21. Silas Mähner Talks Great Houses

In this episode, Greg Treat sits down with Silas Mähner, Catholic entrepreneur and founder of Catholic Founders, to discuss long-term employment relationships, corporate lifers, and what it takes to build institutions that compound over generations. Drawing on Japanese firm models, Dunbar's number, and the economics of defection, they explore why short-termism hollows out companies and communities alike — and what the covenant-based alternative looks like. The conversation covers the spiritual, legal, and economic pillars required to make lifer employment work; how AI is accelerating idiosyncratic corporate stacks that will demand deeper specialization; and why the coming economic order will likely resemble feudalism — with Christianity, Confucianism, or caste as the only real frameworks to choose from. The episode closes on how beauty, walkabout traditions, and keeping your own children are the real drivers of a lasting great house.

What is Great Houses?

The Great Houses series is a private discussion on the enduring structures of elite families, their strategies for generational continuity, and the practicalities of building a lasting legacy. Led by Gregory Treat, the series explores concepts like illegibility, patronage, feudal instincts, and the mechanisms by which great houses have persisted throughout history.

All right.

Hello, everybody.

Uh, welcome to this special … a … I've tentatively titled this Silas Monet Talks Great Houses.

So, uh, Silas, it's great to have you on.

Why don't you give, uh, you know, in case, in case we do publish this, uh, gi- gi- give us a little introduction to you and, and, uh, tell us about what you're doing over on, uh, on, on the Catholic fraternity side.

Yeah.

Thanks, thanks for having me on, Greg.

Uh, I've learned a lot from, from your content over the past, uh, over the past month, so I, I appreciate you a lot.

Uh, the, the short version for me, the quick history is I'm originally a country boy from Wisconsin, ended up in New York City.

I met my wife there, then we started having kids, and I was like, "Yeah, go- we gotta get out of here."

So went back to Wisconsin briefly, and then ended up now in Nashville, Tennessee, where I'm building a recruitment consultancy.

But the thing that I do and spend a lot of my time on, which I'm very interested in, is this thing called Catholic Founders.

It's basically a podcast, newsletter, and you could call it a fraternity or, or a community of, uh, people who are Catholic entrepreneurs,
and the core objective is we want to rebuild American culture through, you know, let's call it responsible or godly entrepreneurship.

Um, godly in the sense that entrepreneurship is a co-creative act.

It is leaning into the, to what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, to who Go- God who is the creator.

And I think that there's, like, a fundamentally different perspective for our entrepreneurs who are, uh, Christian in general- Mm-hmm

when they, when they lean into this idea of being an entrepreneur, because it's not the same as secular entrepreneurs who are just pursuing
wealth for wealth's sake, or even impact for impact's sake, which is usually typically a selfish thing that they're, they're going after.

But there's this third dimension, which is Christian entrepreneurship.

So that's what we're up to.

We've got about 100 people in our community.

We publish podcasts and newsletters every week.

And right now I've been going off a lot on the, uh, the new encyclical from the Pope.

So, uh, you can expect to hear a lot of, of a lot of my opinions probably today might, might reflect around that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the, the genesis of this episode was you had reached out to me and, and asked if I had done any thinking about, you know, lifer employees, long-term, long-term, you know, employment relationships.

Uh, you know, I mean, I think in one of the things that, that this, this probably needs to be said, there was a point in time in the United States of America where you could expect to get hired out of high school by
a corporation and, you know, there was a, a large amount, maybe not over a, a full majority, but a large amount, maybe 30, 40% of people in this country that would stay with that corporation until they retired, right?

Si- similar, you know, to a, a, a lifer military contract, right?

You're 20 years, you, you get a, you get a pension, you get a retirement.

Um, you have, you know, basically one set of skills that you can hyper-optimize in.

Um, there was a lot of friction in terms of, of, of moving.

Um, people didn't wanna move.

This is…

You know, interestingly enough, this is the same, um, time period.

Uh, one of the, one of the key legal, uh, markers is, is of course, you know, uh, the, the 1960s, uh, when it became illegal discrimination to pay marriage bonuses and, um And first child bonuses.

Um, and before that, I mean, and, and, and I'll, I'll note parenthetically that I am aware of, of, of, of anecdotal evidence of managers continuing to pay those bonuses well into the '70s and '80s when it was flat illegal, right?

But they would figure out a way to get a guy money, uh, when he got married because he, uh, uh, a, a… If you're trying to make someone into a lifer employee, you actually want them married because it makes them less likely to defect.

Um, so Silas, unfortunately, because, uh, has, has not heard, there are certain episodes that will come out before this one, so my audience will have heard my, uh, my concept of, of, you know, what, what, what makes someone likely to defect, right?

Mm-hmm.

And there's a, there's a, a, a formula that I've been, I've been talking about, which is wrong.

I'll, it's, I'll… No, no, not that I'm not making a claim that this is a, a mathematically accurate formula, the formula that I've come up with.

Uh, so I worked with Grok, 'cause I'm, I'm a, I'm a attorney, not a math guy.

I worked with Grok to get a very simple formula.

Your likelihood of defection is equal to one minus the proof of work you've put into a particular system or thing, divided by proof of work plus the benefits of defection, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, um, and, and the idea of that is you can… And, and it's not, again, it's not an exact formula.

When I tried to, like, incorporate re- incorporate research, Grok gave me these super long, like, page-ending formulas that had all of these different variables in it that I could never explain in a million years.

And, 'cause I didn't understand them, number one, and because I just don't think that they're explainable to, to normal people.

So there are actual, like, models out there if you're- Mm-hmm … genuinely interested in this.

The point for my audience that I'm trying to get people to grapple with and engage with is if you want a long-term relationship, you have to be okay with the person you're
in a long-term relationship with asking for accountability and some means of reducing your likelihood of defection, which is gonna mean you giving up optionality, right?

Mm-hmm.

So one of the things that raises your likelihood of defection is having a plan B, right?

You, you, I mean, I'm sure in the entrepreneurial world, there's certain entrepreneurs that can work a main job and have a side, side gig, and that side gig can kind of eventually grow up to replace their income.

That, I'm not saying that that's impossible.

But many, and I'll even say most of the people in my experience, to genuinely make their entrepreneurial thing go- They just had to quit what they- Yeah … the other thing they were doing and just say, "I'm all in." 'Cause otherwise, every time things
get hard in the primary thing that you're doing, well, you just sort of go to the s- the, the sure money thing and just kind of invest your, your excess, your marginal time and energy there, 'cause you don't have to make the plan B succeed, right?

You don't have to make the side hustle succeed, right?

Um, you know, it's sort of the same in, in, in the dating markets, right?

Your, your girl, if you're trying to persuade your girl, uh, and now this is happening the other way, right, and because of the depravity of our society.

Uh, but, but in, in, in, in historical times, right, if you had another chick on the side, your girl would be very unhappy with you because she would know that if that meant that if she made you unhappy, she would go…

You would just go with the other girl, right?

Mm-hmm.

You'd have somebody lined up, and that, and that was, that was seen as, as, as negative, right?

Now, I'm not, I don't, I don't w- wanna derail us- Yeah … with a comment of, of, of the modern, you know, gender wars.

There was a great episode put out by New Founding probably, oh, maybe three months ago, maybe more than that, talking about the weirdness of, uh, the, the, the sexual marketplace, right?

Um, you know, people, the modern apps basically mean that you're competing with all singles in your area, so people are literally competing for
the same, the same group of opposite sex members- Mm-hmm … that their, their parents and grandparents are competing for, which is very strange.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, probably, probably harder on the women actually, I think.

I, I think the, the, the, the, the destructive analog on the male side- Mm-hmm … is actually when men are competing for the same economic opportunities that their fathers and grandfathers are competing for.

Mm-hmm.

Which goes back to this lifer thing, right?

If you can be, you know, liquidated, if you can expect to be liquidated every two years, well, it, it, it makes your incentives very weird, right?

So that's sort of my, my opening lobby, uh, you know, lob across the, uh, the, the court.

So tell me, tell me if what I'm saying is landing or, or what- Yeah, no, I- … what, what sparks for you.

I think, I think that makes a lot of sense.

I think for me, the, you know, the core motivation, I, I typically root everything that I'm motivated in by the, mostly the Catholic social teaching and the things that, that we- Sure

that I've been, you know, raised with.

And, you know, there's, um, there's a couple, you could say tensions with some of those things you've said that I, I, you know, I appreciate are actually important to, to recognize.

But in general, my concern as a Gen Z is that we've seen… We, we don't see people investing in their local communities, not because they don't necessarily want to, I would assume.

I would assume it's primarily because they don't see the point, right?

Right.

So on, on one hand, they think that, you know, the government is meant to take care of all of us and take care of all these things 'cause we no longer have to do it.

All the infrastructure was built, you know, in, in, you know, decades prior so that most things are taken care of, and they worked well for a while.

Mm-hmm.

And now they're beginning to fail, and now other people are beginning to, to take matters into their own hands.

I, I have some perspectives on that, especially at the state level.

But- In general, I think if you change the incentives, if the companies change the incentives, the people would stick around, right?

Right.

And obviously we could talk about this in, in terms of, like, great families and everything, and great houses.

But I think that, uh, I tem- I tend to look at things through the entrepreneurship lens.

But I'm just wondering, what are the benefits to society when we get people to, to stick around for a long time, and how do we make sure that they do have an interest in sticking around and working for us for a long time?

Well, I mean, I was just reading a very interesting article, uh, by a Substacker named, I, I, I don't know, actually know how to pronounce his last name, so I've been, I've been pronouncing it David Oks, O-K-S.

Um, and he did this really interesting article about the difference between Japanese firms and, uh, uh, he, he calls it the rest of the world's firms.

It, it, it, it's, it's really American post- Mm-hmm … post, um, kind of McKinsey quality- Yeah … consultant American firms.

Um, 'cause there, there, there's then a different variant in Europe.

Europe's, Europe's kind of setup is, is, is still a third thing between, between the American and the, and the Japanese.

Um, but you know, he, he, he talks about the fact that the, that the Japanese of, uh, uh, they, they, they heavily invest in their employees getting incredibly optimized for specific technical jobs.

Mm. Right?

Which means now o- once you've… So once you've invested in that person, um, you're, you're gonna do two things.

One is you, you want to have them be incentivized to work for you for a long time.

Um, and you kind of need To have work that's specific in that specialty, right?

Um, that, that the co- the corporation goes and gets.

