Snow Crash And the Changing World - Ep 011

Dive into the intricate tapestry of societies shaped by books like 'Snow Crash,' and explore the intersections of technology, culture, and human nature. Can Mars really be our escape plan, or is adapting to Earth's challenges inevitable?

 

Watch this episode on YouTube

 

Hosts:

JD - @CypherpunkCine on 𝕏
Bondor - @gildedpleb on 𝕏
Zach - @idiotfortruth on 𝕏

 

 

Sponsors:

Unknown Certainty - The Bitcoin Ad Company
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A good day coming, and it's all I need, everything I wanted.

Hey, hey.

Welcome back.

11, continuing the slow march towards 100.

We will get there before the end of the year though.

We will.

Before the end of the year, we'll see.

No, it'll happen, I'm optimistic.

I'm gonna run towards it.

I'm actually very impressed that we even have 11,

so here we are.

Oh man. Excellent.

We've crossed into the double digits,

and so at this point, it's a real thing

as much as it can be.

No, I think we were just talking beforehand

in a book that we've both read that I feel is really,

is the word I'm looking for, prescient,

or really important in today's world

is actually gonna be Snow Crash.

And I put another book up here on the side thing

that kind of came out at the same time,

which is The Sovereign Individual,

but Snow Crash, for anybody who's not familiar,

is actually a book by Neal Stephenson.

It's actually where the word metaverse comes from.

So the metaverse, if you haven't seen or read Snow Crash,

essentially it's Inception.

Like that whole thought process

of you just like logging into the metaverse

and kind of like checking out for your life,

that's exactly what Snow Crash is about.

But it's this really interesting merger,

and it takes place in Los Angeles in like 20,

in the late, like 2050 or something like that.

I can't remember the actual years on it,

but I'll look it up.

But the top line.

21st century, unspecified number of years

after the worldwide economic collapse.

Los Angeles is no longer part of the United States

since the federal government has ceded most of its power

and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs.

Yes, and so I think the coolest thing about Snow Crash

and the most terrifying thing about Snow Crash

is that at the end of the day in that particular book,

they kind of walk you through the bifurcation of society

within a single nation.

And so very specifically what Steve just said,

or what Bonder just said is,

you get to a point in time

where your government doesn't matter,

and all that matters is the

place you hold a passport, essentially.

Like where do you throw your religion?

And where do you throw your religion?

Where do you have rights?

Where have you purchased rights, really?

And that's, I think, the thing

that's the most terrifying that we're kind of starting

to see all over the world right now.

And it's like, I don't know if people have seen

what's kind of going on in Texas,

and this is kind of what I wanted to talk about,

is this city in Texas that,

you know, actually I'll drop it in this way,

just so that way I'm not unnimming myself in certain things.

But this city in Texas that is,

boop, boop, boop, that's kind of starting.

And so this is me just kind of pulling up a tweet.

But there's a city essentially called Epic City,

which is going to be a Muslim-only,

Sharia law city planned in Texas,

apparently of 102 acres.

And they've built a 40,000 square foot mosque.

And they're essentially just going to take over.

It's going to be completely,

everyone is Muslim here, is what it says.

This is not a warning.

Actually, this is what's happening in Irving, Texas.

And they're starting to essentially create a Sharia state

within the United States.

This has already happened also in like Minnesota.

You know, it's one of the things that we were seeing

when we were, or one of the biggest issues

with Ilhan Omar that people were talking about

is like, hey, this state is coming.

And I'm just really, really curious to see

how this is going to unfold,

because I actually do think this is the future.

I actually believe this is the most correct.

And I think Neil Stevenson got it right in Snow Crash

when he kind of went through all of the things

that are happening in the future state of Los Angeles

that he kind of put together, you know, what's going on.

And so, I don't know, I'm just curious your take on this

of like, how is this going to look in LA?

Because I think we're going to get to a world in LA

where we are kind of having a similar thing happening

where, oh, hang on a sec.

What do you think is going to be happening in LA?

I kind of see this happening in LA.

So, one of the things that's fascinating

about thinking about it, and probably one of the reasons

why Neil chose to put this book in LA,

put the setting of LA,

is because LA is literally already there.

Now, we don't have Muslim neighborhoods,

but we have something like 500 neighborhoods,

and each one of them has their own vibe

and particularities and the rest of it.

And so, we're already at a place where,

like, in my neighborhood, it's like,

there's no way or no reason for me to drive

literally two hours to get to a neighborhood

that's across town and think that we have

any kind of relationship with each other.

Like, we don't.

It's just, quote, unquote, incorporated LA,

but it's so different.

It's 100% a different world.

Like, I'm on the east side, and when you go to the west side,

it's literally a different world.

And the space and distance of people,

it's unbelievable just trying to wrap your head around it.

So, and a lot of people don't think about that.

They're like, oh, yeah, it's just,

LA is just kind of like Austin,

maybe a little bit bigger.

