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- [00:07]
A
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for bitcoin.
- [00:32]
B
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be. See, it was a long journey. Meandering bouts of shitty tech sales jobs and unemployment in my early to mid-20s, and then decided to start writing about Bitcoin in 2017 that ultimately turned into this. And here we are eight years later on this in Austin, Texas.
- [00:56]
A
That's great, man.
- [00:57]
B
You had a crazy uncle.
- [00:59]
A
Yeah, so. Well, I don't know if I want to call him a crazy uncle on the air, but my introduction to bitcoin was someone I knew who was introducing me first to jet fuel, can't melt steel beams, and the heart project, and, like, eventually flat earth. But he was also like, hey, bitcoin, man. And so I was sort of like. Sort of had, like a reverse halo effect was. I was like, I'm not sure about this. But then, you know, having looked back, I'm like, he's trying to write about some of that other stuff. I don't know, man. I don't know. I had a similar experience with. I spent a summer in Jordan in college, and Arabs love conspiracy theories. They're crazy. They just eat them up. And I remember being like, oh, no. These poor people, they don't have an independent media to help them know what's true. So they're lost in the sauce of all these conspiracy theories. And come 2016, 2017, I was like, I need to go back and apologize to these guys.
- [02:16]
B
Wait a second. You were onto something there. I mean, as we're finding out in the last two weeks particularly, we've been propagandized, and it's crazy debt and our taxpayer dollars been weaponized against us to make us believe that we're wrong, that America is terrible, the white man is terrible.
- [02:36]
A
Yeah, man, it's been a crazy ride. I remember Thanksgiving with my uncles doing the usual, you know, talking politics. And one of them was like, saying, well, you know, conspiracy is too hard to maintain. You know, somebody would. Somebody would spill their guts. It's just too strong of an incentive to sort of defect. And it was like. It was like a month after Epstein died in prison. And I was like, I don't. It kind of seems like it can be maintained. It kind of seems like that thing is. That kind of thing is possible. So, like, I don't know what's true anymore. And, yeah, a lot of things have cracked open in the last couple of years.
- [03:16]
B
Yeah, I've had many. My nickname on the show is Marty Jones. So I've gone down all the rabbit holes. I mean, I think I've gone back and forth. Is it malicious, intentful action on behalf of a nefarious cabal of individuals around the world? I think to a certain extent it is. But you mentioned the important word. I think the incentives are set up in a way where people like the game is set up from an incentive structure in a way that makes it easy for people to sort of game and garner power and rule over the rest of us. And I think a lot of that incentive structure that was built up over the last five decades is being laid bare with what's going on now with the Trump administration. And that's why I'm so passionate about Bitcoin. Have been for many years. Is my idea or my belief is that the core corruption of the broader incentive systems that humans play within is the money. And once you that up, it has rippling negative externalities across the board. One thing which I mentioned to you in DMs, which I truly believe is family formation. And the subject that I really want to dive in deep with you today is this whole concept of natalism. You're throwing a conference here in Austin next month on the subject. I remember last year, it was the first time you did. It was last year.
- [04:51]
A
Yeah, well, it was 2023, but it was December 23rd.
- [04:53]
B
Okay. Yeah. So like a year and a month ago, a number of individuals who attended the conference actually stopped by here either between the two days were after some of the talks, and they were talking about how great it was. And so Joe Rogers. Shout out to Joe Rogers for tagging me in one of the tweets he sent out late last week and saying, you should get involved. I was like, oh, I remember people talking about this natalism conference. I'd love to chat about it because it's a big topic in the news, right?
- [05:22]
A
Totally. We just found out that we've been talking pronatalism, natalism, all this stuff. The thing that's really launching is birth rates. And I think it's interesting because it's like. Because birth rates is number one. It's like this. It's like this KPI. It's this indicator. And what's really interesting about that is there's a cohort of people who are like, because they love KPIs, they're like, look at this dangerous KPI, the big line is going in the wrong direction. And then you've got this other kind of person who's like psychologically averse to that, who's like, screw your KPIs, like screw your spreadsheet brain, whatever. And so I think that's why birth rates is what has launched because it creates this ready made thing to fight about. And I sort of, I sort of come down on like the, the spiritual side of it and like the psychological side of it, like meaning side of it is what matters to me and it's what matters to my family and the people I care about. Spreadsheets is why people with money, people with power, why they should care about it, because it's kind of coming for them. And it's like if you don't create a situation in which ordinary people can solve their ordinary problems, those problems are going to compound and aggregate into something that's a big problem for you. And so, yeah, I kind of, I see both sides of it. But yeah, it's definitely been in the zeitgeist with the baby mama drama of late.
- [07:09]
B
What are your thoughts on that? This whole bringing back a Genghis Khan like conquer and spread your seed mentality.
- [07:19]
A
Definitely not my approach.
- [07:21]
B
Neither is it mine.
- [07:22]
A
No, no. I mean, I think, I think people like that are always going to be weird. And that's not even me saying like, it's okay or I approve of it or I disapprove of it. It's, it's me saying like, there are always going to be super strange people doing super strange things. And so like, if there's, if there's a problem with it, it's maybe the fact that ordinary people may perhaps look to that as an example and be like, this is workable for me. And it's like, I'm not sure it's workable for him. Definitely not workable for you. This is definitely not something you should build a template around.
- [08:09]
B
No. And I am a strong believer in the sanctity and the portmanteau of the nuclear family. I think more about the kids.
- [08:18]
A
Yes.
- [08:19]
B
Which is. And who knows, maybe he's some enigmatic character that like he is the richest man in the world and maybe many outside observers will be like, oh, it's okay for him to do it. And he's genetic spread.
- [08:37]
A
And I guess what I would say is that was always gonna make him a really weird dad.
- [08:41]
B
Yeah.
- [08:42]
A
Like, regardless of whatever else, regardless of how he structured it, he. He was gonna be a weird dad. And. And that's, you know, so. So, like, it's. It's like trying to pass judgment on like a space alien. Like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's. It has not sort of nothing to do with me, but. Yeah, like, like for me and for my kids and the life that I want for them, I definitely want to be present with my kids. I deb. So. So for me, the reason I got into this all was, was basically I started a group called Exit, which is built around. It's a fraternity basically built around how do we have grandkids? How do we make sure that we. And the reason it's grandkids and not kids is because if you have, like, lots of people can have kids. Anybody can have kids. There's like sperm donors who are like Genghis Khan reproductively successful. Right. But that's not exactly the point. And so to have grandkids is to say that your thing iterated like, like it completed a loop and you passed it down. You raised your kids such that they wanted to reinstantiate what you built. Which I think that's sort of the real bottleneck that we're passing through because there's lots of conservatives who have kids who are not having grandkids, and there's lots of, you know, there's lots of sort of accidental kids. And that's not what we're aiming for. We're aiming for something that iterates. Something that works through time. And yeah, I think what works is families. And so, yeah, that's definitely my perspective.
- [10:15]
B
Yeah. Open up a little bit more about mine. I don't know if I've talked about this too much on the show, but I was mentioning before, I come from a big Irish Catholic family. My mom was one of eight. I have 25 first cousins, and we're all essentially brothers and sisters. And we congregate every summer at the vacation spot that we grew up going to. And we're very fortunate that our parents set a good example, particularly around the nuclear and extended family, where we're still to this day pretty tight knit. Like, we're my kids and their kids, we just tell them to call them cousins and they act like we did when we were kids. And that's great. That's something that, until I moved away from home, and spent a considerable amount of time away from home. It's been 16 years now. I didn't realize for many people, it's not the dorm, and it's something as very special, very Americana, in a sense, that needs to be protected. Absolutely. I feel very fortunate to have had that experience. And now, as I have children and grow my family and talk to my wife about what we want to do, it's like, yeah, we want to make sure that we pass that down. And I often wonder, like, I took it for granted for most of my life, I think, particularly up until I had kids, and then looked around, I was like, holy shit. Like, what? We have a special. And from what I understand, the way my parents talk, grandparents, aunts, uncles talk about, like, it wasn't always that way. Like, that was the norm, at least where I grew up in the northeast section of Philadelphia.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah, that was so. My dad's side is Irish Catholic, and my mom's side is Latter day Saints. So it's two very big families with very different dynamics but sharing that vibe. We used to go to Texoma as a kid and all the cousins and. Yeah, part of what's changed is not only the just collapse of cousins. You just don't have as many cousins, but also the geolocation. Being actually together is a challenge. And I think that's sort of what a lot of people are trying to figure out with remote work and with the sort of political sorting that's happening. People are, like, trying to figure out where they want to plant their feet and. Yeah. How do you build? You probably can't go back. Right. You probably can't just revert to an earlier save. But how do you reclaim some of that? Those good experiences that we grew up with? I think we might have been the last generation to have that be relatively normal.