So rather than… So let's say you, you have a skill in A- in America, right?

Let's say you have a, a skill in ceramics, right?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, 'cause that was the, that was the topic of the article.

Um, uh, you have a skill in ceramics in America.

If you're gonna s- I- in America, if you acquire a skill in ceramics and your company has an industry focus, right, and you kinda wanna…

There's other industries that can use, like, the actual specific thing.

So, like, take, uh, CAD for instance, right?

Mm-hmm.

That'd probably be a more understandable example for, for, for most people.

If you're really good at CAD, and there's a bunch of different companies that are really good at CAD, right?

Um, you s- you're in a surveying company and you use CAD every day.

You're a master CAD user, and you wanna go to, go and spend that, that same software skill working on, you know, 3D printing or something, some, some other, you know, manufacturing thing, right?

You're going to switch companies, right?

Course you are.

Yeah.

And that's kind of our default assumption.

In Japan, you're not gonna switch companies.

In Japan, the company is gonna open up a new division that employs these people that they've carefully- Mm … cultivated and, you know, Ox- and I'm gonna do a full episode on the, on, on, on David Ox here, probably, probably a Substack article or two.

Um, you know, the, the, the point is, is that there are actually models that accomplish this, and one of the things that those models produce is, you know, chip foundries.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, and so the, you know, Toto, the, the, the, um, the, uh, toilet manufacturer, right?

Mm-hmm.

Their, their, by far their largest division for the past couple years is this thing that makes really, really flat, like within a couple of microns flat, silicon wafers that are useful- Mm-hmm … for creating, you know, RAM chips and all these things.

Because it's the same machine, right?

They have a guy.

Yeah.

They have a, they have a group of guys, right, that are really good at doing things with ceramics, and so one of the things you do with ceramics is make toilet bowls, and another thing you do with ceramics- Yes … is
make… And, and in Japan, with the way that they construct their companies and the way that their social kind of expectations, their social contract works, th- it's the company that diversifies into all of those things.

Yes.

Now, one of the things that results in is you work for the company for, the, basically you're expected to, for the whole of your career.

Right?

Well, this is, this is the, I mean, the general point here is compounding inside of a company in a different way.

It's not just financial compounding, it's, it's compounding with the, the knowledge, right?

And I- Mm-hmm … I don't, I haven't explored this in too much detail, but I, I wonder how much innovation has been lost because the
majority of workers… I, my, my day job, my, the way I make money is actually recruiting, so I, I spend a lot of time around talent.

And the number of re- of talent in the market who are genuinely interested in compounding their knowledge forever has- Mm-hmm

basically gone to effectively zero.

It's not zero- Mm-hmm … but it's so, it's so, like, the number of people who are genuinely interested in compounding their talents and skills is very low, right?

Right.

Um, I would say under, under 1% of, of the, the workforce because they're bored.

They get bored so easily.

They want something new.

Mm-hmm.

They, they can't focus.

I mean, I have severe ADHD, so I get it.

But at the same time- Right … it's like we need to have this amount of focus, and I think the companies can build the incentives because not only
does the company benefit and the income, you know, for, for the company benefits when people are compounding their knowledge, there's also- Right

the institutional understanding of, you know, how the company works.

You don't necessarily need to have all these, you know, stupid HR policies in place and processes because people just know how things are done.

Right.

There's an institutional… I think the word is institutional knowledge, right?

Right.

Where you don't have to have everything written down and, and made so that somebody can pick up the mantle, and that's a good thing i- in a lot of ways, assuming that you…

Well, there's, there's, there's an interesting point here.

When you do that, you as an employer are also putting trust into your employee that they're not going to leave, and then there's this dependency, right?

When you have a relationship with your employees and you, you respect them as humans, as not just numbers- Mm-hmm

they feel that.

By the way, this is the number one reason why people leave jobs, is they just don't feel respected.

But- Mm-hmm … they feel that they're respected, so they have an interest and they have this relationship.

Even though it's not, like, necessarily friendship, they have a relationship with their boss or, or their, their- Right

company managers.

So they're less likely to wanna leave, and they're less likely to complain about having to make sacrifices for the company.

I was in this situation, uh, with my, my last employer.

Uh, thankfully I run my own company now, but at the same time, like, I, I wanted to see this company win.

I was willing to give up territory for another person to come into the team because I was very bought into the fact that my boss, he took a bet on me.

I was, you know, a kid with no college education.

He moved me out to New York City, um, and he, he bet on me.

So I was, I was- Right … motivated to work for him even though he was gonna have a much higher outcome than I did.

Right.

So I, I sacrificed that, and this is the same thing with other companies.

You, you build this relationship.

Right.

The employee's willing to sacrifice, and you have this implicit- Uh, trust situation where the employee knows that I know things that, you know, would be really hard
to replace, but because you are investing in them, there's this shared kind of tension where you stick around with each other to, to build something for the end.

Right.

Well, a- and I mean, I think, you know, the, one of the points that I… The reason I bring up the Japanese firms is, um, you know, one of, one of my bugaboos is, is when
people say, "Well, basically, Greg, y- these ideas, they just require people that, that, that are more religious or more spiritual than I am, and I'm a normal person.

I can't…" I was like, "No, no, no.

I promise you, this is an, this is much more like an incentives problem- Mm-hmm … than it is like a spirituality problem." Yeah.

Um, so you know, my, my, I, I loved my grandfather.

I, I mentioned my grandfather often in, in the things that I talk about.

My grandfather was not a, a, a religious person.

I, he darkened the door of a United Methodist Church like once or twice a year, right?

Um, and he was able to manage all of these relationships incredibly effectively.

So, so one of the big problems that… And one, one of my grandfather's kind of basic rules of patronage, right?

The first rule of patronage according to, you know, Ernest Burroughs, um, was something like never ask anyone to do something unless you know how much it's gonna cost them.

Not, not- Mm-hmm … how much it would cost you, right?

And, and one of… This, this gets into, you know, there's, there's kind of an ongoing conversation online about, uh, communication barriers across IQ levels.

Um, you know, in in my family, um, one of, one of the, one of the great house attributes, and I would strongly encourage anyone who has great
house ambitions to do the work to acquire this skill and then force your children to learn it, 'cause I was forced to learn it around 12, right?

When they, when they noticed that I hadn't picked it up, um, just kind of natively from being around the family, was you have to learn how to model people that are not as intelligent as you, right?

Mm-hmm.

And you… If, basically, if you are forced to do it, um, you can, right?

Mm-hmm.

If you are forced to say, "Okay, you gotta sit there, and you have to communicate to these people, and you have to get them to do the job."

You're not allowed to do it.

You have to get them- Yeah … to do the job.

And it's crazy-making, right?

For the first, you know, week or so, and then your brain just sort of clicks in, right?

Um, and you get better outcomes, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and, and there's, there's a lot more to it than that.

Again, I'll, at some point I'll probably do an episode on, on, on, on how, how to do that.

Um, but um, but you can do that is the point.

Yes.

And, and, and, and, and, uh, and you have to do that, right?

One of the problems that people have, and, and, and it's just really a, a, a wa- a desire to avoid responsibility, is people will set… They'll have a wage negotiation in which the laborer, who knows nothing, right?

Negotiates for a number, and then there's an economic shift like, oh, I don't know, you know, inflating the money supply by 40%, just to pull a random number out of a hat.

Mm-hmm.

Not that that would ever happen, 'cause that would be crazy.

Uh, anyway, um, so, so you have a, an event, right?

A big picture.

Somebody at the top of, you know, pull- who's pulling levers pulls a big lever, and it dramatically shifts all, uh, what the, what the expectations are and what that dollar figure can actually buy those people in the marketplace, right?

Um And you just say, "Well, that's not my problem." Okay.

I- will it be your problem when the guy's wife goes into depression and she leaves him?

Will it be your problem when he c- you know, when he, when he becomes less… Like, at what point does it become your problem, right?

And, and, and, and this is again, this is kind of that we have to reacquire a mindset that says, "If I wanna be in charge, I have to act like I'm actually smarter than the people
that I'm dealing with, that I know more, that, that I can predict things better, and that I don't just use that to rape economically the, all of the dumb people in my life.

I use that to protect and provide and, and, and prophesy for those people 'cause I'm trying to image Christ," or, or, you know, whatever it is that you believe in.

But for a Christian, right, like if, if what you do with your superior intelligence is just say, "Well, I'm gonna win all the fights with- Mm-hmm … with people
who, who, who I'm always gonna win intellectual fights with, and I'm never gonna use that intelligence to protect them from a, a cold, cruel, rapacious world- Mm-hmm

well, then you don't deserve… Like, like, you know, I, I, I, with, with respect, you know?

There's, there's some- … there's some people that have done great things, some funders that have done great things on, on the right wing, right?

Um, but they… I've consistently seen breakdown in relationships over amounts of money that mattered not at all to the funder, but mattered greatly in terms of the social status.

Now, one of the other things, I did a whole episode, actually, I'll probably have to do that again 'cause I did it in, in the private exit
calls, not on, not on the Great Houses forum, about status and how it's created and how you have to create communities that create status.

'Cause if you just try to buy status with money, it, it just becomes a, a, a, a snake eating its own tail, and you just never, you never get anywhere.

Like, it becomes- Mm-hmm … absurdly expensive- Mm-hmm … to signal to a woman, "Hey, we have enough money that we're okay." And you have to build… You
have to do status games, which is similar to, you know, working with lower IQ people, is a skill that you, you're not taught anywhere in kind of modern America.

Um, but you have to have in order to be successful as a great house, as a patron.

You have to be capable of creating status.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah.

Um, and I mean, the closest thing that I think that I've ever heard somebody talk about in terms of what my grandfather did is sort of like a Tony Robbins.

How do you change somebody's state, right?

Mm-hmm.

He talks about changing state.

And, and that's, that's close.

It's still not quite the same thing, but it's close.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so.

One thing, one thing I'm curious about is with these people who are, you know, uh, not willing to recognize that they will face the consequences of not caring, for example, in, in the case you,
you laid out before- Yeah … how quickly do you believe that- In let's say the '60s and, and '70s and '80s, how quickly did people start to recognize the consequences of not caring versus now?

Is, is the speed to recognizing faster?

Because my, my gut feeling would be that most people, as long as they've built, like, a decent comp- decent sized company, they can kind of get along for a while without, without caring about these things and saying, "That's not my problem." Right.

