a relationship with is actually better than who they really are, is actually so much less than what they really are.That might make me feel... Yeah, pretty brutally, you know, every time that happened in the way that it made me feel. And, and especially if they just like totally politically misjudge what your actual views are and stuff like that. And, and, and they're almost signaling themselves as like the polar opposite of the real you.Which I think is really interesting. But then the question is, and this is an interesting question for you. Do you think we'll maintain this? Because you had the thesis that, okay, if you get big enough, you eventually, or your image begins to disconnect from who you really are.Simone: I think if I. We're acting in isolation that would totally happen because I just don't, I'm, [00:12:00] I'm, I'm, I would say not ever really acting myself when I'm in a group, like in person with other people, right?Like, I'm that one of the reasons why we're sitting in separate rooms is I'm much more likely to be honest and myself and unfiltered if I'm in a room or like a room by myselfMalcolm: so reason. By the way, is that she is an AI iteration of myself. I just do the same thing twice and then put client filter.Simone: ThereMalcolm: was actually a a conspiracy theory about us a while ago. One of the earlier times we went viral. And the, the, the theory went, this was on Reddit that we were actually the same person because we were rarely in like the same picture. And this, this series would only bolster that. My favorite conspiracy theory about us that they said that it is impossible that somebody this weird exists in duplicate like they seem to hold a lot of the same ideas and nobody holds those ideas so how could two people meet each other who happened to be weird in exactly the same [00:13:00] way.Simone: theory, it was more like, oh, that's, it was, it was, they were commenting on a picture of us in the article and, and they were saying, that's not really the prenatal list. Those are models that are posing as them. And I'm like, that'sMalcolm: my favorite. They go, that's not really ever. It was like that scene in Clueless when she thinks like the business women, and they're like, oh, they're all actually models, and they were trying to sound like smart and dismissive.They're like, Ugh. There's people pictured in that article. Don't you know, that's not actually the pronatalist couple. That's just like a theory of what models posing of the pronatalist couple might look like. And talking about like a, and I, I couldn't have, when somebody. Is trying to hurt you, right? Like they're trying to insult you.And yet they say something that is so profoundly complimentary. You know, that they were trying to belittle the movement by saying that.Simone: Yeah. But anyway, Malcolm, if you were to go mainstream famous, I don't, I think you [00:14:00] would not change at all. You would go like full Trump or full Elon Musk. Like those are people who have gone mainstream famous who like.Give zero s***s, like things change nothing aboutMalcolm: themselves. I, I think you're right. And, and, and I would say that it is very interesting. If you look at on this channel, the older videos, the really old videos, like you search for the oldest videos on the channel. Cause we've been using someone's YouTube channel forever, you know,Simone: very cruelly.Do not let me deleteMalcolm: those videos. No, I do not. I love those videos. They represent a different time in your life, but you can see. Her personality comes off as much more of somebody who was beginning to model their personality and identity off of online influencers in these early sort of solo videos you did.Watch them against someone. It's very interesting. My,Simone: my social mode is just like any LLM. It is reinforcement learning based. I just did what I got.Malcolm: Yeah, but if you look at older videos with me in them and I might even upload some of those because we had a, a different channel that I still [00:15:00] haven't taken down that we had some videos on, but like, we've got to figure out how to consolidate them.But,Simone: you've always been you. You should even take stuff from high school, where you're like, you know, it's allMalcolm: still you. I come off as a very similar energy to the energy I have today and, and I find that interesting is, is it that I'm sort of like an anchor personality that draws you in and allows you to fix your personality because you're using me as an anchor?Simone: You're an additional modeling factor that changes how I behave in public. But I will never be myself in public, because I hate being in public. So if I'm actually being myself in public, myself being myself in public is running the f**k away from public. It is leaving the room. So I can't, like, be honest and still be in a group of people, because if I'm not lying and acting like I'm okay, then I'm not there, right?No, I agreeMalcolm: with that, but I feel like in these videos you very much act like yourself.Simone: Yeah, because I'm in a room by myself right now. It's great. It's perfect.Malcolm: [00:16:00] No, no threats other than the big looming mess outside your door. Sorry to interrupt.Simone: I didn't forgetMalcolm: but Yeah, and they did. Yeah, this is interesting for me and I really wonder you know going forwards with our fans.If this is something that changes, like do our personalities compromise going forwards and what would, how can we, you know, I mean, I do want to be the type of person who's still capable of like changing my mind when I get new information or have new ideas. ISimone: never, you're still going to be, there's like the, the bigger question is like, if someone held a gun to our heads, would you actually be able to not?And, and probably not, it would be the death of you. Like there is no world in which you can convincingly go mainstream. So don't worry about it. You'll never sell out. That's one thing I love about you. Okay.Malcolm: Here's the question I have for you. Okay. Let's [00:17:00] do some theory crafting on individuals who are famous, who we don't know whether or not they're showing their genuine.Ooh. Okay. Because I think what's really interesting is the way a person reacts when they meet. Fans, like a generic fan can, if our theory is right, it can tell you. SoSimone: Bill Murray is himself.Malcolm: Oh my God. Funny you should mention Bill Murray. I happen to know Bill Murray as himself because Bill Murray goes to so this is a celebrity that I do know, but only from stories.So Bill Murray goes to this golf championship. What was it called? The St. Andrew's open or whatever. We're like, you, you, you do golf.Simone: You knew about it because you weren't seeing Andrews at the time. So IMalcolm: was a student at St. Andrew's. And so one of the things that he was known for is even in my house, because my house used to be a party house before I moved in.And, but I was really good friends with the people who did it. So they would host big parties every night. And he was the type of guy who would just walk in off the street. Cause he saw a party happening and, and hang out. And they were joking that he would like do the dishes. After the party like [00:18:00] insist on doing the dishes for the entire party afterwards, and I'm like, that's somebody who's just so genuinely loves the way that like people they don't know engage with them based on their public persona.And so the opposite of a celebrity who's sort of hiding away from the public. Yeah,Simone: celebrities don't like. Crash parties with Bill Murray. Seeing someone on theMalcolm: street and being like, Hey, you're a student, can I come to your house for the party tonight?Simone: Every story I've ever heard about Bill Murray is like, so based and I love it.So he's definitely one of those people.Malcolm: And that's a good example of a very public person. And, and yeah, and through seeing stuff like this, so like based on this theory, I would have been able to take that story that I knew about Bill Murray and then say, he probably is very much who he is in public in person.Yeah, whereas I wonder somebody like, well, actually this is why I suspect Hillary Clinton seems to come off. So, jilted when she's talking to people at like conferences and stuff like that. You mean stilted? Yeah, like she [00:19:00] doesn't connect in the same way that Trump does because she isn't obviously feeding positive emotions from somebody saying, like, I know you like a very interesting meeting is the Nick Fuentes Trump meeting.You can read about, like, what was actually going on during that meeting and the aid who is like, trying to protect Trump from this and. He was clearly just loving that this person liked him and was engaged with the things that he was saying. Whereas I, I don't think that you would get that same sort of just like, Cancel all my meetings.I'm with somebody who likes me. No s**t. But here's a question I have for you. What do you think of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson? I'm thinking of like conservative intellectual people who are really high up. Do you think that they are really themselves?Simone: I think Andrew Tate is himself. I think they both are themselves.Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't know about, yeah, I mean, Jordan Peterson probably isn't, I don't know enough, like, but when you look at the way that Andrew Tate set up his entire lifestyle, like that, that he lived with all his [00:20:00] cam girls and stuff, like. You don't do that like if you have a double life and you're hiding is like your real personality You don't make your life your celebrity life, but Tate's celebrity life was his life and he like yeah He's he is yeah,Malcolm: so I'm actually argued.He's probably an interesting scenario So I don't think anyone could 24 7 be who Andrew Tate's pretends toSimone: be I know man I I legit think that You think he's aMalcolm: human being capable of maintaining frame 24 7? Yes, becauseSimone: I think he, he like, it is, it is his. His reason for living like everything is about like I am so tough and he wakes up in the morning and I am so tough and like that.No, I really think like he lives for that more than fame, more than wealth or anything. It is, it is that vision. I think it is, is a beating heart. He is tryingMalcolm: to create like a piece of art and aesthetic vision with every aspect of how he interacts withSimone: reality. Yeah. Yeah. He's like Barbie in the Barbie movie before she got weird.Just 100 percent living [00:21:00] the.Malcolm: I love this, Andrew Tate being like Barbie from the Barbie movie. He is. He'sSimone: doing his thing. No, no. What, like, 100%. No, I, I, I think it's all genuine. I, I don't think he slips. I don't think, I don't think for him, it is not maintaining frame because he is the frame. Like, I just, I, I can't emphasize this enough.I feel, I feel like he's the real deal. And he monetizes that, you know, he makes it, he makes it seem like to other men that that's, that's achievable to them when it's not, it's just his neurotype. But when you look at also like genetically, like his father, like his genetic inheritance, I feel like it's literally like in his.It's in his dunna to be like that, okay? It's done.Malcolm: You listen to the stories from his father, and I don't know if these are made up or anything like that but they are very much that his father invented the philosophy he lives by and not himself. Well, his fatherSimone: was a very, like, aggressive chess champion it just, like, I just, it's in his family.It's his, like, entire genetic line, I think, to, to act like that. So he is the real deal. Who, who else? Who's, who's not? [00:22:00] Who do we have, like, evidence of super not the public imageMalcolm: thing? Well, I mean, so many celebrities complain about their fans. I think literally any celebrity that complains about their fans is probably not.Yeah. And this is something you see sort of across stuff. Okay, here'sSimone: a great example. Megan and Harry, I guess.Malcolm: I was going to say if we're talking about online celebrities. Yeah. Lindsay Ellis.Simone: I don't, I don't know who that is well enough.Malcolm: Yeah, so, Lindsay Ellis is the girl who was like the female film critic.. Oh, the film, the Nostalgia Chick.Yes, there was a nostalgia criticwho's a famous guy on YouTube and then he hired her to be like a female version of himself for like when that was necessary in videos and then she spun off and did her own thing and now she's like. She gets in fights with her fans, so she got in a big fight with a bunch of fans recently, and it's been this huge thing, and I get the impression, because she really seems to be sort of antagonistic with her fans these days that she was always sort of putting on a, a fake [00:23:00] facade.Illuminati was that,Simone: for sure. Who, Gandhi? Illuminati,Malcolm: on YouTube. Oh, Illuminati, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely another one. Yeah. I actually think it's much more common on the progressive side of things. And the reason why I think it's more common amongst progressive niche influencers is because the social rules that the progressive ideal of a person puts on the way people need to appear publicly.They're unsustainable. That you're almost always lying about something about how you look. You cannot indulge in your flaws and still be liked by your community. You know, I think that we admit many things personally here or things that we have done in the past, which demonstrate that like we are okay with accepting our flaws and that we like don't mind them and that our community isn't going to hate us for that. Like, I, you know, I can, you can mention things you've thought in the past. I can mention, you know, things I've done in the past and, and we don't really get that negatively judged.Whereas I [00:24:00] think that was in that community. You would be.Simone: Yeah, well, even for, you know, having the wrong reactions to something, a wrong opinion, but no, who are, who are other mainstream, I guess, like every celebrity who reacts poorly. In public who, you know, like there's so many Reddit threads, which is like, Oh, like Reddit, tell us stories when you've met celebrities.And then there's all the people who are like, Oh, this person was a dick at a restaurant. I guess it's kind of along those lines. Yeah.Malcolm: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation to me, Simone, because I think it provides information on yeah, how you can see the world. And another story that I was going to tell with Trump, which is interesting to me is if you talk about somebody not really changing, one of, I think the most telling things about Trump is a lot of progressives will try to paint him as like an actual racist.And it's like, if you look at the history of a lot of progressive online his influencers today, you will find that they have said, like, actually racist stuff in their use that they inward and stuff like that, like in their rise to fame, you look [00:25:00] at Trump when he's on like Howard Stern from like 30 years ago, how did he never say once anything explicitly racist?Like, do you think this is a man with self control? Do you think this is a man? Who is capable of like tactically putting out even a fake personality. And I think that that's been part of his saving grace is he lacks the tactical self restraint to persistently and over the longterm put out a fake personality, but instead indulges.And who he really is. And in many ways, people would traditionally think of as the flaws of a personality. Yeah. But he really indulges it. That'sSimone: interesting. Yeah. Looks like you've got a good future ahead of you then, Malcolm. Well,Malcolm: let's hope. Let's hope. The political consultants don't make us take down all our social mediaSimone: posts.We won't listen to them. And we're not going to hire them anyway, so don't worry about it.Malcolm: I love you. I love you too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this insightful episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss new research showing childhood trauma is caused more by one's perception of events than the events themselves. People with verified abuse who don't see their childhood as bad show minimal ill effects, while those with no abuse who believe they were mistreated exhibit high rates of mental issues. Malcolm reflects on his own unusual upbringing, arguing he avoided PTSD by seeing challenges as adventures. They explore why women tend to recall more childhood adversity. Malcolm contends trauma comes from random negative events, not predictable ones. Ultimately, it's community narratives that frame events as traumatic or not. Avoiding "trauma creation" will be key for their parenting.Malcolmm: [00:00:00] all these people complain like, well, as a boy, I, I was never allowed to cry and I was never allowed to feel bad.And I was never allowed to confide in people and they're like, and that was all bad. That was all bad things that happened to me, but it's not a bad thing. It actually makes your life better. When people are hard on you, when people are hard on the way that you frame your life, In the moment, it doesn't feel awesome.In the moment, when you want to be vulnerable, it doesn't feel awesome. But in terms of life outcomes, it is demonstrably and dramatically better. And, and this is a very, very, very obvious from these various research data points.Would you like to know more?Malcolmm: Its so great to be here with you today. You had just sent me this study where you're like, this is so fascinating. Mm-hmm. , and better than that, [00:01:00] it confirms our preexisting beliefs. And isn't that just the, the best kind of studies, right? Yes.Simone: That's, that's what, that's why people read studies to, well, for confirmation bias of, so this study, is by Andrea Denny's and Kathy Spatz Widom.Gonna get their names wrong, of course. It's called Objective and Subjective Experiences of Child Maltreatment and Their Relationships with Psychopathology, published in Nature Human Behavior, which is a very respectable journal. And basically they found... I'm just going to quote them. We found that even for severe cases of childhood maltreatment identified through court records, risk of psychopathology linked to objective measures was minimal in the absence of subjective reports.In contrast, risk of psychopathology linked to subject report, subjective reports of childhood maltreatment was high, whether or not the reports were consistent with objective measures. So, so dumbed down some more words.Malcolmm: In simpler language. Basically [00:02:00] what it means is that if you had a really traumatic, in the way that modern society would frame trauma, childhood, like you were systemically abused in ways that were verified by the court system, but you don't believe that you had a difficult childhood, you will not have any negative effects from your childhood.However, if you had a perfect childhood, but you believe you had a terrible childhood, you will have all of the effects that we associate with childhood trauma. Now, this is something that confirms with other studies that we've talked about on this show. You know, we've talked about the study of sleepers that showed that People who believed that they had had bad sleep, but hadn't actually had bad sleep, had all the effects that we as a society associate with bad sleep.People who verifiably had bad sleep they didn't have any of those effects. Yeah, it's how [00:03:00] youSimone: see it. If you think that you slept poorly... You're going to show signs of fatigue that day, you're going to struggle, and even if you slept like s**t, but you believe you slept really well, you're going to be like, oh, I'm perky, I feel good, on average.Malcolmm: This is so critical within our, because what this actually means, you know, you can, you can say, oh, this is like interesting or quirky or whatever. It actually means that as a society, when we say something like, childhood trauma causes adult issues. That is just verifiably untrue. It's the belief that you were traumatized in childhood that causes adult issues.Yet, often these two things are pretty correlated, right? Often somebody who is traumatized in childhood will have the belief that they were traumatized in childhood. But what's critical to remember is when the left, Yeah, it's usually the left who does this, invents new types of [00:04:00] traumas that somebody can go through, or they frame something as particularly traumatic that previously people wouldn't have thought of as traumatic.They create the symptoms of trauma in that individual. Where that individual previously wouldn't have had those symptoms. And this is, you know, we have seen this have such negative effects on individuals lives. Recently we were interacting with someone and they were just absolutely riddled with likeSimone: all sorts ofMalcolmm: diseases, you know, neurological issues, pain, all these sorts of very spoonie like issues. If you go to our spoonie episode and, and we had a friend who was like that as well, you know, but what was really interesting is she was only like that when she was a progressive.So when we first met her, she was like deep into the progressive sphere. And so if you want to talk about what happened, because she's a better friend to you than me.Simone: Yeah, I mean, she, she had some severe health problems and they included, you know, [00:05:00] seizures, severe allergies. I mean, this was a fairly limited life that she had to live.She couldn't, you know, computer screens.Malcolmm: Yeah, yeah, there was imagine your life not being able to look at computer screens. It was, itSimone: was really rough. And then yeah she, she shifted some things. She got in a really good relationship. So she sort of changed her standards and values and sort of the way that she was going to prioritize things in her life.And then like, One day she called me and she was like, yeah so I don't have seizures anymore.Malcolmm: Well, so it wasn't just that. So, I mean, the guy who she married is a Texan guy. You actually have seen this couple in some of our after video credits playing with the kids at one point. Yeah, we really,Simone: reallyMalcolmm: like them.They're awesome people. Yeah, yeah. And then the Fourth of July party, they, they hosted this. But yeah, so, so Texas guy, very religious, you know. And actually not at first. So he and she had known each other for years. He was also in [00:06:00] this far progressive movement. And then they started hanging out more with us than their other friends.And then they became like, really, like, like, they, they went along with sort of the way that we were going, but they went further than us. And, and now, you know, they're really into Jesus and all that, and very much structure their lives as a very religious, Conservative couple and they focus on this realSimone: trad athletic.Yeah, I would, I would say that you almost like implied that like we had some influence on them. No, like they, they very, very introspectively thought through