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- [00:01]
Julian Walker
Carvana is so easy.
- [00:02]
Matthew Rimsky
Just a click and we've got ourselves a car. See so many cars.
- [00:07]
Sean Williams
That's a clicktastic inventory.
- [00:09]
Julian Walker
And check out the financing options payments to fit our budget.
- [00:12]
Matthew Rimsky
I mean, that's Clickonomics101.
- [00:14]
Julian Walker
Delivery to our door.
- [00:16]
Sean Williams
Just a hop, skip and a click away.
- [00:18]
Derek Barris
And bot no better feeling than when everything just clicks.
- [00:24]
Sean Williams
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
- [00:31]
Danny Gold
Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with Ms. 13 in El Salvador? Or how the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s?
- [00:37]
Matthew Rimsky
What about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab? I'm Sean Williams.
- [00:42]
Danny Gold
And I'm Danny Gold and we're the host of the Underworld podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places, and every week we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all
- [00:53]
Matthew Rimsky
over the world, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:09]
Derek Barris
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [01:21]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm Matthew Rimsky.
- [01:22]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:23]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads, conspiracy, spirituality pod, as well as individually. We are all over on Blue sky, although Julian doesn't check there. So you know, whatever. I like it. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality or you can grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your supports.
- [02:06]
Julian Walker
Conspirituality 299American jihad as black rain from bombed oil facilities falls from the smoke choked skies of Tehran, the US and Israel continue their war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. From the start, Trump officials have seemed only to disagree on both the murky rationale and the objectives of their mission. Meanwhile, the Military Religious Freedom foundation has been flooded with reports of commanding officers rallying their troops with apocalyptic pep talks in which Trump has been anointed by Jesus to kick off Armageddon. This should perhaps come as no surprise given that Secretary of Defense Pete Hexseth has been holding Christian nationalist prayer and worship services in the Pentagon since last May.
- [02:53]
Derek Barris
That's Secretary of War Julian.
- [02:55]
Julian Walker
That's right. Yeah, yeah, I gotta. Gotta give him his correct pronouns. Beyond the obviousness of this religious politics, Matthew looks at how Canadian PM Mark Carney supports Trump and this war while pretending not to, using deceptive language tricks that borrow from religion to blur the line between strength and values, power and principle. But hey, if you want to distract yourself from all this, polymarket is a wonderful place to bet on who's going to be bombed next. Derek breaks down how prediction markets have become a massively lucrative Rorschach portrait of our times as the joint strikes against Iran by Israel and the US continued last week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth seemed determined. You're welcome. Seemed determined to portray himself as a heartless yet thin skinned movie villain. He promised Iranians death and destruction from the sky all day in a press briefing where he also said we're playing for keeps and they're toast and they know it. And then complained about biased media coverage when asked about fallen Americans. No somber words of appropriate empathy or grief for the families of the dead. Just frustrated whining when a few drones get through or tragic things happen. It's front page news, he said. I get it. The press wants to make the President look bad.
- [04:17]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay, I gotta stop here because death and destruction from the sky all day. We're playing for keeps. They're toast and they know it. If you've heard commentators mention that Hegseth sounds like he's playing or quoting from Call of Duty or hell Helldivers, I can confirm that the shit talking sounds exactly like gameplay dialogue in any one of a number of first person shooter multiplayer military games. And to my ear that connects to the brush off of the casualties and his failure to speak to that. I mean he just doesn't really have a soul, so that's not surprising. But I think it's coming also out of that environment. It's like he's calling fellow players whiners for losing and having to respawn in. So if you're playing hard, your kill count for a match would be in the hundreds and so if you're going to worry about taking smaller losses, you're just going to be mocked as some kind of snowflake.
- [05:11]
Derek Barris
Well I think your instinct here is is right because the White House posted something, I think it was from Call of Duty after the first day of strikes.
- [05:18]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, non gaming folks should note that a huge part of the Call of Duty game experience, this is true of other games as well, is accumulating or scavenging weapons and accessories or buying them with in game currency so people spend in the shop and then prepping their loadouts for like maximum coolness. So the crucial first step in going to war in Call of Duty isn't skill. It's not training or strategy. It's looks maxing. So part of what's going on, I think with Hegseth is just that. Plus alcoholism.
- [05:51]
Julian Walker
Yeah, plus alcoholism. Meanwhile, public statements from the administration show a complete lack of clarity about the mission in Iran and why the US Is involved. Like, was it preemptive? Did Israel drag America in? Or did the US Lead the way? Is it about regime change or preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power? Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Carolyn Levitt, Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump have all given different, often contradictory answers to those questions. But could it be that the lack of real world clarity about the motivations and mission are murky because of an underlying belief that this war has cosmic significance? When Pete Hegseth was first nominated to be Secretary of Defense, many of us were alarmed by photos that revealed large tattoos on his torso and arm associated with Christian nationalism and the crusades. But for the Project 2025 agenda, those were actually a feature, not a bug. Now cut to the last two weeks and the Guardian, along with other news outlets picking up on the independent journalism of Jonathan Larson, has reported that there have been 110 complaints from military personnel over the course of the first three days of the war regarding commanding officers framing it to their troops as the biblical Armageddon. And in the days since, this has grown to over 200 complaints. They were made to the Military Religious freedom Foundation from 40 different units across at least 50 different military installations. And these complaints included things like a combat unit commander saying during briefings that Donald Trump had been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth. Another complaint involved a non commanding officer saying that they had been urged to tell our troops that the operation was all part of God's plan, with multiple scriptural quotes about Armageddon from the book of Revelation being thrown in.
- [07:50]
Derek Barris
I just want to cite, you know, everyone should listen to segment three today because you can bet on if Jesus is going to come back to do that. You can. It's actually millions of dollars right now. So, you know, get, get in on this. Oh boy. Wow.
- [08:05]
Julian Walker
I would, I would have buy the short trade on that. I think it's important to remember that these accounts are likely coming from a minority of military personnel concerned enough with religious freedom and separation of church and state to even know about the MRFF and take the time to lodge a complaint with them. So I would guess this phenomenon is probably more widespread than these numbers show.
- [08:27]
Derek Barris
And it does say a ton about just how outrageous all these statements are. I mean, how often does anything from the military rise to the level of mainstream coverage coming from the soldier's perspective? I mean, soldiers of all ranks have their personal feelings, but there's always been this sentiment that you keep those feelings locked down to yourself or just your squad. And obviously formal complaints exist, but you really have to be saying some crazy shit to get this sort of coverage. And I would say claiming you're helping to usher in biblical Armageddon definitely warrants that.
- [09:02]
Matthew Rimsky
I've been really moved by the number of vets who are now peace activists in my social media feeds who are talking about just how dangerous this is in ways that makes me understand that they have, like a really clear understanding of what it means to have group cohesion and what it has to be based on. And I was just thinking about, like, you know, to the extent that some people in a particular battle group might be all on board with this mission or this messaging, they're going to regard those who aren't as doubters or as weak links or as. I mean, it's just terrible, terrible for morale. Like, because your trust isn't going to be in each other, it's going to be in, you know, the divine prophecy.