- [12:50]
B
Damn, that's sad.
- [12:52]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I think. I mean, I think we can get it back. I guess I just mean, like, what's happening now is not that.
- [12:57]
B
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- [14:45]
A
Oh, man, there's a lot of things, I think, you know, certainly just our mobility, the fact that we communicate and travel all over the world. Certainly it has to do with the insinuation of the state into our basic relationships, lack of sense of belonging and ownership and sovereignty in our families. Because people invest in things that they. This is Bitcoin, right? They invest in things they can really own and hold and be responsible for. And increasingly it's kind of you'll own nothing and you'll be happy world. And under those circumstances, it's very difficult for people to feel that it's worth the investment to have kids. And that's not like sometimes that gets characterized as like, oh yeah, your great great grandpa needed farm labor or he needed someone to take care of him in his old age and that's why he had kids. And it's a fact that like, you know, families did depend on each other economically. Like that was true, but that wasn't, wasn't why you did it. Like it's bigger than that and it has to do with Are we building something together? Do we belong to each other? Are we a meaningfully. Are we meaningfully a thing in ourselves, or are we just sort of fading into the background radiation of the monoculture? Like, are we just sort of economic units or isolated individuals?
- [16:29]
B
Yeah, and that's millennial, early 30s, many cousins, older and younger. So I've got a good spectrum of data points just in that group and then obviously broadly outside my broader social structure. And that's one thing I've been really trying to figure out. And is it more social, these apps, the ability to have mobility, to move wherever, the normalization of going off to college in Mass. Is it really driving that? Or is it economic, or is it a combination of the two? Because one thing I've. I've talked a lot about on this show and written about, I think the dating apps have been terrible.
- [17:13]
A
Absolutely.
- [17:14]
B
In the sense that they create this market for optionality, where if in the back of your mind, it's like, oh, I can always swipe right for, there's always another option out there. It creates this mental inability to actually make a commitment from a decision perspective.
- [17:31]
A
And it also just. Even if you are prepared to do that, it makes it difficult to find someone else who's prepared to do that. There's a game theory element to it that's. That's really, really challenging for men and women. Men. Men get weeded out at the beginning of the funnel, the top of the funnel, where it's just swipe left. You just don't. You don't get a hearing. And women get opted out or swept basically in the what are we phase. Like, you know, have these. Have these romantic relationships or just sort of romantic encounters, involvements with other people. And especially when that person is like, what is happening essentially is that 80% of women are competing for the top 15 or 20% of men. And when someone like that is willing to spend time with you and have sex with you and be, you know, do all those things, it's very tempting to believe. Like, well, you know, maybe there's a version of the world in which this leads to marriage. And it's like, in most cases, probably not. And so that that sort of interferes with the process of people connecting in ways that actually will lead to marriage and family. And all these things are like, it all. It all goes in the pot. Like, it's all a piece of it. Like, certainly the fact that we can just very easily take a pill to avoid pregnancy, certainly that matters. Certainly the fact that we have the dual income Families are the norm in America and all the houses are priced with that expectation. All the jobs, the wages are calculated with that expectation. Everything is predicated on a dual income family, which basically like Elizabeth Warren wrote the Two Income Trap, which is like a, it's a crazy based book for like Elizabeth Warren, but it's basically like, you know, women, when they went into the workforce, first of all the wages were depressed. And then because the kids are staying at home or they're in daycare, like number one, you got to pay for the daycare and you got to get a second car. But the biggest piece is you have to get a house that's in a good school district and in a good neighborhood because you're like, you know, we're going to sort of abdicate our ownership over the acculturation and the education of the kids. We're going to hand that off. And so it better be really good. And so there's this intense competition for like the nicest neighborhoods with the best schools, which are, those are positional goods. They're inherently, you can't just have all the schools be good schools. There's a best school and that's where the competition is the fiercest. And so all of these things conspire to create a situation where really like the, the, the economic cap for like a normal two income, median income family is two kids. Because after that the daycare math stops making sense. And so, you know, in order to have sort of replacement fertility 2.1 TFR, you have to have half the population having more than two kids. And that's, we're nowhere near that. So that's sort of what's causing this decline which then sort of inverts. You mentioned, I don't know if we were on the air for this, but you mentioned the money. Once you corrupt the money, you corrupt all sorts of downstream things. When fertility is when the expectation of secular decline, secular stagnation is baked in because of population decline, because there's only two ways an economy can grow, right? It can grow through productivity per worker or more workers, right? So if you are saying we're going to have massive declines and accelerating declines in the number of workers, well then in order to keep up, you have to have this massive increase in productivity which isn't happening, doesn't happen. And so you lose that expectation of growth, which means all of these economic structures that are predicated on leverage and predicated on the expectation of future returns, they don't just stall or weaken or they actually like invert, they actually like collapse. You mentioned kind of getting red pilled by 2008. It's kind of a similar situation. It's not a decline, it's a crash, it's a collapse. And places like. So the 2008 housing bubble is a good example because like you could just, if you, as long as you could just keep paying your mortgage, if you waited till what I think 2012 in most markets you were back, at least back to whole, you weren't underwater. But what's happened in China is they've built it's like twice as much housing as they need basically. And the fact is there's no catching up to that supply. There's never going to be enough Chinese people to live in those houses. So the value of those investments is it's not declined, it's not going to recover, it's zero. Those houses are going to fill with mold and rats and fall apart before they're ever inhabited.
- [23:10]
B
They're literally just knocking them down or building them and knocking them down as a jobs program.
- [23:16]
A
It's the same kind of shenanigans as like the collateralized debt obligations. It's the same, it's just fraud, but it's because it's happening in the real world. I guess you could say it's packaged a different way. Yeah. At least there's the machines and the labor and that's maybe the, they're learning something by building all these houses and knocking them down. But like that's kind of it. And so when you have something like that, which, which like that's, that's like most Chinese people's retirement expectations is they have these investments and they, you know, sort of hoping the government bails that out. But like it's a, it's a huge problem and it's 100% defined by their inability to start families.
- [23:58]
B
The one child policy obviously playing a big, huge, huge. I mean although they've reverted on that.
- [24:03]
A
They have reversed it and like every other, every other East Asian country is going through the same thing. It's like it's like one child certainly made it worse, it accelerated it, but like it was kind of coming for them anyway. And it. So I, and what's interesting about China and Japan is like their play is perfect. Like they're making all the other moves. Right. Like they're making all these investments in automation, all these investments in stem. Like their people are very well educated, they're very conscientious and high IQ and like you would expect that like if anybody was going to like win the Game, it would be them. But because they get this one thing wrong, which is like this fundamental, deep, spiritual, profound thing, like you can't convince your people to raise families, fulfill this basic human need. It actually doesn't matter what else they accomplish. Like the 2000 and 30s are going to be a disaster for China. Unless like, basically you would need like the AI Eschaton, you would need the, the, the armies of humanoid robots just, just doing the work for you. In which case maybe you can nose up. But that's like, that's like a whole different existential problem for the Chinese. So like this is a massively important. Is it. It ramifies to, you know, the fate of civilizations. And, and I actually, somebody pointed out the other day I bought the domain for 12 bucks a year. Natalism.org so it's like it's not. When we got in, it was like nobody was talking about it, but it's like this incredibly important issue and that's why we're having a conference. Yeah.