their lives and their values and they came to a very. Religious and more traditional conclusion. Do you reallyMalcolmm: think that would have happened had they not known us?Hold on. Do you really, we were there only like non ultra progressiveSimone: for it. We, we may have nudged them slightly, but I think many, many factors nudged them slightly. Okay. I'll agree with that. I'll agree with that. Yeah. And, and, and, but anyway, I thought like that is really interesting. And I think, you know, we, we see this effect of recontextualization [00:07:00] on real world health outcomes, but what also makes this, this nature.Study really interesting to me is, is Ayla also recently released some interesting research on basically how women remember their childhoods differently than men. And, and basically she looked through her massive amounts of data at how people viewed their childhoods and whether they thought they were neglected.Never, rarely, sometimes often, or very regularly. And whether they were verbally abused, whether they were physically abused, and how often they were spanked. And then she also asked them, like, you know, what was the social class of your upbringing? And, and...Malcolmm: Oh, you're taking too long to get to theSimone: point.The point was basically... Girls reported more physical abuse, more verbal abuse, more, basically more hardship and trauma in childhood. And it almost implied also that their social class was lower. I think actually they reported that their social class was lower. So basically like girls saw their childhood as much [00:08:00] worse than boys did.Even though typically when you look at punishment, Boys are getting more punished. TakeMalcolmm: a step back. It was very obvious from the data sets that this was an equal data set in terms of boys and girls. Women were not being punished more than men. They were objectively remembering every aspect of their childhood is being worse than the men.Now, what we don't know is, is it could turn out that men are just misremembering their childhood and, and, and the, the women actually are remembering everything or it could turn out that the women are inventing. trauma that didn't exist in their childhood. And there's many things that could lead to this.But I probably think the biggest factor in this is that our society does not reward men for experiencing and contextualizing things is traumatic, whereas our society does reward women for doing that. And this is really [00:09:00] important in the context of this other study as well, because it means that through doing that, you know, all these people complain like, well, as a boy, I, I was never allowed to cry and I was never allowed to feel bad.And I was never allowed to confide in people and they're like, and that was all bad. That was all bad things that happened to me, but it's not a bad thing. It actually makes your life better. When people are hard on you, when people are hard on the way that you frame your life, In the moment, it doesn't feel awesome.In the moment, when you want to be vulnerable, it doesn't feel awesome. But in terms of life outcomes, it is demonstrably and dramatically better. And, and this is a very, very, very obvious from these various research data points. And so that when you have these people who try to shut down these sorts of [00:10:00] conversations about well, you really shouldn't, as a man, indulge in these sorts of emotions.These people are helping you be more mentally healthy. And when people engage with us, they often are like, Wow, you guys really don't allow yourself to, like, fuel those emotions. And, you know, that's really gonna cause damage over time. And I'm like, well, I've been around you. I'm obviously a happier person than you.So, like, that's not true. But anyway, it continues toSimone: that one. Well, I just, it's also really interesting the cultural role that that plays. You know, that I think we do live in a culture now where women are more allowed to have trauma and encouraged to have trauma. But it also is scary to me how, especially in progressive circles, people gain status by...Typically showing some form of victimhood which seems to encourage people to lean into their past, find something that was wrong with it, and then turn it into drama, which will, in turn, yield all these mental disorders [00:11:00] and problems, and so it's no wonder that we're seeing mental health epidemics and it's, it's really sobering also to know that there's research that shows that how you contextualize things really matters, I guess.Well, I want to go overMalcolmm: how forced people are to contextualize their childhoods this way. Mm, go on then. No one has seen this as me. So just as an example, I don't know we're how many hundred episodes in at this point and, and people are just now learning this about me, but I grew up in the prison system.So, at the age of 13, I was sent to court appointed prison alternatives. If you have read the book Holes or seen the movie Holes, it's a very good example of one of these camps. It was a private prison system for children that was related to the troubled teen industry, but it was like the court appointed iteration of this.And from that age until college, I never lived with my parents again. Full time. And there's a lot, there's, there's a lot more to this journey than that, but when I'm talking to reporters, you know, they're always like, where did you come from? What's your [00:12:00] origin story or whatever. And when I say this, they're always like, Oh, that explains why that explains soSimone: much.Right. So it's just his trauma. He, all of this is to deal with his trauma. HisMalcolmm: trauma. And I'm like, well, no, you know, like, like I don't. That's not really that relevant to my current world perspective. And they will not accept that answer. You've seen this. They just refused. You can see that they're like, Oh yes, little traumatized child.I see you, you know, Good acting tough, but that's only because of the trauma and I'm like, no, culturally I was taught that this isn't the way you relate to what's hard in your life because you know, worst case scenario, you create this rags to riches narrative, which is really plausible. Like it's one I could really indulge in, but If I'm being honest my parents were both really smart people [00:13:00] and for generations, my family has had a very easy time making money and I inherited that.And yes, I may not have inherited wealth directly or inherited their social circles or connections directly, but I did inherit. The capability of life, not being that hard for me, just from a mental perspective, like, whether it's the way I like, like sociological profile aspects or, or, or IQ or whatever you want to call it.And so I don't really. I personally contextualize my childhood as being that hard at all. Now it's funny now that I think about it, most of the people I knew committed suicide before they hit their 20s. So, that's an interesting fact. Not most, but like a large chunk. Not great. Yeah. Maybe that means it wasn't that good.But it just shows how much you can twist your reality. To just [00:14:00] be like, nah, it was awesome. It all turned out great. You know,Simone: I do want to talk with you about on this front. Right. It's like, you know, cause we need to think about how we're going to handle this with our kids and how to, you know, encourage them to deal with things that are genuinely traumatic.Right. I mean, he went through some stuff and other people went through some stuff. And, and so there's, you know, we know that the way you contextualize things can significantly impact how damaging or not something is. But then we also know that there are things like PTSD, which are real. And which are almost, not almost, which are fairly mechanical and sort of the way they work and need to be fixed.And where's the difference, you know, because you need to admit that you have PTSD to be able to deal with it. And I feel like, you know, part of this viewMalcolmm: is, I've talked about this before, it's really misunderstood. Trauma does not cause PTSD. PTSD is caused by a very specific psychological phenomenon.Happening repeatedly, and it comes down to, I call it the Houdini phenomenon, right? Houdini famously died [00:15:00] because he had this trick where he would tense his muscles and then somebody would punch him in the gut. And one day after an event... Somebody sucker punched him in the gut. He didn't have time to tense his muscles first, because he didn't know what was happening.The guy was just like, well, are you really invulnerable to this stuff? And he died from, you know, internal injury. And this is obviously a really sad death, but it shows what actually causes what we call PTSD. If you are in a family in which somebody is reliably abusive, i. e. if every day your dad comes home and beats you, you will not develop PTSD.You only develop it if your dad is good. A lot of the time, but occasionally he beats you. And you don't expect it. It comes out of nowhere. There's no way of predicting when this is going to happen. A, a wife who is always mean to you won't cause PTSD. A wife who is mean to you randomly and without the ability to predict it [00:16:00] will cause PTSD.So you're sayingSimone: it's like the sort of evil twin of operant conditioning?Malcolmm: Exactly. PTSD is the evil twin of Operant Conditioning. Where ifSimone: something very unexpectedly bad happens to you, it's like the opposite of the addiction that you get with positive Operant Conditioning. you mean byMalcolmm: Operant Conditioning so people can understand.Simone: So Operant Conditioning is a form of sort of like feedback training where when you do not predictably offer rewards, but very unpredictably offer rewards. Examples might be slot machines, gambling various types of mobile games, et cetera. Like it's built into everything these days. You actually have a very you can have a very, a very addictive response.Like the dopamine reward for when you do get that unexpected reward is incredibly high. And so it seems that PTSD, as you describe it, is the opposite of that. That when very unexpectedly a really bad thing happens. the reaction that you have also is like on overdrive, but in the [00:17:00] negative, like panic sense.Malcolmm: So yeah, that's exactly it. And it can cause like visible changes in person.Simone: Okay. So why, why then do people come back classically from war with PTSD if they like expectMalcolmm: to be, because war is not every day people are shooting at you. War is sitting around doing nothing. for months and a half, and then in one day, half of your friends die.WhySimone: did you not get PTSD from getting, like, thrown into the desert and having, like, kind of boring days and then really, really, really bad things happening to you? Like some kid trying to kill you with a shovel in the middle of the night.Malcolmm: Oh, like me? Because I didn't contextualize those things asSimone: bad, I guess?Do you still think contextualization? No, because I think you've argued inMalcolmm: these moments. If somebody went into war and they contextualized it as this honorable thing and everyone who died was in it as this honorable event, as I think a lot of people did historically, even though wars were similar, I doubt you had as much PTSDSimone: back then.Do you still think that contextualization has [00:18:00] something to do with PTSD? Yeah,Malcolmm: but it's about in the moment contextualization because, because PTSD is not something that's caused by the way we remember the events it's causedSimone: by the unexpected, but alsoMalcolmm: the negative nature of the events in these moments growing up these.Bad things happen. Simone was talking about a few times people tried to kill me. I starved at times. I had to eat ants to not die. I had to learn what insects I could eat in the area, what plants I could eat. It was hard because I was allergic to something they were using in the foods that they were giving to the kids and they didn't believe me.And so, yeah, so a lot of stuff happened, but I just saw it all as an interesting challenge. Like, that was genuinely the way I engaged with it. I was like, oh, this is a really interesting challenge. I suppose this isn't the way a lot of people engage with things like this that happen to them in life.But that's how I contextualize it. I, you know, I just saw it as an interesting challenge and I engaged with it like that. And I [00:19:00] think that all events, every, everything that comes into your brain in the same way that everything that comes into my eyes is filtered through the lenses I wear is filtered through the lens that you create, which is the narrative for the events around you.And. Maybe it's being an as a guy situation, you know, you're talking about as a guy, as a girl, a society that frames women as victims, you know, the princess and the tower or whatever, and guys as the heroes. Well, this was just all part of my heroic journey. Yeah. And ISimone: guess, you know, if you were a girl, you know, as a guy, you were maybe thinking like, Oh, like I'm, I'm being rugged.This is like an adventure survival thing. This is making me stronger. Whereas maybe a girl would be like, Oh my God, I'm abandoned. I'm in love. Like they might see it as very different because there aren't very many like heroes journeys for women that involve this level of survivalism.Malcolmm: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.I just, I guess I don't have anything to say other than yeah, you're probably right about this. Well, I haveSimone: one additional question for you because I don't think it was just you contextualizing masculine heroes [00:20:00] journeys while going through this as a kid that helped you not contextualize it in a way that did give you PTSD or other forms of trauma based on your contextualization.I, I'm wondering if your parents modeled this, like, where did you get, where do you think? Because obviously everything's going to be a just so story. This is all speculation. We can't know why we thought what we thought or why we did what we did, but your best guess, where did you get this attitude of like, Oh, this is an interesting puzzle.How can I work this out? Like, was this from books you read? Was this how your parents behaved? Like how was this? This given to you is like the evoked reaction instead of some other reaction. Well,Malcolmm: I think that this is a very important thing about raising kids. And we had done another video on this on the Jordan Peterson raising kids thing.And we're like, we really disagree with his parenting strategies because they are focused on breaking the child's will. And getting them to obey authority, whereas ours are focused on stoking a child's will and getting them to resist authority and even gain like emotional fire and [00:21:00] happiness from the moments where they successfully resistant unjust authority.And I think that there's a final form of child rearing, which is narrative focused child rearing, where and this is the most common, where you teach a kid to engage with mostly just narratives about themselves and about society and about their role in that society. Narrative focused child rearing always leads to really negative outcomes, right?And I think it's really important that we don't allow our kids to engage in that because that's what progressive society uses right now to really f**k kids up. Because every cult historically, this is just the way cults work. It's a very effective strategy. If you can convince people that their close support networks, their family and their culture were abusive to them as kids, you know, then you can separate them from their support networks.And then they, they become much easier prey and they become much less likely to deconvert. So, Yeah, there's a reason that these institutions target individuals in this way. [00:22:00] It's because it's a really good source of prey, but you should know, I think, so there's two things here. One, as a parent, you know, and we'll do a video on, like, how to be a good parent, because I think that's a good one.Like, all the things we're trying to focus on. But you really need to focus on, or one of our core things that we focus on as a cultural tradition, and I would encourage other people to consider, is stoking their will and internal locus of control and, and sort of, desire to know what's right for themselves and fight for that.Simone: Did your parents do that?Malcolmm: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my mom told me, oh, they don't care what the teachers say. They're idiots. They're losers. You know. Well, that's not something a lot of parents would say, you know, but it really, it really worked for me. You know, my parents never being like, I will sit and punish you until you accept X thing that I'm telling you.I couldn't imagine them doing that. Yeah. Yeah. No, they just locked me in our room [00:23:00] and be like, look, if you're having a moment right now, you're having a moment. We'll handle you later. So. So I think that's really important in terms of dealing with situations like this, because then when you deal with hardship, you're not looking at who's to blame or anything like that.It's just a challenge for you to overcome because so much of the world depends on you overcoming it. And I also suppose that's another thing with kids. You know, I was really taught to view protecting the world as my responsibility and as something that I needed to do and everything else was just sort of a challenge on my way to achieving that end state.It was just like, well, this is just what you have to do as a member of this family. Your goal is to fix things. And no one else is gonna do it, and the entire world's gonna work against you. And I think that those sorts of framings are really useful. And I think that these are ones that Christians often do.You know, they see people attacking them. It's a sign [00:24:00] that they're more likely to be right, and this is actually part of what creates susceptibility within more religious communities, I think, to MLM scams, because when they see people being like, look, can't you see this is a scam? Can't you see these statistics?They're like, oh well, the fact that people are attacking it means they must be on the right path. So there, there are negatives to this as well.Simone: Interesting. Okay. So, gosh, I mean, like, how are we going to impart this to our kids in a way that doesn't, I don't know.Malcolmm: Well, I think the easy part is stoking their will.But I think the hard part is providing external challenging situations that they have to overcome.Simone: I mean, my, my theory on this has, remains the same in that I really think. It's, it's clear that when you have siblings, like a lot of siblings in a family, you have already artificially created that hardship because there's not always going to be a parent who's ready to do what you need right away because they may be helping someone [00:25:00] else.And there's just more limited resources. And there's also more people around who are going to make your life complicated and who may want your help or need your help or possible for you to get help right away when you want it. So I actually think just having siblings is enough, like enough hardship in life too.Solve the problem, you don't think so?Malcolmm: If we have enough. Well, that's the plan. I mean, if we get to like 12, sure.Simone: I don't think you needMalcolmm: that much. I don't think 7 counts, that's a normal number of kids. You need like a reasonableSimone: amount. Malcolm, that is not. That is not a normal number of children, that is not a normal number of children, none of this data.Come on, like, even, even people in the past, you know, they may have, have birthed 10 kids, but they had like four or five, like this is. You know, I'm just saying, like, let's be reasonable with what is, is a, a hardship level [00:26:00] of, of having kids. But yeah, I mean, I think between us giving them siblings and us also not being, well, us being inherently very frugal people is enough to create limitations that force some creativity and resilience.If that makes sense.Malcolmm: Yes.Simone: But I do, I do think this is really interesting and actually we've received some, some emails actually from people who follow this podcast and thank you by the way for contacting us guys. But many of them actually are surprisingly riddled with this culture. With this like, well, you know, yeah, I, I have this thing that's running against me, like, I just, you know, I just can't do it byMalcolmm: telling us their narratives.Simone: Yeah. Like what we're seeing a lot of like learned helplessness or like, determined what's the word fatalism. And like, well, I'm just not going to try. Cause it, there's no point. And IMalcolmm: get that narratives are difficult to break. Yes. But if you're [00:27:00] starting with one of these narratives and you realize yourself as having one.The most important thing is to change your friend group and change where you're living and change what you're doing every day. If you change your environment, it is, and you go into this new environment like dead set. Okay, well, now I'm going to live this like trad conservative lifestyle and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to be industrious.The amount to which you can change as a person is really difficult to oversell. Mm hmm. I totally agree. Like it is, it is, the, the, the, the core study on this that I always cite is people coming back from Vietnam who were addicted to heroin, something like 86 percent of them, the addiction basically immediately disappeared when they came back.And the question is why? Because their context was so different that even really deep seated neurological phenomenon could be reset because your brain basically is running different modes for different environments. [00:28:00] Well, this has been spectacular, Simone, and I hope it helps some people and really... The, the biggest takeaway from this I would say is when somebody comes to you and they try to tell you that your childhood was traumatic or your parents did something traumatic or oh here's this problem you have that you didn't know you had.Now if you're like, no, I guess I always sort of knew that this was something that was troubling me. I just didn't have words. No you didn't. That's not a thing. That is, that is people writing things into your history. That is the way, if this wasn't every morning you woke up and you're like, this is my big problem today, then it was created for you.And I hate to say it, but this is one of the big issues we have with the trans movement. In that, I do think that there are some people who are genuinely born trans, but I think for a lot of people who join the movement, it's more like, This is something they were convinced was a problem for them, and if they hadn't had people selling this to them, they never would have [00:29:00] known that this was a problem in their life.And so this level of pain that they're experiencing every day is created by people pointing out the problem and contextualizing the