For most of the, most of their lifetime, meaning, or at least most of the lifetime that they, they really have the energy to care, I should say.

So, like, you know- Yeah … once they start to get into their 60s, they probably just will not really care anymore.

But if they don't have a next generation mindset, will they just never care?

Or do, is that required to, to have this focus on investing in, in solving those problems for your employees?

Well, you have to have something that makes you ask the question: What do the numbers look like on a, a much longer trajectory than a three-month trajectory?

Mm. So, um, there's a guy, I think his name is Rory Sutherland, I wanna say.

He's a marketing guy, great British dude, has these wonderful suits, kind of a hefty dude.

Um, and he tells… He, he's got a, he's got a kind of a big YouTube, you know, Shorts or TikTok presence, right?

And you… I, I mean, I don't know if he, if he has it or just people, like, love him on TikTok, and so they clip stuff out.

I, I don't, I don't know.

I haven't looked into it that far.

But he talks about, you know, uh, what, what are the other things that are going on, right?

Um, so you have the, the classic example, he tells a story about, like, hotel bellhops, right?

And at some point, the quality control consultants, right, came along and said, "Well, life would be much better if we replace the bellhop, who's very expensive.

He's like a human being with a salary.

And, you know, salaries are going to the moon, right?

You- compared to, like, the, the cost of an automatic door.

With now we've got these new sensors, these new motion sensors, somebody who walks up, the door just opens, right?" Beautiful.

Well, you do that, and then, and then people report over time, well, actually the, the, the, the bellhop did, like, a ton of different things.

A more mod… And, and, and, and n- now no one is doing those things.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

A, a more modern example would be, you know, Waymo, right?

The taxi drivers.

Um, you know, apparently, we're, we're discovering taxi drivers did, like, a lot of extra things besides just drive the car.

Who'd have thunk?

Um- Not, not in New York City, man.

Well- I feel… I, I fear for my life with those, with those Uber drivers now.

Well, I mean, yeah, I think that's the, you know, m- yeah, there's, there's, there, there's a lot to that.

There's a lot to that.

Um, you know, the, the, the taxi medallions and, and there- Yeah … there's a whole network of- Yes … of, of incentives that go into that.

Yeah.

Right?

And then Uber comes along and undercuts some of those incentive structures, and then, you know, the other things come along, right?

Um, so the problem is- None of those costs show up on a three-month rolling, uh- Mm-hmm … you know, line.

So they will never affect the quarterly stock price, 'cause no one is…

Uh, if, if, if what you do is say, "Okay, three months back, three months forward, I'm better off for having liquidated that guy," right?

And then you come in and you say, "Okay, three months back, three months forward. Okay, maybe I'm, maybe someone is…" You know, and you do that three or four times, right?

Get a year down the road.

You go, "Oh, hmm, now if I do a year look, I mean, there's something going on here," right?

People are less happy.

You know, there's, this is impacting us i- in some way So what if I reverse that?

Well, what would that do?

Well, in three month forward, three month back, I would be punished for that, right?

Mm-hmm.

I would always be punished for that.

And so- That's actually a problem … in, and so in a world where you have, you know, outside consultants, McKinsey consultants who have to justify their salaries, right?

And I'm not making any, like, I'm not, I'm not, not criticizing McKinsey uniquely or, or saying that they have a, they have some kind of unique moral problem, right?

They are, they are brought in, and they have to justify their salary on a particular timeline, right?

And that's the, that's the terms of the agreement.

And so when they say, "Okay, well, how do, how do I justify my salary on a particular timeline?" You're gonna get those sorts of cuts, right?

And that's just how it is.

And, and the same is true in a, in a more muted fashion, um, in the, um, just in the company more broadly, right?

You got a CEO who's gonna be here for 18 to 36 months, right?

And then he's gonna take his golden parachute and float off, right?

Yeah.

And so that is the maximum timeframe.

I don't think anyone involved cares o- on a longer timeframe than that, right?

There's, there's like few, you know, genuine dividend chasing, uh, stock guys in, left in the system.

Um, not very many.

Like most, you know, I mean, especially in a, in a world where, you know what the, the S&P index is, is like 50% of it is seven companies or something, something crazy like that.

Mm-hmm.

I, I read that and I thought, "Oh my gosh, we are…"

If, uh, if the AI world has a, has a hiccup, we are all, we're all gonna have a, a, a much larger problem than I think we expected.

Yeah.

Especially 'cause indexes are just the way.

And, and no one is actually going through and saying, "Well, I want an index, but I wanna dial back on the only part of the index- Correct

that's growing." Yeah.

Right?

Well, well, the thing I'm always curious about with this is, you know, do you think that the stock market is n- just by nature the problem, or is it the people who are involved with the stock market are the problem?

Because I know a lot of people will, will definitely talk about the, the value of liquidity- Mm-hmm

being o- op, op, um, uh- Right … offered there.

But to me, it just seems that it's, it's very, very difficult to, uh, to measure things on any other metrics, because that's the- Right … only metrics that's actively traded.

And just to reference one thing recently from the, from the pope has, pope's encyclical is he made a commentary that says focusing on GDP growth alone is the
wrong thing because it, it, it misses the fact that there's other metrics or KPIs that should be, uh, considered, like the, you know, human flourishing and- Like-

that are so imp- Yeah.

Or, or, or total fertility rate.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for example.

Those are all, like, other ways that we should measure it.

So how do we solve this problem?

Do we just like, you know, like does the stock market have to go away?

Do we, you know, do we get rid of- And so- … quarterly earnings and make it a- Yeah

yearly?

Like what, what do we do?

So I think we, we need to recognize… So I, I have this, this, this framing that I, I've talked about a s- a couple of my podcasts, so I'm not sure how many of those you've, you've listened to of, you know, democratic technologies, right?

And there are democratic technologies, and then there are non-democratic technologies.

Maybe those are aristocratic.

That's kind of the term that I'm trying to, to, to put forward.

That's the thesis that I'm testing.

But, but there are democratic technologies.

Um, and, and, and the easiest way that I have at this point in time to explain what are democratic technologies, um, is to… Well, let's start with, with, with computers, right?

They talked about in, in the dotcom, well, in the dotcom boom, right, and bust, they talked about, uh, it's a good idea to invest in a business model where the answer to the question, what are we spending the money on, is we're buying more computers, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you have a business model that you can expand.

If somebody gives you money, you go, you buy, you know, readily available computers, slot them in, and then your, your, your revenue grows, right?

Like, if that's the pitch, yes, we're gonna throw money at you, right?

Um, and we should throw money at you.

And so I, I, w- I think there was a point in time, and there are always gonna be certain technologies where the basic answer is just throw more labor at it Right?

And specifically throw more mass labor at it, right?

And this is, this is what I think a democratic technology is, is a technology that benefits from, uh, you know, you have, you know, something that can be used or people can be trained in, you know, six weeks, six months, two years max, right?

So you have either an uneducated person or in these, in these troubled modern times…

'Cause we, we really haven't had, I think, genuinely democratic technologies in maybe 100 years.

So what we've done is we've tried to push what is a generally educated person so that we can get them to the point where they're productive.

You go through some government-funded education system basically, right?

Student loans, you know, and then the- the- the- the public school system, right, below that, and you- you- you get to the point where a
generally educated person in that system can join in less than two years and be productive and be, and- and justify their salary, right?

Um, and one of the points that I make is, you know, there's- there's a bunch of people running around saying that, uh, the fact that there's not gonna be a, they- they- they are equating a lack of entry-level jobs with a permanent underclass, okay?

And I mean, historically, that's not true.

Historically, for most of human history, we have had nothing that resembles an entry-level job except in farming, right?

Mm. Um, and so you see, you see this play out, right?

So I- I think what's going on here is we need markets to say, well, where should we allocate flows of short-term capital and short-term labor, right?

And basically, that three months should be those are the- the kinds of jobs.

We should do that for companies where the basic job is something you can be trained to do in 90 days or less, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you get money from the markets, you hire more people, more labor, or you buy more computers, and less than 90 days later, you- you put those in, and that's how it is, right?

Mm. Or you're pumping something out of the ground, and you're shipping it around the world, and in less than 90 days, which, you know, applies to food and, you know, oil and all of these things, right?

Um, and in less than 90 days, you're selling it, right?

Or you're, or you're holding it, and you're playing some other kind of more abstracting.

Mm-hmm.

But you could sell it, right?

If the price point were right, you could and would sell it, right?

Um, so- so those are the sorts of things that I think that public markets do well, um, and that describes very little about the actual, like, economic drivers of our, of our modern society.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Um, I mean, even the hyperscalers problem, right?

It's, it… The problem is that the market doesn't know how to price these things because it's gonna take too long to onboard us.

We, we just- There are so many cycles between now and when, when we will get the information as to whether this was a good idea that they are They, they're, they're trying to divide by zero, man, and it's not going well Yeah.

Well, do you think that this is part of the reason why we have seen fewer IPOs in, you know, the past… I, I, my understanding is, like, the past 10 years, give
or take, like, there's been a lot fewer IPOs because people are already catching on to the idea that, that it's just not worth the, the downside of having- Right

that exposure?

Well, I mean, I think, uh, so part of it is that, um, part of it is also just that, that many of, many of the Many of the companies are able to make it work with consumers- Mm-hmm … and non-retail investors, right?

Mm-hmm.

They're able to go and do private placements fairly efficiently.

Um, you know, they're, they're…

It's not like the, the, The New York Times doesn't, doesn't… Or not The New York Times, the New York Stock Exchange, um, is not the only, the only
one that can coordinate a funding event across the country, you know, 'cause of their, 'cause they have a special- Yeah … communication system, right?

Yeah.

That is just absurdly expensive, right?

That's just, that's just a thing of the past, right?

Um, so you, you can have a buying club that has, you know, 100 mil- 100 million or $100 billion collectively among the members, and they can just fund things, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you, you, you get an idea and, well, okay, now n- we've, we've funded things, and now we're selling it to people who are paying us for a service, um, or software as a service, and then we just…

Why, why would we, why would we IPO, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, so you don't IPO in that point until, until basically you're starting to become commoditized, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Until what you do is so well understood, and there's a bunch of imitators, right?

And so you genuinely can hire people kind of from off the street and just plug them into the thing that you're doing, and I see that a lot, right?

Mm-hmm.

But in the early stages that, you know, these venture funds, right?

And even now, I mean, there's just a bunch of venture funds that are carrying these companies that will someday, they hope, be productive, right?