- [25:37]
B
And you've mentioned the KPI, obviously top of mind for a lot of people. 2.1 replacement rate needed. China, Japan, bad. But just like in your mind, like to quantify the severity of the situation globally. Like what? Like how would you put into context the danger that lies ahead if things don't change drastically globally?
- [26:03]
A
So. Well, there's danger and there's opportunities and I want to be clear about that because like a lot of what we're going to be talking about at the conference is like anytime that, anytime that you're trying to out trade faster than the investment banker who's got his computer hooked up right next to the exchange so the electrons can get there faster, that's kind of a sucker's game.
- [26:32]
B
We had that book right next to you. Flash Boys talks all about that.
- [26:36]
A
But if you can be taking bets that these big institutions not only don't see, but can't see, then there's all kinds of opportunities that open up. And so, I mean, I can talk about the gloom and doom and the catastrophizing. That's certainly real. Essentially what you're going to see is rich countries getting old. And like either they have to do something like Japan, where they go through, I mean it's been 30 years and there's been essentially no economic growth in Japan. Yeah, Completely flat.
- [27:15]
B
The central bank owns essentially half their bond market. They're buying stocks now. It's all being propped up financially at least by the printing of money.
- [27:25]
A
Right. And, and many people point to Japan and they Say, like, well, you know, Japan's a pretty nice place to live. And of course it is. Wonderful place to live. Not dismissing that. And it took. It took an immense amount of hard work and like. And, like, preparedness and thought and dedication just to keep them stable as they've managed this demographic transition. But a. Yeah, like, they're working harder. They've put in all this investment and it's still flat. That's for one thing. And for two, they're not done. Like, their population is still getting older and their population still declining. Like, they've sort of passed the crest, but now they're on the. It doesn't decline, it doesn't recover. Because the more. Have you seen that? There's that. There's that political cartoon of the kid and he's holding the student loan debt and the boomers like, I'm not paying for that. And the next page is he's got Social Security on his back. And it's like. It's like he's. He's getting hit from both ends. He's got to cover both sides of it. And that's what's happening is essentially it's. It's getting harder for people to raise families as this problem of raising families gets worse. And so, yeah, it's. It's this accelerating trend, unless you find a way to. To nose out of it. And, you know, so we talk about Japan. That's like. That's like, best case, no immigration, full automation. Like, that's how they're handling it. Maybe other countries can pull that off, maybe they can't. Korea, very similar, but they're actually deeper in the fertility. That's like 0.7 TFR per woman, which is very, very low. Basically, it means for every 100 Koreans, there will be four great grandchildren, which that's. I mean, that's essentially. That's game over. That's like that. That culture will no longer be coherent. It will no longer exist because there's just not enough people to maintain it.
- [29:25]
B
Holy shit.
- [29:26]
A
Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And, you know, people can say, well, you're extrapolating too far into the future. Maybe it'll recover. And it's like, well, but it keeps going further down. Like, there's no reason to assume it'll even stabilize here. So anyway, those are some options. There's also the American and European model, which is. We'll just pump it with immigration.
- [29:52]
B
Chasmo work at 12.
- [29:54]
A
No, it's. I mean, there's several things wrong with it. Like, you know, Even if you just like as a matter of spirituality and aesthetics and meaning, you say like, well one, one economic widget is as good as another one labor unit. Right. Which I don't agree with that practically or morally. But even if you stipulate that these immigrants, number one, they don't have even replacement fertility in their home countries, TFR in Latin America is at replacement and falling. So like they're gonna like, we're gonna run out of other people's kids, we're not gonna be able to maintain, just sucking up all the young blood from the whole rest of the world. And like, you know, these countries are gonna reach a point where they have to think about like, where are young people, how are they, you know, who's gonna take care of grandma?
- [30:53]
B
Yeah.
- [30:53]
A
And like in Japan you can maybe answer that question with robots, but like not in Guatemala or Bhutan, you know what I mean? Like these, these countries are getting old before they get rich. And China is actually, you know, for all the, you know, you can what, like glittering drone shows over Shenzhen. And like, there's lots of cyberpunk imagery coming out of China these days. But like, I looked it up, their GDP per capita is still like in line with Moldova and Montenegro. Like, it's still developing country. It's still, they've got a lot of rural poor people and they're not food independent. And so for them the task of taking care of this massive population of the aged is going to be enormous. And you know, they take actions that are things that you couldn't get away with politically in America. You know, maybe they solve that in a really gruesome way. I don't know. But it's going to be, it's going to be tough, it's going to be a difficult situation. And that, I mean, that ramifies to how they fight wars too. I mean, it's the biggest army of only children that's ever existed. So like how, you know, how does the population deal with everybody's only son?
- [32:09]
B
And they have a gender imbalance too. Right. Because one child policy favored males over females. So you have like 40 million more men than women.
- [32:17]
A
Yeah. And maybe 10 years ago they were talking about like, oh, you know, China's going to be dangerous because they've got this young hot blooded, you know, cadre of his disposable men who nothing to lose, they kind of aged out of that. So, you know, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen there. But with, so that's, that's, that's one option with, with the immigration and what's happening in Europe, what's happening in America? You're obviously getting this, like, are we, you know, who are we as English people, as Germans, as Americans, what's our identity? And then, like, you know, just sort of the expectation, especially when it's couched in these sort of crass economic terms of like, we need someone to pay for Social Security. It's like, why would you expect that you could import these people away from their own grandparents and just expect them to, like, pay into your system and respect the arrangement that you made with your ancestors and descendants, like this sort of social compact that existed across generations? Why would you expect them to honor that? Why would they have any obligation to honor that? So, yeah, that's really not workable, and it's going to collapse in a different way.
- [33:35]
B
Yeah, you can see that play out in the data, in the form of remittance data. It's not going into Social Security. It's going back to where they came from in a lot of places. And I think what you were describing here, too, because obviously the immigration debate, whether it's here in America, the uk, Germany, all over the world, very heated right now, very vitriolic. And I do think the core focus on immigration is important. But I think what you're getting at is really the crux is like, you have this collapsing replacement rate around the world, and what is the solution? Not importing people. But I think El Salvador has been a great example of reverse diaspora, where we need to work on creating conditions, economic conditions, social conditions, where people actually want to live where they're from and develop a family and do it the right way. But the conversation that's. I mean, immigration, obviously a great replacement theory, which many people were like, oh, that's a conspiracy theory. But it's like the UN wrote a paper on it and yeah, what was it the Cliven Howard. What was it the Liv and Howard sort of theory? I mean, it is an economic policy that people have put out there publicly for decades.
- [34:51]
A
Sure.
- [34:52]
B
It's pretty obvious if you have more than two brain cells and you're paying attention, that it's tried to be implemented globally and it's obviously not working.
- [35:01]
A
And the sort of the strongest case I can make for the, like, it's not really happening take is like, they could say, you know, well, we just don't, you know, we don't really enforce immigration law. And like, it happens to be this useful thing, and, like, it happens to, like, it's a good thing but it's not a conspiracy. It's just sort of like, people want to come here and that. Like, but even that, it's very mealy mouth. Like, they clearly, like, it clearly benefits their political team to have a dependent class. That's sort of their only tie. I mean, that's from Machiavelli, right? Like, obviously a tyrant prefers foreigners because they're sort of attached to him and dependent on him, and they're more inclined to serve his interests than, like, the native population. So, yeah, I mean, that's pretty obvious.
- [35:59]
B
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- [36:38]
A
But, yeah, it's so. So we're getting together to. To bring all these. All these different factors. Like, I mean, it's. It's definitely about the dating apps and it's definitely about immigration and it's definitely about secularism, and it's about all these things. It's all. It's all part of it. And so the purpose of the conference is to get. Basically dice it up into categories and say, like, let's talk about the health cons. We haven't even talked about the health consequences, which is like. Or the health causes of it, which is like, so many more people are obese. So many more people have metabolic disorders and hormonal disorders. And it's like, obviously, you know, if a huge portion of the population is overweight and has metabolic health issues, like, it's going to be harder to date. It's going to be harder to connect it to be. Not only to be attractive to each other, but to be attracted to each other because it interferes with libido and it messes with things like. Things like hormonal birth control messing with the types of people that we pair with.