problem and then framing the problem as really bad. You know, one of my favorite things that I mentioned as a study, and I've never been able to find this study, but it was mentioned when I was doing my degree in college.At St. Andrews, by the way, right now, ranked the top university in the UK, by, above both Oxford and Cambridge, by both The Times and The Guardian, for the last two years. Hey, I gotta take pride in my alumni honor. Anyway. It was a study that showed that women who grew up in environments where unwanted non consensual sex was common.Didn't have any negative effects from it, but people who grew up in environments where unwanted non consensual surprise sex was uncommon like, you know, the West really faced negative reactions to it. You create your society, the [00:30:00] people who your friends was, they create what's traumatic for you by what they contextualize as traumatic.And I guess you could say everybody gets their sort of. Wisdom saving score. Yeah, I'm sorry, I've been playing a lot of Balders Gate 3 recently. So, it's a, it uses the DND engine and it's, you know, you roll the dice every time to see if you get a saving throw against this. But if you have a community that's constantly trying to tell you, people not recognizing this, people not seeing you this way, this is traumatic.It becomes traumatic in the way that trauma is meaningful. And by that, what I mean, Is all trauma is really just due to these sorts of contextualizations. And no matter what happens to you, the things that happen to you aren't what create the trauma. It's the way your community and yourself choose to relate to those things.Simone: Yeah. So, yeah. If you, I think a lot of people in the world,Malcolmm: because they will tell them it's such a cheat code. I think a lot of peopleSimone: who follow this podcast think that they have this view, but don't. So [00:31:00] next time you find yourself believing that, you know, you, you can't solve the problem. That's probably a sign that you might be subject to these views.So there'sMalcolmm: that. Sometimes one of the fun cultural differences between Simone and I is every time something bad happens, she's always like. I didn't even realize that looking for a solution to this was possible. She grew up her entire childhood, like not knowing about mucin X because like her family, like they'd be sick and they wouldn't, I'm like, you're sick.I'd be like, well, you're sick. Google solutions. But what do we do about this? She'd be like, I've been feeling really bad today about X. And I was like, okay, go to Claude, type that in. That's an AI, that's the anthropic AI. And let's find a solution. He goes, Oh, there probably isn't one. I'm pregnant.And I'm like. I'm sorry, just try. This was gas recently. And it was like, actually there's this really easy solution that doesn't hurt pregnancies. And she's like, like, why did you have so much resistance to even trying? [00:32:00]Simone: Yeah. I think part of like a lot of it's how I grew up, that like there, there was no attitude about like, Oh, like take cold medicine when you have a cold.It was just like. Drink chamomile tea.Malcolmm: Problems require solutions and that's a cultural attitude thatSimone: you can bring into your day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not exempt from this. That's why I really recognize it as a problem. So go home and think about it, people. But Malcolm, thank you for helping me think through it all the time because I really appreciate it.I loveMalcolmm: you. to death, Simone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm argues racism applies group differences to individuals, while true evil legally encodes it. This prevents inter-generational competition essential for progress. He explains racism’s similarity to communism in suppressing the “grand game” advancing society. Racists grasp external excuses for failure rather than learning from successful groups.Affirmative action is the worst modern racism as it systemically handicaps minorities. Historic racism still disadvantaged some groups, but evenness doesn’t mean fairness. A level playing field enables eventual parity. They discuss respectful cultural pride versus outgroup hatred. Overall the left’s racism destroys potential while right bigots chiefly hurt themselves.Malcolm: [00:00:00] ethnic socialism is what it really is.Malcolm: Racism is ethnic socialism. They apply. Unfair barriers to people of different racial and ethnic groups based on preconceptions about those groups that prevent those groups from competing against them in a fair and open ecosystem. And doing that. They hobble those groups, but they also hobble their own group.Malcolm: What the great thing is about actual racism is groups that don't punish it, don't compete as well.Malcolm: And they end up falling apart. If you look at America and you look at the white populations, the white populations that were less racist economically have outperformed the white populations that were more racist. Hmm.Simone: Yeah.Malcolm: You look at multicultural groups and this is something you see. Racism is a self extinguishing phenomenon when it is not entrenched in government law.Malcolm: That's why I see the groups that are just like [00:01:00] generically racist as less evil than the groups that enshrine racism in law with things like affirmative action because. Those groups are hurting themselves often more than they hurt the groups around them. And so it's like, ha ha ha, look at the idiot.Would you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm, you really piqued my curiosity the other day when you said racism was a lot like communism. What's going on there?Malcolm: Now, this is a fun topic and it was inspired by a comment by Simone by the way, love you excited to be talking to you again where some people were like, why isMalcolm: racism ethically wrong? You know, so first we need to define what we mean by racism. And what we consider racism. So some people consider racism as believing different ethnic groups are different. That is stupid. And diversity has no value if we're not actually different.Malcolm: In a [00:02:00] world in which everyone is secretly the same, there is no point in diversity, culturally, ethnically, anything like that. It's an aesthetic difference. And that it's not, there's no superiority to a painting with more colors in it than a painting withSimone: less color. And furthermore, in such a world, which is optimal, it would also be ridiculous to pretend that there aren't differences, right?Malcolm: And it's you know, I think, here's where it gets bad, okay, and this is where I define racism.Malcolm: It's when you use Intergroup differences to make decisions about individuals when you find out they're part of one group or another group, or to make decisions about how you interact with groups as a whole. This is very important to me. Like I bet that you never. allow knowledge of like, well, people like this, they're like, they're like, Catholics are like, this Jews are like this.Malcolm: It's just like groups like this. Like, obviously there are going to be [00:03:00] statistical norms that are culturally, even if, even if just cultural differences, because different ethnic groups clustered within different cultural groups and culture can influence life outcomes. Of course, you're going to have different averages that differ between groups.Malcolm: And these averages can allow you. to create prejudices, which allow you to more quickly make decisions about those groups. Often this is what I am against, and this is what I consider to be a racist. But then there's the higher form of racism, which is the ultimate form of racism. And I think where you get into sort of pure evil, which is when you encode group differences into legal systems.Malcolm: Or social systems in terms of how you deal with cultural outsiders. Ah, okay. So let's talk about why this is very similar to communism and why it is evil from our cultural perspective. Okay. So there are many things that our culture values. But [00:04:00] one of the highest value systems within our culture is intergenerational improvement.Malcolm: The core goal of every human being... is to make kids that are better than them. It is. a game in which you are always playing against your ancestors and yourself. It is a game in which you are consistently striving to not stagnate, where stagnation is the highest form of failure. A stagnant species, our pattern from our worldview, Is completely pointless.Malcolm: It is, it may as well not exist. If you think of it in terms of Conway's Game of Life,Malcolm: and I'll see if you get some video of this or something. A simple self repeating pattern is as pointless as a pattern that ceases to exist because it is uninteresting. It is, it is, it is unmeaningful.[00:05:00] Now, this is why when we see groups like the Nazis who are like, well we need to go back to like, A single Aryan white, they sort of see the perfect ethnicity as being something in the past can be crafted and then is stagnant which is actually very similar to the people who want to ban us from using genetic selection on our kids because they see us as like dirtying the human gene pool by like entering exogenous technology into our practices.Malcolm: They both believe that there is a perfect version of humanity. It is either close to the existing version of humanity or, or in the past. And we can achieve it by limiting other groups, reproductive capabilities or exterminating other groups. So this is a form of stagnation to us. It is a form of evil to us.Malcolm: But even generic racism is, is the Ideologically uplifting of stagnation as a [00:06:00] concept. So the way that progressive groups, because progressive culture is, if you look at conservative culture as it typically offers a lot of cultural amenities to people, it offers. You know, if you live in a very Christian community, they often have a very Mormon community or something like that.Malcolm: You know, if you're on hard times, it has systems for dealing with that. If you're old and food scarce, it has systems for dealing with that. If you're an orphan, they have systems for dealing with that. You know, and, and, and this, This often makes progressives angry. They're like, well, of course, like the Salvation Army exists and provides services for people, but they don't provide them to trans people.Malcolm: They, they enforce some of their cultural values when they're providing these services. And it's like, well, yeah, they do. Okay. But. They are able to motivate their average member to provide these services, while you, progressive community, appears to be unable to do that without the threat of government force.Malcolm: Well, because of this, if the progressive community wants to [00:07:00] deconvert people into it, if it wants to convert people's kids, because, you know, they're not having kids of their own, so they can only survive by converting the children of nearby healthy cultural groups, the way that they allow that to happen is they need to create government mandated alternatives to these social safety nets that are prevented by these variable cultural groups.Malcolm: Well, that is what communism is at the end of the day. Communism is a system in which the government is providing all of the social services. So socialism, communism, all that. So that there is no need to be in any of the disparate cultural groups. Communism has always worked hand in hand with cultural genocide.Malcolm: That has always been the goal of communism is cultural genocide. It is to erase all of the differences between humans. It is to make all humans the same. And that isSimone: stagnation. So racism is communism. Communism isMalcolm: racism. Well, we haven't gotten to exactly how it's similar yet, because I haven't gotten to [00:08:00] that.Malcolm: But it removes the need for intergroup competition. You know, you cannot have, you cannot have, in one of these totally socialist states, it becomes much more difficult to say, well, you know, Jews seem to be economically outcompeting other groups. Maybe there's something we can learn from them or something like that, right? To be more pointed. This form of racism is really just an outward reflection of inwards cultural weakness. It is the signs of a dying culture. Strong cultures, almost never hold these sorts of beliefs because they don't need to. It's the type of thing that people begin to grasp towards when they can see that they are being out competed. And when they can see that they have begun to die. And I suppose just the weakness of it disgusts me seeing that sort of weakness in other people discuss me.Malcolm: Like, because there's no reason to be in any of these cultural groups. And they try to erase all of the cultural differences between these groups. So you don't, you no longer get the competition. And it [00:09:00] is competition that leads individuals and groups to attempt to improve themselves. And as they improve themselves, as the, and then people convert into the groups that are doing better, that have lifestyles that are they have a competition of you know, economic and cultural success and a cultural sense of oneness and cultural amenities.Malcolm: And you know, we had a friend who converted to Mormonism because it helped her find a husband. She's like, I just can't find a husband in, in the dominant cultural group. I'm in you know, I told him to convert to Mormonism and they, I, they have these systems. And it did, she found a husband and she's happily married and having kids.Malcolm: Now cultures convert people by offering these amenities and these systems that they offer. And that is actually one of the main reasons that people often convert. to different cultures. Is there like, yeah, but like people here are happier and they seem to be living wholesome, good lives. And that was not something I felt when I was growing up in you know, the urban monoculture, right?Malcolm: But it's, it's harder and harder to convert people as the urban monoculture offers more and more services that these cultures are able to motivate people to sacrifice to. [00:10:00] Okay. So what communism is, the core reason it's evil, right? Is it's not evil because it provides. equality. It's evil because it removes the motivation for intergenerational improvement.Malcolm: Evil because it removes this grand game which leads to our species improving itself, every generation improving. And, and this is, this is, this is just, it's such an important thing because you, In the moment, it makes life harder. But if you look at the technology that's been invented in our capitalist system, it has made even many times, you know, I talk about a 10 percent or American in terms of income, they live lives that are markedly better than like the king of England, 200 years ago, 250.Malcolm: Yep. And, and that is wild, but that is created because of intergenerational improvement. Intergenerational improvement may take a while to raise some boats, [00:11:00] but eventually it raises all boats. It is a obvious ethical good. Well, racism is ethnic communism. People use racism and ethnic socialism is what it really is.Malcolm: Racism is ethnic socialism. They apply. Unfair barriers to people of different racial and ethnic groups based on preconceptions about those groups that prevent those groups from competing against them in a fair and open ecosystem. And doing that. They hobble those groups, but they also hobble their own group.Malcolm: When you do things that hurt other ethnic groups that prevent you from competing in a fair and open ecosystem, then you cannot see when cultures that cluster within your ethnic group are doing a bad job and you cannot intergenerationally improve. Oh, soSimone: what you're saying is it makes people blind to [00:12:00] room for improvement that they might have in their own culture because they're too busy being like, I'm so much better thanMalcolm: more than being blind to room for improvement.Malcolm: It, it makes them blind to even the market forces of improvement. You know, you eventually have to learn how to improve your culture. If it has to out be out competing in some metric, whether it's fertility rates or economically for it to still exist, and you see this ardently within racist groups, you look at the people who are like racist in our videos and you see this cluster one, they need to feel just like axiomatically better than some cultural groups so that they feel like they're.Malcolm: their lives are meaningful in some ways, even if they're failures. So they're like, Oh, well, you know, black people, bad, my, my group, good. I am in some way good because I'm a member of that group. But then you can see the blindness as well. They'll look at something like Jews, right. Jews the boy, but like a lot of Cess Rogan's guests are Jews.Malcolm: A lot of Nobel prize winners are Jews. A lot of politicians are Jews. You mean Joe [00:13:00] Rogan, Joe Rogan. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. So you, you, you see Jews usually disproportionately represented in areas of success. And instead of asking the question that somebody would ask if they were not racist, which is what are Jews doing that I am not doing?Simone: Right. What can I learn from them? What can I steal from them?Malcolm: Yeah. In the way that they are succeeding, right. They instead ask the question that all racist groups ask. Which is, how are they cheating? How have they created a, a, a group a, a a system that is systemically making my group unable to outcompete their group.Malcolm: They are unable to admit to themselves that a group other than them may be outcompetingSimone: them. Oh, so it's, it's basically like a racial. External locus of control.Malcolm: Exactly. It's a racial external locus of control. So when you look at us and you go, well, this being true, what is the highest form of racism in our society?Malcolm: It is of course, affirmative action. Nothing does [00:14:00] more to systemically. Cause a group in our society to not intergenerationally improve then affirmative action.Simone: Well, and also I guess to see the world through an external locus of control rather than focusing on like internal improvement. It isMalcolm: more racist than practices put in place by the most racist white supremacist, the most racist existing Klan members, what the Democrats regularly put in place in terms of policy, because it intergenerationally keepsSimone: generating weakness.Simone: Yeah, I guess. I mean, it sounds really bad, but so what you're saying is like, even like in the times of, of the worst forms of racism in the U. S., it did forceMalcolm: No, I'm not saying that. The Klan used to be much worse than the left. I'm talking about the Klan today. I'm not like murdering people, systemically keeping people down.Malcolm: That also prevents both them and [00:15:00] you from moving forward because you're not playing by the same rules. So, of course, and I think that this needs to be said. Alongside the statement that many ethnic groups within the U. S., particularly the Black and Native American populations in our country, have been systemically disadvantaged due to historic conditions.Malcolm: They are not starting from the same starting gun, intergenerationally you hurt them much more by systemically unevening the playing field and like BLM does creating this external locus of control. Like that is a form of meaningful and in this ethnic external locus of control. Of, of, of, of meaningful racial oppression because it meaningfully and intergenerationally disempowers specific ethnic groups.Malcolm: Also, what would youSimone: say to like, you know, the society at large that's like, okay, I hear you and I don't want to [00:16:00] disempower people, but also like, it's so not fair that they're starting off on uneven footing. And like, how do we correct for that? Like, is there a way to both have an locus of control for groups while still.Malcolm: I mean, I mean, the really insidious thing is these policies that are intergenerationally keeping down these minority groups that are starting from worst positions. They're all being operated and promoted by white people who intergenerationally benefit the most from these practices, which is really disgusting that these individuals do this because they're, they're helping.Malcolm: Their own, you know, their own ethnic group over the, the other ethnic groups and in so doing, feeling good about themselves, like they're being these great oh, benefactors, oh, it's very it, it, it feels so much like that poem that Noble Savage I'm sorry, the What is it called? The White Man's Burden poem.Malcolm: You know, oh well, I just must hope uplifts the, it's so [00:17:00] disgusting, it's so disgusting. But to what you're saying, you're saying, okay, well what do I say to people who are like, yeah, but it's very unfair. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Society is unfair. I'm sorry about that. The way it treats attractive people versus unattractive people.Malcolm: The way is, is, is horrible. The way it treats people born to rich families versus poor families is horrible. But, why have we elevated this one form of unfairness over all other forms of unfairness? It makes no sense. It's not ethically correct. In an ethical society, we would say... Well, whenever you try to treat one ethnic or cultural group special, it always ends in tragedy.Malcolm: Yeah. Tragedy for everyone. Yeah. And that what we need to do is to create a system that even if it's less fair in the moment can lead intergenerationally to an eventually fair society. Now let's be clear. What does fair mean? It does not mean everybody wins. [00:18:00] Okay. It does not mean everyone is equal. It means that everyone is given the same shot and same pressures to intergenerationally improve.Malcolm: So by this, what we mean is like, yeah, I mean, if you wanted to create, and this is something that society doesn't talk about, but if you wanted to like ethnically normalize society, so you're going to divide society into ethnic groups and then say, okay, well, we're going to put. penalizations on different ethnic groups based on how successful they are.Malcolm: Okay. Well, you know, whites wouldn't be at the top of that totem pole in America. There are many ethnic groups which out earn white people. And, and, and. Yeah, so you would what, normalize it and penalize them? That's sick. That's disgusting. I, I, I, I I am genuinely morally repulsed by that. The idea of saying some other group should be punished because they're out earning white people.Malcolm: And yet... That is the logical [00:19:00] conclusion of this sort of system, right? So, if you can create a system that is intergenerationally fair, right, in terms of competition eventually within a few generations, everyone should be able to come back as long as actual racism is being punished. But actual racism, what the great thing is about actual racism is groups that don't punish it, don't compete as well.Malcolm: And they end up falling apart. If you look at America and you look at the white populations, the white populations that were less racist economically have outperformed the white populations that were more racist. Hmm.Simone: Yeah.Malcolm: You look at multicultural groups and this is something you see. Racism is a self extinguishing phenomenon when it is not entrenched in government law.Malcolm: That's why I see the groups that are just like generically racist as less evil than the groups that enshrine racism in law with things like affirmative action because. [00:20:00] Those groups are hurting themselves often more than they hurt the groups around them. And so it's like, ha ha ha, look at the idiot.Malcolm: You know, shooting themselves in the foot. Like, it's funny. It's funny because it's wrong. Ain't that cute, but it's wrong. So what are your thoughts?Simone: Yeah, this checks out. That racism hurts people who are like the perpetrators and the receiving end of it. And... It is surprisingly similar to communism on a coupleMalcolm: of points.Malcolm: Racism is ethno socialism, but to be clear from our definition of racism, the Democratic Party is the core, the Democratic Party and the social movements that they support are the core sources of racism in this country. And they are the core perpetrators of racism in this country. Right. You know, every racial pride rally or something like that.Malcolm: Now you can say, well, I want to create, and this is what we would support. So I really [00:21:00] support sub racial cultural groups.Simone: Okay. So what does that mean?Malcolm: So a population, let's say American blacks, right? They may say we have a problem in our communities, right? Like I can see like black on black violence is a problem or something like that.Malcolm: And we can fix it by creating new cultures for our community that are meant to address these problems. But we want these cultures to differentially be of utility to people in our community because due to their social background, you know, due to being a black person in America, they are going to better be able to understand and assimilate with the culture that we're building.Malcolm: Okay. I have no problem with that. And I actually support that. I have no problem with the fact that Jews. Sort their culture, in part, based on who your parents are. Like that it's gonna be, like, if our kids wanted to [00:22:00] convert to Judaism, they'd have a very easy time, because they're matrilineally Jewish.Malcolm: And people would be like, well, that seems like wrong. Like, people know, like I have differences with the Jewish group. I think there's, there's, there's things that they do wrong. But I I don't think that that is one of them. I don't think that saying our culture is an ethnically locked culture, but we treat.Malcolm: Outsiders as equal. That's totally fine. So if you have a black cultural group with like Kwanzaa and stuff like that, and they're like, yeah, we are an an ethno cultural group and they want to have pride rallies and stuff like that, that is. All things that I think are perfectly hunky dory, and there is nothing unethical about that at all.Malcolm: So long as they don't frame other cultural groups, it is axiomatically worse to them. Okay,Simone: so you're for pride, but you aren't for, like, out group hatred.Malcolm: Right, so there's a big difference between you know, some of these, It intra black cultural group pride rallies where it's a cultural group within the black community where blackness is part of their core [00:23:00] identity and they're doing a rally than something like a BLM rally, which is all black people, but only because they're black.Malcolm: It doesn't matter aboutSimone: other like we'll say control cultures. I'm thinking about sports teams, for example, and I think it's really hard. To like, have a lot of pride for your sports team, but then to not be like another sports team. Like, do you think it's possible to have pride while simultaneously holding respect for other groups, for our groups?Malcolm: Jews do it all the time, and I'm sorry, some people might not like, know a lot of Jewish people or not have a lot of like, like, hung out inside, like Jewish people when they're being very honest about what they think about side groups butSimone: they, I guess now that I'm thinking about it, they do show a lot of respect for like, Oh yeah, I love what this group does.Simone: It's really interesting.Malcolm: Yeah. It's totally doable. It's totally f*****g doable. And a lot of, does anyone do it aside from Jews? Catholics? Not the Catholics in America, not this weird integralist nonsense in the U. S. I'm talking about historic Catholics. [00:24:00] They, they don't do it with the people they're currently in conflict with, but they typically do it much better with groups that they're not in conflict with.Simone: with groups that are assimilating because that's all I'm thinking about right now.Malcolm: So look at the Catholic group. I mean, they typically didn't see, like, Protestants as that much better than like native groups and stuff like that. They have a equal level of disdain and discomfort with all cultural groups that aren't theirs.Malcolm: Okay,Simone: but that's different from And then just thought of your own group and respectfulMalcolm: how antagonistic those groups are to them. Okay.Malcolm: Avowed Satanist or, or Wiccan or something like that. But that's because those groups are like actively in conflict with each other. You know, most Protestant groups are actually very good at this. Calvinists historically have been very good at this. Historically, Calvinists really did not see. Like they would be like, okay, this cultural group has problems competing in this way or this way, but obviously everyone is wretched.Malcolm: Us especially, but we're just a little less than other people. [00:25:00] It is not wrong for a cultural group to say people of our cultural group are different than people of other cultural groups. But when you tie that to an ethnicity, I think that that, or when you begin to rank other cultural groups outside of your group against each other and then treat them based on that, that becomes a big problem socially speaking, because it means that your group doesn't need to improve as much.Malcolm: So it's okay, like, for example, to disproportionately, like, if you are within one of these Black separatist groups, right, and they have, like, a distinct culture, and you are disproportionately rewarding other members of that Black separatist group, that is totally okay, like, totally ethical, but when you start rewarding other people who are outside of that group just because they're Black, that's totally unethical.Malcolm: Yeah, that makes sense. So, it's, it's, it's okay to have some level of cultural isolation and even to be culturally, ethnically locked. Now our cultural group isn't ethnically locked. Like I would invite people in from, from other ethnicities. I don't care. But. But you don't have a problem with people having.Malcolm: I don't have a problem. I don't [00:26:00] think it leads to evil every time. Yeah. And again, I. As longSimone: as there's respect for outsideMalcolm: groups. Yeah, again, I would point to Jewish groups as an example. This doesn't lead to evil every time. You can have multicultural societies like we had in early America that lived alongside each other.Malcolm: But usually that happens when a symbiotic cultural group is the one in power and becomes less likely when a dominating cultural group is the one in power, which we've talked about in other videos. Something that people often miss. It's AmeriCorps, which was founded And the majority of at least the white population in the country during the founding was the Calvinist cultural group, which did not believe that everyone could join it or everyone was meant to join it.Malcolm: So they didn't have conversion conversion as a big part of their mission statement, which meant that they were like, okay, it was being Catholic because they were like, well, you were born to go to hell. So whatever. You know, or Jewish people, you know, you were born to go to hell, whatever, like, we don't need to convert you as a state, like, we're okay working alongside you, which is, you know, not dissimilar from Jewish cultural groups, they're also a symbiotic cultural group, they're like, yeah, well, not everyone's meant to be Jewish, so they're, they're usually, but when you have [00:27:00] a cultural group that thinks that anyone can convert or anyone could be a member of their cultural faction, like the progressives or like some other Christian denominations when they become the majority faction in an environment they often will try to use government apparatus to commit cultural genocide and force the conversion of people who are different from them, which ultimately ends up weakening those societies as we've talked about in other videos.Malcolm: You know, if you're talking about fertility rate or economics or really anything, typically. More diverse societies seem to be doing better and seem to do better historically. But the reason is, is because the diversity leads to competition, the diversity of economic situations, the diversity of ethnic groups, and the recognition of, and the diversity of cultures.Malcolm: And the recognition that this diversity is meaningful, but that ultimately you're only competing with yourself and your ancestors, not with the other, not with the other. But it's good toSimone: like see what other people do and compare notes. Speaking of comparing notes, actually not at all. It is time for us to play with [00:28:00] our kids.Malcolm: Oh, but I have so much fun talking to you, but I have so much fun playing with them. You know what our viewers haven't seen in a while is any after video shorts, cause I stopped getting them from you. CauseSimone: I've given up on life. No, just kidding. I will yeah, I will get back to editing them when.Malcolm: No, I understand.Malcolm: It's really hard. Things are really hard,Simone: it's just that you know, we, we always yes and everything. And then that means we go for capacity sometimes, and that's where we are rightMalcolm: now. Yeah, we're, we're unfortunately working without Greece at the moment, because they took on a few other really big projects.Malcolm: Oooh! But, you know, the world needs to be saved, and we appear to be the only ones putting in the effort. So, that's true. That's the end goal with all of this. Everyone's like, why do you do so many things? And I'm like, well, are you going to do it? And they're like, no, well, that's f*****g why, because someone needs to be fixing.Malcolm: The new one that got added to our plate is one of our viewers reached out about donating to us and we've been talking about a project that I'm really excited about to potentially create a [00:29:00] charter city.Simone: Well, yeah, and we're also prepping to run for office. We have to go get our kids though. So, let's do that.Simone: TomorrowMalcolm: you're going to a running forSimone: office event. Yeah, so I love you. Goodbye. Go get the kids. I love you so much. We gotta keep focused. I love you.Malcolm: Bye.Simone: Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We interview Patrick Friedman, a leading thinker on competitive governance, about his vision for decentralized societies. He explains the charter city model as a way to "upgrade" existing nations by allowing innovation in legal systems. These startup societies enable jurisdictional experimentation absent in most countries today.Patrick argues exit rights are paramount so groups can self-determine governance. He envisions charter cities as platforms where many opt-in communities with niche values/cultures can emerge. We discuss economics, recruiting celebrity founders, penal colonies, and more unorthodox concepts. Overall Patrick sees charter cities as unlocking competition to find better forms of social organization.[00:00:00] Hello. We said, we're going to get a very special episode today, which can almost be thought of as a lost interview, because it was one of the early interviews we did. Uh, but it was in a very different format than our other episodes. And so we didn't want to release it until we had a bit more of a following. It was, was Patrick Friedman who runs Pronos capital, the first venture capital fund that focuses on charter cities and network states. So when people are trying to start new countries, uh, this is the main funder of that. And Patrick Friedman, who we've known for a very long time since Silicon valley. Is the guy who would have been at the center of the seasteading movement when that was really growing. He coded at Google for 10 years, rent a small angel fund since 2, 7, 11 has degrees in CS and business and has been a leader in the competitive governance scene for over 20 years. Yeah. Leaders understatement there.He was basically he's the, what was the early charter city guy, when [00:01:00] most of the charter city movement with seasteading, which was this idea that people would go live on. Uh, sort of floating boats that would be made up of, uh, autonomous components that could like break apart and recombine. So like even your house, you could easily leave one government system and go to another government system very easily. So, uh, Some other stuff here I have 2001 began thinking about a new approach to upgrading governments. The side hustle 2008, started the sea setting Institute with funding for Peter teal, 2009. Co-created a famous phrase, a self-organizing festival on water, still running annual annually. So for if ever raises another thing, cause this is actually a really important event within. Silicon valley culture, which was seen as sort of like the rationalist slash less wrong version of burning man. Um, but it was done on boats, which honestly seems much more appealing to me. Uh, 2011 co-founded future cities development, which have had the first M. Oh you for a modern charter city in 2012 in to southern 18 started promos capital patrick [00:02:00] has board memberships and advisory positions across this charter city network state space He does talks interviews and events regularly around the world Very excited to, to bring this loss a bit of context for you and we have a few other interviews we might be able to put out this way Um so very excited about that.Simone: Hello Simone.Malcolm: It's wonderful to be here with you today. And Patrick Friedman. Patrick Friedman, he is and has been for a long time, known as one of the most preeminent thinkers of what. Future cities may look like what future society may look like. And given that we've been talking so much about the future of the world economy and the future of what human civilization may look like in ways that are very orthogonal to the way people think about civilization today, we are so excited to have him on.Malcolm: I would love you to give a bit more of your background if you think as any is necessary. And the first question I will prompt you is, is has [00:03:00] any of your thinking around what future human cities may look like? Changed with the rapid development of AI and the movement of AI into the public sphere? Or had you, were you such a forward thinking, you alreadyPatri: accounted for all of this?Patri: Well, nobody can know the timing of something like ai, but I think of it as being like somewhat orthogonal. Like, I have serious concerns about AI risk, but like, that's not my path, right? I have my part of the world order that I try to make better. And yeah, I think it's like really hard to predict what AI will do, but definitely now is the time when it's starting to do something.Patri: So we'll find out. Okay. So when you thinkMalcolm: about how cities are gonna change, what is your sort of go-to talking points right now?Patri: Well, so I'm, I'm interested in New city states it's kind of my life's mission to make it so that we can start new countries, like we start companies today. And at this kind of halfway point, after 20 some years of working on [00:04:00] it what it looks like is what are called charter cities.Patri: Charter cities have regulatory authority over some parts of the law while being under a country's sovereignty. And so I'm very interested in the way that that cities using new governance systems. Can be a way to kind of upgrade a country, right? Because the alternative, a lot of countries have old laws, maybe like relics of some mishmash of like pre colonialism, colonialism, post-colonialism.Patri: Often the courts aren't great, but it's really hard to reform a whole country at once, right? I mean, you can't make huge changes the legal system of the whole country at once. And you shouldn't, right? You shouldn't change it on top of a bunch of people. But what this has meant so far is like very little innovation in government.Patri: No, like sandboxes as we say in software engineering. No ways to test out new things. And that's what's really missing. And the genius of the Charter City idea is it says, Hey, wait. If we start with empty [00:05:00] land and then put a significantly different legal system there and people are opting into it, now we can make much bigger changes and test things out.Patri: And also it's a way of kind of, Creating a bubble with like a different culture and having people like opt in and acculturate it in time. So that's really different about it and I think that definitely the city state. I mean, look, the best run country in the world right now is Singapore, which is a city state.Patri: It seems like cities are like kind of like big enough to matter and potentially be independent while like small enough to be responsive to their citizens or customers. As I like to say, one of my main generative metaphors is looking at governments like businesses and thinking about the governing industry.Patri: That's all the countries in the world and citizens or customers who pay taxes and other fees and get some package of governance services and are kind of like shopping for the place that gives them the best deal. [00:06:00] Yeah.Malcolm: One of the things I love about what you're saying, and it's something that we often bring up, is really government hasn't been experimented with that much in a long time.Malcolm: Like there haven't been major innovations. And the last big one was when America was formed. And the reason you had that innovation is because right before that period you basically had a flourishing of steady states, which were the American colonies, combining European governments with Native American governments, which had evolved down completely different trajectories.Malcolm: And since then we haven't had isolated scenarios where people could, in lower risk environments, experiment with totally new government structures, which it sounds like is what you're trying to enable as you enable that. What are some of the new governance ideas you find mostPatri: interesting? Yeah, I, I definitely agree that the, the industry standard right now, the best practice is constitutional representative democracy.Patri: Mm-hmm. But as you say, that's 1787. I think it was also, I mean, it being a frontier was [00:07:00] important. Also the philosophical flourishing around that time around freedom and equality was very much rooted in the enlightenment. And I think a lot of people don't know that the Europeans, they considered America crazy.Patri: Like they seriously were like, this is insane, like this, like this democracy. Like it's insane and it's never gonna work. Like the American experiment they called it. So it, it was radical at the time. Now it's the industry standard, but it's gotten, it's gotten really out of date. And there's some people who, who just kind of assume that the status quo is the best that there is and only think about small changes.Patri: But like, come on. We've learned so much about science, about mechanism design. We have all of this new technology. Like there is no way that the optimal form of government is still exactly the same as it was 200 plus years ago. It's funny you ask about what forms I actually, these days, kind of like, I don't like to answer that question or hold strong opinions because for me, I got into this because there wasn't a country that [00:08:00] was values aligned and run well.Patri: Right? Those two things, there are almost none run well, none that were values aligned with me as a libertarian. And so I was like, what's going on? Why is this? And like, and and, and how can I fix it? Yeah. And so that kind of like sucked and I wanted to investigate it, but what I realized along the way is like, hey, what is the reason that there's not a country for any niche group mm-hmm.Patri: Is that we don't have ways to start new countries for smaller groups of people. And that what I needed to do to get what I wanted was to figure out a way to unlock the creation of new jurisdictions in the world. And then I realized like, wait a second. Like that's gonna let lots of other people with their own idea of a good civilization try it.Patri: And as far as the approach to like actually engineering a good society, like some people like think that if you agree on morals, you can like create a legal system. That's just, it's not true. We have a whole field of law and economics that like, there's no way, it's in the same way that like I could write [00:09:00] on a piece of paper like, yo, I want a car that goes zero to 60 in 1.1 seconds gets the infinity miles to the gallon and nobody ever dies in a crashes.Patri: Like a specification is not an engineering plan. And it's the same way for government. And so, I realized that the thing I needed to do to have what I want would actually work, even if I'm wrong, about what makes a good society and even if I'm wrong, about how to build it. And so for, I don't know, maybe 18 years or so since coming up with kind of those theories, my focus is how can I unlock it so that groups of people can start new jurisdictions?Patri: I'm trying to create a startup sector, right, to unlock competition and innovation. And it's not, it's not on me to say what those systems are. I mean, I, I'd be interested in seeing some variant of the terribly named a narco capitalism, the system. My dad was kind of a co-inventor of tried out but that's, that's just sort of a, a, a personal thing in general.Patri: The one [00:10:00] thing, the one criteria that I, that I care about for all of these is, is exit. And the reason is that, If you know that people can freely leave, then you kind of don't have to worry about anything else. Not, not quite exactly, but in terms of what are the internal laws? Is it what I think is right and wrong?Patri: All of that stuff. If you let people freely choose it, maybe there's like, maybe there's the option to have like death matches, right? And like just go at each other with chainsaws or cars or whatever. And like, people do it because like the money they get paid is gonna make a huge difference to their family and like elevate them, like whatever, like not my problem, right?Patri: What matters is that people can choose it. So a place where like people weren't allowed to visit, media wasn't allowed to visit, family wasn't allowed