- [09:43]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So in a diverse group of military personnel, you're not actually going to create cohesion by insisting everyone binds. A fundamentalist Christianity?
- [09:53]
Matthew Rimsky
Probably the reverse.
- [09:54]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Yeah. So Mikey Weinstein, who's the head of that Religious Freedom foundation, and he is himself an Air Force veteran, commented that what the complaints had in common was reporting an unrestricted euphoria of commanders as to how the biblically sanctioned war is clearly a sign of the end times and that many commanders are especially delighted with how bloody the conflict will have to be to fulfill fundamentalist Christian eschatology. But this holy war zeal, I'm sorry to tell you, goes all the way to the top. A far right evangelical named Ralph Drollinger has been providing Bible study, evangelism and discipleship, as his, his mission statement describes it, through his Capital ministries organization since 1996. They have branches in 40 different state capitals, including in Washington, D.C. where Drollinger himself is headquartered. He even personally leads a small weekly Bible study group within the White House and then provides printouts from those sessions to Donald Trump, which I just thought that's a fantastic factoid. His politics. Drollinger, of course, are anti gay, anti abortion, anti immigrant climate denialists, and he frames Catholicism as one of the primary false religions in the world. Like many evangelicals, Drollinger teaches that Israel is a key component for end times prophecy to be fulfilled. He's said in an interview that Israel retaking all of Gaza is necessary to start the eschatological clock toward the return of the Messiah.
- [11:26]
Matthew Rimsky
I want to point out that Dorlinger is not just about the geopolitics. Like he really brings it home because one of his other fixations is that he really wants to communicate to all Christians out there that corporal punishment for their children is the best way to raise them. And actually if you don't hit your children, you're not actually doing God's work of discipline.
- [11:45]
Julian Walker
Yeah, nice guy. Drollinger touts Hegseth as among the White House Cabinet members designated as sponsors of his Bible study group. And that's Pete Hegseth alongside others like speaker of the House Mike Johnson and of course Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and OMB director and Project 2025 author Russ Voutt. In addition, since May of last year, Hegseth has himself led a weekly prayer and worship service in the Pentagon auditorium, and this has raised concerns about separation of church and state, violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause, and the complexities along the lines of what you were bringing up, Matthew, of the Secretary of Defense inviting subordinate who may feel that they're actually compelled to attend a religious service during working hours.
- [12:36]
Matthew Rimsky
Totally woke restrictions there. I know, Julian.
- [12:38]
Julian Walker
I mean, come on, I know it's insufferable, but this isn't Pete's first American Jihad rodeo. The former Guantanamo Bay platoon leader. Great thing to have on your resume. And decorated Army National Guard major who taught counterinsurgency tactics in Kabul, Afghanistan, has long been involved with Doug Wilson's deeply controversial Christ Church. Now, more about Wilson in a moment. But on a 2023 podcast associated with that church, Hegseth talked about the role of fundamentalist Christian schools, which he refers to as boot camp, to do spiritual battle with the secular world. He's also published several batshit crazy books with titles like American Crusade, which calls for an internal holy war against those who oppose his traditional values. He has another book called the War on Warriors that decries wokeness in the military, like the kind I was just espousing, and it says that female soldiers undermine civilization and argues for the removal of legal restraints and rules of engagement for American soldiers. So in other words, no prosecuting of war crimes. Then there's his book the Battle for the American Mind, which waxes conspiratorial about the need to utterly destroy the leftist agenda of secular education. And he commented about this on that podcast, saying, in the last part of the book, I lay out what an educational insurgency would look like because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. And kind of the phases that Mao wrote about, we're in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way. And obviously all of this is metaphorical
- [14:28]
Derek Barris
and all that good stuff and kind of the phases. What a writer. When he was nominated, I actually reviewed the books on the podcast. I forget what episode was for, but I read parts of the War on Warriors and Battle for the American Mind. And I mean his he's just a literary genius for sure.
- [14:47]
Julian Walker
As I mentioned, this podcast that he was talking on comes out of the controversial Christ Church headed up by Doug Wilson in Idaho, who Hegseth controversially hosted at his weekly prayer and worship service at the Pentagon just last month. Hexeth has also belonged for some time to a congregation in Tennessee that's affiliated with Wilson's church and has had the pastor from that church lead worship at the Pentagon, too, in a set of political religious policies that would, with maybe a few theological tweaks, have made the Ayatollah proud. Christchurch advocates for theocracy, restricting women's voting rights, barring non Christians from holding office, and criminalizing gay and trans people. During COVID Doug Wilson described resistance to quarantine measures as the cold civil war that will lead to the hot civil war. It sure sounds like Pete Hegseth is excited about that kind of bringing the war home. In his writing, Hegseth calls for the, quote, categorical defeat and utter annihilation of the left, without which, quote, america cannot and will not survive. Our American crusade, he says, is not with swords, and it's not about guns.
- [15:58]
Matthew Rimsky
Yet Wilson's, you know, saying that resistance to quarantine measures is the cold civil war that leads to the hot civil war. I don't think he's wrong about that. Like, that's pretty perceptive, actually. I think one good thing about Hegseth and the whole Trump administration is that they always tell you exactly who they are and what they're doing. And the religion of it, as specious or incoherent as it is, is obvious. Like, Doug Wilson arrives at the Pentagon to bless the coming Armageddon, and he's trailing behind him Decades of apocalyptic propaganda. Like it's just part of a thing. He's just sort of reaching a peak. He's been saying the same thing and how he's got the best stage ever. There was another new apostolic Reformation prayer circle around the Orange man today. The other day, there are some pragmatic, material things going on as well. I think they raise their hands in blessing and they. They're partially blocking the smell of him shitting his pants. But then we have this fundamental belief structure that's just obvious. And anyone who falls for it, I think either has to be deeply indoctrinated into it from birth or willing to accept a complete bait and switch on their reality. As a convert, you know, so before baptism, geopolitics exist, but after baptism, it's all red heifers and Jesus descending. So after the break, I'm going to talk about another form of religious mystification that I think is pretty important for keeping this kind of disaster chugging along. So, as I said, I'm going to talk about another kind of religious language that I see at play in this war. So far, it's subtler, it's more in the background. My prime minister, Mark Carney, became an instant global political celebrity on January 20 with a speech at Davos that I'll get into later. But at the exact center point of this 2100 word text, he dropped this line. We are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength. So, guys, without any other context, what does that sound like to you? How does that strike you?
- [18:17]
Julian Walker
I mean, just right off the bat, it sounds like a kind of double speak, like it's easy on the ear, but is it manipulative? It calls to mind the critique of power described by the phrase that might makes right. Like he's messing with the relationship between military strength and moral values by kind of conflating or at least blurring the line between the two, as if they're mutually dependent on each other.
- [18:40]
Derek Barris
Yeah, I agree. It's Orwellian. Off the bat, I will take a charitable view here and actually read it decontextualized. And what it would appear to be saying is that if you actually live your values, you have a certain sort of strength. And then your strength, your strength should also reflect your values.
- [19:07]
Matthew Rimsky
You're doing it better than him, Derek. I think he should give you a call for some speechwriting help. He does this a lot. Like, there's a 2021 book that he's got out. It's called Values, building a better world for all. And what's interesting about this book is that it's kind of the kickoff campaign book for a political campaign that didn't really happen because he wasn't elected. He was appointed. I'll get to that in a moment. But in that book, he's got other lines like this. He's got. This line is incredible. Values beget value, which reinforces values.
- [19:45]
Julian Walker
He's really into this.
- [19:47]
Matthew Rimsky
He loves it. Yeah. Values drive value. So on one hand, I think it's just typical baffle gab from politicians. But I want to argue that rhetoric like this, especially at a point like this in his administration, performs a kind of like, supportive metaphysical role as it tries to smokescreen away the contradictions of participating in and then benefiting from imperialism. To be frank, when you're a client state, but you're pretending you're a middle power with a moral center. If we go back to your segment, Julian Hegseth and Wilson and Rubio and the gang aren't pretending anything. They see themselves as the tip of the spear, and they're as open about their insane rationales as like anybody out of the 19th century. Like Rudyard Kipling was, you know, very clear in the White Man's Burden, what, you know, we're supposed to be doing in the Philippines. They're as clear as the Nazis were about skull measurements, deciding who would live and die. But like as much as fascists want to believe that they can do it alone, every spear tip has to have a handle. It has to have a counterweight. It has to have a guy holding onto it. There is no capacity to bomb Iran at the drop of a hat without the generalization generations old normalization of 20 military bases in the region belonging to the U.S. there's no equipment to deploy without generations of, like, business as usual arms trading. There's no financial backing without the massive global oil economy demanding more predictable or favorable investment cycles. I think we can see the distance between the tip of the spear and the guy holding it. In the scene of Hegseth bragging about infinite superiority in one moment. And then Trump on Truth Social claiming that the US has unlimited supplies of interceptors and smart bombs. But he's lying. And so he has to haul the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and others into the Oval Office to just beg them to increase production, which they're not. It's unclear whether they're going to be able to do that because they probably need the rare earths and metals that he slapped tariffs on the other guys holding the spear handle are the legislators who can fund or defund the process. And the GOP is online. Will there be strong enough opposition from the Democrats when the inevitable demand for more missile money comes in? Their record on military aid to Israel under Biden in the midst of a genocide is one indicator. And then I found on February 20 that DropSite reported on communications within the Democratic Senate leadership before the 12 Day War in June in which the communications showed support for military action against Iran, but the hope that Trump would be the tip of the spear and take the fall. So sometimes the tip of the spear and the handle guy share the same core objectives, which shouldn't be surprising now surrounding any insane executive. This is the way I see it. There's three professional complexes. There's military, industrial, financial. These are all institutions built for longevity to other crises, and they are managed by liberal democracies. And these liberal democracies tend to select for leaders with more managerial skills than morals.
- [23:06]
Derek Barris
I have a bit of a trouble understanding this part about democracy because based on political science research, the top qualities that voters look for are warmth, competence, character, value, alignment, personality traits. Now, of course, the person might not actually live up to the values or morals that they claim, but I would say that voters tend to vote more on affect than bureaucratic skills. It's literally how Trump won, given how bad he is at business. And we also know that things like height has historically played a role in voting patterns. And then there's the famous moment of JFK debating Nixon on television, which absolutely tanked Nixon.
- [23:48]
Matthew Rimsky
Yes, I totally agree on the voter level. All of the personality stuff is true. It comes into play once the candidates have been institutionally selected. This is my point for ideological consistency and managerial skills, like they've got to fit into a particular mode of, you know, the support of, you know, the, the capital project.
- [24:09]
Julian Walker
It's interesting. I mean, I, I wonder if that's a, a somewhat outdated observation in this era of anti institutional populism, because what you're saying seems to suggest like this well oiled corporate style machine selecting predictable candidates, which does sound like, like a Mitt Romney or a Hillary Clinton. But regarding ideology and managerial skills, Trump has always seemed to have neither. And I, I think a lot of people in the establishment did not want him to get where he got to and then they fel did.
- [24:38]
Matthew Rimsky
Right, right, right. Well, I would say that, let's just say Gavin Newsom is the front runner. I'd say it's still pretty oily, that machine. But if my Model sounds outdated. It might be about what part of the timeline we're looking at it from. Because from my point of view, or from an American point of view, let's say the management class has failed, which makes Trump the fascist who comes after that. Failure of liberal administrators to fully manage the contradictions of wealth inequality and so on. That's what gives him the door. Also, like Trump would be nowhere without his managerial support in the GOP and, you know, arguably the unwillingness of, of many Democratic lawmakers to fully stand against things like ICE and military budgets.
- [25:22]
Derek Barris
I want to just drill down on this a little more because I'm trying to understand what level you're talking about. So, for example, in Portland, we went from one district to five in the last election cycle and introduced ranked choice voting for the first time.
- [25:37]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah.
- [25:37]
Derek Barris
So you're talking about candidates who had no institutional backing whatso whatever, who have to then become part of the process. I mean, I don't think that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert had institutional backing when they went from their CrossFit box to suddenly being in Congress. And then there's all sorts of, like, weird sort of collaborations that happened recently. James Talarico, the number one donor to his campaign, was Mariam Adelson, who is a big MAGA person. And so there you have, like, conflicts of interest coming in at a level. So I, I think I agree. I mean, I am fully on board with. They pushed Bernie Sanders out to get Hillary in, in 2016, for example, like at that level. I agree. But the way it's being framed right now is that every level, someone has to be part of the managerial class. When on regional levels. I've never seen that in local politics.
- [26:34]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, I'm really. I am speaking of the sort of. Of the superstructure more than these amazing moments in local politics in which somehow people change the, you know, first impose rules or they, you know, divide up districts or they open up democracy the way that it should be. Yeah. Then interesting things can happen, like parliamentary things can happen. Things that happen in Europe can happen when that sort of stuff begins. But, I mean, there's a really good reason that Carney ascends to this particular position at this point. And it has everything to do with his ideological training. He's not chosen, so he's a good test case for this. It's like, if the system has to choose somebody without voter intervention, who does it come up with? So let me just talk about Carney a bit. Over the past six weeks, he has really distinguished himself globally as an icon of managerial calm. This is what he was known for as the bank of England governor during Brexit, and also while amassing a personal net worth of approximately $10 million as Vice Chair of Brookfield. He's, you know, he's been at the. The head of other companies as well. Brookfield manages hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure, energy systems, and real estate. He's not a career politician. Carney is where he is because he won an internal Liberal Party leadership race after Justin Trudeau won last year's general election, and then he stepped down because his numbers were in the tank. But he also wanted to date Katy Perry.
- [28:11]
Derek Barris
What do you have against love?
- [28:12]
Matthew Rimsky
Nothing. Nothing. He's. He's a. He's a. You know, he's free. He's also a theater kid. Once and forever, Carney's banking streak is unbroken this way. Like, he's never really faced scrutiny. But now he has a problem, because the challenge for him and other leaders in his position is how do you protect your contracts and capital flows and the investors you've always worked for when your fascist neighbor who controls a lot of your economy goes ballistic? That's the question he tried to answer at Davos in a speech that went viral. There were two parts to the speech. Part one, he really won people's hearts by offering a seemingly transparent account of the fecklessness of the international rules based order, which he called a fiction. And that fiction was now being exposed by the chaotic narcissism of Trump, although he didn't call him out by name. And, you know, he really was saying that now middle powers have to distance themselves from that kind of chaos. And he said, quote, we knew the story of the international rules based order was partly false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. The trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This is an incredible admission, by the way. It feels like it's an admission to complicity in real skullduggery. Right? But that kind of gets blown over because he's doing something honest, apparently. So this fiction was useful, he says, and American hegemony in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks of resolving disputes. Okay, so setting aside the question of for whom is he talking about these benefits applying, like public goods, stability, security, Carney is lauded for what seemed to be a frank breakup letter with Trump. And finally, he's the adult in the room. But the second half of the speech was this long list of investment friendly neoliberal militarization and oil economy policies that all rhyme with global north capital goals and seek to ensure, in his view, Canadian strength and coherence like we will do capitalism in a more orderly fashion than and apart from the Americans. But the problem is we are pretty much a client state. The US is our largest trading partner and the US really treats the country like a strip mine or an atm. It buys three quarters of our exports. A lot of those are sort of just natural resources. Supply chains in energy, autos, agriculture and manufacturing cross the border constantly. I think with when a Ford F150 is built either in Detroit or in Windsor, it crosses the border 17 times before it actually rolls off the line. So it's like impossibly entangled. And our militaries are merged in a similar way. Through norad, NATO and Canadian companies hold contracts with dhis, with ICE, and with the armed forces, supplying tools and software and armored vehicles and surveillance services. So that is all background for being surprised or not being surprised when Carney is the first world leader to come out in support of US military policy and objectives as it starts bombing Iran. And it's not surprising either that now he's not ruling out direct military support, but the entire speech at Davos is based on we're becoming independent. We're not sort of going to go along with anybody who has made this international rules based order a fiction. We're going to cut our own way. Well, you can't really do that.
- [31:52]
Derek Barris
Well, Matthew, I'm confused by a few things here. I'm not Canadian, so, you know, maybe we can unpack them a little bit more just based on what we've been discussing and the speech I read and I watched it in preparation for the episode. The client state aspect is really important here. But isn't that what Carney is advocating for moving away from? And I agree with the double speak because, you know, there's another example in the beginning he says in French, and I'm not saying it French, but translated, the power of the less power starts with honesty, which would also qualify as pretty Orwellian. But if there's a hinge point of the two sections here you're identifying, and he says, you cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. I actually think that's a pretty good line that gets sort of the heart of what I read because it feels like he's advocating for Canada becoming more Sovereign and not so dependent on America. So I get a bit confused when you flag Carney's list as neoliberal. Traditionally, that called for less state intervention in the marketing, but he's calling for more collective investments with government partnerships, it seems he mentions business tax cuts, but also income tax cuts. And there's obviously deference to business. That's where he comes from. I would expect him to speak in that language, but he focuses heavily on trade partnerships at the government level, which again, is not less state intervention. So he seems to be putting forward a bulwark against tariffs.
- [33:27]
Matthew Rimsky
I think these are all great questions. I also think they speak to how good Carney is at this type of communication. He is advocating for independence, and his trade missions, fishing for new customers are a big part of his strategy. But. But what would that test of independence be like? How could he make good over his lament that we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim? Like maybe at the moment when the dominant state launches an illegal war. I mean, he's talking about independence, but in a very particular way, like an independence of capital flows. Like that's what he wants to be independent. It's not the independence of people. It's not the independence of human rights. With regard to domestic policy, he's signaling to the Davos crowd that the country is open for business, and that depends on them understanding that he's loosened regulatory standards, which is what he's doing here on the ground. And anybody in that crowd would know that. And he speaks to some of those details in the second half of the speech. But he's loosening environmental protections to expand more oil development. He's short changing consultation processes with first nations people over building projects on unceded land. There is more state intervention to the extent that he's centralized more executive power in cabinet ministers so that all of the extraction projects can speed up. So, yes, Derek, there's more state intervention to the extent that ministers have more power to give CEOs kind of blank check or no competition contracts so that they can get things started faster. Right. So it's weird. I mean, yes, like, technically, neoliberalism is less state intervention, but that, you know, sometimes the. The lever is, well, we've got to get the state to do this thing so that there's. There's absolutely, you know, freedom in how capital is moving.
- [35:23]
Derek Barris
Right, but that's. That kind of hints at. I mean, I think an issue we've discussed in varying ways for a long time. Because from my perspective, what we're seeing is a group of men, and it's always predominantly men who are working within a system, but they aren't sticking with the rules of that system. So you've often argued that socialism has never been put into, into practice in the way that Marx prescribed. I've argued that capitalism has never been put into perspective into practice the way that Adam Smith is prescribed, at least not in America, because it absolutely has not. And so now we have, we have another opportunity or another example of a political category and they're always fudging with the rules. So I just say that because everything you're describing, like loosening regulatory rules around drilling and shit, that just sucks. It's not going to do people good in the long run. But, but I think besides the veneer of any sort of political movement, you just have men who want to make a lot of money and will fuck over everyone along the way.
- [36:20]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. And I suppose the major question is like, in what direction is that moving? Right. In general, in what direction is that moving? And you know, one term that he left out of the Davos speech was austerity. But I heard it loud and clear. In fact, when we were going preparing for this, I actually claimed that he had used the word austerity in the speech because that's what I heard in the policies. And then he pointed out I wasn't there. But the reason that I'm hearing it is that beyond the stage, he's directing cabinet ministers to find 15% across the board, departmental spending cuts, he's cutting the federal workforce by 40,000 people. We're a small country, that's a lot of people. They're also stopping things like door to door mail delivery and closing post offices in rural areas. These are pillars of democratic community and communication. And he's doing all of this while doubling military spending. Right. So, I mean, a lot of this is going to sound familiar to our American audience. And you know, to be honest, I think it's, it's kind of like gentleman doge. Right? So this is all preamble to like, well, how is he making this work? Right. Because this is where the language comes in. Carney has become a ninja in this world, but he didn't build it. And because he's not going to challenge it, he really has to make it sound good. And that's where I believe he deploys this kind of metaphysical rhetoric delivered through his slow burn charisma. So the line again, along with many others in the book, is we are no longer Just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength. And it stuck out to me so much that I looked up, like, is there a technique here? Is this called something? And I learned that this, this formulation is called chiasmus. So you get parallel phrases and then you flip them in order that the terms and meanings crisscross and enrich each other, but also kind of make. As they crisscross, they also confuse and create noise. Right. That is very charged. And it's a form of speech that's like aesthetically satisfying. It creates cognitive closure, feelings of resolution, like, oh, he really knows what he's talking about. It's sticky. It's memorable. I think it also tranquilizes the brain with, like, deepity, feels. And it's not new. It goes back to speeches to the Roman Senate. But with Carney, there's another influence that's really important because chiasmus is super, super central in Catholic liturgy and literature. And Carney is a devout Catholic who in his book says that he's guided by the values of Pope Francis. So maybe you've heard, like, Christian chiasmus hits like the following. He was made man, that we might be made God. The last shall be first. The first, last. Grant what you command and command what you will. So what I've learned is that chiasmus works best if the terms are abstract and lofty. So, you know, strength, value, power. Not only are these terms hard to define, but when you double them up in this crisscross structure, it's like abstraction goes squared and. And you know, I've said before that with American diction, with words like freedom, for example, you know, Derrida's term for these words are transcendental signifiers, words with high piety and emotional charge, but low meaning or definitional value, especially when they're repeated. In fact, if you repeat them, they sound emptier and emptier. Like, when you close your eyes at first, however, you can almost see that they all have capital letters like in some old Victorian book. So these are perfect tools for obscuring issues like international law and selling arms to the idf. And we have referred to Robert Lifton's notion of the thought terminating cliche probably 500 times on this podcast, and he says that that is at the heart of a cult leader's influence. Now, I don't think that Carney is a cult leader at all. It's more like he's a middle aged choir boy with a lot of power. But I think we can add this notion of Chiasmus and its religious and scriptural background to that toolbox of discerning how leaders use speech to cast a spell and distract from what's happening in the real world.
- [40:53]
Danny Gold
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- [41:21]
Matthew Rimsky
Experian.
- [41:23]
Derek Barris
While most people were sorting through the fog of Trump's sudden war with Iran, a lot of people probably miss the massive amounts of money being exchanged for the worst possible reason. Roughly $529 million was bet across the prediction market. Poly Market linked to the timing of those strikes. And some people who can remain anonymous, given the currency as crypto. They made a financial killing mostly from suspicious, suspiciously timed wagers from newly opened accounts just hours before the attack.
- [41:57]
Matthew Rimsky
Attack?
- [41:58]
Derek Barris
The blockchain analytics firm Bubble maps flank flag 6 accounts as suspected insiders. You a Bubble Maps fan?
- [42:06]
Matthew Rimsky
No, I. Can I get a. Is it an app? Can I get an Bubble Maps app?
- [42:11]
Derek Barris
No, it's a. It's an analytics firm.
- [42:13]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay.
- [42:13]
Derek Barris
To be clear, so they flagged those accounts as suspected insiders because they'd never placed a bet on any other topic, and they earned approximately $1.2 million. Jesus. Now, there was this separate account called Maga, My Man. And. And that account made $575,000 betting on two incidences that Khomeini would be out of power and the date of the strike. Now, after this came to light, Senator
- [42:43]
Matthew Rimsky
Chris Murphy said, obviously there are people close to Donald Trump who on Friday knew what was happening on Saturday. It's very likely, probable even, that the people that placed those bets were people with inside information.
- [42:56]
Derek Barris
You think?
- [42:56]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah.
- [42:57]
Derek Barris
I've been researching prediction markets for a few weeks now for my other career in tech. So I want to go through what they are and how they're being used, because I don't think a lot of people interested in wellness and yoga or listenership really knows about these markets. And to start, I'll say I don't personally bet on anything. I went to a casino in Atlantic City when I turned 18. Like, the next week. I spent the Entire evening playing poker. I went in with $118, I walked out with $118. And. And I told myself that night I wouldn't do it again because I value the money. I earn too much to blow it on things out of my control like gambling. And that's just my personal feeling. I don't personally care if people bet or not. I do believe the proliferation of legalized sports betting is going to be as much of a crisis as opioids has been.
- [43:49]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah.
- [43:49]
Derek Barris
And this evolution into prediction markets could seriously fuck up society when insiders are pulling the strings for real world outcomes.
- [43:58]
Matthew Rimsky
Derek, I haven't even done that one night test with gambling because I'm as terrified of gambling as I am of drugs. I think, funny story, actually. You went to Atlantic City. One of my best friends was a school teacher and he would get on a bus in Toronto that took him to Atlantic City on Friday night. He'd arrive on like 4 o' clock Saturday morning. He would spend all of his money. He'd come home dead broke in time to go to school on Monday. At 8 o', clock, the bus would pull in and he did that over and over and over again. It was horrible to watch and live through with him. I really loved him and he just could not, he couldn't get out of that. And these days it's like I couldn't bear throwing money away, not having it for my kids. Like, it would just be so shameful. And I think that's the legacy too, of my, my mom. Because, you know, there's addictions in my family history. She grew up with an alcoholic war vet and her father, and, and that just all instilled in me this mortal fear of addiction. So, yeah, I didn't, I couldn't even do that. I can't believe that this is a thing. Like, this is a complete nightmare if this, if this takes over the, the, you know, the, the culture.
- [45:20]
Derek Barris
Yeah. My college roommate, in the tens of thousands that he had to move out of state for a few years to pay off his bookie in the 90s after he graduated or else he would have been seriously harmed. So I've been up close and seen it happen in college basketball games, mostly in my apartment. I did not partake. And it's just. Yeah, again, I just never, I've never come from money. I've never had a ton of it. So wasting it in that way for, for the possibility of, of getting a payday just never made sense to me. But, but to your point about like, you know, we might not be able to understand it, but political bet is not new, right? Betting, as I'll get to, is kind of in our DNA in some ways. The first political bet on record dates back to 1503. People place bets on the papal succession, and even then it was considered an old practice in the literature. Crowds wagered on gladiatorial contests and political outcomes. In ancient rome, you had 17th century coffee houses in London, which served as informal exchanges where merchants and parliamentarians traded odds on wars, royal successions, and changes in government. There was one shop called Jonathan's Coffee House that would eventually become the London Stock Exchange. And wow, they published political betting odds in newspapers. The first instance of political betting on Wall street was in 1884, and this went on until World War II, when it was actually outlawed.
- [46:49]
Matthew Rimsky
I did not know that about Jonathan's Coffee House. I knew about the coffee house. So it sounds like political betting and stock, minute stock speculation have been, like, tangled up for a very long time.
- [46:59]
Derek Barris
Yeah, I mean, stocks come a little bit later, but yeah, absolutely. You know, today's prediction market was revived, actually in 1988. There were three economists who were frustrated by polling failures that they kept seeing in newspapers. You had Jesse Jackson, who trounced Michael Dukakis in the Michigan primary, despite polls predicting the opposite. And these economists wondered if market mechanisms could outperform surveys. So they created the Iowa Electronic Market Markets, and they launched it the same year to let participants trade real money contracts on the race between George H.W. bush and Dukakis. Their creation outperformed traditional polls, and it provided an early proof of concept of the wisdom of the crowds, which is a principle that was first identified by Francis Gton and it was later formalized by Hayek. And the basic idea is this aggregating dispersed beliefs through financial incentives can produce more accurate forecasts than any single expert. And just to add to that, if you get called for a poll, you don't have any incentive to tell the person the truth. So there's always that you have to weigh. But if your money's on the line, you're much more likely to. To be honest about what you believe. And then the Internet came along and gave steroids to all this. So prediction markets have been in circulation since 2001, but regulations kept getting in the way. Crypto. And until Trump's administration, decentralized platforms started using smart contracts to settle bets automatically without a central clearinghouse. And the prediction industry remained relatively under the radar until the 2024 presidential election. Poly market, which is the same Platform that Iran money was wagered on processed over $3 billion in trading volume. On this one race. You had an anonymous trader named French Whale who made over $80 million on Trump's victory, which significantly shifted market odds in that person's favor.
- [49:09]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay, so you mean that the bets changed Trump's actual numbers. Like, do we have good data on whether Poly Market odds are contaminating polling?
- [49:19]
Derek Barris
Not. There's no clear, you know, indication of that yet. It didn't necessarily shift Trump's numbers in the American polls, but his wagers shifted the pred market in Trump's favor.
- [49:31]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [49:31]
Derek Barris
So theoretically, insider training could affect elections. But so far, we have no definitive knowledge of this happening. But I think, as we're seeing in Iran, if people inside the White House are betting on this and then doing the action knowing they can make some money, I would say, yeah, we are. We are in for some rough times with this. And so prediction markets have arrived. Total trading grew from 9 billion in 2024 to more than 44 billion last year. You have another market called ki, which is Polymarket's main competitor. They now process over $1 billion in weekly training. Their platform is mostly used for sports. They process more than a billion dollars on Super Bowl Sunday alone. Poly Market is where political betting thrives. And if all this sounds dicey, yeah, major institutions are getting in on it. However, you have Robin Hood, DraftKings, and Coinbase. They're all in on the action. Now you have the Intercontinental Exchange, which is the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. It is not a government entity. It is a private business. They now distribute Poly Markets data globally. The company has become the official prediction partner of X and stocktwits. And along with Kalshi, they are now the official market for the NHS L, meaning you can bet on games through them. And the NHL is putting up the odds during games. Polymarket raised $2 billion from Intercontinental Exchange alone, and they are now valued at $8 billion. And a big part of the reason is Trump. He's made a killing in crypto, and the entire industry is trying to get as much regulatory momentum as possible while he's in office. A number. Polymark is actually thinking of ipoing before the middle terms just so they can become legitimate.
- [51:27]
Matthew Rimsky
Wow.
- [51:27]
Derek Barris
Donald Trump Jr's venture venture capital firm invested in polymarket, and he serves as a paid strategic advisor to KI. Trump's media company partnered with Crypto.com, whose parent company donated $30 million to Trump Super PAC to launch its own prediction platform called Truth Predict.
- [51:50]
Julian Walker
Boy.
- [51:51]
Derek Barris
Then in December, Trump's newly confirmed commodities future trading CFTC chairman said his agency would withdraw a proposed rule that would have banned political and sports related events contracts. Then he created an innovation advisory committee to draft new regulations. This is a 35 member panel. It includes the CEOs of Polymarket, Kalshi, Coinbase, Robin Hood, FanDuel and DraftKings. You guys might be surprised to learn there's zero representation from consumer advocates or public instruments interest groups. It's all CEOs.
- [52:26]
Matthew Rimsky
No addiction specialists on the on the
- [52:29]
Derek Barris
board doesn't appear to be so no mental health professionals.
- [52:32]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [52:33]
Derek Barris
But there is an AI psychologist I think is on the board.
- [52:37]
Matthew Rimsky
Oh, that's awesome.
- [52:39]
Derek Barris
Democrats have threatened legal action against these markets, but yeah, they're going to accomplish anything right now. And so you can event right now. You can log on to polymarket, you can event, you can bet on. On how many tweets will Elon musk post on March 13? You can bet on top Spotify artist of 2026 and you can bet on when will Mr. Beast's million dollar puzzle be solved by my favorite. I flagged this earlier. Will Jesus Christ return before 2027? And there's currently $39 million being wagered on that. Now, to their very limited credit, Polymarket pulled a bet off the site last week speculating on a nuclear 2026.
- [53:25]
Matthew Rimsky
Why? Why was that beyond the PA?
- [53:28]
Julian Walker
They had morals.
- [53:29]
Derek Barris
Come on. They actually did come out and they said that's even a little too far for us. Which is, which is stunning. It's pretty apparent as to the consequences. But the Jesus bet leads to one of my main problems with these markets, which is actually defining the terms. There's a lot of wiggle room for the market itself to say we see said will Iran be carpet bombed on Saturday, not cluster bombed. And so we're not going to give you your money. And since these markets are virtually unregulated, there's no way to actually hold them accountable. But Polymarket's founder Shane Coplin is a billionaire. At 27, KI Co founder Luana Lope Lara became the world's youngest self made female billionaire ever. Ever. At 29. They are doing fine.
- [54:20]
Julian Walker
Woke. They're absolutely woke.
- [54:21]
Matthew Rimsky
I just want to understand you're. You're suggesting with this problem with defining the terms that somebody who believes in their heart that Jesus came back could have a claim against polymarkant.
- [54:33]
Derek Barris
Well, they could have a claim, but. Well, I bring that up because there was a bet that happened. Will Khomeini be Out of power by a certain date right now. He was killed.
- [54:42]
Julian Walker
Killed.
- [54:43]
Derek Barris
And so the market said, well, that's different. We're not going to, we're not going to honor that he's out of power because he was killed. And so people are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people are trying to sue, but you, you can't because these markets are still unregulated for the most part. The fact that ice, the Intercontinental Exchange is now a main backer, this, these could eventually be on publicly regulated platforms. So that could change. And that, that's going to make the turn terms, they're going to have to define them much more clear, more clearly than they do now. But as of now, they, they're just like, nope, Khomeini, that bet is off. You're not going to get your money.