- [37:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, the observations of women who've come off birth control and they don't like their partner anymore because, because their endocrine system was so messed up from it.
- [37:58]
A
Terrifying, right? Yeah, terrifying. And that's real. And it's like, you know, we've just sort of, sort of polluted that system in a really serious way. And so we've got people coming to talk. So we got like raw egg nationalist. He's a, he's a guy who is concerned about those things and he's going to come talk about, you know, the issue of declining sperm counts and reproductive health. And so that's one piece of it. Then there's the dating issue. And we've got like, we've got a guy who built essentially a matchmaking app to come talk about what he's doing. And you know, what is like, is dating apps, are dating apps just like sort of a flawed form factor? Like, do they just sort of fail intrinsically to accomplish this goal or is there some way to make like a good dating app? You know, it's. Jury's still out on that. But then, you know, why is it also difficult for people to get married? And that's a really, that's a really deep one because so we've got, we've got Brit Benjamin who's going to come talk about marriage law. She's a divorce attorney and she did this great presentation last year about basically it's like, it's the most important agreement that most people are ever going to enter into is their marriage. But it's like completely unenforceable as a contract. Like it, obviously divorce has extreme financial consequences and social consequences, but the terms of the contract themselves are like, those are like toothless. There's very little you can do except just snap the line, get divorced. And so people, men and women, are like terrified to get married and sort of reasonably. And so it's about how do you, how do you make that contract do what contracts are supposed to do, which is not to, you know, not to coerce people into arrangements they don't want, but to set the terms and make sure that everybody's on the same page when they come together so that they don't know. They're not surprised later on. And they're not like, you know, there's no, there's no sort of obscure expectations. Right.
- [40:17]
B
I didn't realize this was a big hold up for people.
- [40:19]
A
Huge hold up.
- [40:20]
B
Getting married in the first place.
- [40:21]
A
Oh yeah. No, in fact, like, if you look at, so one of the speakers last year, Stephen Shaw, was talking about how basically it's, it's, you know, if the fertility rate is like 1.6, 1.5 in the US right now or something like that. It's not actually all the households having 1.5 kids. It's more like families who have kids having 2, 3, 4, 5. That's a very sharp declining tail.
- [40:54]
B
Right.
- [40:55]
A
But there's this huge portion having zero, and it's like, I think it's like 40% of millennials. It's something like that. It's some huge number that. That are basically never going to have kids. And we're sort of never going to have kids. Yeah, we're sort of coming on.
- [41:09]
B
Yeah. Because the lower band of millennials is what, turning 30?
- [41:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. So we're sort of finding the. The last bit of who's going to have kids. And, you know, lots of millennials are going to have kids in their 30s, but so many of them haven't even started. And, And Jordan Peterson has an interesting bit on this. He's like, you know, if, if, if it's past 40. Yeah.
- [41:35]
B
Logan's looking up the stat.
- [41:36]
A
Oh, nice.
- [41:37]
B
What's it at, Logan? Okay.
- [41:41]
A
It's all over the place, right? Like, you're gonna, you're gonna find a bunch of things, but it's. It's a ton of millennials who are not having kids, number one. Like, that's gonna change the political makeup of the country all by itself, just because of who's having, like, who shows up in the next generation, in addition to all the economic and political ramifications of just not having as many people. So, yeah, that's a big piece of it. And so when people are being asked to enter into this relationship, this contract that is, even if it's not a marriage, having kids is this binding mutual obligation where you're just stuck with each other for a long time, ideally forever, but a long time. And people don't want to enter into that if there's no clear expectations. Like, everybody's sort of expected to synthesize their own values from the ether and just make up what they believe in. There's no common expectations.
- [42:54]
B
So are you getting at that? Maybe the stray away from faith has led to this?
- [43:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think certainly that although even societies where there was religious pluralism or there was a more sort of secular way, even societies like that have had children and expectations about what a family is. Like, we're dealing with something that's, yes, it's secularism, but it's like, even more fundamental than that. It's like the total rejection of objective meaning. And so, like, what Is a marriage for what is a wedding for? What are. You know, why would you. Why would you have that expensive party? Like, what is the point of that party?
- [43:40]
B
I saw you, quote, tweeting somebody today complaining about somebody brought a kid to a wedding.
- [43:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's that kind of thing. It's like, you know, and, yeah, like, not all. Not all couples who get married have kids, that's fine. But the purpose of the institution is to create an environment for raising children. Like, that's sort of the primal purpose of marriage. And so with that understanding lost, it's like, you know, trying to find somebody that you want to marry. It's like, what does that even mean to you? What does it mean to them? And so when that's all nebulous, people feel this incredible pressure to, like, number one, they have to find somebody who's, like, deeply compatible so that they can work all this stuff out. But it also, because it's such a risky move, they sort of want to. They want to find somebody who is, like, really extraordinary. Like, it had better be somebody amazing for me to take on this huge risk. And so, you know, of course, there's all kinds of heartbreak and disappointment and difficulty in dating because of that. And Jordan Peterson was talking about, like, you know, if you're going to take two years to assess a particular. A particular partner each time, it's like, you get to look at, like, five people as a woman. Like, in terms of your reproductive window, if you want to have kids, you get to look at, like, five people. And so that. That, like, fundamental math is, like, really hard for a lot of people to confront. Just the fact that life is short.
- [45:24]
B
Yeah, especially just think about, like, when women enter the years in which they're most fertile and able to have your late teens, early 20s, mid-20s. And the culture, particularly here in US, is like, go to college, have fun, graduate, maybe get a job in a big city, continue to have fun. And then I'm pretty sure, like, the way most millennials think is, like, all right, by the time I'm 30, I should have my partner, and we should have a plan to get married by, like, 30. Then, like, yeah, observationally, I think that's at least a lot of the people, individuals in my cohort. That's the way they thought. It was like, all right, college, fun, get a job, find a partner. I want to have kids by 32 was like, yeah, how they thought.
- [46:08]
A
And, you know, if I get there and I don't have enough, I'm not rich enough at that Point. And I haven't met the right person. Like, the money thing is huge because it's like, well, I want them to go to the right school because it's competitive and it's hard. That's a huge problem in Korea. The Koreans, it's hyper competitive. And so people are dumping all their resources into one kid. Like, that's, that's actually very common, like, like for Koreans to, like, actually get married, have a family. But just, just one kid in the US it's kind of like if you're going to have kids, you might as well have kids.
- [46:40]
B
Yeah.
- [46:41]
A
And the problem is zero tfr, so. So, yeah, we're going to be. We're going to be talking about the health side, the dating side, the marriage side, and then the economics of raising a family, like the two income trap and all that. And we've got sort of speakers set aside for each of those categories. And then we're going to have like an unconference portion where basically it'll be like two talks and then an unconference where, like, the, the attendees get to come and discuss what they heard and what they, what they come to bring to the table. And it's, it's the. At this price point, the quality of the attendees, extraordinarily high. They're very committed to this issue. They're very smart, and they are as interesting as the speakers in a lot of cases. And just tons of really, like, that was the biggest feedback from the original conference was like, more on conference. Let us talk to each other. Let us, Let us build together.
- [47:40]
B
Spilled over here. Like I was saying, we had a few people stop by here after, and they were like, the conversation that was happening at the conference, like, continued. And we're like, oh, where are you guys at? And they were like, oh, we're at this Natalism concert. Ben Braddock, we actually recorded Nice the week he was here. And like, me, him and Michael Goldstein had a conversation about the content at the conference.
- [48:02]
A
Awesome.