to visit, or where people couldn't leave. That I would consider not. Okay. Yeah. And, and [00:11:00] support intervention. And obviously like there's corner cases, right?Patri: Mm-hmm. Like, you don't wanna allow, probably allow zero jail time, right? What if somebody like runs up debts? Like, I'm not saying anybody needs to be able to quit on a moment's notice, but I would wanna keep things like that. Indentured servitude, like anything that prevents people leaving. If someone wants to indenture servitude for five years and they've like, gotten to see what things are like, fine.Patri: But like 20 years, like, no. Yeah.Malcolm: I, I, one thing I wanted to add color on that you were saying that I think is a point that a lot of people miss about the sort of default system of government we use today, which is typically a copy of the American model, is that the American model isn't even really a working model.Malcolm: It's a model that collapsed into a stable state, but it's not working the way it was intended to work. Like early on it was created to like prevent a party system and stuff like that. And it's more just like, well, it doesn't completely collapse and it's better than the last system, but there is just so much room for improvement, which is what I love about what you're doing here.Malcolm: Another area that [00:12:00] I wanted to. Before we get into free moving stuff, cause I really wanna get into that, I think that's interesting. But just at the beginning of the prenatal stuff, we'll get more into it later, but I think a lot of people would hear what he's saying and they're like, why would a government seed control for one of these charter cities?Malcolm: And, and I want to get to your thoughts on this, but one thing that we've seen was in our government work, it's a lot of governments when they're talking about their rural areas, so if you're talking about a government with like a lot of small islands and stuff like that, beautiful idyllic places they have this fear of like, these places, they're depopulating because people, you have this massive urbanization and so they are willing to try radical things to try to bring vitality back into some of their areas.Malcolm: I'm wondering what motivations you havePatri: seen. I'm kind of on the other side of that in the sense that like, like, yay urbanization. If people need to move anyway, if new cities need to be built anyway then they can have regulatory autonomy. I think I would just worry like if there are strong, [00:13:00] like look, there are really strong economic forces pushing the world to urbanize and I would just be really wary about trying to fight that kind of uphill battle.Patri: Mm-hmm. I mean, if there's innovative regulations that will help. Sure. But like I'm trying to fight the downhill battle of like, if you bring in the current best practices, then that is gonna be a huge boost to the city. Right. I believe that like effective governance, honest courts that act quickly, best practice laws that just boosts everything about a city and like makes the growth run downhill.Patri: So thisMalcolm: is a really interesting question then to me. How do you make that argument to an existing country? Because my concern would be if I was coming to a country and I was saying, loosen the regulations and make one of your existing cities, one of your existing wealth sinners have,Patri: have looser regulations.Patri: No, no, no, no. I don't change laws on top of people. That's wrong. Okay. Like maybe in the future, if there's a system that's really proven, that's gone for a [00:14:00] while and a group of people has some really, they vote like 90% to adopt it. Like, okay, but for now, no. It needs to be opt in.Malcolm: So it's about creating land that new cities can be built on.Patri: Sort of no. Why, why would you? We got a world full of land, dude. There's lots of authentic, that's what I where I'm having trouble. It's about building a new city, an empty land. And, and for the government generally it's the motivation is just straightforwardly economic to get foreign direct investment to create jobs and to increase income.Patri: Like that's the main thing. There, there are sometimes countries are, are interested in the sandbox aspect or even the fact that it's kind of, that it's kind of new and cool. But in the vast majority it's, it's economic development.Malcolm: Economic development. Okay. That, that's fascinating. So, this is where I want to prime you with our thoughts on this and hear what you, where you think things are going.Malcolm: So one of the things that we often focus on is in the developed world, or most of the developed world, [00:15:00] and, and, and not, it's not just the developed world, it's also the developing world. So, you have a fertility perhaps, and when I say most of the developing world as of 2019 by the UN zone statistics, All of Central America, south America and the Caribbean collectively fell below population rate.Malcolm: And we live in an economy that requires constant, that was built on the assumption of constant growth. And there's a lot of stuff that we can get into in this. In other podcasts, like debt instruments that require constant growth are social security systems that require constant growth or marketplaces that require constant growth.Malcolm: But as the world begins to enter a state where, and, and we had an economy that grew on average over the past 300 years because the number of workers were growing exponentially, and the productivity per worker was growing linearly, and we begin to see the number of workers declining exponentially, we're going to start to see economies decline on average, the world economy decline on average, which means we're entering a very interesting economic time where the only safe places to [00:16:00] invest will be the places with.Malcolm: Technophilic populations that have high fertility rates,Patri: but NigeriaMalcolm: Woo. Right. But since Exactly. Yeah. None of the countries have figured this out yet. What are your thoughts? How does this work for the cities you economic and,Simone: sorry, Malcolm, we have to, did you see him pixelate? Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm, you have to.Simone: Okay. Well, we'll justPatri: focusMalcolm: on the first question. The second question I'll ask later is, how does this relate to freedom of movement at an intergenerational and cultural level? But, we'll, we'll ask that separately. SoPatri: here's where we're starting. So I'm, I'm totally with you. I'm a hundred percent with you on the fertility collapse and the problems.Patri: I think maybe the only thing I, I'm not sure I agree with is whether GDP will go down. Certainly I don't think per capita GDP will go down, and I suppose it's a question for like total GDP of productivity increases versus population decline. But I agree, I'm like super worried about it.[00:17:00] I think it's a huge, huge problem, like a ticking time bomb.Patri: And I think what a lot of people don't understand, because most people just have zero sum thinking intuitively, right? Positive sum, just positive sum is a much, much more evolutionary novel thing. So of course, we're like less adaptive to think about it and for population people think about the fact that more people means we're sharing more fixed resources.Patri: But the thing is very, very little of our economy consists of fixed resources. Almost none of it does. And the vast majority of humans are able to create more than they consume and that they're actually like kind of economies of scale or benefits in a large population I'll give too. First is evolution actually happens faster.Patri: Most people don't get this, but twice as many people means twice as many mutations. Means double the chance of finding beneficial mutations. So a larger population actually speeds up the evolution, which is super interesting. It's one reason that we've adapted as much to agriculture as we have, even though we're not totally adapted.Patri: And the [00:18:00] other thing is ideas. Like most of the economy consists of ideas twice as many people, as twice as many ideas and ideas are, basically free to replicate. One person thinks them and everybody benefits from them. And so like more population is, is good. And then in terms of like meaning, like more resources to throw at the, the huge problems like settling other planets so that we're like less vulnerable to a certain set of natural disasters.Patri: Also benefits as well. And so, yeah. And the fact that like all the existing systems are based on like a different demographic pyramid and they're all gonna break. Like, I gotta say, I got mixed feelings about that. Yeah. Like, maybe they should break. And like that, that's what the math says.Patri: So, yeah. I, I, I really worry about this, this, this fertility stuff.Malcolm: Yeah. What I'd love you to pontificate on further is when I look around the world, the countries that seem to have this fixed the most are countries [00:19:00] with a. Ethnically and culturally diverse population, but with a population that has a strong sense of cultural identity.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So the, the most clear example here would be Israel whereas the, the counter example would be countries with an e ethnically and, and culturally homogenous pop population like Korea, which typically have the lowest fertility rates. So one, I think charter cities naturally lend themselves to diverse populations, but how do you create the sense of identity or do you even think that's necessary to maintain a high fertility rate?Malcolm: And how do you think about culture building as it relates to creating these newPatri: sorts of entities? I mean, it's been a while since I've looked into this, but it, it's, it's my impression that. You know that, that a huge amount of the fertility rate relates to education, length of education, women getting educated and women as equal partners in society, which [00:20:00] kind of sucks because what I want is a world where women have all of those things and we're making enough babies.Patri: And so, that makes the solution tough. And so places like, Africa and India are gonna be a, like a massive percent of the world's population. But like, is that gonna last most likely with the pattern we've seen as they move up the income ladder and become more like westernized or, when it's the whole world, it's more just like developed that their fertility rates will probably plummet too.Patri: In terms of like charter cities I think that. There's some countries that have tried prenatal policies, that there's various things that you can do. And having more jurisdictional experimentation means that more different groups are trying more different things, whether it's different laws or policies, whether it's a different culture Right.Patri: Or building communities differently. Right. Like, I mean, come on. Like, like the, the suburban America thing or the [00:21:00] urban Dangerous America thing, right? Like the best way to run to, to like raise kids is for them to be able to like run around and play with other kids. And that makes it easier for the parents.Patri: Like we're doing it all wrong, as in like Brian Kaplan's book. So I think there's a lot of things that communities can, can experiment with. I mean, I'm moving to Austin imminently and I'm talking to various people who have communities where they live in proximity to, to decide where to live.Simone: Well. Okay. That's really interesting. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Please. Yeah, so I mean, I'll say I personally struggle with the idea of of city states or charter cities because we constantly see people complain about wanting to start or have communities or like live somewhere where it's really cool, but then very few people are willing to move or they want to go to where everyone already is and it's really hard to get that critical mass.Simone: Yeah. And, and it's interesting, you see cities like Austin start to form because that's where everyone already is. I don't, I don't know of any [00:22:00] example where someone has seated that, like Austin was already like the cool city of Texas. Yeah. And then there were a bunch of sort of tax incentives that got all the tech people to go to Austin because it was like the one Okay.Simone: City, like from a like sort of progressive standpoint in a tax advantaged state, I also is city RedPatri: State. That's the formula. Yeah.Simone: Right. And, and so, I mean, I, I get that Charter Cities could possibly game that formula and that other cities have done that as like tax savings internationally, but. In the end, I feel like I get this impression that people are more living in like tech-based spheres, where like there isn't necessarily a, a one city where they go to, but it's like sort of social graphs that tend to be governed by the same social laws and work in the same like investment spheres and kind of live off their own floating economies.Simone: But they're like cloud economies. They're not anchored to any place. And the only way that to me, I feel like a charter city would really pick up or get off the ground is for an industry, like [00:23:00] let's say with repro tech, we're talking about, well, it kind of sucks that you can't have like really high levels of education and, and female workforce participation and.Patri: But if you had the uterine replicator Exactly.Simone: It's gotta help. If you had like a charter city that was like built around. Yeah. Like, genetically modify people to high heaven, like artificial wounds all the way, like zero ethics boards, like letter rip. I, I do feel like some communities can build around that, but I, I've never heard charter cities discussed.Simone: As like tech hubs or as like regulatory free for all zones in a like really groundbreaking way. Like maybe they'll be like, oh yeah, well, like, we'll be okay with crypto regulation. Are there any examples of charter cities or plans for charter cities that are like really like. Violently different, or even like, like thunderdome, like you were kind describing like yeah, we get a gladiatorialPatri: battles ethnicity.Patri: Don't that word violent, like, I mean, look, there is one charter [00:24:00] city, Honduras Prospera. There is one. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And their, their, and their legal system is English, common law based. Mm-hmm. Drawing from the best jurisdictions around the world. I think they took Texas mortgage law and Delaware corporate law.Patri: Right, right. And put together. But the way I see it is that what I'm in this for is for people to try radical new systems and find the next best thing eventually, right. But product market fit today. It's just bringing best practices and honest sufficient courts to new places, right? That's product market fit.Patri: Not because there's not gonna be experimentation, but because this stuff is brand new and we haven't kind of proven ourselves. And I think like crypto is the place where the governance innovation is really happening right now. Mm-hmm. Because it's so much easier in the cloud. And so I think that those tools and governance systems will be there to draw on when people want to wanna create more radical things.Patri: In terms of what you said about the population, yeah. We call that the cold start problem. It's one of the top [00:25:00] couple. Problems that any charter city startup faces, right? Is people wanna move where people are and how do you get them to move? And, we have a few answers. So, like, apologies, network state concept.Patri: Mm-hmm. Or you can look at what Praxis is doing is the idea of recruiting a values aligned community online who get together in meetups and build social bonds with the intention of moving together. Mm-hmm. Now, until one of these has, has happened, we won't really know will those people move.Patri: But I, I think if you get a. If you get to the degree to which there are like compact social graphs, right? Where people mainly have connections within a given set of people. Mm-hmm. Who can work, work remotely or are in the same industry. I think the idea is, and it has to be a set of those people who would want to move someplace and live under a new regulatory system.Patri: And that may sound like a lot, but we're talking about kind of like [00:26:00] the entire population of the world, the entire like nomad population of the world to just find some of these connected graphs where it's like, hey, if this, if like the thousand people closest to me in a social graph, like all moved someplace and look, we're not talking about like the middle of the ocean anymore.Patri: Like Honduras, Prospera is on Roton, right? An island which has a bunch of tourist stuff in an airport. Praxis is looking at some countries around the Mediterranean that have like lots of stuff going on. So it's not just those thousand people. But you know, I, I think that we have a shot.Patri: I mean, look at this Zulu thing that I just got back from a few weeks ago. This was this pop-up village in Monte Negro where 200 people rented out a whole resort for two months and then there was about 300 visitors that came through like me over the course of those two months. Vitalik Budin was one of the kind of main forces behind it, and it was awesome.Patri: People loved it. Lots of people are like, how do I come next year? So this was like a group of people [00:27:00] into longevity and crypto and network states, two cities who all got together. And I think that to me, What was so exciting about it was not just that it worked this one time for this one vertical, but there are a ton of different nomad verticals and there's no reason this couldn't work for all of them.Patri: So just any vertical again, where there's a pretty compact, like highly connected social graph you, you can start doing these things and having people like get together in person for longer stretches of time and maybe have that location move over time. And then as there's that in-person bonding, I think it's natural to open permanent sites.Patri: Zulu is already thinking about this. We had a bunch of conversations about what kind of jurisdictions to look at. Cuz one of their criteria is, and this works for Monte Negro as being someplace where the government is open to talking about changing regulations. I mean longevity regulations and the crypto regulations were presented to the head of state during Zulu and they're looking at other [00:28:00] countries like that for, for the future.Patri: So I think that you could just do this bond more and more, have this happen more each year, have it grow more, and then have permanent settlements and whether people float between them or stay in them, it's kind of up to the people. WhatMalcolm: are your thoughts on Simon? I can interrupt you here just, just for your heads up, Simone.Malcolm: We were invited to Zulu and with Praxis, the Collins Institute does have a contract with them to provide their education system. So we're, we've been very involved with a lot of this stuff and, and I think it may look like we're just total outsiders to the space, but it is something we've been very interested in.Malcolm: And the core thing that we were looking at was praxis that I found really interesting that I wanted to get your pontification on, is how do you build holidays? How do you build culture for New City states to create a sense of identity? And what do good state holidays look like if you're them from scratch?Malcolm: And do you think that they're necessary?Patri: Yeah, I mean, I think [00:29:00] again, I'm I'm very meta I've like worked to find what I think is the highest point of leverage. And so in terms of like the design of a society for like common culture and values I, I don't get into the specifics of that, but what I will say is in, in like our greatest bottleneck is founders.Patri: Like I, I've stopped. I don't follow up on leads to countries anymore cause I have way more countries interested in talking than I have founders. Wow. And it's been like that for, for a couple of years, that things have really changed. And I, so I often get asked like, what do I look for in a founder? And obviously the first thing is all of the same things as everyone else.Patri: But the second thing I used to say, some real estate experience and I totally changed my mind. I think that was just wrong. I think that that's something more of a commodity can be hired. My like, One specific, or first specific thing now is community building experience and then the, the last one is like, connections with a given country or [00:30:00] region or like really strong partnership building ability to create them because a, a charter city is like a, a partnership with a single like key stakeholder.Patri: But that community building side like that, that is a key skill that's needed because these things, whether it's an online community or the first in person community, they are small communities. And so people who are good at that, what is the experience design for a country like and who think about things like songs and holidays and things like that, I think is a really important part of this.Patri: So Simone,Malcolm: what were you gonna askSimone: as a solution to the Coldstar problem? What are your thoughts on like company town 2.0 where a company like Google or Amazon or anyone with sufficient funds who's also bringing in a lot of talent and possibly tax revenue approaches a nation or even a state in the United States and says, Hey, allow us to create a city, allow us to create our own laws or have these sorts of allowances [00:31:00] and bring in people and own their housing, and own their, their restaurants and everything.Simone: A lot of people describe company towns as being very dystopian, but it also seems like it could be a quick solution to the Cold Start problem. Do you feel like there are serious problems with it?Patri: Well, I mean, first of all, it's good because it's more cyberpunk and, the cyberpunk future is, is part of what I'm, what I'm here for.Patri: Yeah, sign me up. I think it's great. No, I think I, I think you're very on point. I think it's a great solution to the Coldstar problem. Again, like people need to be able to exit. Like I don't worry about a company town so much, if it's Google Engineers, right? Like, They're not going to, they're not gonna like be in a situation where like they're getting charged more than they're getting paid in salary or any of that.Patri: Like, terrible crap that happened in company towns, right? Like they'll just go to Facebook or whatever. Yeah. So I, I think it's great. It's a great idea. Yeah. And we'll, and we'll just see whether they go for it. SoMalcolm: there's a great story here I have to tell. So WeWork at one point decided to try to create [00:32:00] like a their own building complex, right?Malcolm: That was like WeWork branded, like live and work, right? And they initially had planned to make it like a company tone, like they were going to stock it with their own employees, but they were so disorganized that right before launch they realized that they