Um, but, you know, there's a bunch of technologies that, that don't really resemble- Yeah … a, a wheat harvest, right?

Uh, 'cause a wheat harvest is another thing that you can, you can work with, right?

There.

Um, though even there, you know, most of ag is doesn't work with, with the way we have our modern markets- Mm-hmm … and, and that, that causes a bunch of problems, but- Yeah … um, but let's say, let's say wheat harvest you could, you could make it work.

And, and, and, and, and maybe you should.

I, I don't know if you should or not, but, but you could.

Um, there's a bunch of things that are much more like trees, right?

Where, you know, you, you get like a, a fig tree, right?

Where it doesn't produce anything for the first five years, or an olive tree, right, where it hits full production at 50 years in, right?

Uh, which, you know, which that's, you know, that's… I don't know if you followed the, the oil, you know, olive oil scandals, right?

Like there's- Mm-hmm … there's a huge amount of adulterated olive oil just in the world right now because 50 years ago nobody was planning- Planting trees … to, to have enough olive oil.

And so there just isn't enough olive oil to go around.

And so unless you are absolutely a super, super high-end buyer who can, you know, exert enormous market power and basically punish people,
you know, when do… You, you're in a position to do the chemical testing, and you can very much punish your suppliers if they fail you- Yeah

you don't get, you don't get actual pure, you know, olive oil.

Like there- Wow … have been big scandals about s- stuff that's in Costco or even higher end stores, like just very, very, very hard
to have any kind of national chain, um, that, that can get you 100% olive oil because there's not enough, and so they just cut it- Mm

with stuff.

Um- Yeah, I see.

I mean, even, even in Europe they cut it with stuff a lot of the time 'cause there's- Yeah … because there's not enough.

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's just this challenge of not looking long-term.

But, you know, the thing I would love to get your perspective on then is let's say there's people, obviously people listening to this will probably be interested in this.

Like, if they want to consider how can I build life for employees for my firm- Right … first of all, like, what is the, what is, in your mind, the core benefit to them to do that?

Yeah.

And then tactically, how do they increase the, or, or, um, increase the incentive to stay versus leaving?

Right.

So I, I think, I think, um, the, I mean, the core benefit is, is moving away from at-will employment, right?

Um, having, ha- like from, from, from the perspective of the employee, right?

Um, what I, what I want you to understand is, is that at-will employment however, is the, the, the necessary

sort of balancing act in terms of the supply and demand of labor, uh, to the fact that, that most people, um, it's not worth it to, to, to pay that much to replace them, right?

You can't have an insurance policy on your entire company, and all of your employees could leave at any given time, right?

You can't, you can't retain them.

Um, so when you start looking for this, what you are going to find is offers that sound like giving up optionality, right?

Um, you're gonna find places where the company is offering company housing, and you're just entering it…

Y- you're becoming extremely dependent, at least in the short term, on this company, right?

Um, that's … But th- th- so the problem is, is that that's kind of just necessary because otherwise the company invests in you in the short term.

You have not economically repaid the company back, and you can just leave at any time.

You have the perfect legal right to leave, which, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm glad that, that we don't have slavery in this country, right?

But, but we, we have to acknowledge, hey, you know, having, having the ability to just pick up and leave means that the other person… I mean, it's, it's sort of like the, the fault-based versus no-fault divorce kind of a deal, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and understanding that the way that that stacks up with things like bankruptcy, right?

It means that if you … They, th- there's no contractual penalty 'cause, that, that can be enforceable.

I mean, it, it can be enforceable from a, from a perspective of a yeah, the contract holds up, but you say, "Oh, okay, well, I can't pay it, so I'm just gonna declare bankruptcy, and I have no assets," so, so the company gets nothing.

Um, so you need to either be a, be willing to trust the company directly and say there's gonna be some things like housing and, um, you know, some kind of community element.

There's s- something that I can't get, right?

And I'm, and I'm basically being, becoming extremely dependent on that company, at least in the short term.

Or you need some kind of mediating institution, right?

Something that, that, that serves as a guarantor between you and the company.

And, I mean, I think that's a lot of, like when, when we talk about, you know, religious networks, that's a lot of what those guys are doing, right?

How to, how do you get… How do you in, in a Catholic community get people jobs?

Well, you get them because there's some set of expectations, maybe stated, maybe unstated, that this person will not behave like a typical employee.

They will not just leave as soon as they've, as soon as they've got some, you know, skill trained up.

The, the… Or if they, they do leave, that that will be viewed negatively by, by the community, right?

Um, you know, we were talking, there's a, there's a guy that, that comes on my calls who's also Catholic, and you talk about old, the, the old Catholic credit unions, right?

Mm-hmm.

And one of the things that happened there was you had somebody who had a mortgage to the Catholic credit union, and that meant that, you know,
between the, the bankers or the priests- Uh, they, they worked really hard to make sure that this, this good Catholic boy always had a job, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, but the reason they were incentivized to do that is because that person had a mortgage, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and, and I think I- So, so you're saying, so you're saying that in using, using these financial, uh, incentives to, in a, uh, how do you say?

Like, a morally acceptable way to- Right … basically use that as the, the stake in the ground that says, "Hey, listen, because of this, we're all in this together," kind of thing.

Right.

Like, we will help each other out.

Uh, not in a way that's like, uh, we're gonna hold this over your head and it's usury.

We're, we're going to, you know, uh, damage you as a human or, or treat you poorly.

Right.

But hey, we gotta work together and, and you gotta also hold up your end of the bargain, pal.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, it's, it's, it's essentially a penalty clause in a, in a prenup, right?

Yeah.

He, he, you know, he… Who- whoever is the first person to try to break this covenant, you have to start thinking about it covenantally, and you have to be okay with legal structures, um, that- That act as though there's actually a covenantal relationship.

If you're not okay with th- So there, there's kind of three framings, right?

There's three maybe permission structures that people have, right?

There's the, the economic permission structure.

Is there enough resources to do this, right?

Or does this activity produce enough profit to do this?

There's the legal structure.

Is it, i- is there some deal that's enforceable that I can actually go to a court and get satisfaction from?

And then there's the spiritual element, right?

It has to be, it has to satisfy my moral intuitions and, and be acceptable in, in whatever, you know, hierarchy of moral values that I claim, right?

So, so a- for anything, and you see this a lot in when they're analyzing wars, right?

People will talk about there's the, there's the economic reason why a war happened, there's the political reason or the legal reason why the war happened, and then there's the, the moral reason why the war happened, right?

And, and usually when people, like you see this in, in discussions of like the Civil War in the United States, right?

Well, was, was the war about slavery?

Was the war about, you know, cotton tariffs, right?

Um, and the answer is yes.

Yes, it w- and, a- and about, you know, who was gonna be in charge, right?

Yeah.

Um, which, which, you know, w- w- were, was a democratic sen- uh, was a, was a southern Senate, right, going to be able, southern senators, were they
going to be able to effectively block a bunch of, you know, fairly significant changes that the northern industrial elites wanted to make, right?

One of those groups was gonna win, and one of those groups was gonna lose.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and, you know, as is often the case when elites can't resolve things behind closed doors, we had a war over it, right?

Yeah.

Um, and, and, and, and those are all true and, and all three of them had to be happen, had to be present for there to actually be a war.

If anyone, if no one could make money with the war, it wouldn't happen.

If no one, if there wasn't an outstanding legal question that we couldn't really solve, it wouldn't happen.

And if there wasn't a, a profound moral disagreement, then the church would've been able to mediate it.

So you, you have to have, um…

And, and by the way, you know, failing, the, the Presbyterian Church really did try to mediate the, the issues of the Civil War, and failing just wrecked them.

Like, they, they were broken as a cultural institution by the Civil War, and they never recovered.

I mean, the death of- Mm … of Princeton, I think 40 years later is, was just kind of the last, you know, uh, the last, uh, not the death
of Princeton, but the, the fracturing of Princeton into, into modern Princeton University and then what was called Wins- Westminster.

Um, you know, that, that was just a, a, as, a continuing consequence of the death spiral that the Presbyterian Church had gone into after, uh, World War t- or after, uh, the Civil, US Civil War.

Mm-hmm.

So you, you, you, you, uh, you gotta have an ability to solve the problems, you know, on all, on all different points, um, in order to, in order to have a relationship.

So, so when you come to someone, you know, this sort of, you know, again, it's similar to marriage, and I overuse the marriage examples, but it's the only thing that we have left in our culture that we kind of think about covenantally, right?

So to have a wife, right, you, you gotta be able to, to provide for her, right?

Um, it would be a really good idea for you to have an enforceable legal contract that wasn't explicitly contrary to your beliefs, right?

Um- And you have to have a, a framework.

You have to have a theory of what marriage is and what's acceptable within marriage, and you have to have some community around you that's gonna give approval, affirmations, or not.

So the same thing is true when you're talking about… 'Cause when we're talking about how to- how do we have lifers, we're talking about something that's more like a covenant.

Maybe, maybe it is a covenant, right?

Especially if you've got explicit religious connection.

Maybe it's just kind of a quasi-covenant, right?

But that's how you have to think about it.

Like, does this work economically?

Does it- is there a legal structure that gives… And it doesn't have to enforce and it can't enforce the whole relationship, right?

Yeah.

No legal contract ever enforces the whole relationship.

But the things that are enforceable have to give both sides some levers that they can pull, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, and pe- what people don't appreciate is, hey, the company is investing.

When we do these lifer things, what makes it worthwhile for the company to take you on as a lifer is they invest heavily in training you to do something specific and idiosyncratic, right?

Yeah.

And, and, and just in general, that's going to kinda constrain your options in the future, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, unless you start your own business or something.

Well- But you have to be okay with that, them saying, "In exchange for me investing a bunch in you, I need some levers on you," right?

Mm-hmm.

So that, so that this relationship can be, can be balanced.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and what I say to people is, you know, over time y- that, you kinda work your way out of that, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, but, but if you're, if you're not willing to entertain a, a time and place where they've invested in you, they haven't gotten anything back,
and so they want some legal thing to hold onto, if, if, if as a moral matter you say, "Well, that, that, I just can't even entertain that-" Mm-hmm.

… well, then you're not gonna get this, right?

Yeah.

That's the, the big thing that I see where, where, where good people… 'Cause again, the Japanese do this all the time.

They're, they're doing this right now.

Mm-hmm.

And we don't do it because we can't, we can't get all three of those elements present at the same place at the same time.

Yeah, I mean, I think that to an extent, you know, as you say a lot of these things, my, my typical apprehension or my ma- my apprehension with most of this is, is that I think- Take for, take for example the, uh, the, uh, regulatory industry in America.

Like, the regulations- Right … have made certain things safer.

They're typically reactionary, so they don't really… Like, they come in after the fact.

But if you look at it- Right … people, you know, Boeing has met the regulatory requirements, but their planes still fall out of the sky, right?

Right.

Because nobody cares anymore, right?

Right.

And I think that the, the personal, at least the way I view contracts typically, I'm, I'm not a lawyer, but the way I view a contract is always that, like, this is just a bare minimum.

Like, if things really break down personally between us- Right … then we'll have to resort to this.

And obviously, you know, it sucks when that happens, but it does.

Right.

Um, so we need the contracts.

But I always try to make sure that I even go above the terms of the contract personally, 'cause let's say- Right … I have a client that wasn't really happy with the outcome, I'll give them a credit for the next search, right?

Right.

Because I just don't want there to be this breakdown.

I wanna, like, you know, in some ways they're, they're my patron because I, I receive- Right … my income from them, so I'm, I kind of defer to them.

But that's my biggest apprehension is when you, when you force these things, like, you can have the contract in place.

But you as an, as an employer, even if you morally are like, "Hey, listen, like that could be, that could be a little dicey.

Like, I don't know if I agree with that," you could have them in place but still choose not to enforce them if you, if you really- Sure … feel such, like, hey, you know, this person, like, in their true situation they needed to leave.

Like, they're- Right … I, I see a reason why, you know, they weren't getting the benefit or they were truly just- Right

super unfulfilled and it was, like, clearly a, a bad use of their God-given talents.

Right.

I'm not going to enforce the contract.

And I can go to them and say, "Hey, I can clearly see you're not, you're not happy with this." That's where that personal relationship component comes in and where you need to recognize- Right

the humanity in everybody, regardless of IQ levels, right?

And, and, and people do.

So one of the, one of the areas, like, where this is true and, and actually explicitly in the laws of most states or in all, basically all the states with a functioning agricultural society, I exclude, you know, California from this of course.

Um- But so, so in, in, in, in many states there will be a provision for, you talk about, uh, eviction proceedings, right?

Mm-hmm.

So most evictions will take, you know, 30 to 90 days, this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's an exception though in almost every state that has a significant ag presence for farmhands who tend to get housing, right?

And the, the except- the, the rule is basically if you are fired, right, from your job, you have seven days to get out.

And that's it.

Like, that's, that, that is the, the general rule that I've observed, and I haven't done a 50-state survey or anything like this.

But as, as I've, you know, been a lawyer and kind of interacted with things, um, that's, that's been a thing that has come up over and over again, is…

Or, or there's some other, like, much more favorable, you know, it's like, "Hey, you got seven days to leave," right?

Um, that's the law.

And that's to the- Like, they can actually- That's to the- They can ac- To the, to the tenant, right?

Yeah, but that's to- So if you, you're a farmhand- … the provider of the housing for the farmhouse, uh, t- farmhands.

Yeah, the farm- Yeah.

Right … they can tell the farmhands, "You're fired, and you have- Yeah … seven days to, to leave." Yeah.

Which is a very, very accelerated timeline.

Yeah.

And if you don't leave within seven days, the, the farmer can have the sheriff come out and throw you out, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, that is the law in most states.

I've never heard of that happening, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, I mean, uh, uh, yeah, the, the only times that I've, that, that, that would happen would be somebody that they were, like, a temp person, and it really just wasn't working out.

But once people that had established… A lot of farmhands will work for, uh, w- work for their employer for three, five, 10 years.

You tell me you're gonna throw somebody out after 10 years in seven days, this is not gonna happen, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, they, they, they took care of your family when you were sick, and they, you know, all these things, and your wife, and nursed their, their baby to back to health when… You know, they, all, all of the…

Right?

There's all of these, these human connections that got formed, and y- and, and they weren't, you know, a terrible jerk all the time, even though you're, you might be firing them now.

But there, there was some, some real affection.

There were some good times there.

You're not gonna throw them out in seven days.

I never heard of that happening.

Yeah.

Right?

Now, they could, right?

They have the power.

It's, it's right there in the text of the law.

I've just never seen a farmer do that, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that- I, I think there's, there's something to it that you are c- if you make terms of an agreement where one person obviously w- without- Mm-hmm

without the agreement itself, obviously has more power than the person- Right … who's, like, re- you know, on the receiving end.

Mm-hmm.

If you make an agreement that is, that is appearing to be equal, it is a, it is a, uh, a lack of truth of the reality.

Like, you're not- Right … acknowledging the reality anyway.

So it's important to have- Right

those things, and then you can always, you know, um, you can have the… You can choo- choose to, to give deference to them and still to, to be extraterritorial to them.

Sure.

Yeah, so- Sure.

Um, I guess o- one thing I'm always curious about is I like to look to the future a lot, and I, I'd just be your, curious of your perspective
on if companies start doing this, like, I, I, I think a lot about this example of, um, uh, Ferrero Rocher, the company in, I believe it's…

I wanna say it's France.

Mm-hmm.

Um, they have, they, he, he famously made sure that there was, like, transportation for his employees from the local grounds-
Right … to his factory- Right … so they didn't have to move closer, and they could, you know, keep their, their more affordable house.

Right.

And a lot of their children and grandchildren ended up continuing to work for them in that, in that company.

And I think that we could bring back this idea.

That's part of the lifers thing is, like, you, you have almost this, this, like, genetic knowledge of the, of the skill.

I think there was an example Ben Black recently mentioned on one of his podcasts around, uh, this guy who had been farming or, or
doing something particular, I think it was farming, for, uh, you know, 30 years, 40 years, and he said, "Yeah, but you think I'm good?

You should see my son," who's only, like, you know, 15 years old.

Yeah.

And you're like, how, how, how is that possible?

How could he know more?

But it's because he's brought up in it from day one.

But- Yeah … there's that benefit to the employer, obviously.

But I wanna just understand, uh, your perspective.

Let's say in America, like if we start doing this, if we, if companies start investing in this, this long-term mindset, do you think that we're s- it's gonna be very difficult at the beginning, but we will have the long-term advantage?

And will it end up leading to other people following in our footsteps, even if they're not necessarily ideologically aligned with our, uh, worldview?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think actually that we're about to see an enormous level of corporate level specialization where, where you're gonna have idiosyncratic stacks.

I think this is what… So, right, they, they, they talk about the death of the app, right?

Because software development is now so cheap with AI.

So what that's gonna mean is that, that there will not be a Slack.

There will never again be a Slack.

Mm-hmm.

Every, every company will have a chatbot that has been optimized for their particular company, right?

There will… Th- th- they will have optimized, even if they're in CAD, they'll have optimized CAD programs that do exactly what they want
and, and that kind of evolve over time as they have one, you know, a couple of AI guys that just modify it, right, continually, right?

Um, and, and you accelerate that process by 10 years, and that means that every company now becomes like a world unto itself, right?

Y- you could see this in, in like- Mm-hmm … you know, biotech or, or some of the, the genetic engineering firms right now, where basically each company is a world unto itself, right?

It… When you go… One of the problems they're having is these, these biotech companies will hire a PhD who's 35 or 33, right,
has three-quarters of a million dollars in student debt, has never worked a day in his life, has been to school for 20 years, right?

And they get him in the building, and they have to train him for another two or three years- … right, before he's productive.

Yeah.

Because all of their machines are custom, all of their software is custom, all of their research is custom.

No one else on Earth is doing it.

Google even has, like for its algorithm, its core algorithm, I think there was, there was this, this scandal I think at the tax world where basically Google was bringing over people, you know,
H-1B's from somewhere else, and, uh, it, it was being creative in the way that it, it compensated those employees during their, their training time, which is a, which is a different subject.

Um, but, um, th- their argument, which, which was a, a fairly valid, I mean, it's kind of an interesting argument to think about.

Their, their argument was, well, um… And I don't think it was Google per se.

It was like a, a sub, satellite company.

It was, you know, some… But it was, it was for these algorithm-based companies, right?

So you got somebody who, they're living in a penthouse, right?

Or they're living in a, in a nice apartment, right?

The, the, the company provides their clothes, the company provides all of this stuff, and they're not paying them at all.

Um- Or hardly at all, at least for tax purposes.

Um, and the reason they're not paying them is they, well, these people aren't economically valuable.

We're training them, right?

Mm-hmm.

Because we have to train them for four to five years on what Google's algorithm is, 'cause it's a trade secret.

We don't tell anyone how our algorithm works, so they're- Mm-hmm … you can't go to university and learn how to be, uh, you have to get a master's degree in Google's algorithm or a PhD in Google's algorithm.

Like, that would be crazy for Google to do that.

So they have this kind of internal stack where they bring people in, they train them for two or three years, then they work for three to four years, and
then they, at the end of that period, basically they give them a fairly large payout and then they go back to, you know, Southeast Asia or wherever, right?

Or they don't, I suppose.

But, but they leave Google's ecosystem at that point, right?

'Cause they're, by the, the standards of their hometowns, stupendously independently wealthy, right?

Um… Well, then isn't that still, like, in the negative, negative outcome for Google because then they just lost all that, that, tha- that investment dollars?

Or is that, is that the point you're pointing out that there's still, like, a difference?

I mean, so, so, well, no, no.

I mean, so, so they, they, like, th- there's, there are different layers to this, right?

But, uh, but Google, Google's point was, well, we didn't, we, th- they, they didn't wanna get taxed on a bunch of things that they were giving these people in the first couple- Mm

of years that were not cash, right?

Mm. I see.

Um, but so, and, and, and, and, and, and the idea w- and they do have some people stay, right?

And you can kind of, you can kind of roll that in.

You're sort of like, sort of like with an investment group, right?

You have the moment of, okay, you could cash out or you could roll into the next thing, right?

And, and, and that's an important moment to kind of figure out what, what are people oriented towards?

Anyway, um, the point being that I think that's gonna be everywhere now.

It's not just gonna be Google's algorithm.

It's not just gonna be biotech companies.

It's gonna be everywhere.

Every company… 'Cause the other thing that's gonna quickly happen is it's gonna become a, a job in and of itself just to learn how all of these optimized parts work, right?

And I think AI's gonna drive that farther and farther and farther.

Now, and, and there'll be some pushback.

I think Microsoft will probably push back.

I think some of these… But, but, but quickly we will get to the point of tribal knowledge.

One of the other interesting things about tribal knowledge.

Have you ever studied Dunbar's number?

You familiar with that, that term?

Uh, I know the term, but I'm trying to remember the nuance.

Yeah.

It's, it's a f- it's a, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing.

So the, basically Dunbar's number is there's a s- there's a certain number of friend slots that you have in your brain.

Mm. Yeah.

Um, although they're not actually necessarily friend slots, they can be friend or enemy slots.

It's, there's a certain number of people that you have felt a, a, a enough emotion at that your brain has assigned them a slot, and, uh, w- if they die, you will experience grief hormones, right?

Your brain will release the gri- Mm … the grief chemicals.

Um, which is probably part of rewiring your brain.

'Cause when you have…

You assign a slot to somebody, then your brain remembers a bunch of information that's relevant to that person, um, in a different way than it remembers most information.

Okay?

Um, so there's a bunch of… There's really cool things you can do with, with Dunbar's number.

But the point is, uh, it's like, you know, 150 to 300 people and, and maybe, like, 75 on the low end.

It's, it's, it's under 500 is the, is the point.

Like, that is the absolute limit of this kind of brain-based tribal knowledge system.

And, you know, less than 75 per s- people, you tend to not need money because people just can track the flows of value, right?

Uh, you know, under 3,300 people you can have a fairly simple corpor- you know, corporate structure with basically one captain and a bunch of squads, right?

It's the company.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Like, as in the military company, right?

Which is a captain- Yeah … plus, you know, 10 t- you know, uh, yeah, 10 squ- squads of, uh, of, of, of 20, something like that, right?

Um, so that's, uh, that's the size that I think a lot of working groups will default to, and that's also, um, I think it will become M- efficient in terms of the marketplace, right?

In terms of putting out good product, you will need to optimize your software stack to compete or you'll die, right?

Yeah.

Well, it's- But when you optimize your social stack, it'll mean that people, you can't swap people in and out willy-nilly anymore.

Correct.

Yeah.

And that's gonna drive us towards this.

So I, I, I think this is the greatest time in the world.

I think that people like us with a, a religious frame, that th- that third pillar, right?

The spiritual frame, that that should make us better what we are about to do, uh, than, than your, your, your average, you know, Harvard MBA.

That would be my hope.

Well, yeah, I also… I think that's, um, I like that, that, that, that is very fascinating because there are, there are obviously companies that they drastically from, uh, economies of scale.

Like you, you think about Amazon, I don't think, you know- Right … Amazon being a small company would be easy to do what they do.

Uh, at least even if you just take like the marketplace only, remove all the other stuff, it'd still be very different.

Right.

But, um, I do think it's a very fascinating time for those who are seeking to stop being corporate monkeys and to build their own companies.

Mm-hmm.

Because you can build a highly specialized company in a niche that can serve people way, way better than anybody else ever could.

Because you can build specific software, you can build this institutional knowledge, and you only need to have, you know, let's say, you know, 15 to to 100 employees to do a lot, a lot of stuff.

To have a good revenue- Right … have everybody built up nicely.

Um- And- And you… Sorry, go ahead … the same trends mean that now providing housing at 15 to 100 people is wildly cheaper.

Providing, I mean, heck, providing utilities, p- clean power, water, sewage, you know, internet, like all of that.

The… You re- you hit economies of scale at less than 200 people in a, in an AI world in a staggering amount of industry, right?

If Peter Thiel gets done what he's doing, right?

Down in, in Paraguay, like you might be able to hit an economy of scale for a nuclear power plant at less than 500 people.

Like, that's kind of what makes the… That, that is the kind of thing that makes his, his, his small, his small, uh, modular reactors thing economically viable.

Now, will that happen?

I have no idea.

Yeah.

Right?

Well, well, this- This was actually gonna be my next question to you is I've be- I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of, like, localized employment and talent.

Because I, I hire overseas right now at the moment.

Right.

It, it allows me to, to provide cheaper, uh, services to my customers than my competitors.

Right.

It's my, it's my edge, but I really hate it.

Like, I kinda wish that I could have my fr- like, people with me in the c- you know, together, and I could, you know- Mm-hmm … vent about the things I don't like.

But what do you think this will do to potentially rebuilding those, those small towns in America where somebody says, "You know what?

I've got the brains.

I'm gonna go invest in this small community that has nothing.

They've been completely- Mm-hmm … hollowed out, so they're willing to do anything.

And if I'm willing to invest in them, I've got a little bit of, of capital to do so.

I can acquire the clients from, from wherever.

You know, our clients can be everywhere, but our people can be local.

I can go to this town and become, you know, in, in a, a pseudo king of this town," right?

Right.

What do you think about this?

I mean, I, I, I think that it is, it has never been more technically feasible than, than it is right now.

Mm-hmm.

I think the, the challenges that you're gonna run into are, are legal challenges.

First off, that's kinda how this will manifest, that there's some legal barriers to doing that, um, regulatory barriers.

People, people in the, it system as it exists won't like it, right?

Your local, uh, welfare bureaucrat will, will, will hate it, 'cause you're greatly decreasing the personal power of that, you know, blue-haired woman.

Um, you know, and so she, she will, she will try to fi- find ways, even if you're not actually violating the law or doing anything different than any other person, right?

Regulations being what they are.

You will attract institutional negative.

Uh, all of those I think are basically solvable.

Um, you know, someone with my skill set as a, as an attorney, all of that stuff is, is solvable, um, e- especially, again, in a world where, where compliance work…

I just put out a Substack article where I said one of the key things that I see changing the balance of power is one lawyer with an
AI application and access to his, his, his client's, you know, data stack is gonna be able to do all of the compliance work, right?

'Cause all, 'cause the thing is, like, you don't have to worry about AI slop in compliance work.

Compliance is slop by definition.

It, it, it ha- just has to technically comply with the requirements.

But the more boring and kind of sing-songy and, and repetitious that it is, the better, right?

'Cause the last thing that you want is, is bureaucrats actually reading it.

Um- Mm. Anyway.

I like that.

Um, so, so- I've never heard of that perspective.

That's, that's quite fascinating.

So I think, I think, I think we're gonna, for small and medium enterprises, we are gonna blow the compliance barriers all the way down.

It's gonna be, this, there's gonna be a renaissance on that, on that front.

Um, where I think the real challenge is, is, um, is the spiritual front, right?

There was a, there was a poster who, who asked, uh, in a, in a, in a, uh, more pointed and direct way than I will, uh, why Peter Thiel went to, is going to Argentina instead of, uh, to, um- Instead of to the Ozarks, right?

Um, and I think there is a real sense that people have that the, the spiritual, that you can't negotiate this covenant, that there's no way to bridge that gap between people with money and people that, that, that, that kind of are in abject poverty, right?

Which, which is unfortunate.

I think, I think in many ways we're just sort of saying, well, the communists are, are basically morally right and we're not gonna, we're not gonna fight with them, right?

I, I, I… But I do think you need a, you need a mental frame, um, you need a spiritual permission structure that says, "This is what a virtuous king looks like."

And one of the, one of the ways that I, I frame this for people is, you know, uh, there's basically three feudal systems in the world.

Um, there's the, there's the, the Indus Valley, uh, feudal system, the caste-based feudal system.

There's the, the Chi- the Confucian, the Chinese collectivist, uh, uh, feudal system, right?

And, and feudal system just means an economy where, like 2 to 5% of the people generate i- in- insane amounts of, of productivity, and everyone else generates, like, like multiples, 10, 20, 100, 1,000 times as much excess as they need.

And then, you know, everyone else generates like 10% more in a, in a, if, if you get them really hyper-optimized.

And a lot of people actually are net negative on the economy, right?

Um, at least… A- and when I say 10% more, I mean 10% more over their whole life, okay?

Mm-hmm.

Um, so there's no, there's no entry-level jobs.

People only become economically productive in their late 30s and 40s.

Um, you know, and then there's this group, this small group, right, who eventually by some means will develop a name that is, you know, effectively equivalent to aristocrat.

We won't probably call them that at, at the beginning, but it's, it's, it's, it's gonna be similar to aristocracy.

Um- And so when you have that econo- economic system, which I think we're about to have in the AI world, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, then this is, this is what it can look like.

It can look like the Indus Valley, it can look like the Confucian, or it can look like Christian.

It can look like Christendom.

That's it.

And if those are my choices, I vote for Christendom, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, does that make sense?

For, yeah, that, that's a, that's very clear.

I, I like that, the framing.

It's very… It helps me visualize it.

I, I'm just curious if you, if that is the case, right, and we have the majority, my understanding is the majority of people, like, really in charge of, of AI systems for, for example currently, are not of the Christian leaning, right?

Not, not truly.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Um, do you think that they will naturally end up, like, just becoming one of those three things automatically, or will they, will they, will they be drawn to one depending on the influence that they have?

Because I'm, I'm wondering what's gonna happen when the society takes, takes shape.

Are they going to say, "Well, I need a moral framework for this," or are they just gonna, like, burn it all down because they don't have one?

Well, so I think that, that if, if we let AI… So there's, there's basically a couple ways you can do it.

If we let AI sort people, um, then you're gonna wind up with some caste-based system, right?

Mm-hmm.

Effectively.

And I think, you know, not to, not to be crass, but I, I think that there's a number of people in tech that would find that a natural fit for some of their cultural priors, okay?

Um, if we do an intensive kind of culture-based testing, um, regime, right, um, then you get the Confucian system, right?

That's, that's what the Confucian system produces.

Everyone, all, all family, every family kind of puts out a, a, a, a person who gets tested each generation, and the effect of that test, uh, hits the whole family, right?

Um, and then kind of the, the, the Christian system i- is, is basically saying, "Hey, there's, there…

We, we are going to have, um, spaces for other people to, to, to rise and to, and to say, 'Hey, we actually have a duty to, to, to take care of people down below us.'" Right?

They don't exist… The, the people on the bottom don't exist to serve us.

They exist to serve God, and we also exist to serve God.

You know, fear, fear God, who is your master and they, and there is no respec- He is n- you know, there's no partiality with him, right?

That's a different kind of model.

Now, there is a, an open technical question here, okay?

So one of the questions is, will AI be more like rice cultivation, right?

Or will AI be more where, where, where you can have very large producers, and they invest in kind of the hyperscalers, and they do these frontier models, and the frontier models are just incredibly better than everyone else, and you're all…

we all wind up using Claude, right?

Um, in various, in various respects.

And, and somehow we're able to create a legal regime that prevents people from getting access to, to, to the underlying code of Claude and just, you know, h- running it on their servers, right?

Um, I am not, um, you know, again, may- maybe that's possible.

I don't know.

Um, the, the example that I would give is I, I, it looks to me like AI and local hosted AI is gonna be more like, like the horse.

The one of the things when you… And, and again, it's not one of the things I have to say every time that I mention horses Riding an AI is not going to be like riding a horse.

So the, the peak AI users, the AI knights, will not exhibit the characteristics that we associate with chivalry because it's a totally different experience, it's a totally different kind of thing.

Now, I have some hope, and there's some kind of interesting flickers from time to time because AI is so malleable, that we might be able to produce
a, a version of AI that actually could select for at least some of the same core psychological templates as the, the horse-based culture did, right?

Mm-hmm.

Which is what chivalry is about.

Um, but I think AI will be very similar to, to, in terms of the economic output, right?

So the economic output is you get the Normans and the, and before them the, the, the, the Franks and the Saxons and the, the, the Goths who are m- barbarians.

They have very flat hierarchies, they have tribal assemblies.

They come into Europe, they get access to a war horse, and within like two or three generations they all look identical.

They have a horse-riding class.

They have an artisan class that makes the, the, the armor for the horse, you know, lords.

And then they have, uh, the peasants.

Um, and then, you know, the, the, the Italians send up some churchmen who eventually create a, a, a church class, but it's, it's kind of fits and starts.

That takes way longer.

The, the horsemen, artisans, peasants happened super quickly, right?

Mm. Super quickly.

Um, and that happens to everyone who encounters the horse.

Um, and, and the reason that's able to happen is it was incredibly expensive to develop the initial breeding lines that could, with the horses that were strong enough to s- to, to be armored and to carry a man in armor.

But once those existed, it was, it was way, way easier to acquire, and by acquire I mean steal, right?

For the Normans to go in and steal horses, right, from the Franks.

Yes.

And then two generations later they all had horses, right?

And they were, they were basically as good as everyone else's horses.

Um- So, so is your take then that even though AI should be relatively inexpensive for pretty much everybody to access, you're saying that some people's AI will not be the equivalent…

Uh, it'll be like, you know, s- the equivalent of having no horse versus having a horse because the, the true frontier models which will be more, uh, difficult to access will be the horses in this, in this example?

N- no, actually I'm s- I'm saying that the skill of the user is what, is what matters.

Mm. Okay.

I'm saying that a, a, a 130 IQ guy, uh, with access to the best frontier model in the world fighting a 165 IQ guy running a local hosted, you know, LLM is gonna lose to the 165 IQ guy.

I see.

Right?

I see.

Um- So it's that everybody will have a horse- Even among people that… Right … but not everybody will know how to ride it and use it properly.

Right.

Well, not everyone will be able to be a knight.

Correct.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, like the peasants had horses, right?

And horses pulling, you know, draft horses, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, though, you know, as I point out in one of my articles, like it took- 400 years for anyone to care enough to invent the horse collar, which is what you needed to use to, to, to make the, the, the main horses that we had.

We had all these great horse lines, right?

And to, to, to… It took 400 years for somebody to bother to go, "Oh, well, I wonder what would it take to make a, a horse useful for, for farming, for the peasants."

Right?

That, like, it was just way down.

They didn't invent any new technology.

It was just, you know, carving wood and putting some leather around it , right?

But no one, it was not on anyone's priority list, so it didn't happen.

All right?

Mm. Yeah.

Um, and, and I, I, I, I… When I look at the, sort of the more democratic uses of AI right now, a lot of it seems to be driven by either direct Chinese releases or threats of Chinese releases, and the China- Chinese are doing that for, for their own reasons.

Um, so I think that's a, that's kind of a, one of the things that I would say on that front is- Mm-hmm.

Yeah … it's, it's, it's not clear to me that, that, that the, that the people that are developing AI would care about releasing horse collars
for the, for the peasants, except that China keeps doing it, so they have to, they have to compete, otherwise everyone shifts over, right?

Um, that, that seems to me, to me to be more what's driving that.

But I, but I do think that… I mean, I've seen, there's, there's, there, you know, I'm, I'm in a group called EXIT and, um, and I've, I've seen people use local models To do things with that, that, that most people can't get a frontier model to do, right?

Mm-hmm.

Because they're, they're smart and they know ex- To that point … 'cause, 'cause they know exactly what they're doing, right?

Mm-hmm.

And they have deep knowledge of what a computer is and what a, and what a model is, and they, they can hold… They have a context window that's about as big as the model they're using.

And it just, you know, reminds me of, hey, you've got Norman Knights with thir- you know, second rank horses, and they're beating, they're beating the Franks and the Latins.

They're just- Mm-hmm … they're just slaying them because they are better at using the horses they have than those guys, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so that's- Yeah

I mean, again, I, I think, I think that's, that's the right way.

It's to think about the economic impacts.

It's not to think about what, what, what virtues will these, will these peak AI users have, right?

We're not gonna go back to chivalry.

We're not gonna go back to kind of the romantic feudalism of the past.

I mean, unless, I mean, AI is malleable enough that if somebody with enough money tries hard enough, maybe, maybe.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe there's a way to do that, and wouldn't that be interesting?

But, but I, I, I, I… That would, that would be something that we… Sort of like, uh, you know, when, uh, when, when European society decided to, to re-adopt Latin and, you know, Ciceronian Latin and all of that stuff, right?

Um, it took a lot of effort, and I don't think, I don't think anybody was particularly satisfied with the result.

It didn't, it didn't- Yeah … it didn't create the same impact that they were hoping for.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so but, but yeah, that's, that's, that's what I see.

I see idiosyncratic, lots of idiosyncratic stacks, and I see just incredible power from smart people that know exactly what they're doing being able to use this super sensitive force multiplier, right?

Um, and then on the other side, like, there is a democratic use of the AI.

It's to say to the AI, "You're smarter than me. Tell me what to do." Right?

Mm-hmm.

And we might get to the point where everybody 115 and under, that's how they interact with AI.

Here is my problem.

I don't know how to solve it.

Tell me how to solve it, right?

Mm-hmm.

Thanks.

Uh, yeah, that'd be, that'd be rough, rough outcome.

That's part of the, part of the reason the Pope doesn't want us to just use AI all the time, right?

He's, he's saying, "Hey, we, we can't, we can't out- outsource our reasoning." But I, I would like- Yeah … to get your perspective on one, one last thing- Yeah

if we have time for it.

Yeah, yeah.

Is, um, with this idea of, let's say, w- we're covering the core things, right?

We, we do life, uh, ideally we get life for employees.

We treat them well.

Mm-hmm.

We, we make sure there's kind of this, this shared in- shared interest for the long term.

We, um, we build these local communities.

Do you think that this would then naturally, even if they're not, even if the, the leaders of these great houses or companies are not necessarily drawn to art and beauty, that it would naturally lead to the creation of more beautiful communities?

Because this is something I, that really bothers me is that we don't have beautiful houses.

What, we rent the house that's probably only, I think it's three years old, and it's already, like, has issues, right?

They just threw this thing together.

Yeah.

They're doing this all over Nashville.

Yeah.

And I'm just wondering if you think that that would naturally end up as a result, because eventually other people will do these, the, build these communities, and then they
could choose to go to one that's more beautiful, that appeals to, you know, now that my survival needs are met, I want to appeal to my intellectual, like, the beauty around me.

I'm curious if you have- Right … any perspectives there.

Yeah, I mean, I think the beauty thing will happen primarily because, um, you have people that are trying to keep their own children, right?

Um, so what, what I said earlier about, about culture and creating status, um, that beauty, and seems to me when I, when I see it happen, it's because you have an established family that decide, that says, "Hey, I love my kids, and the best
thing that I can give my kids is the continuation of this blessed charge that, that God has entrusted me with that's, that's been the, the fruit, the, the fruit of that has been all of, all of the blessings, the material blessings that I enjoy.

And so I wanna make what I'm doing beautiful so that my kids stick around because that's what's in the best interest of my children, and what's most likely to fulfill my family's calling and, and,
and kind of meet some kind of level of, of, that- that's, that's, um, a necessary thing that I feel compelled to do for my kids and for my God, and then ultimately for, for my community," right?

That, I don't tend to see it be, "I care about my employees, so I'm going to make beautiful things to attract- Okay … people from outside." It looks to me in almost every… It do- it has that impact, right?

It has that impact, for sure.

It looks to me in almost every case to be, "I want something so that when my children…"

So have you ever, you ever, uh, you ever hung out with foodies?

You ever taken foodies to a restaurant and, and had them- Mm-hmm … immediately start talking about, uh… You gotta hang out with some more crunchy people, man.

There's, there's, there's crunchy people in your community.

Um, one of the things that'll happen if you, if you hang out with enough crunchy people is, is at some point you will have a group of
friends that whenever you take them to a restaurant, they will spend the whole meal discussing how they could make it better, right?

Like, they could make this meal better at their house with their, with their specialized tools, right?

Um- And what happens is people get to the point where they don't wanna eat out and their kids don't wanna eat out.

Their kids want to eat this meal made by mom with this tool, and that's the, that's the birthday meal that they want.

They don't want- Mm … the food from outside.

They don't want to go to a restaurant.

They, they, they want… Like, if it's about food, like they might wanna go out for the social element, right?

Because it's prettier, because there's better art, right?

But they don't wanna go out for the food.

And, and at a certain point you'll sort of catch on, "Oh, okay.

Well, the way to have my kids want to stay at home is for us to be better than what's available to my children to, to go out to," right?

And so it's, it's, you know, there's that, that old phrase, right, it's hard to keep them home once they've seen Gay Paris, right?

That's what you're fighting with.

That's what most of these families are, are fighting with is, hey…

And, and again, the message of hope that I would have is it's never been easier to do that, right?

Um, th- you know, there, there's, there's several mega churches that I've, I've seen in recent years, or I think since AI basically, that have
started to put out, you know, '90s cinema level quality stuff on their, just for their Sunday morning service or for events that they're doing.

I mean, just incredible things and, and, and my kids really like that, and they like it better than the slop that's put out by kind of the, the, the standard institutions.

And, and that makes me happy, right?

And, and I think that's where we, that, that, that's where you see the development of beauty is it's we wanna keep the people that we already have.

Now- Yeah … if you do that well, you will attract people from outside, but I've never, like, it's not quantifiable enough, it's not predictable enough for that to be a thing that you do.

You do it so that you can keep the people that you already have, that you've- Yeah … already invested in.

And so it's part of how you create the lifers to begin with.

It's not, that's not the lifers.

Yeah.

That's the how do we keep the next generation, right?

Yeah.

Well, that, that, that was my, my perspective on it too, is primarily keeping people who have already, like, now that you've brought them in, especially if you do have- Mm-hmm … this division of world where it's, it's, it's plebs and lords effectively.

Like, you have these people who, who are now taken care of, and now if there are options to leave and exit to another community, they can choose to, but you can keep them.

Right.

But it's interesting that your, your point was to me that, that stood out is that the actual challenge is keeping your own children engaged in the future, right?

So y- It always is … preventing or finding a way to, you know, disincentivize their exiting of the situation.

And, and I'll say they're permanent exiting 'cause y- you have to send them out.

Yeah.

They have to go out, right?

Every culture that, that, that, uh, that… I'm, I'm aware of no cultures that don't have a, some kind of a walkabout tradition.

Um, every culture that abandons that tradition, it dies within two generations, right?

You have to have some framing of, "Hey, we're sending you out to experience the world, to acquire something. Maybe you come back with money, maybe you come back with a company, maybe you come back with land, maybe you come back with a wife," whatever, right?

You come back with something, right?

But we want you to go out, and we want you to come back, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, we want you to go out and maybe you're, you know, in, in your late teens, and we want you to come back before you're, you know, maybe, maybe by the time you're in your mid-20s and then st- start having children, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, that's kind of the, the healthy progression is, you know, get out there and experience life- Um, and, and, you know, there, there's that expression, sow your wild oats, and, and,
and often that, that refers to kind of sexual impropriety, which that's, you know, um, I, I think that there, the healthy way for that to be manifested is go out there and experience life.

Drink a little.

Live a little.

Hang out with people.

Watch your friends.

Don't be an idiot, right, and sleep with a girl.

Watch your friends sleep with a girl, and experience, like, watch what happens there.

'Cause you can just sort of, you know, two, three years in a big city watching your friends go through what, what normal urbanites go through, like, if that's not enough to put you off the urban lifestyle, man, I don't know what is.

Like, if you cannot be- Yeah … totally drunk and totally, like, addicted to the lifestyle, which is another form of a test, right?

Yeah.

'Cause I mean, that's one of the things that we, that we're talking about here basically is do you have the capacity to resist the, the addictions of the modern world?

I heard this.

I, I, I, I, I've, I've, haven't chased this down, so if I, if I, I, I, I think about this, I'm not, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

I've heard this, this comment that basically, uh, one of the problems with chemistry, like in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, was that a bunch of people
who learned chemistry would create something equivalent to cocaine and then just take cocaine for the rest of their life, their short life, right?

And it took, like, a long time for us to figure out how to not have every chemist just be an addict of some kind, right?

Um, and, and, and then, you know, in synthetics, you know, h- the heroin and all of this stuff, right?

Like- Mm … chemistry, like, one of the, one of the things that makes chemistry hard is not, like, learning how to do it.

It's learning how to do it and having all of your top people not, you know, be Brian, or was, who, who was Bryan Cranston's character from, um, from, um, um, Breaking Bad, right?

Have not be the- Oh, yes, yes … Breaking Bad guy, right?

Either, either a user or a dealer 'cause that's, I mean, that's the immediately monetizable thing- Yeah

for, for chemistry, right?

And that was apparently a problem.

Like, it happened a lot allegedly- Mm … to in, you know, in, in France, in, in Germany, in Britain, all these guys that were discovering chemistry, and every now and then you stumble over something that's wildly addictive.

And a lot of guys, their journey just stopped right there-

because they either made that for all of their friends- Yeah … or they made it for themselves until they died.

And so, you know, I think AI is gonna be the same.

I think urban, the urban life is the same.

So you have to send somebody out to test themselves- Yeah … against that reality.

Um, and- And it is a sort of selection bias, too, at the end of it, right?

I- if, if they can't s- if they can't pass that test, should we be putting them in charge of people's lives?

Right?

Should we be g- Like, again, structurally I laid out for you, like, there's these arguments.

You have to give the, the, the guy that's in the, in the, the, the top part of the hierarchy some lever, right?

Otherwise he's not gonna marry you, right?

You're, you… For, for most of our audience, you're the girl in the relationship.

If you don't give him some lever, he's not gonna marry you, right?

Just as we're- Mm-hmm … as we're seeing in many, many parts of, of, of the country right now, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Many communities.

Like, we've, we've taken all the levers away from the men, and the men are saying, "Oh, well then I'm, I'm not gonna do this covenant 'cause I have no levers," right?

Yeah.

It's a good point, yeah.

Um, so you have to give them some lever, but if we're gonna give them that lever, we, we, we, we cannot have them be the kind of person that, that, that is just going to suffer from addiction, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, that, that, that is going to give in to that.

It's always a temptation, right?

Uh, but, but, you know, there, there's… The, the, the most addictive thing in the world is power, right?

Yeah.

And that's still true.

Um, and, and our faith has been, you know, warning about that, uh, on a fairly regular basis for a long time now.

Um- Yeah … so I, I think that's… We have to acknowledge that, we have to recognize, okay, that is still true.

That is still what, what we have to contend with.

And if, if we wanna do this, well, well, you know, as, as, as, uh, um, as Aristotle says, uh, you know, to, to, to, uh, Alexander the Great, "How do you lead men? Well, be better than them."

Right?

So you have to be the kind of person who is not going to be… to, to fall into addiction in order to be worthy of, of, of leading these people.

And that's just- Mm. That's, that's the selection.

Well, it's also very interesting though because my, my… Some of my friends have told me about this, this fact that, uh, if I'm not mistaken, that the majority of great men have the very easy tendency to fall into addiction, right?

So in modern times, oftentimes if they don't, if they don't curb that, if they don't, if they don't direct that, uh, energy correctly, they'll end up being addicted to video games or to, or, or to drugs or, or other sorts of lifestyles.

Yeah.

But they need to apply that in, in the right way.

So it's like we, we in some ways, we, we know that they have the tendency, but they have to be able to steer it properly.

Right.

Well, I, I, I, I, I don't know if that's true.

Uh, I, I think that what one of the things about great men historically was that they were always being asked.

So I hung out with a, a, a, a descendant of a, of an ultra-high net worth house for, uh, three or four weeks while we were accomplishing something, and he would get propositioned by women multiple times a day.

Wow.

And be- some of them quite attractive women, right?

And- He said yes way less than I would have at that, at that time.

That make sense?

Yeah.

Like, and I think you have to have that, you have to have that, that… So I think when we look historically, um, they, the, the reality was that they just had access.

And the problem of course- Mm-hmm

is that now, now everyone with a phone has, has access, right?

To, to all of the- Mm-hmm … world's, you know, unearthly delights, right?

Um, and, and that's, that's again one of the, one of the problems with our, with our society.

So I, I don't know that it's, I don't know that it's necessarily that different.

Um, it's just- Mm-hmm

it's, it's the same, but they, they have to go through that trial, and all of the great men of the past did go through that trial.

Um- Yeah … I think, I think our, our, in, in, in earlier cultures we did a better job of, of making sure that if you gave off lots of signals that said you wouldn't pass that trial, you just were not given the opportunity, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, you were told, you know, "Marry Snaggletooth across the way and, and count your, count your blessings, young man." Oh, yes.

Um, and, and you were happy, right, with that.

Um, and, and, and, and now, you know, it's not just, it's not just the women on Instagram, it's the men, right?

We, we, we are all faced with this.

And, and I think that's one of the challenges that, that, that we have is, um, we have to be, uh, be okay.

You know, think about spiritual permission structures.

When you meet people that are genuinely meeting this standard, you will feel inferior, right?

And if that makes you mad, then you're not gonna be able to build anything productive.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Yeah.

Like, like, you, you… And, and, and what I've seen, what I've seen an unfortunate amount of the time, and I know it's gonna keep happening, I'm gonna keep watching this happen probably for the rest of my life, is people will find
someone who is genuinely exceptional, genuinely meeting a standard of nobility that qualifies them to be in leadership, and they have another person in their life who has some, like, fatal tragic flaw that they're giving into their flesh.

And they pick the guy with the fatal flaw 'cause he, he, he makes them less frustrated.

And then three years later, of course- Yeah … their life has crashed and burned because that guy's life crashed and burned because he wasn't qualified for the position that he gave them, right?

It's sort of like, it's like the women who marry the beta, right?

And when you get that, you're not happy, right?

Mm-hmm.

You're just not happy.

It doesn't, it doesn't get you what you wanted.

Um, and, and we look at the women and we say, "This is very predictable, okay? Like, you should have known this about this guy when you got in, you know, in bed with him." Yeah.

And, and I see a lot of, of business…

I see a lot of, of, of people, even Christian people, doing that same thing, that when they meet someone who is genuinely exceptional, um, that they have a problem with him, right?

Mm-hmm.

That, that, that that makes him, them less interested in trying to build a life with, with that guy, um, and trying to draft in, in, in his train.

I mean, like, I've been successful to the extent that I've been successful because when I meet somebody like that, I, I press in.

I'm, I'm like really excited by a guy that isn't obviously disqualified from the position of leadership I'd like him to fill, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's pretty much, that's pretty much it, right, in terms of I've, I, I've made a bunch of mistakes in my life and I have made…

I've chosen correctly on that front on a series of occasions and, and, and that's why I've gotten as far as I've gotten.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm very, uh, I'm very, um… That's kind of my, my, my framing and my thought on that.

Yeah, I mean, it's the same, it's the same thing with all of the, the startups I see.

I see a lot of talent who end up only spending one or two years at a company because the company just keeps folding because they chose the wrong- Right

they just can't find the right founder.

Right.

They don't have judgment to identify when they're looking at the right founder too.

So no, I, I, I definitely see it across other things.

But man, I knew this was gonna be informative, but this is, uh, this is really good.

I, I appreciate you having this discussion with me, man.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for, uh, for coming on and, um, we'll, we'll talk more in the future I, I, I'm sure.

All right.