And it's like, no, there's literally,

like, I couldn't tell you how many,

but there's, like, Austin has a cool city center

with all the skyrises.

LA has, like, seven of those.

It's like, this is not,

these are incompatible, like, comparisons.

Like, there's seven different downtowns,

including downtown LA, which is its own thing,

unlike all the other downtowns, right?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, because, you know, there's, like,

Culver City, Studio City, and if people aren't familiar,

there's, you know, all these different boroughs

is probably the best way to describe them, or enclaves.

But what's unique about LA is they all, yeah,

they all,

And then Long Beach, and Pasadena, and, yeah, it's just.

And it all kind of stemmed out of an interesting

predicament that we have here in LA is

LA is the biggest backlot in the world,

and we don't need that anymore.

You know, all of these, like, Pasadena,

people have heard that name before.

You know, Pasadena has a couple different areas

where, like, this particular street looks like,

you know, New England, and then this street looks like,

you know, the middle of nowhere in Mexico.

You know, all these different vibes

and different styles of architecture.

You know, you have other places that look like,

oh, this could be the Midwest.

And that's a really interesting thing that LA has,

is they have these little boroughs and these little enclaves,

but I'm increasingly more under the,

you know, or coming to the understanding that Bitcoin

is going to expedite the,

you know, separation of our cities,

but then it's also going to expedite

the creation of completely new economies.

Yeah, what it's going to do,

like, you have to go through the logic of it,

and sometimes the logic can be a little bit fuzzy,

but I think ultimately it forces people to extremely,

and especially with AI coming in now, too,

it forces people to extremely discount

everything they see online, right?

Oh, well, you know what?

I got a call on, like, my phone, or I got an email,

and it seemed like it was from my mom,

and it said she was in distress,

and she needed my Bitcoin for some reason.

Like, all of a sudden, well, I don't really trust email.

All of a sudden, I don't really trust my phone.

And then, okay, well, what do you trust?

Well, one of the only things you can actually trust

is Meetspace, as they say in Mr. Robot,

like, the encryption we used was the real world.

Nobody can tap that encryption.

You know, I'm sure space satellites can hear everything

and see everything, blah, blah, blah,

but, like, okay, it's just a small group.

We're talking about distributed actors

and the mass of society being able to interact

with each other on a commercial basis,

and all of these protocols are broken,

except for the one protocol

that humans are made to interact with,

which is the local protocol.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I was talking to somebody else today,

and the only realm in which I feel humans will ever not,

or rather, will ever be completely safe and secure

is farming, and I know that sounds weird,

but there's gonna be a lot of moments

where I don't think, I think robots can do a lot.

Oh, look at this.

Hey, what's up?

Stranger.

We're talking about Snow Crash,

and have you read Snow Crash?

I have not.

Zach, it's a great book.

It's literally the sovereign individual thesis

in a narrative form,

so if you haven't read The Sovereign Individual,

it's another one, but it is a very, you know,

very unique and focused and targeted idea,

and it's kind of like, how do we walk out

what's gonna happen when governments

actually have to provide real value

to a place where it's like,

you have to provide real value,

that real value actually needs to be providing real things,

and if you can't-

It's not gonna work if it's just somebody saying

this is real value, guys.

Like, nobody will believe you.

There'll be, and then there'll be,

somebody else will be like,

well, okay, but here's my competitive product

that's even better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing about Sovereign Individual,

I mean, many of the things that that book really

just totally gets right,

but one of the things that sticks with me

is the industrial revolution really being the thing

that allowed for the superpowers

that we've experienced over the last 100 years

to even exist, and that concentration of wealth

and concentration of factories

and concentration of people in one spot

made it really easy for the government

to just go and be like, well, we're gonna take your shit,

we're gonna tax you, we're gonna do whatever,

and, you know, the decentralization

of manufacturing capability, robots,

energy sources, whatever, you know, all of that.

Bitcoin, you know, being a key component

of the capital behind that, you know,

it just, it always seemed very much so

like we were going back to what the world was previously,

which was a lot of, you know, multipolar powers,

a lot of people vying for power,

and I don't think that necessarily

has to mean more conflict.

I think it can mean less conflict,

but there's just not Russia, China, the United States,

these giant superpowers.

There's actually one thing

that they kind of brought out in the book is you,

there actually was less conflict

because everybody kind of just understood

the different like social constructs

because at the end of the day, it's like,

oh, and one of the things like, you know,

you have to go to college, to Costa Nostra,

like city college, like community college or whatever

to get like a five-year degree to deliver pizza.

Pizza college, yeah, pizza college.

It's awesome, it's a phenomenal book,

I highly recommend it, but it's like,

because, you know, to deliver these pizzas,

you have to understand how to drive on these roads

where you're flying like 600 miles an hour

in these crazy, thanks camera, I need to fix this,

in these crazy streets of LA

where everything's going wild.

And so, yeah, it's just,

it's a really interesting take on everything.

Like part of it's run by the mob, like it's cool.