paid almost none of their employees enough to afford it.Malcolm: So they ended up having to desperately find other people to fill it. And I think that follows your point there where if you're doing a company town like this, make sure you're not building it for the CEO's salary, you're building it for your employee'sPatri: salary. Yeah, I mean, I think that effective organizations are just gonna solve that automatically.Patri: Like you only need like one competent project manager to make sure that doesn't happen. But yeah, I mean, one way of, one way of generalizing, cuz I'm sorry, I'm, I'm relentlessly meta, actually, I'm not sorry that I'm relentlessly meta the company town. Idea is, is saying that like, if you can get a, like a set of [00:33:00] people who all have like shared economic activity and like shared culture such that socializing with each other is valuable and like an existing community, like, this is what's, what's different.Patri: And like one, it's like not happening yet, right? Because these ideas are so new. But it's, it's my opinion that, not the first ones, but that the first really big. Charter cities that happen will be drawn from like large existing communities. So for example I worked a little bit on a concept to make an eSports city, right?Patri: Like for gamers where it's like, yes you have like a huge eSports stadium where you might see your favorite streamer having coffee or at a restaurant where people would move to. From, for, from the, my investment perspective, I was mainly stuck on, I just didn't see any like, regulatory things.Patri: I was like, well, maybe legalization of betting on them or something, but there's not really regulations needed. But, even though governance change is my focus, like the broader [00:34:00] sta space of these new communities, what I call sovereign communities is it can be value aligned or culture aligned or based on like a lifestyle thing, having different education system.Patri: So I kind of consider the work I do on governance to be in this broader space of any group of people who get together to live in person. With some differences from the rest of society, some parts of the Civilizational Text Act that they wanna rewrite. And so I think that drawing from big existing communities like eSports or like Oprah, like I think celebrity c like Oprah City, Tony Robinson.Patri: Oh, yes, yes. I don't know. I would consider living in those places, people who have like huge audiences and have opinions about health and wellness and how to live a good life.MarthaSimone: Stewarttown, that's forPatri: me. I, I, I had the, I had the pleasure of having dinner with her actually in South South Korea like some years ago.Patri: And she's amazing. I think she is. I think yeah, I think those will be like, we have to prove the concept. We weirdos. But then I think it's gonna be stuff like that. [00:35:00] Yeah. SoMalcolm: here what he's saying, a lot of people may think this is an insane concept, but if you look at the early city states that made up the Americas, a number of them were essentially celebrity colonies, where they were based around a celebrity peer preacher who often had interesting ideas about Brigham Young, well, Brigham Young.Malcolm: It's an example of a celebrity city state, but that's not America.Patri: Right.Malcolm: That's more a religious city state. What I'm talking about is celebrity protestant preachers who would've been seen as just another person within their faction, but then had interesting ideas about things like diet and stuff like that.Malcolm: Very similar to your modern celebrity. Did KelloggSimone: create something like a No, he just, early America,Malcolm: that was about a hundredSimone: years, I think. Yeah. That, that was really late year.Patri: It was small, but in the baby. Yeah. That's awesome. I didn't, I didn't know about the, the preachers having lifestyle stuff. I mean, obviously, religions have a lot of lifestyle stuff in them, but you know, it's very old and immutable.Patri: Yeah. I mean, it [00:36:00] wasn't confSimone: confus. What is Confucius if he is not a lifestyle brand, what if, what is Jesus, if not a lifestyle brand? Let's, I've actuallyPatri: been getting, by the way, I've been getting into the Jesus lifestyle brand lately.Simone: Yes. Well, I mean, you got the long hair going, youPatri: know this. Yeah. I, I've been, I, there's this This Christian preacher, I really like John Mark Comer.Patri: Mm-hmm. I, I got into him because he has videos on, on the Sabbath, so, bringing Shabbat to Christians because it's one of the 10 commandments that was kept. Like, it's not one of the like two or three that changed, but it's kind of mostly ignored and he's into kind of slowing down and, and, and minimalism and the, the Sabbath is one of his, his practices.Patri: But he, he has a recent book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry because hurry is a profound enemy to spiritual life. And I learned like these awesome points about how like Jesus literally says Hey, I have an easy life. If you want an easy life, come with me. Listen to me, follow my [00:37:00] principles, and do the stuff that I do.Patri: But yet, Christian churches have gone so far from that. They're not teaching people to like to live like Jesus. There's some little principles from there that they teach, but it's like, it's this whole different thing. And like Jesus was very clear, if you want to, like, if you wanna be like me, live like me, right?Patri: Mm-hmm. It wasn't just about like, listen to my sermons, it was about a different way to live. One that we've very much gone away from in the modern day. And so there's this like much smaller subset of like Christian religious authorities today who actually like put this viewpoint forward and think that the church has kind of lost its way and that it should be saying.Patri: And but the problem is that living like Jesus is. It's really hard. It's really hard in the minor world. Maybe it could be done better in a community dedicated toSimone: it. I dunno, actually, I'm just gonna say, like, we don't peoplePatri: that cross this here much anymore. The pointMalcolm: have you seen, because [00:38:00] I actually think it would work really well if you're talking about intergenerationally durable cultures and stuff like that.Malcolm: And as a good recruitment mechanism. Any celebrity preachers or anything, has the Charter City community reached out to any of them about starting potentially a religiously themed charter community?Patri: No, but it's a, it's a great idea cuz it's just a classic community seed. I think we, we've talked to some, the closest is talking to some.Patri: Like very, very large musicians in Africa who have kind of a big following, for like, both their music, but it's like, it's, it's more than that in Africa. Yeah. These huge artists, there's also like a, a, a culture aspect too, but it's a great idea.Simone: Sweet. Okay. I wanna take us from utopia lifestyle brand cities, which sound really cool to another form of city state that also addresses a major, we'll say wicked problem which is [00:39:00] penal colonies.Simone: So you talk a, talk about in the beginning of this, the, value of being able to get away. But I, I do think that, there's, there's this growing concern about crime in cities. Some nations are like, well, just. Screw it. Let's like round up all the criminals, put 'em in jail. What are you pitching here,Malcolm: Simone?Malcolm: Well, I'm just wondering,Patri: like, I dunno, but it's gonna be awesome.Simone: I, everyone wants to like, create these solutions. I'm like company towns that own people, penal colonies, make it happen. But I mean, I, one of the things that we're really, interested in is, recidivism and, and people concerned about crime in cities and, also like, it, it really sucks and it seems really stupid to me that you just lock someone away and that, that costs a lot to people For sure.Simone: When instead, like, if this is about removing people from a society where it's not working for them, would it be possible to build a society where it does work for them or where at least they're not hurting? I wanna reword. That's an,Malcolm: that's anPatri: insane idea. I mean, it's, it's not like Australia is like a functioning modern country.Patri: ISimone: [00:40:00] know. It's not like that. I mean, come on.Malcolm: So think about how many problems it solves. So one states, it costs them a lot of money to to house an incarcerated population. They do have a recidivism problem. They would likely be willing to pay for some external entity to take. The, this population, especially if it was being handled in a humane manner or more of a humane manner than their existingPatri: prison system.Patri: It could even be opt-in and you could opt in. Yeah, opt in. Like I think it's really tricky. You have to be careful, like I said, like the right to exit to me is like the thing that kind of makes it so that we don't worry about other things. If it was opt-in, then, then sure. But look, so, so my, one of the things my dad does is study lots of different legal systems across the ages.Patri: He has a book, legal system's, very different from ours and banishment. Was a very traditional punishment, right? Because it is very expensive to keep people in jail through much of history. It wasn't done except for very important prisoners or for like shorter periods of time. And so I think banishment is [00:41:00] like a fair and effective solution.Patri: Like a society should be able to decide who's in there and who isn't as far as like crime and cities. I mean, I really think it's ineffective governments without incentives. Like I don't think a privately run city that makes its money from rents and taxes. Like that's just, that's not gonna happen.Patri: Mm-hmm. And by the way, like as a little, I used to be so against taxes, and now I'm like, wait, if, if you have an entity, like a, a for-profit company, like creating gdp, then like having an like taxes or just there's like a rev share. Yeah, it's like they have an equity share. If you're taking like seven and a half percent taxes, not a random number because that's what you need in the O C D to not be able to tax haven Uhhuh.Patri: It's like you have a seven and a half percent equity share of the economy, which you're doing work to create. It kind of makes all the sense in the world. But yeah, I agree. Like again, if you're, if you're like a profit maximizing. Company that's trying to like, make money by making a great place to live and work that people wanna come [00:42:00] to that's growing where people's incomes are increasing that, that's the incentive.Patri: Then something expensive like incarceration. Like it just, it's just very unlikely to be the best solution, right? Like, it's just mm-hmm. Very, very costly. And there's, maybe circumstances where it's the best thing, but you know, probably not. Right. There's, there's gotta be other, other mechanisms.Patri: Yeah. I don't know, maybe if you don't wanna vanish, people can kind of be in society for a period of time in like, a certain like limited area where there's more security and protections from them leaving. Yeah. But they can actually like work, right? Yeah. Like, yeah, that's, I mean, I feel productive enough to pay for the housing.Patri: There's an old Highland story, which is like a, like utopia, whole utopia society. And there's this one place where like they send the people who break the rulesSimone: timeout zone. Well, I, I feel like for many people who end up going to jail, it, it's, it's also for dumb reasons, it's for be, it's because society just hasn't worked for them.Simone: So I,Patri: I'm really intrigued by, well, I usually have way too many laws. I mean, there's [00:43:00] still a lot of reasons. Yeah. And so if there wereSimone: like an optin option for like, all right, you know what, like if you want, a road warrior society where you're just gonna be super violent or if you just want like drug society where like, whatever goes, like it's, it's all for you.Simone: Like, if people could opt into that, you might actually get really interesting innovation. You might actually get a. People for whom mainstream society or whatever society, they, these are customers. They're customers, right? Yeah.Patri: People who you banish Yeah. Are like, I mean, sure. You're saying this person is not a, is like a negative value customer for me.Patri: Yeah. And that means that they'll probably be a negative value customer for a lot of places. Yeah. But they're potential customers and so I mean, imagine, imagine this society that can like evolve to take those people in and make them productive. Less of a negative money from doing it. It's an unserved market niche.Malcolm: Yeah, once you get a critical mass of them, it makes sense for systems to develop, to make a negative value customer. A positive value customer.Simone: Yes, exactly. So, so here's the scenario, like, here's one that would be really cool. So let's say that there's like lots of [00:44:00] violent offenders and like just societies that work for them.Simone: Like, oh, they're inces, actual underdo. So no, no, no. What if we created like modern Sparta where like there was this warrior, mercenary state that made money. It's like a corporate town. It makes money by selling out. It's, it's armies. It's mercenaries. Mercenaries. It's a lack group city. And it has like, yeah, but also like, it has like, prostitution servicePatri: love so much.Patri: Blackwater Inmate City. Yeah. Like, well, no, it's, it's like,Simone: it's, well it's, it's, it's Warrior City, so they have their prostitutes, they have like, great services training ev, it's Superman. It's like the Bronze Age mindset Heaven. And then they like go and they like raidMalcolm: tors for like international television in the city.Malcolm: And people think, well, ISimone: mean that's more like for show. I'm talking like mercenaries for k, mercenaries for hug. Yeah. When a lot of people talk about civilization falling apart and also when you consider, yeah. I mean, honestly, for many other nations, aside from the United States, they cannot come close to our military spending.Simone: They can't, they can't hold standing armies like that. They can't train [00:45:00] soldiers. They can't afford it. Imagine the business opportunity for someone who figures out how to train incredibly skilled mercenary soldiers. People specialized in drone AI-based warfare, but also like on the ground combat strategic assassination.Simone: I mean, talk about a really cool penalMalcolm: company, right, Simone? Is that it would have so much culture to it. It would be so freaking cool.Patri: Gated was the it.Simone: Oh, did the team Malcolm, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, welcome. Okay, ready? Are, are you back? Try to say something. I think so. Okay. Now, now you can say whatever you think is fine.Simone: What I loveMalcolm: about this idea is because since you're creating this place with such a sense of identity and what it means to be a member, that people would feel that it would have this cultural ideal of, yeah, this is who we are. And that's what I love about these models that are built with a goal. It reminds me of the one that you and I have been [00:46:00] noodling on for a while.Malcolm: So we have this city state idea that we've really wanted to put together, which was essentially one in the far north. So in an environment where every day is like harsh, it's similar to fo Frost Punk. I don't know if anyone's ever played the game, but that aesthetic, which I really love but but then base it around genetic technology and rro tech technology.Malcolm: So you have an industry base there, which is artificial wounds, genetic engineering of humans, all of the stuff that you can't reliably do in other countries, or it wouldn't make sense to set up o organizations in other countries. Basically, I'm trying to create the Caminos from Star Wars, but in an actual city.Malcolm: But I think within many of these cities where you can create this sense of intergenerational identity is by basing them around something you can't do in any existing country. I was wondering if you had any ideas toPatri: that extent, Patrick. Yeah, I mean, Just briefly to close up on, on, on inmate Sparta.Patri: Yeah. Yes. One thing about it is [00:47:00] that it's a very proven model, right? I mean, not just Sparta, but it's been traditional throughout history for like young men who are troublesome or aggressive to go into the military. It's like a way of making use of that type of people in a way that is pro-social, that benefits the society, but the world has gotten much more peaceful, right?Patri: And so there's being a cop, but that's mainly about doing paperwork, unfortunately. And so it's kind of something that's, that's missing and we like put, it used to be that you would sometimes have the option to like go to jail or get banished or have some strong punishment or enlist in the military.Patri: Yes. And like, we put people in jail and like don't give them the option. So I think what's like, that's part of what's, what's. I dunno, compelling about the idea is it's actually like a thousands of years long proven model, proven model, product market fit. Yeah. As far as like frost punk, I guess I worry that it's very [00:48:00] uphill, like dealing with a harsh environment.Patri: This is like, I looked at the ocean for a long time when there are things about it that are necessary and make it worth it. Like sure. But dealing with a harsh, like you don't have to go to a harsh environment in order to like have regulatory freedom and like, it's not like there's no land unclaimed, like there's freaking oil and gas in the Arctic Circle.Patri: It is claimed and defended like Russia and Canada will go after you. And so yeah, I mean I think that like it's a cool idea for a city, but. But it's, it's notMalcolm: about the regulatory aspect. It's, I wanted a city state where you had an opt-in model where people had to suffer to join in some way, because I don't feel like that really exists within modern city states.Malcolm: And I thought that could create a form of identity. ButSimone: I dunno what your thoughts about, in other words, he, he wants a city in which, a city state in which there are selective pressures that force onlyPatri: the,Malcolm: yeah. Early American cities did this.Patri: I mean, I understand like Burning Man, I, I started going to Burning Man in like [00:49:00] 99.Patri: Like, it, the fact that it was so hard was this like really strong screener for people who are really, really interested in kind of the easier it got over time. The more people who are kind of there to like, consume instead of producing. So like, it's, it's a real thing, but like, again, there have to be, there was big benefits to them doing it in the middle of nowhere, right?Patri: Yeah, yeah. Like gave them much more autonomy. So like, if you're gonna have that cost, there have to be huge benefits. Like, besides just the screening, I think. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. So, well, I think in the end what we'll make for a successful city state is you need one, a forcing function. You need some reason why people need to or have to move there.Simone: There's a job there for them. They're literally like, it's that, or jail or death, so there has to be something that forces you to go there. It, it has to have a shared sense of identity and belonging. So once you get there, there's that retention. There's, I belong here. This is, this is, these are my people.Simone: This is [00:50:00] my tribe, this is my lifestyle, these are my values. Yeah. So something like a lifestyle brand or a celebrity based one, or like a preacher based one, religion based one sounds really compelling. And then the third I really think is, is like broader product market fit within the larger, like global landscape.Simone: There has to be something that you provide that makes you useful to the rest of the world where there's maybe some trade or where they like want you to be around. One of the reasons why we're really enchanted by the idea of a like far north, very unfriendly, frost punk city state is we worry that, let's say if.Simone: Sort of civilization crumbles. Securities is not a thing anymore. People are really gonna go after arbel land. They're gonna go after, wear those resources. So obviously we wouldn't wanna go wear those oil or anything, but you'd wanna go somewhere where basically no one would want to go. Mm-hmm. And one of the reasons why we really like the idea of a place where you'd have to grow food indoors, where you'd have to basically learn how to live in an extremely hostile environment [00:51:00] is it would prepare whatever group lives there for space travel perhaps.Simone: Cuz we're kind of excited about that. D So if, if you both have a super like rep ProTech oriented, like let's edit people with crispr, let's go with, let's make artificial wombs. You can not only engineer people to survive in really harsh environments, but then you can prepare them and have like a demo zone for harsh environments or for seeding other planets someday.Simone: Yeah. But I think that that isn't, to that point, it doesn't, it still doesn't fit the model of forcing function. I mean, the sense of identity thing could be there. Cuz like we're, we are theMalcolm: weird, well what, what I was saying earlier is that early American City states did do this. So specifically the Calvinist City states founded their city's on land that was bad for farming, that had a lot of rocks because they only wanted people who to join them who had a hard work ethic.Malcolm: Yeah. And that's something we don't see in the world today, is any community that's really screening for workPatri: ethic. I feel, I think that immigrating to America still screens strongly for work ethic. Mm. [00:52:00] I agree with that. And did even more so in the 18 hundreds. So I, I just, I have a general concern about like self-sufficiency.Patri: So something that I find in this movement, it was very true in stationing too, is that there are lots of, lots of people who like wanna do things themselves, like want self-sufficiency, who are, who are attracted to it. And I understand why, right. It's because in the evolutionary environment that's we did in modern jobs are amazing in some ways they certainly provide a lot more resources, but there's other ways in which they're like, Much less satisfactory.Patri: They're abstract. Right? But all of our modern wealth is from specialization in trade, like self-sufficiency is poverty is like mm-hmm. Deep, deep poverty. And I don't think that technology has changed that. Yeah. And so I think that this, this kind of instinct, like just doesn't match the economic realities.Patri: Yeah. We do have certain technologies, like microgrid infrastructure that is, makes the economies of scale like less and makes local production like less bad, but still, [00:53:00] like, there's still economies of scale and like, in all of this stuff. So I think it's important to find like what are the