- [48:03]
B
Yeah, I love. And yeah, it is. It's very important. And again, going back to my story, I don't think I recognized how. How bad the problem was until I physically got away from my nuclear and extended family and was like, oh, shit, this is really bad. I think me and my wife, like, again feel very fortunate. Like, she was best friends with my cousin growing up. Her mom and dad, my parents knew each other. Her parents are very good friends of my aunts and uncles. They all. She grew up with my cousins in a different county in Pennsylvania. And so, like, when We. I started courting her when I was 17. It was like a very natural fit. And as we've gotten married, there is some. Not that my wife and I are deeply in love, but going back to the family dynamic, there is some social sort of structure set in place where even if we wanted to get divorced, it would just be so socially ostracized within our family group that it wouldn't be worth it.
- [49:04]
A
Yeah. People treat those things as if they're adversarial. That the idea of. That there's a social context that. That sort of keeps you channeled, that that's at odds with sort of the serendipity and the magic and the beauty of love.
- [49:23]
B
I don't think so at all.
- [49:24]
A
I don't think it is at all. I think. I think it actually helps you to find each other, helps you to focus. Like, it maintains the ability to build that. Like, what's happening now is total diffusion and total. Like, nobody's making. It's not like we tore down all those rules and everybody suddenly became deeply, passionately, vibrantly in love. It's completely the opposite. It's just completely sexless. Not sexless, but unerotic culture. And. Yeah, so you mentioned having this big extended family. I think that's how you solve the. Well, there's so many information problems now. It's not just. It's not just finding a spouse. There are so many problems now where the information environment is so overwhelming. There's so much optionality. There's so much possibility that one person can't possibly assess it all. And you're finding that people sort of spontaneously are gravitating toward these affinity groups where some of that search can be sort of crowdsourced and there's more nodes in the network and richer connections are possible. And I think it's sort of a rebirth of community within the new technological environment. Like, we sort of had this deterritorialization where we were sort of broken loose from these categories defined by geography. And now we're trying to rebuild on these grounds of affinity. And so, like, a lot of what I see is, like, what I want to get out of the conference personally, is I want to connect with the kind of people that I want to introduce my wife and kids to, because I want my kids to have really solid playmates and mentors and peers and rivals, people who challenge them. And then eventually, you know, so the way. The way I put it is, like, you may have heard the saying, like, you know, if you want to know what your kids will Be like, they're going to be like your spouse. You, like, you pick your spouse on the basis of like, this is someone I want my kids to be like. I think the way you pick your grandkids is you pick your tribe because your tribe is who your kids are going to marry. People that you work with and socialize with and interact with and go to church with. Like, that's who your kids are going to marry if you do it right. And so what I want to do is I want to make sure that I have great, admirable, excellent kids and that they meet other admirable, excellent kids and they have excellent grandbabies. And because fundamentally, I think that's sort of like this bottleneck that we're passing through is extreme.
- [52:18]
B
Yeah.
- [52:18]
A
We need to be on our game.
- [52:19]
B
Yeah. And my wife and I joke about it quite often. It's like, we're pretty because we're not an arranged marriage. But you could squint and look at our situation, be like, was that arranged? It wasn't. It was natural. But we joke like we're pro arranged marriage because just thinking about how easy our life through the courting and marriage process and having children has been made because of the integration of our families is, I don't think you should discount that. Like, it is something that is very undervalued and that you should search for. If you're out there looking for me, like, depend on these, these networks, these filtering systems.
- [52:57]
A
Yeah. I think even more or less normal people, like, they don't have to be like weird political people like me. I think most people, if you describe like, what would be your ideal dating situation, how would you like to meet your spouse? What they will describe is something that is, is like a, essentially the modern version of arranged marriage, which is like your, your mom and all your aunts get together and they sort of put together some dossiers. Right. And then you choose from the dossiers. Right. Like, I think, I think the search part and the soul searching of like, you know, is this person really a fit? If you have lots of people who know you from the outside and understand you and love you and have your best interests at heart. Like, at minimum, if you have that group of people telling you, like, go ahead, green flag, you know, that I think would make it so much more easy to relax for a lot of people. And this is something that I've talked about. It's a little bit strange, but like, part of the reason why I didn't want to do too much doom and gloom on the issue is that a huge part of the dance of mating, for lack of a better term, that is being disrupted right now is the. The looseness, the fun, the casualness, the openness. I've talked about this in a couple other places, but, like, the fact that you could. The fact that you could, like, be sending some amorous tweets to a girl and those might be broadcast on Instagram the next day, that's a huge disruptor of the dance. And because you kind of need to get into.
- [55:06]
B
Is she gonna put me on blast?
- [55:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you could, because the whole point is that you need to be in this, like, relaxed, kind of irrational, emotional headspace to flirt and connect. I mean, that's why bars exist, right? Like, so I'm a latter day saint, I don't drink. But, like, it's clear the reason that bars exist is because people need to be in a relaxed, low key state for things like that to happen. And so that's not a facilitator I would use, but it's a facilitator. And so the fact that we are under constant observation, the fact that we are constantly in artificial, highly legible, like, Panopticon environments where our moves can always be judged, that's like death to libido and eroticism and connection between people.
- [56:03]
B
Yeah, we're not gonna doom.
- [56:08]
A
We're not gonna doom.
- [56:10]
B
I think another white pill. I think people, I do truly. Maybe it's the X bubble that we're in, the Twitter bubble that we're in, or the political bubble that we're in, whatever it may be. But I think millennials particularly are waking up to it. There's plenty of women, particularly, that I know, my extended network that have woken up to like, holy shit, I started this process too late. And you're beginning to see people voglit. I'm sure you saw the TikTok that went semi viral. Those people sitting in the circle. You had the girl there saying, I was taught to go to college, be a girl boss, get a job at all I want. Now that I've done that, I hate it. And all I want is a husband and some children and take care of them.
- [56:52]
A
Yeah.
- [56:52]
B
I think there is some sort of natural reversion to the mean, at least socially, where people are like, wait a second, maybe we fuck this up and need to begin rethinking about that. And I know that's happening in the millennial generation. I'm just curious if that's. And I don't know if you have the answer to this. But if the Gen Z is looking ahead to us, we, like, maybe we shouldn't repeat the mistakes that they did.
- [57:16]
A
I think it's taking an interesting shape, which is, I think that they are, they're much less careerist than any living generation. Right. They're like, clearly the answers aren't there. And that in some cases has led to a kind of like, nihilism. Mm. It's like, you know, it's, it's not the career thing and it's not anything else. But I think in a lot of cases it's like it's leading to this, like, searching, spiritual searching and. Yeah, I mean, you know, the fact that I don't, I don't think, I don't think that we're gonna get back to. Well, I don't think we ever get back to anything. Like, I think time only goes in one direction, but we are experiencing a kind of spiritual revival among a subset of the population. And so, like, there's a conversation about, like, you know, can we nose up? It's like, number one, who's we? Right? Like, can the world nose up? The world's going to have demographic problems. Like, like there's nobody who has a megaphone big enough to make it so that the world doesn't have some kind of demographic problem in the 2030s that's baked in. And even if they did, like, like the kids that will define that labor shortage are already 10. So like, you can't make more 10 year olds. You can only make more babies. Right. So that's happening, clearly. But can, can America figure this out? I think maybe they can. Can your tribe, your community, your family figure this out unambiguously? Absolutely they can. And in fact, the, the, the fact that we are. The fact that there are certain phenomena that the institutions that sort of run the world as it is right now can't see. Like, this should be an existential project for the Chinese, for the Koreans, for the Japanese, for the U.S. for Europe, all of them. It's not. Because these institutions are not built to perceive threats that are, you know, you have to do something about them now. And in 18 years you get the payoff, right.
- [60:00]
B
As a high velocity trash economy focuses on.
- [60:03]
A
Exactly.
- [60:03]
B
Monthly statements, quarterly growth, all that.
- [60:06]
A
Exactly, exactly. And so in the absence of that, it's like, there's money lying on the table, both literally and figuratively, because the big institutions can't handle problems like this. But we can. Humans exercising human judgment totally can. And so, yeah, I think, I think, I think the people who are aware enough to be concerned about this and to take action on it and to connect with other people who care about it, they're going to figure it out. Totally. They're going to figure it out.
- [60:47]
B
Yeah. This is actually reminding me of a conversation lunch last Friday with somebody and somebody in the investment world. We were talking about like the problems with investing, particularly venture capital investing, PE investing, like even look at the stock markets, look at price to earnings ratios. And it's just all been. Everything has been reoriented around the high velocity trash economy of what are your quarterly financials, what's that looking at? And what are the flows of capital from the money printer into these assets and tying it back to Bitcoiners obviously like to focus on lowering time preference thinking longer term, building families is part of that. But then reintroducing patient capital into the market via bitcoin. Because you have the ability to accumulate wealth in a hard asset and.
- [61:40]
A
If.
- [61:40]
B
The trend continues, adoption continues, the purchasing power of your bitcoin is going to go up. And so therefore you can begin making long term capital allocation decisions. And I do think it's a core part of the problem is the money. People talk about the economic situation more broadly and the fact that two people and two parents in the workforce, seven kids at daycare, inflation's running, it's harder to keep up. If we had good money, the ability to actually be productive, save and watch that purchasing power increase, it's like, all right mom, come back to the home, take care of the kids. And then it comes to rebuilding, maybe not even rebuilding to your point. You don't go back reorienting the world around institutions that are developed by people with this long term mindset, the good money is going to need to be part of that solution.
- [62:36]
A
Even just the fact that one of the things that we talked about in the beginning, the fact that the most influential and powerful people are psychologically really strange, I think is a consequence of the fake software economy. It's like there's a certain type of person who's excellent at solving that type of problem and they have a bias toward converting all of reality into that type of problem so that they can solve it the way they solve everything. And bitcoin has put so much wealth and so much new power in the hands of cranks. And I use that affectionately, like we need more cranks, we need more people with wild ideas. And like, um, the tech, the tech boom led to an inversion of like the jock nerd dichotomy. But it was like the nerds had to like pile into the paradigm of making money. It was like the nerds who were useful to that system, who, who could, who could sort of tend the managerial machines. And that's why, I mean, that's, that's in my view, that's why small tech is like, tends to be right wing and big tech tends to be like big blue blob, fake and gay. It's like the people who can snap into these capital systems and who can sort of be like, who can excel within that frame, who can stay within that frame, that's who has money. But with bitcoin, you know, it's anybody who holds bitcoin, right? Like, it's just anybody. So like Diogenes could not be a tech billionaire, but he could totally be a bitcoin billionaire, right? Like guy sitting in a urn, right? Like, that's, that's, that opens up all kinds of possibilities.
- [64:53]
B
And I don't want to harp too much on my personal story, but I do truly believe, like, without bitcoin, like I said, I got into bitcoin relatively early, was smart enough, maybe fortunate enough, lucky enough to squirrel away a little bit per paycheck. In my early 20s, like I was telling you before we hit record, like, I had a bout of unemployment.
- [65:18]
A
Right.
- [65:18]
B
Before I started this media company. I was unemployed for like 18 months, Bitcoin at that point. So this was like late 2015 into 2017 at that point. Bitcoin in 2015 went all the way down to 180. But then towards the end of 2016, started going back up and I took some odd jobs, made some money on the side and made it a point not to sell the bitcoin. But then it got to the point where I was with my wife for many years at that point. I was like, we need to get married. And bitcoin gave me the confidence to get married, having that saving that I built up over the course of four or five years. At that point I said, fuck it, it's time to get married. Let's get married, let's start a family. And I don't know if I'd been able to make that same decision if I didn't have that safety net of the savings that I'd built up in my early 20s.
- [66:12]
A
And individual situations are individual, but in the aggregate, it's obvious people don't breed in a cage. They don't like, they don't start families. If they don't, they're not in control of their lives. And so few People feel like they're in control of their lives. And I think you're right that it's absolutely, it's connected to the, the economic system that we live under and who's, and who's in power because of that. And yeah, I think, I think Bitcoin is a profoundly disruptive technology. The, the architecture of just blockchains in general creates the possibility, again, the possibility of privacy. The fact that you can, that you can do things and be things that are nobody's business.
- [67:01]
B
Yep.
- [67:02]
A
Like, that's immensely powerful and it's an immense return to a more natural way of life because like, even the most tyrannical, even the most powerful autocrats of the pre modern era had nowhere near the surveillance and enforcement tools that our state has. Not even close. And it's not just the state. It's like again, the fact that your, your, your date can like put you on blast on, on Instagram. Like, that's part of the whole Panopticon. Like, that's, that's. It's not just the state, it's this whole thing.
- [67:40]
B
Yeah, it's like the, like the girl blasting you on Twitter, she's like, I don't say SS agent, but like some like an external operative for the surveillance state. For who?
- [67:52]
A
Right. Like, and that's what you were talking about with like incentives. Like, it's not necessarily that it's a cabal, it's just that the incentives flow a certain way.
- [68:02]
B
And that was actually, I'm sure you saw, but Sam Hyde's monologue towards his letter to Elon Musk particularly, and that was the one section that really stood out to me was like, what are we competing against China on? Like, do we want this digital Panopticon? Do we want these just inputs, cogs in the machine, in the economy? And I think it is time. And honestly, there's never been a better time with this current administration. I mean, J.D. vance going explicitly saying humans are not economic inputs in some machine that you just put them in was incredible, dude. Was incredibly incredible to see. And I think the way Sam phrased that as monologue, I do think we do need to have the conversation as Americans, particularly with this. I think Trump administration should think deeply about this too. Like, what are we competing against China on? Like, what KPIs, is it birth rate? Is it energy output? I think we need to get more focus on the social side of things. Like, what is, what is an America? What is a strong America? And I think falling back to being able to form these strong Nuclear and extended families and these tribes beyond that is something that we should really begin to shift the narrative toward totally. That's why I'm happy you're starting this conference.
- [69:21]
A
Well, thanks, man. Connects to the Elon thing. It connects to China, it connects to bitcoin. Like the fact that if you are not. If your answer, if your framework, if your structure, no matter what else it gets right, if it's not convincing young people to fall in love and have kids, it's failing. It's going to fail because it's just people. The purpose of a society or a community or a state should be the people of that society. And if they're opting out of existence, something's gone wrong, you're messing it up. And so, yeah, that's what we want to talk about. And it's going to be an incredible group of people. I'm really excited to hear the bitcoin angle, like in depth at the conference because I think, and I hope we get a lot of bitcoin people to come, because I think so. Last round we had sort of a lot of tech people and a lot of people who are sort of right leaning tech people. So a lot of them were into bitcoin. And then we had like a big kind of trad contingent. It almost kind of presaged the Trump coalition in some ways. It was like people who clearly were like, oh, we need to, we need to find the right words. Right, right, right. But we didn't have any explicit, like, let's talk about the money, which I think is a tremendous addition. Yeah.
- [71:05]
B
It'S extremely important. And again, I'm beating a dead horse here now, but I think that's going on the bitcoin side of things. We've been talking about this for years. We've been noticing this growing trend and this fervor around this new political movement saying this is not working and what ultimately led to Trump the first time and now the second time. And it's funny because I'm an investor, we invest in bitcoin businesses and nobody is seeing the opportunity in the broader venture landscape for investing in bitcoin companies, which we're sort of perplexed by, but we also sort of love because there's less competition to get into great companies that we think are going to build infrastructure that leads people to this superior technology. But there's so many otherwise sensible, really sharp people out there that have not realized that a part of the puzzle to ultimately getting to the end state that they talk about getting to is bitcoin. And yeah, it's blown our minds for, like. And that's part of the reason we started this here in Austin as this energy from the tech sector. Bitcoin, you got the comedy scene. Like, it feels like a lot is coalescing. Incredible town, particularly around this corner that we're on right now. Like you said, we're cranks to a certain extent, so people think we're crazy. But it's like, no, if you guys just add. Sprinkle in a little bitcoin to what you're trying to do.
- [72:40]
A
Can I. Can I drop a theoret 3 on theory on you? Why that's happening? Why? So I worked at Lockheed in strategy, and we would. We would talk about. I was cubicle drone and do anything important, but I was. I was on strategy team. And we would talk about the radars and the missiles and the airstrips and everything about the South China Sea. We would never talk about nuclear weapons. And that was really puzzling to me until I met Malcolm Collins, who was a VC in Korea. And he would go talk to investment banks and people who were involved in vc and nobody would ever talk about the birth rate in Korea, which is equally existential for the Korean people. And I started putting it together and I was like, you know, if. If you make a. If you're. If you're a PM Lockheed or a VP or something, a director, and you decide internally that I'm going to place a bet on nuclear war, global thermonuclear.
- [73:44]
B
War.
- [73:46]
A
How do you cash in your chips when you win? Like, how do you make an internal bet? That's right. And then you get something, you get a promotion, you get a raise, something. Well, you kind of can't, because that thing's. If you're right, that thing's going to zero the whole thing.
- [74:01]
B
Congrats, you won. You're dead right.
- [74:03]
A
Similarly, how do you make a bet on. To be clear, individuals can make a bet on nuclear war, right? They can build the bunker, they can whatever, but, like, the institution will not survive. So if you're climbing that ladder and you want to stay on that ladder, you just kind of have to say, well, probably nuclear war won't happen. And in Korea, it's similar. It's like no one, no internal constituency within that institution can place a winning bet on the collapse of Korean fertility. And what that's going to mean, the way to place that winning bet is to get out of that institution. And I think similarly with bitcoin, if you're catching people who are climbing a ladder that is sort of predicated on the dollar not collapsing. There's no way for them internally to win if they're right. The only way for them to win if they're right is to get out and get into bitcoin. So, like, it doesn't surprise me that they're not wanting to sort of cross the streams. Yeah, you kind of have to jump off.
- [75:08]
B
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a very good point. And it makes a lot of sense.
- [75:15]
A
And it just like you say, it creates opportunities for you to make investments.
- [75:18]
B
Yeah.
- [75:19]
A
And that's kind of the, kind of, that's the kind of thing we want to talk about at the conference. Like how can people who are aware of this set themselves up to succeed?
- [75:26]
B
Yeah. And I think there's. And that's got crank. Crank McCrank.
- [75:32]
A
It's a fun word.
- [75:33]
B
Maybe too optimistic. No, particularly anybody following you to the show is not aware of it. I'm going to sound crazy. I'm looking right in the. I'm going to sound crazy. But we've heard the meme of a manufactured soft landing in the news. Whether that's from the Treasury, Biden administration, Trump administration, the Federal Reserve, the conversation of soft landing, like how do we thread the economic needle via perfect policy decisions on interest rates and monetary base expansion and contraction and treasury issuance. I truly think bitcoin is the way you manufacture a soft landing. Because to your point, a lot of people may be thinking, I can't cross pollinate with bitcoin because it completely negates what I've worked my whole life to get up to and the system I built up within. And I agree, I'll give you that it could collapse. I do think bitcoin is superior. And ultimately the system that you built your career in and the way it wired your brain is completely wrong view of the world. A decade, two decades from now, I think it's going to look completely different. But you're going to have this transitionary period and bringing it back. The system that we've built up, particularly financially within the banking system is just filled with a bunch of shit debt that needs to be recapitalized, refinanced essentially. And we're beginning to see the beginnings of it. You can see MicroStrategy with their convertible debt. We've got a portfolio company that's underwriting commercial real estate loans where it's dual collateralized with the property and bitcoin. They're saying, all right, we're going to give you cash to refi pay off your existing mortgage. Here's a little cash to make some changes to the property, upgrade it, and here's some cash to buy bitcoin to hold within the loan structure. And it's a 10 year loan. The longer you hold the loan, the more bitcoin you get at the end. So you sort of incentivize people to stay in, pay it off, create income, make sure they're running a good business. And so while I get the feeling and understand the feeling of people in that world saying I can't get into bitcoin because it will collapse everything I do, it's like it could if you don't do it the right way. But there is this sort of like you can just inject bitcoin little by little and transition into this harder money by recapitalizing the shit debt with better collateral in the form of bitcoin.
- [78:06]
A
Right. I think that would be how you'd have to think about it. You have to give them a, give them an escape hatch. Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. I think that's the right approach. Yeah.
- [78:19]
B
Sorry. I talked a lot. I don't know how deep down the bitcoin rabbit hole you are.
- [78:23]
A
I'm not terribly, I mean, I hold it, but I don't. I'm not in that world.
- [78:29]
B
And that's why I'm excited is again going back to whether it's like the VC world, finance world. But I think I've talked to Ben about this and others. I've talked to the guys at the Blaze about this and I hate to make it political, but it is very obvious the conservative movement that has these goals that they want to get to. And I think a lot of people on the conservative side of the aisle are missing. Bitcoin is a tool to help bring about that ultimate goal that you're striving toward.
- [79:08]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. I think I, I think a lot of Republicans and Republican money are sort.
- [79:21]
B
Of.
- [79:23]
A
Getting shook loose by the, by the sort of the new, the new paradigm. And it's a really exciting time. I've been reaching out to politicians and basically saying like, look, this is, I am, I am interested to hear from anybody on any political, of any political persuasion. All I care about is like survival and flourishing and thriving. And I want everybody to do it. Like, by the way, like a lot of people have this like triumphalism about like, you know, we're going to outbreed the libs or whatever because they're not having kids. That's true. But I think it's bad. The temperaments, the types of people who are currently chasing experiences and chasing careers and not having kids. Many of these people are incredibly productive, incredibly creative, and they create beauty and. And utility and all kinds of good things that I think we should have and that we want. And so I don't actually want to see them wiped out. Like, I want them to figure this out and get onside. Having said that, this issue of natalism lays bare the total inadequacy of liberalism to, like, deal with the problems of our time. Totally exposes, like, even by their own standards, like, it won't be good for poverty, it won't be good for the developing world, it won't be good for the planet. It's like none of the stuff that they would argue. It's not going to be good for racial comedy or equality or any of that. That's gonna be terrible for all those things. So, like, even by its own. By their own sort of framework, their own value system, it's falling apart, and it's falling apart because they can't persuade people to have kids. And so, like, I've been. I've been reaching out to politicians and I've been. I've been saying, like, look, this, this issue, number one, it unites the clans. It brings together so many different tribes of people who otherwise would have very little in common. I think it's like Bitcoin in that respect. But it also, it provides a fundamental, like a Manichean binary between the light and the dark. Like, do you want life and flourishing? Do you want extermination? Like that. Those are the choices that are being sort of set before you. And it's an incredibly powerful framing. And so we're sort of trying to get people more involved with that.
- [82:18]
B
Yeah. I think one of the most potent memes, like the last five to seven years, has probably just been labeling the Davos Globalist blob class as Malthusians.
- [82:29]
A
Yeah.
- [82:30]
B
Like their policies, their stated policy goals. Not even their goals, but what they identify as the core of the problem is the human.
- [82:39]
A
Right. Biomass. Yeah.
- [82:41]
B
They need to. I mean, climate change is the perfect example if we need less humans because we're destroying the planet. So stop breeding, stop using energy. You're a bad. You're a bad human.
- [82:53]
A
And collectively bad for being a human. Yeah.
- [82:56]
B
Yeah. And I think people went along with that for a certain period of time, but I think it's all right. I think we're finally at a point, I don't want to say I made the mistake of calling Pete Clown World, like three years ago. And I'll never try to time the top of Clown World.
- [83:14]
A
That's a dangerous move.
- [83:17]
B
But it does. I get ragged on a lot for that Pete Clown World call. So I'm not going to call Pete Clown World, but I will say it does seem like many people are coming to their senses. Like this is. The Malthusian frame is wrong and we need to reorient.