Dope, dope.

One of the things that comes to mind

in thinking about it is just how does,

like some individual thesis on it was,

it's kind of more intellectual,

hey, this is how we're gonna lay it out.

And you kind of get the impression that he's just like,

well, what's really gonna happen is that

everybody's gonna move to the Bahamas

because it's the Bahamas.

And it's like, there's something nagging

in the back of my mind that says,

no, because there's nothing in the Bahamas.

There's just nice beaches and that's,

there's no people, there's no economy,

there's no industry, there's no like inventive community,

there's no creative community.

It's just people trying to escape everyone.

Like that's not a community of people.

If everyone's there because they're trying to escape,

bro, nobody wants to be your friend

because they're all trying to escape each other.

Like it's just, this is not a good community.

It's not a good space, right?

The alternative or the other side of that coin is like,

no, you're gonna wanna be in a large community.

You're gonna wanna be in a diverse community

and surrounded by people who are doing interesting things

and pushing in interesting ways

and building interesting things

and being creative and all the rest of that.

Now, that's what you get in Snow Crash.

Snow Crash is this dystopian meta,

like we're talking about communities on top of communities,

which your local communities

have all these weird political systems in the legacy world

that are all kind of, some of them are working,

some of them are falling apart,

but then you also have the metaverse,

which is like your pristine, like,

hey, this is where I live.

Like this is my office.

This is like what I believe is where my identity is

and like all this other stuff.

And that really kind of jumps into that.

And you get to see these two worlds collide, if you will.

Yeah, and the dystopia that is the real world as well,

which is funny, which is kind of the similar thing to like,

one of my favorite movies actually of the last decade

is Ready Player One.

If it's on an airplane, I'm watching it.

Like it doesn't matter.

I've probably seen it a thousand times.

Judge me, that's fine.

But it's just the escapism, it's the voyeurism

that I think humans are the novelty.

That's probably the best word, the better way to say it.

But it's like the novelty we're so used to.

It's like, we just love this novel nature of the digital,

which the digital allows us to do so quickly.

And I think that's gonna be one of the greatest things

about kind of the future is there is a great desire

to go somewhere like Mars,

because there's novelty in it

and to go somewhere like Pluto,

because there's novelty in it.

And so there's this great desire for the unknown,

just like Star Trek, but by the same token,

that could also be our downfall.

It's like, okay, well, maybe there's an interesting thing

if somebody wants to see the world burn

and like launch a nuclear attack or whatever it is.

So I don't know if you believe nukes are real, but yeah.

Well, that's kind of a premise,

I mean, jumping off to another book,

but that's kind of the premise behind the Expanse

and that whole series.

I don't know if you guys have seen that,

but I highly recommend it.

Very, it bridges the gap between like now

and Star Wars or Star Trek.

So it's like, no, we literally have not left

the solar system, but we've done the whole solar system.

And so we've got all like, you know,

we have spaceships and stuff,

but it's really like we can't figure out

how to jump to light speed or above.

And so it really jumps into the politics

and the social systems within our solar system.

And yeah, JD, you get like at one point,

one of the characters starts bombarding

Earth with meteors because he was raised in the belt

or the outer rim or whatever.

And he hates it.

Well, of course he does,

because Earth has treated him like shit

his whole existence, right?

It's just like, F these guys.

Like we're talking about totally different

political factions, right?

Amen.

Rednecks existed long time, man.

You know, there's always going to be conflict

between people in the mountains and people in cities.

It's a circle of life, man.

It's part of how it goes, you know,

ain't one better than the other.

I don't know.

Okay, riddle me this guys.

I don't understand the whole terraforming Mars thing.

I mean, I get it on the one level of like, yes,

if, you know, there's a fucking meteor that rolls by

and destroys Earth, we need like, you know,

moon base two or whatever.

Okay, fine, I get that.

But other than that, the idea like,

this is how it comes off to me.

Tell me where I'm wrong.

The idea like, oh man, Earth is fucked.

We got to go to Mars.

Like, what?

Have y'all motherfuckers seen Mars?

I don't, we could just fix Earth.

Yeah, that's the escapism attitude,

like take to the nth degree.

No, let's really not face our problems.

Let's just totally feed on our problems and ignore them.

And we'll just go away.

Like there's actually, I mean,

C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce was like about this,

literally like, oh yeah, hell is the,

one of the definitional qualities of hell

is that no one actually has to face any of the problems.

They can just move further away

and build whatever they want

and have all the resources they need and blah, blah, blah.

Just move further away.

So you don't have to deal with the other people, right?

Like C.S. Lewis has a vision of that is what hell is.

Escaping just everyone all the time.

Like, oh, look at the surface of Mars.

Well, it's pretty much hell.

Let's go there.

It'll be great.

Yeah, we got to do it.

I will say though,

the one thing that's unique about the Mars thing

is if you walk everything out far enough,

at the end of the day,

our sun is going to supernova.

That's just the way it works, right?

And so there is a-

I don't believe in stars.

I don't believe in stars.

Stars aren't real.

Camera, this is so sad.

But at the end of the day,

I was talking to some folks the other day

and they're just like, your camera always do this?

I was like, yes, it doesn't matter what computer I'm on.

Like, you probably need a new router

and all this other stuff.

And I'm like, God.

And it's actually the router at the box

or at the, that comes in from my fiber

because it's every computer.

But anyways,

there is going to be a time

when the world is going to be engulfed

in some type of supernova

and then buried in a black hole

because the sun is going to go out.

Now, is that going to be in the next five years?

Probably not.

But it's one of those things

that on a long enough time horizon, it's going to happen.

And so even though I know Mars is,

for me as a believer in God,

but then also I believe God is the God of the universe.

And I do actually think,

I do think part of the game as an interesting thing,

I know it's like, I don't think God is a gamer,

but I do think part of the thing is like,

hey, I made these things.

Will they figure it out?

Like, will they survive?

Can they get off the rock?

Ooh, I don't know.

Like, it's like kind of an interesting thing

because I feel the belief I have

is the reason God knows everything.

And the reason everything is like recycled, right?

It's like every animal has veins, right?

And those veins pump blood, right?

It's like all these, oh, that works.

That's an effective system for getting things around.

And so it's like, okay, I'm going to reuse this.

And so in my mind, one of the challenges we have

is as a species and as a creation

is the desire and need effectively to be interplanetary.

Yeah, I think ultimately, totally necessary,

you know, totally on board with that.

But I always just crack up at the like,

Earth is super fucked, let's go to Mars.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, we have Teslas here and Teslas in the United States.

Yeah.

No, yeah, JD, I tend to agree with you on that.

What's going to happen is we're going to terraform the stars

just because it's like, oh, this will be fun.

It's like, oh, this will be fun.

And also, you know, natural resources and whatever else,

but it's going to be like, oh, this is going to be like,

that's going to be cool.

Let's do that, right?

Yeah, imagine being a robber baron of the stars,

the Rockefeller of space.

Yeah, and I think that that's part of the human story too,

which is, oh, well, we have this land here

and like, for instance, pre-battle,

and then God's like, no, you're going to,

you're going to go everywhere.

And then like, you know, civilization,

Western civilization says, oh, we're going to have,

you know, we're going to make Europe this really,

this is where civilization is.

And then, oh, well, we just discovered America.

Well, there's all sorts of reasons why we need to go there

and figure that out and explore that.

Like just because of our interests and curiosity

and oh, there's also resources there that we can use it.

Like this solves some of our problems.

We can go take this back.

And I think that that pattern just kind of continues.

And I don't think it,

I think that's a part of the human story, honestly,

because we're meant to go out.

We're meant to come back.

We're meant to explore.

We're meant to build and build and build.

100%.

How long do you think it takes for Peter Schiff

to capitulate after we find gold on a meteorite

that we can harvest?

Never.

He's never capitulating.

And in fact, he has been right.

Gold is.

He's not wrong.

Bitcoiners don't want to admit it.

Peter Schiff wins this round, son of a bitch.

I mean, gold is down $14 today,

but it is up significantly on the year.

On the year, it is up 10%.

So this one to you, Mr. Schiff.

So JD, going back to your original reason

for bringing up the snow crash thing,

what's your vision for LA?

Like with all of those details and nuances considered.

Yeah, I'm actually really, you know,

I do think it's going to get worse

before it gets better, unfortunately.

But I think there's going to be an interesting opportunity

and we're kind of at this moment

with Altadena burning down and with, you know,

the Palisades burning down to reshape

and rebuild some of these communities

in a more 21st century way.

I'm optimistic that it can be around a church and a school.

And I would actually argue that the best school is a farm,

but that's a little bit different.

But I think it would be, you know,

it's going to be interesting to see

how those communities rebuild.

And if they can be rebuilt in a walking fashion,

in a more Euro style fashion.

It's going to be harder just because I know Americans

are, we're a car horse.

We like our cars.

I didn't know you were a communist, JD.

What is this, 15 minute city, smart city?

Get the fuck out of here.

Don't want 15 minute cities, don't want smart cities.

I want as many guns as possible.

But I do think there's a really interesting

and cool opportunity to build citadels again.

And I'm sorry, build cathedrals again.

And, you know, kind of re-point people

back towards the stars.

And I'm saying specifically God and heaven, but we'll see.

It's going to be a long, hard road.

And I think the bigger challenge we're going to have is,

you know, because the money is broken,

it's going to be way easier for those 15,

for 15 minute cities to arrive.

Cause that's not what I want.

I don't want 15 minute cities.

What I want is, you know, the sovereign,

and I don't know what that looks like.

I don't know what that looks like.

But I want the sovereign individual aspect of things,

which is probably closer to Snow Crash.

I just don't want it to be as dystopian as Snow Crash.

It looks like basic property rights being respected.

It's really just not complicated.

It's fair.

But they're not going to, and they don't.

Yeah, it's fair.

What do you think, Zach?

What's your take on how this all shakes out?

With respect to the fires, or just LA in general?

Just LA in general, like, you know,

LA in general, yeah.

Okay, good news first, I guess.

All of this is reversible like that.

Snap of a finger, and we can be back to

massive economic expansion, prices down, quality up.

So I think the potential is there for this

to do a very quick turnaround.

But unfortunately, I don't think that it's going to happen.

I think that it will probably be another 25 to 50 years.

And I always go 25 and 50 years because, you know,

I just think in terms of generations.

Is the current generation of,

is the current cohort of kids in any position

to do anything about what's going on around them?

No, they're not.

Boomers still have another 15 or 20 years

before they're totally dead and gone.

Sorry to be morbid about it.

But from a power perspective,

that's the battle that's being fought right now.

And boomers are going to hold onto that

for as long as humanly possible.

The other element of it is that,

and this is LA specific,

this isn't necessarily true for NorCal,

excluding San Francisco and Marin County,

but LA specifically, so many of the people

who would be necessary and useful

in the political fight to come have left.

And I think that we're going to continue

to see that bifurcation in the United States.

I think that is going to speed up.

I think it's going to get more severe.

I think we're going to continue

to see red versus blue bifurcation.

And I think that California will become bluer and bluer.

And I have hope that the fires

could do something for this politically,

but I just, I haven't seen any indication

that there's even a modicum of intellectual rigor here

with regards to voting.

Case in point, they just voted another tax increase here

that went into effect yesterday or whatever.

You got people in LA paying nearly 11%.

You got Palmdale paying like 11 and a half percent.

Like what, sales tax, like what?

And they voted this in for people

to solve the homeless problem

of which nothing has been done for the last 10 years

despite four, five, $6 billion being thrown at it.

So the voting block is like clearly not aware at all.

Or real.

Yeah, when I hear that, when I encounter that,

it's like a hundred percent valid, yeah.

The thing that gets me, I think it's just a matter of,

it's just a matter of this,

there's going to be a switch in people's mind

where they're like, wait a second,

the policies and anybody who's paying any attention

already knows this.

And you see tweets about it all like every day,

which is the policies for the right are this,

which are completely brain dead.

These policies are brain dead.

The policies for left are this, which are brain dead.

All these policies,

it's like the same people in the same absurdity

just all over again.

You're like, wait a second, this is, at some point,

you go through the process of, oh, what's insanity?

Well, it's just doing the same thing

over and over and over again

and getting the same results over and over again,

thinking you're going to get different results, right?

Like everyone knows that this is the case.

This is a part of our culture.

And yet we're still here doing this.

I genuinely think that there's going to come,

there's going to be a groundswell

that basically says, wait a second,

once you see that fiat is the problem, you don't unsee it.

And the more people who see that

are going to start believing that

and they're just going to convince more people.

At some point it becomes a, wait a second,

we've tried everything.

Everything's still broken.

Why is it still broken?

And then they're going to have to turn to other solutions.

In the past, those other solutions

have always been revolution, right?

We can't, our voice doesn't matter.

Therefore, we have to revert to violence.

JD, I think that you're like, yep,

that's what's going to happen next.

I think that still needs to happen.

Well, I mean, it's still happening, right?

Like we're literally seeing Tesla's get vandalized everyday.

Now, the next-

And that's actually why I think

we're on track for another revolution.

Because the problem is there's enough,

JFK and Ronald Reagan killed America.

When they got rid of asylums, they killed America.

Now, the problem is it's really difficult

to know who's crazy when everybody's on Xanax.

Right, so here's the point I'm trying to get to.

Because the conversation always gets cut off

right at this point and everyone's like,

well, I've got the solution, I swear, we got it.

Like, here's what's going to happen next.

I'm like, no, you guys, the entire game theoretical

and political structure of reality

has changed since Bitcoin.

All of the stuff that the Sovereign Individual

book talks about, all of that exists presently today.

You cannot expect the same returns on violence

that you could in times past

because of the things that you were talking about.

All of the centralization of factories and everything else,

that's now distributed.

There's no like, oh, well, we're going to have to,

if we just draw a line around this area,

then it'll be under control.

And it's like, that's not the case anymore.

Nobody thinks that's the case.

It's like ridiculous to think that's the case, right?

Now, oh, okay, well, maybe the line,

maybe we can do it like drones, right?

Like we'll just unleash 100,000 drones

and each person will have a drone

like just hovering over their head all day.

And if they try to, and it's like, okay,

well, that's just asking for evolution.

So it's just never going to work that way.

That's when we get to, maybe there's an economic solution.

Maybe the problem is fiat

and maybe the economic solution is Bitcoin.

And when you go down that path,

you realize that, yes, that's the solution.

And yes, that actually illuminates

every single one of our problems.

It shows us that, wow, I didn't realize

that like this was actually the problem.

When there's no accountability in the money,

well, then you're not going to have,

you're not going to solve your homelessness problem.

You're just going to be paying all these nonprofits

to bankroll more and more people, right?

Like it's never going to solve the homeless problem.

Oh, when there's inflation in your money,

you're always going to have more homeless

because the cost of housing is always up.

Oh, okay, well, this is about the money all of a sudden.

And when people start to realize that,

when people start to actually internalize that

and see that there's a solution that's not revolution,

they're going to choose Bitcoin.

Everybody's going to choose Bitcoin.

Just like, it's just the exact same thing

that's happening in the boardrooms

of all these major companies

that are trying to adopt Bitcoin.

Oh, what are our options?

Well, we can buy gold.

Why would, like, this is ridiculous to buy gold,

like et cetera, or whatever they're thinking.

Oh, we can buy Bitcoin.

Like, actually that kind of is interesting.

It's forward thinking, it's different.

So.

I think it's, I think that's, I think that's true.

I think the timeline, I mean, obviously,

I think everybody will figure Bitcoin out,

but I think the timeline of,

I'll put it this way.

I think California collapses before it gets rebuilt.

I don't think that it makes, you know,

a U-turn on the direction that it's going.

And for one primary reason,

which is your hypothesis on that point, Bondor,

was requires an element of self-awareness

and a willingness to seek the truth,

which is the polar opposite of the leftism

that has taken over parts of this state.

They don't, they just don't have that capacity.

They literally don't care.

And so I think that they will self-immolate

before rational entities and people and organizations

can kind of sweep back in,

clean up the mess and rebuild the state.

I think that kind of goes to this whole thing

of the nationalism.

And this is part of the sovereign individual thesis

is like nationalism as backlash.

I would argue that woke-ism is a nationality.

I would argue that the ideology of the left

is a national, is a national.

And you can probably argue the same thing

for the right.

Trump-ism is also just national.

Both of them are nationalism.

They're just for different nations within.

And that's the kind of ideology that we have, yeah.

Yeah, and so I think what's really interesting

if you look at this, and if you haven't read this book,

these are all the theses that they had

and they were pretty damn spot on.

And like the end of the welfare state by 2010.

So they were off, I think on that,

because we're in 2025 now,

but I actually think the end of the welfare state is coming.

That'll come, I think maybe mid 2030s at the earliest.

I think, I actually think the nationalism,

I don't think the left are nationalistic.

They're ideological at best

and don't have any respect for the nation that they're in

or wherever they're at.

It doesn't matter where they're at.

So I see that as a backlash to the,

I see nationalism as a backlash to the ultra left-ism

that we've been going through for 35 years.

But of course it can be

its own ideological nightmare as well.

So one of the things I keep,

like I always just come back to this thought

and that's the game theory around Bitcoin.

Every time somebody gets converted to Bitcoin,

they don't, I mean, apart from people

who convert to Bitcoin and then get into shit coins

or like, oh, well, it was just a right-wing extremist group

or whatever random conclusion they come to.

The people who actually figure it out, get to it,

they're like, wait a second.

People who are interested in the truth,

and there's basically nothing,

they become the intolerant minority.

There's nothing that the left or the right can do

to convince them otherwise.

And it becomes easier for all of the legacy systems

and all of the legacy processes to just not fight Bitcoin

and instead to just adopt it.

And then when they adopt it,

the same incentives that change somebody

from being bought into the legacy world,

but after the truth,

and then they get into Bitcoin and they're like,

oh, well, this is a higher truth that makes more sense

and blah, blah, blah, solve all these problems.

Okay, so it basically just kind of in a subversive way

infiltrates all of the legacy systems.

Everybody at a company that's like,

oh, I guess we're gonna buy Bitcoin now

because it's a memeable thing to do.

Like, that's gonna be on their balance sheet

and then they're gonna be responsible

and then they're gonna have to look up,

what have we done?

I think we'll figure it out from there.

And everybody has to go down the rabbit hole.

We're literally every single person on earth

is on the same journey that ends at Bitcoin

or is beyond Bitcoin.

And we're all just at different stages of the journey.

The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.

Yeah, I'm very optimistic that,

I think the most interesting and valuable thing

going on right now is actually the Tesla riots.

And what I mean by that is,

if you are a liberal and you are defacing a Tesla

and you get arrested for that,

you are going to immediately be pissed off

at the federal government.

If you're a liberal and you own a Tesla

and your Tesla is now vandalized by another liberal,

because there's no MAGA people doing that,

you are immediately going to have a shock to your system.

Right?

Like, that is actually like the Tesla thing

is actually the best marketing for a Trump 2028 run

in a really interesting way.

And it's also though, I think the first chink in the matrix.

And it's this really interesting thing

where it's kind of like,

it's that the Spider-Man meme

where they're pointing at each other.

It's literally that meme of like,

oh, you're the bad guy,

but it's literally woke-ism pointing at woke-ism

because originally woke-ism was correct in buying Teslas

because it was the green thing to do.

And now you hate Tesla because it's the other thing to do.

And so it's this, you know, it's the,

I can't remember the name of the Asian dragon

that's eating its own tail, but it's literally that.

Ouroboros.

Yeah, it's the Ouroboros of woke-ism.

Like it's literally the Ouroboros of woke-ism right now.

And that gives me hope that we're going to get to a moment

where, you know, I'm not going to say

more people are going to wake up,

but what I'm going to say is I think the general sentiment

is going to shift to a desire for something to cling onto.

And that's going to be truth.

And then ultimately I think that

that truth is Bitcoin, personally.

Can you imagine how exhausting

and how expensive it is to be a leftist right now?

Like, first of all, okay, so Elon launches Tesla

and you're, you know, you're a leftist

and you're like, fuck yeah, green car.

Finally.

So you go buy the Roadster, you get the $120,000 Model S.

And then a few years later, Elon's evil.

Fuck, I got to burn my Tesla.

So now you're out 120 grand

and you lit your fucking car on fire.

Like this is, to have no principles or no framework at all

is very expensive and very exhausting.

The silver lining in all of this though is you hate Maha.

And so McDonald's is back on the menu.

You are now at a place where eating garbage fast food

is the best alternative.

The problem is Taco Bell for a family of four is $85.

Well, I mean, look, they were cutting their dicks off.

They're dying their hairs blue.

Like, whether McDonald's takes them out of the gene pool

or their own dick cutting, you know, they're out.

In 25 years, there's less of them.

It is wild that it is like,

I didn't even think about that,

but like woke-ism is the Ouroboros of itself.

And the only way that it survives

is if it mind viruses other people.

And the only way that that can do that is education.

And so that's why you want to close

the Department of Education.

Correct, check.

In the USA thing, like one of the things

I saw one interview, somebody was like,

went to a Tesla protest line, right?

Interviewed all the people.

Every single one of them was a boomer

and they were all so mad.

And they were like explaining why they're mad.

And they're like, well, because Elon Musk shut down.

Like, look, she lost a $35 million grant for whatever.

It's like the person standing next to them in the interview.

And you're like, oh, well, that's why they're mad.

They don't care about Tesla.

They're mad because like they can no longer suck at the tea.

Like, that's why they're mad.

I really want to, I want to know,

I'm curious how significant the hit

to the organized crime that we've seen

over the last five years is going to be

with the shutting down of USAID.

For instance, I don't know if y'all remember,

but you know, Pepperidge Farm remembers

when these fucking protests, riots,

fucking riots were going on,

there were entire pallets of bricks being delivered

to the places that were supposed to be,

you know, where the riots were going to be.

So this whole thing was highly fucking organized.

Obviously, to get a bunch of mentally ill human beings

to blow shit up, you basically need a bunch of organization

and you have to pay them.

And that's what we saw over the last five years.

So I'm curious, you know, these Tesla protesters,

obviously, I'm sure some of them are paid,

it's fairly organized, saw the violent ones.

So like, how much, the question is,

how much did we kneecap this behavior with removing USAID?

Like, are we going to see pallets of bricks

being dropped off during the next riots?

Or did we actually blow a significant deal,

a significant blow to, you know, the organized chaos

that's been propagated on us for the last five years?

I feel the answer to that lies in who collects the data.

I think if we don't have independent arbiters of truth

that are not in the government,

near the FBI and whatever it is,

we will never know the answer to that question.

And I think that-

Well, we will, I mean,

if we see a bunch of fucking riots pop out

and they're laying pallets of bricks again,

like the money came from somewhere.

That's true, but-

This is like, look it up on Twitter,

just like right now or after the call.

Like, there's literally unbelievable evidence

that USAID, like explicitly,

was funding narcotic and cartel organizations.

Like, it's just tons of it out, just all over the place.

Oh yeah, here's, and you like the picture of USAID

on a random building in the middle of Mexico

where there's nothing going on except for narcotics.

The whole thing.

It's just, it's like literally,

like Zach, totally valid question.

How much of it is now done because of that?

How much of it was literally just being entirely funded

because of that?

Yeah.

How much of the US government was funding

the other side of the quote unquote war on drugs

to work?

It's like mind boggling.

100%.

And the people who think that like,

getting a caravan of human beings

across multiple continents to walk across a border,

like that was some natural fucking phenomenon.

Like, have you ever tried to play telephone?

Like, you can't get three adults

to say the same fucking words

after they whispered it into each other's ears,

much less organize millions of people

walking across a fucking continent.

You have a brain.

No, no, no.

Across an ocean,

because so many of them came from Africa and China.

Yeah, they never were Moroccan.

No.

Yeah, they definitely walked.

South African immigrants was wild.

They just all got together and were like,

fuck it, let's do it.

Let's invade the United States.

No funding at all.

Anyway.

It's wild too when you go down the rabbit holes,

but you know, of the, you know, the world wars, right?

It's like all the things that are coming out now

about Hitler living out his days in Argentina

and the bankers funding both sides of that war,

which I absolutely agree with.

Because there's a lot of NIMBY, you know,

and I've been to a couple of different places

where there've been genocides.

And I went to Cambodia and I went to, you know,

Vietnam and a couple of these different places

where they have, you know,

Cambodia specifically had the killing fields.

And I went to Rwanda as well.

And it's really fascinating when you look at those,

like microcosms of, what's the word I'm looking for?

I think the word is just like of terror on both sides.

It's like you get people whipped up into a fervor,

which is the Tesla thing right now,

where they feel like they have to act

and they have to do this thing, they have to dehumanize.

And that was World War II.

It's like the people on the other side, you know,

my favorite story,

and I think somebody was making a movie about this

and I was actually looking at doing one too.

It'd be a great AI one.

Is you guys familiar with the World War I

Christmas Day soccer game?

Yeah.

So if you're not familiar with that,

in World War I, there was a soccer game,

was a Christmas Day ceasefire,

where essentially the British and the Americans

and the Germans stopped, you know,

they started singing Crystal Knot,

which is, you know, a silent night.

And then after they did that, they all came out

and they all played a soccer game.

There was a soccer game in the middle of these

killing fields in France.

And thank you every time I'm making a point, camera.

This is lovely.

And there was a soccer game in the middle

of these killing fields in France on Christmas Day.

And they basically celebrated.

They shared cigarettes.

They, you know, did whatever storytelling they could

because there's a language barrier.

And then they went back to their trenches the next morning

and they started killing each other again.

Launched one of the greatest,

probably the greatest commercial I think

that has ever produced was an Adidas commercial

about exactly this day.

So if you'd like a visual, just Google it.

It's on YouTube.

I think it was Long Live Sport World War I.

But yes, supporting details for your point, JD.

Yeah.

Let's look.

Oh yeah, Adidas Long Live Sport.

That's how much that commercial had an impact on me.

I literally know the name of it.

It's been hanging out in my brain for years.

It's fucking good.

So let's, just because we're here

and you know, we're almost at time too,

but let's just for sake of funsies,

we'll watch it together.

This episode brought to you by Adidas.

Yeah, I know.

And then don't get us canceled.

Incoming!

It's the guy from Remember the Titans.

Stay down.

Wait, no, get back!

Get down!

As epic and great as that is.

Hold on, hold on.

I'm buying some sneakers real quick.

I'm buying some cleats.

Yeah.

It's wild to me, though, the,

I mean, this kind of goes to what we're talking about.

They're like wokeism and leftism,

like taking some of these things,

like that is a beautiful moment, right?

I'm not, I'm not discounting that.

But it's like just stripping all of the, like,

raw gore from my body.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not,

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not,

raw gore from something and then just been like,

oh, this was like such a happy moment.

It's like, you realize what was going on there.

It's also one of my favorite things about the Bible.

If anybody's ever actually like read the Bible,

you're like, this is literally

the most vicious, violent book in existence.

But it's great.

It's got a lot of morals and fiber in there.

But anyways.

Yeah, thank you guys for jumping in and jumping on.

Any closing thoughts or ideas?

I don't know.

Curious to see what happens with the tariff stuff.

I was thinking most of yesterday, you know,

we focused so much on the negative potentialities of this,

but I was like, there's gotta be a bunch of fucking people

in this country who are looking at this going, hell yeah,

now I can go manufacture or produce this thing

at a competitive rate and I'm gonna get to it like now,

which I'm all for, you know, like, duh.

So I don't know, we'll see what happens.

Yeah, I think that in closing thoughts,

when and if you are interested in the truth

and you go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole of truth,

you start to realize, at least for me,

from what I've realized,

is that money really does affect outcomes

in really profound ways.

And failing to understand that is failing to understand

the logic behind all of our political and economic reality

and what happens next and seeing down those paths.

Where we go from here is like, you can figure it out.

It's not gonna be easy.

I don't have the answers, but the logic is gonna be sound.

You can figure it out.

Good stuff.

I feel like I've tossed the most,

so if I have any closing thoughts, it's buy Bitcoin.

Buy Bitcoin.

It's only getting better, you guys.

It's gonna get worse.

It's getting better, though.

It's gonna get worse.

$50,000.

$50,000.

$50,000.

$58K incoming.

Get ready.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Hopefully, you got some dry powder ready.

No.

Who the fuck has money?

What are you talking about?

The only guy who has money is Warren Buffet

and hopefully, he just buys Bitcoin.

So, we'll see.

Stranger things have happened, man.

If you have money, drop a line in the chat

and let us know how you got that.

I'd like to figure out how to replicate that strategy.

Tell me what I need to do

to get some of that money of yours.

All right, homies.

Good to see you.

All right.

Cheers.

Got a good thing coming.

And it's all I need.

Everything I wanted.

Bam.