way, like what are the ways to satisfy that craving for an older life, which to me is really what it is.Patri: Yeah. In ways that are like still efficient, like I. Cooking dinner together and eating dinner together. I feel like it, like scratches that itch and like that's how we still do things, right. Whereas growing your own food, like that's mostly not how we still do things because it's like way, way less efficient.Patri: Yeah. So just be aware of how uphill it is to do things yourself and try to pick the things that have the least cost. And the most value. But it's like, it's just an, to me there's this whole space of like intuitions that we have that something's called folk economics. I have the say like folk politics, it's like beliefs and tastes that were true in the tribe where, we were monkeys for [00:54:00] millions of years in tribes.Patri: Yeah. And for hundreds of thousands of years of tribes agriculture happened 10,000 years ago. Industry happened 200 years ago. Right. And tech tech happened, 50 years ago. So like, we're not adapted for it. So of course we have all these cravings, but I, in most cases I think they're just not satisfiable, like, yeah, not achievable.Patri: SoMalcolm: I, I really wanna highlight something you said there because it's such a, a reallyPatri: kids running around together. Like I'm not saying there's none. There are some Yeah, yeah. Yes. And I don't think it's growing your own food, but,Malcolm: but it's self-sufficient. Communities are typically poor communities. When you have a community where every individual is determined to be self-sufficient or even a small community of people is determined to be self-sufficient, they are not going to have a high quality of lifestyle ina,Patri: any sort of, they don't have specialization in trade.Patri: Yeah. Really critical point.Malcolm: Another side point, I actually might edit this earlier in the video, just so you guys know when we were talking more about the prison camp thing, but something that's important to note is that [00:55:00] for these militarized forces that recruit from prisons like Wagner has started to do to make money they often do jobs in places like Africa.Malcolm: But to make money in those places. Sometimes they aren't actually getting money from the state, but they are getting money in terms of mineral rights and stuff like that, which actually would require a city state to do in a way that you couldn't do as easily was an American company or something like that.Malcolm: Which provides another reason why you would have to operate this out of a city state, because in that case, you have a state that can negotiate with local countries to say, we get access to your gold rights or your oil rights if we help you win this revolution. I mean, obviously we were unethical, but it is another reason to do it that way.Malcolm: I just wanted to, to get that economic point out there. All right, now I'm gonna move back to where we are. I'll move that earlier in the the show. But yeah. Any closing points that you guys had?Simone: Sparta 2.0. You have my vote. [00:56:00]Malcolm: You want Sparta 2.0.Simone: Mm-hmm. I want, I want my Merc. I mean, and there was also some really interesting like mercenary groups in Italy, like when they had some really interesting city states going on.Simone: I think there's just, it's a very underrated idea. I want city, well, they were also after, after,Malcolm: We call the camian explosion of Jewish culture. There were some Jewish groups that specialized in that. Yeah. And then there was the, the, the, the 300, the tale of 300, which was basically a roaming mercenary city state.Malcolm: Yeah.Simone: And that in company towns though, I mean, I really think it, it makes a lot. And, and you could argue that early nations were essentially company towns. It's just that at that point, the only thing that they could really do is either mine or extract minerals or engage in some kind of specialized trade.Simone: Like that's a place ofMalcolm: like pottery or dyes. Like even if you go back to the Phoenicians, right? Yeah.Simone: Like Venice was like glass place. It was the glass city state. They owned glass. That's not what Venice made their money on. Just, okay, what did they make their money on?Malcolm: Trade. Venice was fantastically wealthy, trained.Malcolm: They were like an independent city state that, that, that pitted other cities [00:57:00] against each other. The, the, the economics of Venice is like a 36Patri: hour luxury, long, long ocean trade as as well. Yeah. Mm.Simone: Still a city state specialization.Patri: Yeah. I mean, I think that as, as like, as far as the company town goes, I mean one way to look at it is like, as a way to start, right?Patri: Like it's solve to solve the coldstar problem and then jumpstart. But like there are significant economies of scale in cities and you can start with that and then you've got service providers for that. You've got like related industries and it can grow from there to be like a full diversified economy.Simone: Ooh, you know what? So there's also this interesting like teen dystopia series that I still love. It's not great, like, but it's it's called UGLi by Scott Westerfeld. Hmm. And it involves this, this world in which once you reach puberty you. Get to live in this city of just young teens that all get plastic surgery and then form all these weird like subcultures and get, like giant anime eyes [00:58:00] and like weird moving tattoos and like super.Simone: It's crazy, but it's all just teens. And then the adults go live actually in a different city. And another interesting city state could be like literally, is that not college? Well, I mean, we we're, we were thinking about this, we were talking about dating markets and marriage markets and, how do you resolve the relationship problem now that dating apps are, are broken, relationship markets are broken?Simone: And someone had told us in a YouTube comment, you're forgetting with Mormons who actually have some really interesting solutions on this, like singles words that ultimately b BYU as like a university is such an amazingPatri: solution. You know what BYU stands for? Right? I mean, people, it Brigham Young University, but I know it's, it's Miriam Young University.Patri: No. Marriam Young University. Oh, no.Simone: Okay, okay. I get you. But that's, that's the thing is also known as this person argued that like the majority of people do goat, yet it's Maria Young University. Like they, they go there to get married. Yeah. And you could theoretically create a university [00:59:00] town. Marriage market, city state, wherePatri: like, yeah, you go basically like yeah, you're, you're getting an education too.Patri: Mm-hmm. But we're not trying to be world class researchers. Mm-hmm. We're trying to be a place where you can learn some things uhhuh and find your life partner. I love it. OhSimone: yeah. So there's like life, lifeMalcolm: dreams is an automatic citizen, but you have to earn your citizenship after that age range.Simone: But I like the idea of there being life stage, city stage.Simone: So there is a forcing function. You can come, you can go, there is a very distinct economic need in industry. And then you go there and you live this life. And I think it's a sort of like that, that's another thing that these things could become. So I would also vote for my dystopian teen plastic surgery Mecca Marriage market, city State.Patri: Yeah. I love it. And look, I think that, the goal of this is for me is to unlock innovation. Yes, innovation in different types of societies. Yes. And I think that the way I view it, like a charter city as a container, right? Like it negotiates with the host country [01:00:00] for what degree of local autonomy it has over regulations, what the revshare agreement is with the government.Patri: But then once you have that container, like the city can then allow like neighborhoods, villages within it with all kinds of different policies, all kinds of different, like target markets, right? So the really, the hard part is creating the container, but I think of it like a platform play. Like if you're gonna make a bunch of global nomad villages around the world, like if you got charter cities to plop 'em into like, great if you wanna do something like we're what you're describing, that can be one ward of a city.Patri: And I think that having these just like cities with flexible governance that are kind of made with people expecting innovation, again, opt in are just way more likely to try stuff like that. Yeah, 100%. Let's, let'sMalcolm: wrap this up. Simone. We, we are an hour in. Okay. I will wrap it up. Ask him what, who, who should go his way, like who, if they're interested in you, should be chatting [01:01:00] with you.Malcolm: What should they be checking out that you created in the past? What's the follow up of listeners who are interested in your work?Patri: Sure. Right now they should go to my hand, still hand coded in html website, patri friedman.com or go to PAI mo p a t r i s s I M o on Twitter. That's where I write the most often. And yeah, who I'm looking for, I mean, number one thing I'd say would be founders strong entrepreneurial background and drive.Patri: Same thing as other founders, but with the sort of ambition and vision to create a new society. And I deal with some community building experience on the team. Of, of course I run an investment fund and these these. Charter cities are done by for-profit companies. So, there's always investment opportunities.Patri: That's another useful one. And then just yeah, just follow and boost on social media. I'll be putting out a thread soon with links to actually edit that bit. So, on the promos [01:02:00] website that's pro P r o n o m o s.vc our portfolio page has links to all the social media channels of all of our companies.Patri: So there's a lot to follow and you can keep updated on the space that way.Malcolm: This is really exciting and this is awesome. And, and if anybody's interested in starting a penal colony, reach out to us, cuz that's something I'm interested in. I, I wanna start super jail in reality. I love it. This has been fantastic.Malcolm: I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.Patri: Yeah,Simone: you're brilliant. This is so fun. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone discuss how political polarization makes it impossible to take a neutral stance today. Malcolm argues progressives force moderates into extremism by demanding endless concessions. He cites education reformers branded far right for helping disadvantaged kids.Simone notes many organizations now prioritize self-preservation over their mission, leading to tribal dynamics. Malcolm adds conservative spaces permit diverse views while progressives enforce narrow dogma, even lying about opponents. He believes their incompetence and false attacks will galvanize the public against them.Overall they conclude you must pick a side as the left doesn't allow middle ground. But the right welcomed them despite differing views, valuing truth-seeking over signaling status. They encourage watching for the progressive coalition's coming collapse.Malcolm: [00:00:00] Scott Alexander, right?Malcolm: Who writes Slate Star Codex. And him just talking like as truly neutral as possible. It's important to understand that in a society where the academic system and most media centers are controlled by one faction, if you talk neutrally, you are a threat to them because you weigh things. Towards the, the faction that's not in power, which is the conservative faction.Malcolm: And so he very famously just really tries to give the truth in like the most non extremist, non hyperbolic way possible.Malcolm: So, you know, he got outed by the New York Times and they did this really mean piece on him andMalcolm: to me that even somebody as honestly, I think pretty progressive in terms of his sensibilities as him is now pretty solidly grouped with conservatives in terms of the online intellectual movement..Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, you beautiful human being.Malcolm: Simone, you are the most beautiful human being who's ever [00:01:00] lived, and I love you to death. Now, today we are going to talk about political polarization, because this is an issue that has bedeviled us where we keep having people come to us and they're like, I'm going to start a nonpartisan version of your foundation, like the Prenatalist Foundation, because we Pretty openly aligned conservative.Malcolm: And we're like, that's not going to go well for you or they'll even try to start a, a full on progressive one. And I'm like, that might go better than an unaligned one. But the question is, is why? So one, I mean, I think the easy answer for a lot of people is truth has become a team sport in our society.Malcolm: Where people care less, you know, when they hear a piece of like, they can hear a piece of like research data, right? Which is just like. Furthering their understanding of reality, and they might become upset because it makes their side less likely to win.Simone: Yeah, I'm fuzzy on this, but I think even some psychology studies have demonstrated that people, when presented with evidence that runs against their [00:02:00] political beliefs and their political party's belief will become even more trenched in their belief.Simone: They won't be convinced or change their mind by that. So it, it does imply that truth is indeed a teamMalcolm: sport. And this is really damaging implications on reality. I mean, like, for example Germany, because of the environmentalists, shut down all its nuclear power plants? Not good. What were you thinking?Malcolm: Like... This is a, you know, when we complain about like aesthetic conservatism versus real conservatism, this is the perfect example of aesthetic environmentalism versus real environmentalism, nuclear power, bad, dirty, big nuclear silos and deformed people living near them. You know, it's like, okay, that's like a weird, like aesthetic of environmentalism from the 1980s, but like, we should know better now.Malcolm: Especially if you don't have any other way than to generate that power than Russian oil, which it turned out you didn't have any backup plan for, it was [00:03:00] profoundly stupid. And so I should say, we don't just have this problem on the right of like this, like, I'm going to be, you know, aesthetically and I'm, I'm, I'll link the video here or you can check it out, like aesthetic conservative versus real conservative, because we do have this problem on the right, but the left has it as well.Malcolm: Where they just stop caring about reality, and it's just about whether or not their team is winning. So I'd say that there's sort of a few reasons why this doesn't work. But I think one of the most important was when Simone went over with me, and I want to have early in our video here, you know, because I watched some watch time on these, and I'm like, well, let's at least get the good ideas to people faster, right?Malcolm: Which was, do you want to go into it, Simone?Simone: I don't remember it. What, what, can you remind me and I'llMalcolm: explain it? Okay, your idea was that if you try to hold the middle ground, the progressives will just keep pushing you further and further and further to extreme positions. Oh, okay,Simone: okay. Okay, I think I remember the argument I made and I think you can make this more nuanced thing, but I remember what I'd said to youMalcolm: at least.Malcolm: So progressives [00:04:00] essentially don't allow individuals to hold the middle ground ideologically. Well,Simone: specifically, I think what happens is, They more center people, even if they are progressive, get increasingly pushed progressive because if they attempt to apologize or correct their behavior, if their behavior is pointed out as being problematic, they will, they will be further punished and then further forced to go in a very, very Thank you.Simone: extreme position. So yeah, you basically don't get rewarded for deviating even slightly from the most extreme positions and in many circles at least. And then if you apologize, if you, if you engage in any way in a way that, that signals, no, I really still do want to be a part of this community, you are forced to become more extreme.Simone: Does that make sense?Malcolm: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So, so you can think about it this way. The progressive community it basically will say, okay, you, you want to be a part of multiple communities. You want to be a part of the conservative world, you want to be a part of the progressive world. That's what you're really saying.Malcolm: Like, I want to [00:05:00] be, Broadly accepted within both these communities. That's what a person is saying when they're politically neutral. You can't just say, oh, I'm not engaging with either, right? And then the progressive community comes to you and they'll be like, well, you need to change what you did here. You need to change what you did here.Malcolm: You need to apologize for this. The moment you do that. You have lost because then they, they make their demands more extreme and you get no reward for conceding. But if you do not concede, if you do not change your behavior based on what they're saying, then you are said to be a far right outsider or a racist or a Nazi or eugenicists, you know, all the sorts of accusations we have appointed at us.Malcolm: But they get pointed at literally anyone who disagrees with progressives. If you just disagree with progressives and it's. Irrelevant what the facts are. I mean, one of my favorite things was a guy was like, look, I'm obviously not a racist, I have a black wife, and I have black children. And they were like, well that's extra sign of your racism because you disagree with us, and you're around black people, so you must be victimizing them.Malcolm: And it's [00:06:00] like, come on guys, like, get it together, that's, all you're showing there is that you're just using the word as a bludgeon. For your political enemies and people who want to be seen within your group, and they know if they get this label of racist or this label of, you know, Nazi or fascist or whatever, that they're not going to be able to engage with your community.Malcolm: And so you use that, you, you, you spread this, you know, as we've said. Hilariously progressives who call us eugenicists are like, yes, you, eugenicists, you're dirtying the gene pool and I want to use the government to limit your reproductive rights in terms of the technology that you're engaging with so that you don't dirty the gene pool with all of this weird stuff you're doing.Malcolm: And I'm like, that is literally exactly eugenics. And yet you use the title of eugenics. And the accusation of eugenics on us to try to force us to engage with your way. But this is one reason, but it's not the only reason why you really can't take the middle ground anymore. [00:07:00] Another reason is that you just will have no one to support you.Malcolm: So if we tried to take the middle ground, we could be othered by progressives while not having a conservative line of support, which is really, really, really damaging. Another thing I'd label, and it's a little sad thing that progressives have so taken control of the narratives that even some conservative influencers believe this, but and we have a whole video on this, it's called like the greatest lie in history, which is that the progressive base is actually as racist or more racist than the conservative base.Malcolm: And I don't mean like in like vague wishy washy, like affirmative action is racist. I mean, until Obama was erect. Elected president. Fewer Democrats in the U. S. said they would vote for a black president than conservatives. Like, literally, it's still the party of the Klan. They just have hidden that because they control the media.Malcolm: And, and then they use like a few clowns in like the public to try to connect racists with conservatives. When the, the [00:08:00] Democratic Party is and always has been the party of the Klan. They just... Do things a little differently now and and you can see this in the actual data. So so check that video.Malcolm: But it is it is really sad. So can you tell us why you that things have to be so politically entrenched these days?Malcolm: Well, I can go over one if you want me to go further, which is to say that if you look at something like the educational system, like we came at this and this is actually a problem that Teach for America has, because, you know, we have a lot of friends and like high up in Teach for America you can not make meaningful reforms in the educational system and sideways progressives at all.Malcolm: So Teach for America basically attempted to do this and a lot of people don't know, but they're basically about to die now because they can't get any new recruits. They became known despite being the. One former number one employer for Ivy League graduates and to an incredibly efficacious organization work.Malcolm: They did really made a difference, but it made things harder for, like, long term [00:09:00] union paying teachers because they had to change things to adopt to these new strategies and they had to compete with Young, educated people who were like, actually, what you're doing is causing long term damage and they're like, I don't want to change what I'm doing.Malcolm: I'm going to the union about this. And because the union then turned against Teach for America or the unions turned against Teach for America now became not cool, like it becomes known as not cool among progressive circles to work for them. And I'm like, you know, you could just brand yourself as a conservative organization and you'd be, you'd have a, Whole fresh recruit of people you could take from and they would actually be interested in your mission because it's actually helping kids.Malcolm: And this is something where if you do any sort of like charter school advocacy, voucher program advocacy, anyone who looks at the statistics on this would obviously see that it helps students. Like it's just like reality is. Disintermediating in the education system is good for students, but it hurts teachers unions and teachers unions are an incredibly important voting bloc for Democrats.Malcolm: Like they would not, if they lost, if a, if a Democratic candidate lost the teachers unions, they could not win an election just period, like any election. [00:10:00] And because the progressive movement is so tied with the Democratic, U. S. Democratic politics, they have to then shape reality and truth around. The, the interest of those political interests, i.Malcolm: e. even if it's hurting children, even if it's disproportionately hurting poor children, well, the truth needs to be that charter schools are bad that even if pretending this is hurting children because it's Or, or, at least that it's still open to debate, at least that scientists go both ways on the issues and economics researchers go both ways, they do not.Malcolm: They're just like strictly a good thing. If you actually look at the data, not