- [55:21]
Matthew Rimsky
And because of that semantic difference between he was killed versus he lost power or he's out of power, they're willing to do that and stand by that and then keep all of the money because they're not afraid of pissing off their clientele because everybody's going to keep betting anyway.
- [55:37]
Derek Barris
Right? Yes.
- [55:37]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay.
- [55:38]
Derek Barris
At this point. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.
- [55:39]
Julian Walker
And there's no consumer protection.
- [55:41]
Derek Barris
Yeah. And none of them are on the board. So at least in America. So, you know, it's entirely possible, and this may have already happened, that as has happened in sports for a long time, and we, we flagged this a moment ago, politicians start throwing the game to manipulate these markets. I mean, they've been manipulating markets forever. We, you know, there's been a lot of talk or we're recording on Tuesday that, you know, oil went up to 120A barrel. The markets were about to crash, and then it dropp 90 a barrel all of a sudden. And so market manipulation is a real thing. But now they have an even more untraceable way to do so through these decentralized platforms. And I'm going to guess whatever regulations this administration devises for these companies, it's not going to be to favor the people placing the bets, provided that said, politicians are getting a cut of the spoils.
- [56:31]
Matthew Rimsky
You know, I hate to broken record my citations, but, you know, Marx describes all forms of speculation as like mystification. Like there's all of this running money that's gamed around as if it's extra. And the game hides the underlying economy. It hides the like, exploitation that generates the money. And like you're saying, like it can just be flipped, it can just be turned around to do the opposite thing.
- [56:58]
Derek Barris
Well, with that Theory, you know, mystification is just an admission of ignorance.
- [57:03]
Matthew Rimsky
No, no, no, it's not. It's not an admission of ignorance. It's a process.
- [57:07]
Derek Barris
I believe it is.
- [57:08]
Matthew Rimsky
What?
- [57:08]
Derek Barris
Well, I believe it's an admission of ignorance.
- [57:10]
Matthew Rimsky
Then I'm not explaining Marx properly. It's not an admission of ignorance.
- [57:15]
Julian Walker
How are you using the term, Matthew? How is Marx using it?
- [57:18]
Matthew Rimsky
Mystification. It's based on the idea of the commodity fetish that the farther the object gets away from its material production and its labor inputs and all of that stuff, the less you're able to see, see all of the human sort of factors that flow into it. It becomes an abstract object that then is worth money instead of labor. And so you can't really connect to the, the actual. The blood, sweat and tears or the place or, you know, how much time it took or what the lives of the workers were. So you go to the mall and it's filled with commodities that are fetishized because you have no idea where they came from. So it's not. You're not admitting. Admitting ignorance. You can't know. It's. You've been. You've been. You've been alienated from the process of production. Right. So that's, that's what it means.
- [58:11]
Derek Barris
So you're talking about from the consumer perspective purely because there are steps of production and supply chains that led to that appearing in the actual.
- [58:23]
Matthew Rimsky
Yes.
- [58:23]
Derek Barris
Mall that you're shopping in.
- [58:25]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, yeah. But you, but you as the person, and more specifically as the world worker who has produced this object, will find that object later in the store, divorced of all kinds of social relations that actually made it. His first concern is that the product that you make is alienated from you in the sense that you don't use it. It's not something that you have because you love or you honor. It's something that you have made for somebody else so that they can make. Make money. Right. And so the mystification is the, the product goes out into the world and. And like, it's just sort of somehow exists and. And you're right, like the people, the workflow managers, everybody who brought it into production and retail, they know where it came from and how it tracked. But. But, but we don't. We don't. Right.
- [59:21]
Derek Barris
Okay, so is he arguing for isolationism then? Because what you're saying is, if I, if I'm buying something from my wife's homeland, Thailand, land, like, I'm not going to see the processes that come there. So is he saying, well, therefore, we need to then stop all sorts of global trade, because if you can't see the processes that went into this, then at the consumer level, you shouldn't be able to purchase this, or you're not really going to understand.
- [59:46]
Matthew Rimsky
There's no prescription against mystification. He's describing something that happens in industrial capitalism that hides from us what the power relations are. So it's a much simpler observation than I think you're making out. Right. Which is on the level of, you bought the product from Thailand. Yeah. You're going to have no clue as to whose hands made it, whether they got paid fairly, whether they were abused by their employers. You're just happy to have it. And your calculation around how much it's actually worth is going to be based on comparing it with other abstracted commodities on the shelf beside it, not in comparison to all of those social factors that created it. So he's not arguing it doesn't go farther, further into, okay, well, we should never buy anything from Thailand. We should understand what happens in mass production industrial capitalism, so we can understand why people are so easily separated from their labor and its value because. And they don't know that that's happening.
- [60:50]
Julian Walker
It's super interesting, Matthew, because it sounds like you're describing Marx talking about a psychosocial or philosophical sort of process. Like mystification is a process whereby our perceptions collectively get distorted in this sort of way where we're alienated from the reality of what's really going on in terms of that product and where it comes from and what.
- [61:09]
Matthew Rimsky
What it's worth and who suffers to produce it and who suffers to produce
- [61:13]
Julian Walker
it and what it's worth. Right. And how it can be. How the worth can be speculated upon. But it's what's tricky about that is because, you know, I hear Derek listening to it and saying, well, how does that fit into a kind of economics theory that, that, that has nuts and bolts. Right. As opposed to like an idea becomes abstracted in a way that alienates us from the reality of it.
- [61:35]
Matthew Rimsky
Well, it does have nuts and bolts in the sense that he spent like 10 years sitting in the British Museum looking at shipping manifests and doing the math on how the economy is actually working at that time to figure out that there are basic processes that bring commodities to market and this is what they do to the power differential between workers and owners. So there are nuts and bolts there. But if we jump directly to, does that mean we should never buy anything from Thailand? It's much more like, no, let's Recognize that if the things that we make are only for profit value and not for use value, this will be the outcome. And therefore maybe there's an isolationist outcome to that in the sense that, yeah, it would be very good if we could become more localized and self sufficient in our economies, not only so that we could, you know, avoid the excesses of globalization, but also because we would have more human contact with the objects that we use and we wouldn't be sold that we didn't need by people who just want to make money and don't care what we need.
- [62:44]
Derek Barris
So it's an isolationist argument. So you're. So it's saying local community don't. Yeah, well, well, when you say it's much simpler, it's not. I mean, I don't understand why speculation becomes a form of mystification in this. But besides that, I mean, you, you're, you're painting something. You said a moment ago that the number of people who suffer in the production. We know that's true sometimes, but that's not always the case. I mean, there has to be a reckoning with the fact that every company is going to want to make some profit so they can hire more workers and actually produce more goods if, if it's warranted and people actually want them. And this seems to be working backwards from that concept to saying that even that very idea of producing anything for Prof. Profit is therefore of. Is going to only be a net negative, which I just do not believe in at all.
- [63:32]
Matthew Rimsky
Well, if things are only produced for profit, then we begin to lose contact with what we actually use and what we need.
- [63:42]
Derek Barris
That's your belief. I don't think that's true.
- [63:44]
Matthew Rimsky
No. How many people want AI as a product in the world? How many people want the coming AI sort of panoply of products to roll out and destroy their labor? Like who actually wants that?
- [63:58]
Derek Barris
Well, in the UK there's just been a report release that they're actually, businesses are hiring more people than they expected to and above because they're trying to work with the AI systems. So we're looking at you have, you have two things going on in AI right now. You have a doom and gloom scenario and I believe some of that could come to fruit. But you also have a number of companies that are trying to use it and actually creating more labor of it, and that's a recurrence throughout. The same thing happened in the Internet around 2001. So to just look at the doom and gloom scenario, I don't think is taking A holistic view of what's happening in the industry.
- [64:35]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm not even looking at it as doom and gloom. I'm saying who wants it?
- [64:39]
Derek Barris
A lot of people.
- [64:39]
Matthew Rimsky
Who wants a better truck?
- [64:40]
Derek Barris
Well, my neighbor just bought a Rivian and she absolutely loves it based on her old Ford.
- [64:45]
Matthew Rimsky
This is, this is what I, this is what I'm. This is, what I'm saying is that, is that this, the sort of completely free manufacture of products to perceived and then created needs is anarchistic. Right? There's no planning, there's no. We've talked for six years about why there's no universal healthcare in the States. That takes planning. It takes planning, it takes discipline. It takes some kind of like I'm going to restore strict purchases or expenditures on these products in order to bring them home to serve social needs. Right. And the people who make really big money in capitalism are not thinking about what human beings need at all. They are seeing a potential for marketing products that then they can sell upsell is essential. And then they exploit human desires and they create a bunch of useless shit that drives the climate off the cliffs.
- [65:54]
Derek Barris
Yeah, I don't agree with that. I mean a moment ago you said the people don't foresee and that's absolutely not true.
- [66:00]
Matthew Rimsky
The people don't.
- [66:01]
Derek Barris
What, what did I say when you said that? That people who succeed at capitalism do not think about what people need. And my former co worker was the number nine employee at Amazon. He is the guy who created the Amazon book Bookshelf which basically made the company what it is. And so I got some insights into the early company and I'm not it Jeff Bezos and everything the company had that has become. But in the early stages of the company they've. They thought very much about what people need and delivered it to them. And over time as it scaled, as happens with most of these systems, as it's scaled and becomes further away from people, then it became extremely dicey. But the idea that at the idea that at the origins of this thing that they don't think think about that about serving a need is just false.
- [66:48]
Matthew Rimsky
That's fair. But what does that movement from useful innovative product to Jeff Bezos wants to eat the world or Sam Altman doesn't know if it's worth or Peter Thiel doesn't know if it's worth saving humanity, what does that tell you about that arc?
- [67:03]
Derek Barris
It tells me the same exact thing I said a little while ago about political systems that however good intentions are, as time as people gain more power, it is human nature to then exploit that power, whether it's capitalist, socialist, neoliberal, whatever it is, at some point when it hits scale, it is going to then kick in a certain number of people's greed and then they start looking for opportunities everywhere.
- [67:26]
Julian Walker
And what's the antidote? What's the antidote to that?
- [67:28]
Matthew Rimsky
If you have a, if you have a mathematics that is based upon the exploitation of the greed principle in the form of I'm going to appropriate all profit from a particular exchange into ownership and capital so that I can and expand my operations, create more products, then you have a very particular sort of jet fuel behind that. Perhaps natural, perhaps organic, perhaps human nature process. One of the most interesting stories that I heard David Graeber say was that he was talking to or he was reading, he was researching communications between ExxonMobil executives in the 1980s who knew that climate change was doing what it was doing, who knew what kind of crap they were responsible for, and who were writing to American legislators to say, please regulate us, please do something because we are beholden to our shareholders. And so, you know, he gave it as this example of, you know, it's, even if you intend to do well in a system like this, you will run up against the mandate to make money first, for profit, to be your God. And I think that that's what we've got.
- [68:46]
Derek Barris
Well, yeah, but I mean, I don't disagree with any of that. But you're also talking about one specific industry. We were started this conversation about a systems approach. And I think within any sort of economy, you're going to get the exploitation. It is human nature. We've, we've watched this happen for thousands of years from the beginning of the Harappan civilization forward. So that seems to be a human, a human feature, not a bug. And to answer Julian's economy, me, I mean, Julian's question, my, my prescription would be what we have proof for, which is mixed economies and mixed economies seem to do best because they keep, they keep checks and balances in ways that America is not because we have just allowed unfettered capitalism to reign.
- [69:32]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. So strong regulations and strong separations between, between corporation and government. Right?
- [69:38]
Derek Barris
And strong social safety nets. Yeah, absolutely.
- [69:40]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. I mean, I respect that aspiration and can say from somebody who lives in more of a social democracy than you do, that's the dream here. Right? That's what we would like to see. And I would just say that in the perspective of the last, let's say 75 years or since the beginning of The Cold War period, that's been the sort of progressive ideal and I think to sort of suggest that, you know, the Nordic model or the Scandinavians or the Canadians or the Australians have found this balance between, you know, regulation and innovation. And that is what we should model ourselves on. That's why I wrote this segment in the middle about our very prime minister. Because the pressures will always move towards privatization.
- [70:40]
Derek Barris
The pressures come coming from a certain group of people that usually have acquired capital.
- [70:46]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, from capital. From capital. I almost have a metaphysics around it. Right. That's the way it moves. It moves. It exerts incredible downward pressure on people's best instincts. And so I know that you guys both look to Scandinavia and you go, wow, it would be so nice to live there. But I assure you, you, it's temporary.
- [71:11]
Derek Barris
No, I don't say that everything is, everything is temporary. But I don't say, I don't say I don't want to live there. I'm saying that that model has shown data that has the highest happiness indexes and also has economies that work best compared relative to all the other countries. Now you can't, no doubt they're better when you're looking at these. So when you're looking at these things, that doesn't mean we've reached a final form. We absolutely have not. And you can continually improve upon that, that model incrementally, which seems to work best. Because every time we have phases where sudden changes of power happen, things don't go so well in the long run. So we can look upon incremental improvements. But that never means that I want to move there or live under that economy. I do want universal health care.
- [71:56]
Julian Walker
I mean, I mean I'd like to move there. So if anyone wants, if anyone wants to host me. Absolutely. But, but, but my point is always that we have have to compare. When we start talking about models like what they have in Scandinavia, they should be compared to other countries in the world, not compared to some abstract perfection that has never existed.
- [72:17]
Derek Barris
Fair.
- [72:36]
Sean Williams
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