- [83:32]
A
And with the USAID thing, it's shocking how much work has gone into pushing that. Do you know how I heard this recently? Do you know how many times Paul, or, you know, Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb, wrote the book about, you know, everything's gonna, you know that's where Soylent Green comes from.
- [83:49]
B
Yep.
- [83:49]
A
We're gonna live in Trash World because there's gonna be too many people. And you know how many times he went on Johnny Carson? 18 times.
- [83:59]
B
Holy shit.
- [84:01]
A
Right?
- [84:01]
B
It's a pure mockingbird.
- [84:03]
A
They just had him over and over and over and over to pump that.
- [84:06]
B
I didn't tell you this, and it didn't hit me until last week, but we were, I guess, indirectly targeted by usaid. Really the center for Countering Digital Hate put us on a list. Oh boy, we're on a list. Particularly about climate change. We are new deniers according to them. But they got funded by usaid, so US taxpayers have contributed to getting this channel on a list.
- [84:28]
A
That's great. I mean, that was my doxxing. My doxxing was paid for by. Not. I don't know if it was usaid, but there was state involvement for sure.
- [84:37]
B
Yeah. I don't know if you want to dive into the doxing story, but I have like a surface layer understanding of what happened. Like you were working and somebody at work found your Twitter account.
- [84:48]
A
No, no, no, no, no. Basically I was already on. So. So a reporter at the Guardian was actually. This is, this is how. This is the state involvement. A reporter at the Guardian was funded by the German intelligence services to create a hate speech web of Twitter, basically. And it's funny because. So I'm a latter day Saint and there were all these like camps and it was like the. The tech bros and the right wing bodybuilders and the Neo pagans and the. And then because they were like circling clusters on the map and one of the clusters was like random guys with followers. Like, we don't know who these guys are. It was because it was us. It was this, it was this latter day saint Twitter. So we would joke about like random guys with followers Extremism, random guys with followers, nationalism. But yeah, so basically I knew that they were on to me for about a year, and I had this decision to make. Like, you know, do I, you know, do I, Do I shut her down? And basically I concluded that, like, apart from my family, it was like the only meaningful thing I was doing with my day was this communication, this talking. And so I was like, no, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna keep going. And so when they finally doxxed me, there was an antifa doxxing ring out of uvu. There's like this trans professor of socio. Something, I don't remember. Anyway, they got into a group chat that we were a part of and basically rolled up like half a dozen of us or a dozen of us or something. And we, you know, every week we would watch as some other guy got docs. And so I was like, right in the middle of this. This event, this infiltration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I think I was like the fourth out of like a dozen. And basically on Monday, I, you know, because I worked for a sec, a defense contractor, intelligence contractor. And so, like, you know, at other companies, I would, you know, if somebody accused me of having an on Twitter account, I would kind of be like, you know, fuck you. Prove it. Right? But this was like I had clearance, so I had to go report it to security and be like, this happened. So Monday I was told, you know, go home while we figure this out. And Wednesday I was fired. And that Friday I started exit. And basically what happened was I had a bunch of people reach out to me and be like, hey, you know, we want to help. Like, some of them, you know, they were concerned for me personally, which I really appreciated. But like, more than that, it was August of 2021. It was right as the vax mandates were coming out. It was kind of not peak woke, but it was kind of a really dark period, a low point. And a lot of people were just like, they can't keep getting away with this. They can't keep just having these uncontested and just knocking our people out with no recourse. And so people were trying to help me out, and I love that. And I was trying to help my friends out who were being fired. And I thought, you know, instead of me just taking one of these jobs, what if we just all got together and we started like work on this problem, which not the problem of doxing per se, but just the problem that we were totally at the mercy of these people who hated us. How could we be more sovereign. How could we build something that. That we were really in control of? And, you know, toward that end, one. So we got together, we had. I had 70 guys sign up in the first two weeks, which is incredible. So I was like, all right, I'm onto something. And we've built it from there. But we quickly realized, like, what are we actually doing here? Why do we feel the need to, like, run our mouths on the Internet? Like, what are we fighting for? Why are we opposed to this system? And, you know, I would talk to people of various faiths, and, like, some of these guys aren't religious. They're like Nietzschean vitalists or whatever, you know, and whom I respect. Love those guys. But. But we. We were like, what are we about together? And it's like, well, if we don't speak up, if we don't fight back, they're gonna sterilize our kids. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna make it so that we can't continue what we're. Because what we are doing, what we have is a threat to that power and our ability to speak. And so it was like, yeah, it's about, do we get to have grandkids or not? And then we watched. I was at an exit meetup, and we were watching Tucker Carlson's documentary the End of Men, which is raw, ag nationalist, and a couple other friends talking to, like, Tucker and RFK about, like, what's the cause of the sperm count decline, the obesity epidemic, the microplastics, the xenoestrogens, all that stuff. And I said, you know, this is. The fundamental problem is are we gonna have grandkids? This is what it's all about. Why don't we get people together to talk about that as a. As a big picture issue? Not just. Not just the medical side of it, but the whole. The sociological, the ideological, and. Yeah, so that was. That was the genesis of Exit and then the conference. And so Exit still going. We've got 230 guys, and we. We have.
- [90:34]
B
I just.
- [90:35]
A
Just had a meet up in Dallas last night. They've got a cowork up there with the new founding guys. I'm familiar with them.
- [90:40]
B
I am, actually. They've recorded in this before.
- [90:45]
A
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, so they're good friends. We collaborate a lot, and we've got a pretty solid crew in Houston, Austin, and Dallas, which is sort of why I made the choice to move down here. And then a big cluster in Salt Lake and in, like, New York, D.C.
- [91:03]
B
Hell, yeah, so no, it's awesome to see and it's something. It's funny independently. Like that's what a lot of bitcoiners have thought about this as well. Again, lowering time preference, building family.
- [91:15]
A
Hopefully.
- [91:17]
B
Many bitcoiners talk in like the context, like, how do you build generational wealth and then pass it down? So that's something I'm fascinated about as a topic just in general, it's just the transfer of wealth over generations. And how do you actually set up things so that your kids don't blow it and your grandkids don't blow it.
- [91:37]
A
One of our guys is actually an estate planning attorney who. That's his whole game is how do I set. How do I help you structure your business so that your kids can inherit it and pass and it becomes a patrimony, a meaningful patrimony. Yeah.
- [91:53]
B
And more importantly, like, how do you instill the values where, yeah, it's all part of kids aren't brats and they want to contribute to the family business or feel pride in the wealth and responsibility to preserve, hopefully grow it and pass it on to their kids.
- [92:09]
A
He would say that he did a whole presentation to this, on this to the guys was tremendous. But he would say that the families that are the most successful in instilling that are families that take responsibility for some component of their community that's like in line with their business arrangements, but also sort of in line with their values. Like I think he was talking about, I can't remember the nature of their business, but it had something to do with water treatment or processing or something. And like, apparently there's a family that like, their whole thing is like, we're responsible for the Trinity river in Dallas and we, it's. It's our job to take care of that river. And so, so like having a generational vocation almost. Yeah, yeah. Generational vocation is a good word for it. Like, like something to be about that isn't just like filling dad's shoes because that's obviously time bound and a pretty like imperfect target.
- [93:11]
B
Yeah, that's actually really interesting.
- [93:14]
A
Yeah, I'll put you in touch with him.
- [93:16]
B
This has been great. I know you gotta get out of here. I can't wait for the conference.
- [93:20]
A
Yeah, man, it's gonna be a great time.
- [93:21]
B
Natalism.org natalism.org where else can people go?
- [93:27]
A
Natalismorg on Twitter is probably the best place to find. And then I'm extra dead. Jcb I've been doing a lot of the sort of natalism posting so, yeah, those places. And then exit group us is for the group, if anybody's interested in that. But, yeah, it's March 28th and 29th here in Austin, Texas, downtown. And we're going to do, like, offer code Marty for 10% off. So, yeah, come on down.
- [93:54]
B
Check it out. Kevin, thank you. You're crushing it, dude.
- [93:58]
A
Thanks, man.
- [94:00]
B
Peace and love.