like what people are publishing, because obviously people, you know, like keep their jobs and stuff like that. But I mean, like, just look at the data. It's just like so overwhelmingly obvious. And, and this is one of those things where it's an interesting thing for a lot of people who want to like.Malcolm: Help with education, especially if they want to help with education in lower income communities. Cause a lot of people, they're like, yeah, this could really help these people. And they realize the minute they actually try to change anything, they get [00:11:00] branded as like far right activists or far right extremists.Malcolm: And it's always. It's somewhat humorous to me because it's like either you can take that branding and you can continue and continue to fix things or you can bend over backwards to try to, you know, accommodate them. And this is why stuff was like, you know, I think it was Mark Zuckerberg, right? He donated a hundred million dollars.Malcolm: To the Newark school system and over half of the money went to a bribe to the teachers unions to allow them to pay teachers more with the pittance that was left for good performance. That was the thing that teachers unions didn't want to happen for teachers to be paid more for good performance. And when I say a bribe, of course, it, it went to like unpaid something, something, basically it went just as a cash payout to members of the union in the local area to allow them to make these other changes.Malcolm: And this is what happens when in an issue like education, you're like, okay, I'm going to try to go at this from a politically neutral or even progressively favorable position. And it is created [00:12:00] that way. It is structured that way to prevent things from ever getting better. Because if things got better, they would have to change and unions.Malcolm: axiomatically hate change, right? Like they are about maintaining the existing power hierarchy within a field.Simone: Well, but I mean, to that, to your point there, that's not just unions. That's pretty much, I think we've gotten to a point where many political and governmental organizations have become extremely strong and entrenched and organizationally.Simone: Ossified but also very powerful and they've gotten to the point where they've essentially grown tumorous cancers that we talk about in the pragmatist guide to governance that are more interested in self perpetuation than in doing their job. So the focus then becomes Really protecting and entrenching rather than working.Simone: And so it would make sense that there's a lot of, you know, team sports and alliance creating and, and sort of power mongering and protecting, right? Because, you know, the, [00:13:00] the imperative of many, many organizations, both political and governmental are to just survive. Like they're not, as we learned from doing work in the political space, they're not effective.Simone: They're not actually really doing their job. They're putting most of their money and time and effort. and skill into raising money and telling a certain story that will lead to more donations or more support or larger budgets. But then I also think that the larger phenomenon with the way that internet communities work contributes to this as well.Simone: And that, you know, in a dominance hierarchy, as you say, in the pragmatist guide to governance, the way that you show your dominance in many cases is through your extremism vis a vis the special interest of whatever group there is. So I think because so much of political action has become really dislodged from like, oh, helping a community, helping policy, you know, changing this, I think the economy would work a little bit more efficiently this way.Simone: It's really become what team are you on? That therefore the most easy way to show your status in these communities isn't [00:14:00] by writing policy or by working with a politician or doing local issues like making progress on local issues, but rather. By showing how extreme you are in your views, because that makes you even more Democratic or even moreMalcolm: Republican.Malcolm: That's such a good point. And I really want to, you know, explore this point that you're making more here, because I think it's very important for our viewers. You know, that the democratic party does self eat itself due to this weird dominance fight. And you keep seeing this in local elections. Like I've heard from people in local elections.Malcolm: Yeah, we're out rating the Republicans, but due to these internal dominant struggles and these hierarchy fights we have within our local offices over stuff like, are we hiring, you know, the right. Makeup of ethnic groups. Are we hiring the right makeup of disabilities? Are we properly? Because that's how you show your dominance.Malcolm: Wording. Yeah. These are all dominance fights, but you know, they're, they're, they're, they're absolutely so infesting the progressive side that they are preventing efficacious work. Whereas we do have these problems on the conservative side as well. Absolutely. We have [00:15:00] these problems. I believe that we can overcome them.Malcolm: I believe that the dominant faction of the conservative group can prevent these sort of virtue spirals from happening. And we do this through shaming, which you constantly see on this channel, individuals who engage with this type of conservatism. This is not us, like being anti conservative when we're like, you know, you flexing your aesthetic conservatism is a problem and will lead to virtue spirals and will lead to problems.Malcolm: It is actually a problem. It actually causes. Problems. It is stupid and a waste of time. And don't do it. Like, just don't do it. But the other thing that you mentioned there and you were citing something that was actually really concrete that we have information on that your average person wouldn't have information on.Malcolm: So we ran the selection thing that had us, we were being funded by conservatives, but it, it had us aligned with progressives a few times. And so we got internal access to some of their data. Yeah. Like these big democratic get out to vote organizations. And we learned that they [00:16:00] performed literally 6, 000 percent worse than us on a per dollar spent level.Malcolm: And the core innovation we had was just AB testing. Well, and a few other really sophisticated things we were doing. But the point being is that it appeared that they hadn't like, they would send these emails, which you might've seen was political emails was like borders on the email. And then like internal texts that was like.Malcolm: A page and a half of like text was like images and stuff. And I'm like, this looks like a spam email from the nineties. Like you guys know the reason why all the companies stopped doing this is because it doesn't work. And they were like, yeah, but we don't want to risk experimenting with things. If you looked at the emails that our org was sending.Malcolm: They never went above three sentences, usually one to two sentences, simple action items meant to emotionally engage people. That's our consulting thing. If you want to like get all the information that other people pay a lot of money for when we're talking about these sources of political things.Malcolm: But yeah, that's literally how we did it. And it, [00:17:00] it, to me was not. Shocking to me. I was thinking about like, what gets me to act on an email? Like it has to basically piss me off. Like if it's a spam email, it needs to be short. Like people only read one to two sentences. They don't read anything long form.Malcolm: They don't read anything that has these fancy images on it. So take all that out. And emotionally engage them as quickly as you can and that will get them to act in the way that you, you want them to act but that they, that they hadn't even considered this because, and what we realized, if their emails were not about doing what people, when they said we're taking donations to do X or Y, they weren't about doing X or Y, they were about In raising more money.Malcolm: They were about doing what seemed like plausibly an okay thing to be doing with the money so that they could raise more money so that they could pay more salaries. And this is a, you know, the word you use is, is wicked problem, Simone, because it's a very difficult problem to fight at the level of a nonprofit if you're not giving to a nonprofit that's not like,Malcolm: Which [00:18:00] is, well, that's the thing isSimone: it's really hard to find a nonprofit like that because nonprofits like that do their job and either fix the problem or disassemble as soon as their specific job is done and, or fail to raise money because they were so busy doing their job. And then basically the only nonprofits that persistently exist over time are extremely good.Simone: And making money at raising money and making the problem seem bigger, which frankly is a lot easier when the problem doesn't go away. So I just, I think it's, it's, it's going to be really hard for people to find any. Long lasting organization that is not ossified to at least some extent by this level of corruption.Simone: And I mean, I, I used to use organizations like Charity Navigator to try to figure out like the percentage of spending that was program spending, but even those numbers are really fudged. So I think now, like, if I were to donate, I mean, like the way we donate money now is actually how I would always donate money, which is like.[00:19:00]Simone: Put money toward a very specific discreet project with a start and an end. And metrics that enable me to see if it did its job, period. Like nothing, you know, see no organization that is going to have staff members that is going to have people who, you know, depend on it for a salary. Because those people are going to be incentivized to keep the organization alive much more than they're going to be incentivized to solve theMalcolm: problem.Malcolm: I mean, our nonprofit spending goes to our own projects, largely speaking, and It goes to our own projects where we also have the secondary nonprofit goal of you should never be donating to anything that can't become self sustaining. And by that what I mean that can't become because when something provides something of value to other people in our society they pay for it.Malcolm: Like that's what that's what efficiency gains are. Right? And so if you have actually created something that's providing value, eventually people will pay for that value. And if they're not paying for that value, well, then you're not creating value. You're not actually helping people. There is always a way to profit when you're making people's [00:20:00] lives better.Malcolm: And so we look for ways that we can put, you know, some money down now to create something that then spins up itself and improves the quality of a lot of people's lives. But this is very different than the way traditional nonprofit organizations work. Yeah. But it's really sad. I'd say another thing is you know, if you, one thing that I've been very surprised about is.Malcolm: You know, coming from a world where you're in the progressive community is how narrow they are in the ideas that they accept and will allow to be voiced yet how diverse the ideas in the conservative community are almost to a fault today, which is very interesting to me. You know, it's, it's a community where you can have a conservative Muslim and a conservative Jew in, in the same.Malcolm: organization who have almost literally nothing similar about their world perspectives. And, and then people like us who are, you know, conservative atheists, I guess you could call it, or, or secular Christians. Which, [00:21:00] which have pretty unique views, yet we've been pretty Accepted by most of the, the voices in the movement, except for some where we could like disrupt their power hierarchy.Malcolm: Like, who was the guy who called us like nerds that no one should listen to? Oh, Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro. Yeah. But other than that, you know, it's, it's, it's been pretty interesting. I also think that if you want to look at an example of why you can't take the middle ground, a great example that happened pretty publicly, which was the guy we were just meeting was last week was Scott Alexander, right?Malcolm: Who writes Slate Star Codex. And him just talking like as truly neutral as possible. It's important to understand that in a society where the academic system and most media centers are controlled by one faction, if you talk neutrally, you are a threat to them because you weigh things. Towards the, the faction that's not in power, which is the conservative faction.Malcolm: And so he very famously just really tries to give the truth in like the most non extremist, non hyperbolic way possible. He always, anything we care about, he's always like, [00:22:00] well, you may be worrying a bit more. Everything's always less. And as we point out, you know, you're talking about prediction markets, because we're at this prediction market event.Malcolm: We're like, look, if you always bet that any extremely alarmist prediction is wrong. Generally, you are going to make money or you are going to make prediction market points on average. However, You are also going to do less meaningful things because you are going to miss the things that actually turn out to be right in terms of outrageous predictions.Malcolm: So, you know, he got outed by the New York Times and they did this really mean piece on him and it sort of forced him in many ways to, to become, it, it, it helped his, his public rise a lot becauseMalcolm: to me that even somebody as honestly, I think pretty progressive in terms of his sensibilities as him is now pretty solidly grouped with conservatives in terms of the online intellectual movement.Simone: Yeah. But again, I, I think that [00:23:00] that's actually a really great example of what it's like when you are punished, you know, for for being insufficiently progressive. That, you know, there's like nothing you can do. It's, it's really crazy. And, and also the accusations that were made about him were so tentative that it's, it's almost a joke.Simone: Like they, they were really accusing him of things that weren't even true. But it was enough to endanger his professional practice to make him extremely uncomfortable, of course, and to sort of like really disrupt his life. So it is. But you know what? He didn't apologize. And I think he did theMalcolm: right thing.Malcolm: He did the right thing, and it helped him.Simone: Yeah, well, I mean, there's nothingMalcolm: to apologize for. Like, I'm not, I'm not backing down from these positions. You guys are being unrealistic and unreasonable. And you're being little turds basically. And it ended up helping him. Now, of course, he's not hyperbolic like us.Malcolm: Like our whole public image is based on being kind of bombastic and combative a little bit. I mean, not in like a mean way. I mean, [00:24:00] unless you're talking about Yad, then it's in a mean way, but other than that, not in a mean way. And. His is not. His is not. He is genuinely, like, very middle line, and it was shocking to me, and this is actually interesting to me, and it's how I know the progressives are going to eventually lose, is in this power consolidation play, They are kicking out many allies through potential allies through very tentative in a way that makes it increasingly obvious to the general public that one, these groups control the positions of power in our society to they are willing to lie to them pretty aggressively.Malcolm: And three, they do not have their best interest at heart. And I think at thisSimone: point, there's no way to win also. I think it's,Malcolm: it's just, yeah, there's no way to win. And if you're not in the cult, you know, I, I think it's pretty obvious that it is a cult and that it's a cult that doesn't have your best interest at heart anymore.Malcolm: And that the only way to fight them is, is to unfortunately align yourself. I won't say unfortunately, fortunately, because they have so many [00:25:00] beliefs that are aligned with us. You know, since Trump was elected, we're really like, well, Now we sort of agree with almost everything the conservative party stands for which is pretty interesting because before him, you know, before this major political realignment, now we had a lot of pretty major disagreements with the way the conservative party was structured.Malcolm: And it's, it's a lot less of a, a, a smelly pill to, to target and sort of the Trump and post Trump, especially the post Trump era. Although I do think Trump will probably be our next president. So it's, it's not post Trump yet. Right.Simone: We're in for it. An interesting future. Well, unless they have a change, cause I don't see how in the age of the internet it can change.Simone: But I, I think it would be really greatMalcolm: if it did. Here's how I think it's, it's one of those things where it's, it's slow in the background until it's all at once. I think anyone who is engaged with like, what is actually true about reality. When they investigate the data, it's really obvious that many positions.Malcolm: That you would come to are not [00:26:00] positions that progressives allowed. They will kick you out of your community, their community for having, which means that anyone who's interested in like actually what's true about reality, not what helps me signal my status to other people that they will side with the conservative party.Malcolm: I mean, this is what the intellectual dark web really is when people talk about this. And, and because of that, that means we get the best talent. When I talk with smart young people, they're like, yeah, I mean, I want to stay under the radar, but secretly I identify as this, this, and this conservatively speaking.Simone: Oh man, the number of times we hear that.Malcolm: Yeah. And it's because they have made themselves the big boogeyman, the big oppressor, the big, you know, we do this, this and this. And the accusations they are leveling at conservatives with little research, like the racism episodes that the progressive base is actually as racist or more racist than the conservative based in like the most traditional sense, the accusations like, Oh, these conservatives are racist.Malcolm: They're just obviously not true from the data. [00:27:00] And, and, and then they use these words to be like, why would you associate with these racist conservatives? And when you look at the data and you don't see this as being true, you're like, wait, have I been lied to? And nothing galvanizes people against you like lying to them, like convincing them to malign or hate somebody based on something that turns out to be entirely fictional.Malcolm: And . That is exactly the stance and tactics at the progressive party is using so aggressively right now. And then on top of all of this, when you're in this status signal, you know, fight, you know, within the Progressive Party to be accepted by this community, you know, desperately something to be accepted by this completely narcissistic.Malcolm: unrealistic demigod that you won't have kids because that's not what you're focused on. Right. And it's sad, but it's, it's, it's sad that so many people have been caught up by it, that it has so many positions of power in our society, but it's just so astoundingly inefficient. Now, of course we have the fear that they then use AI or they use government control in a way similar to like what [00:28:00] China is doing.Malcolm: They, they, they shut down people's Ways to make income like they did with the trucker protest, like anyone who is even like reasonable on the trucker protest, they would like literally shut down their bank accounts in Canada. Like, we have seen how far they have had to go to keep control when they are obviously not on the average citizen side, when they are not on the working classes side anymore, when they are the party of racism now.Malcolm: And yet they need to hide all of this when they have organizations like Antifa that literally act like, like Nazi fascist goons. Like you look at what the people were doing in the lead up to the election of Hitler and you look at like these goons who would go out and rough up people and like agitate was in protest and they, they like dress, they act, they talk like Antifa.Malcolm: Antifa's goals are like literally actually fascism. And yet they, they call themselves anti fascist and you see pretty quickly, Oh, these guys are actually like transparently evil. And actually transparently support fascism and what they want from a government, the government that fascist [00:29:00] reinforces their values on anyone who thinks differently than them.Malcolm: I mean, I think that this is all pretty transparent to people and that they're going to lose the control they have now. Yeah,Simone: we'll see. I think that it can get a lot worse first.Malcolm: But we'll, we'll, we'll fight. We're here. We we'll win. We've got plans in action across many domains and we know other people who do too.Malcolm: And as we always say, if this podcast had a motto, it would be thank God the forces arrayed against us are not as competent as they are malevolent. If we lived in that timeline where they were competent as well, Oh, I wouldn't want to be there. But they are wildly incompetent.Malcolm: And when our money goes 6, 000 fold further per dollar spent to things like our foundation versus theirs they just can't compete. They're not nimble enough because they don't get people who relate to truth. They get to people [00:30:00] who relate to status seeking. Yeah.Simone: So it goes. Well, I love you and I love, you know, not being on the oppressive, not allowed to talk about certain things side of the spectrum because I guess I, I kind of grew up there and it, it wasn't just not being allowed to talk about certain things.Simone: It was not being allowed to admit certain things about yourself. And. That wasn't great for me. I really like it on the other side. So thanks for bringing me over there for showing me I had the rightMalcolm: to do that. It reminds me of a scene from Madagascar where they have the fun side of the island and then the not fun side of the island and they're like, you're always welcome on the fun side of the island.Malcolm: Just come over. It's a party over here. You don't need to be so sad and angry at everyone. And, and this is true. Progressives on average are much sadder than Republicans. They haven't since Pew started recording this [00:31:00] data. And, and I, and I just love that scene. And I've even gone back to watch it cause I'm like.Malcolm: The, the, the the fun side of the island scene, because that's the way it is when you, when you join the conservative side and you realize that all the fun people are already over here and we're all having fun and you're welcome over here and we are not the boogeyman that you have been told.Simone: Yeah.Simone: Well, speaking of fun, let's go play with our kids. Yeah. I love you. I love you too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe