#076 - Freddie New - From Caesar to Starmer: The Death of a Nation

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Peter McCormack Show #076

"Freddie New – From Caesar to Starmer: The Death of a Nation"

Date: May 21, 2025
Host: Peter McCormack
Guest: Freddie New

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the systemic challenges currently facing the UK—spanning government inefficiency, public sector bloat, economic decline, and the parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and the state of modern Britain. Host Peter McCormack and guest Freddie New (lawyer, fintech/bitcoin advocate, classics scholar) weave together contemporary economic woes, the problems of unaccountable government and civil service, the risks/opportunities of Bitcoin, and historical analogies drawn from ancient Rome. The discussion oscillates between critique, dark humour, philosophical reflection, and the exploration of solutions—most notably the hope found in localism over national reform.

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Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Government Inefficiency & Public Sector Bloat

• Guardian Article Breakdown ([01:16]–[07:50])

  • Peter introduces a Guardian article stating the UK may need 92,000 more public sector workers due to falling productivity.
    • Peter: “Because people are so shit at their jobs in government, they need more shit people to deliver their services. Is that a fair summary?” ([01:55])
  • Freddie agrees but unpacks the loaded assumptions; such an increase is driven by low productivity, leading to more hiring instead of fixing efficiency.
  • Osborne's austerity led to a million fewer public sector jobs between 2010–2015; COVID reversed this trend ([03:47]).
  • Peter: “If your team isn’t productive enough, you don’t get more people in to fill the gap... It’s a startling and obvious point.” ([04:52])

• Incentive Problems in Government vs. Business ([05:12]–[07:50])

  • Freddie argues government has no market discipline—if funds aren’t sufficient, it debases money; businesses can’t do this ([05:21]).
  • Peter outlines how government red tape and mandated costs (minimum wage, pensions, insurance) create market distortions and make business harder ([06:27]).
  • National Insurance discussed as a misunderstood tax, not a personal savings pot ([09:41]).

2. The Tax Burden & Regulatory Overreach

• Complexity and Hidden Costs

  • Freddie highlights the spiraling accountancy costs caused by government complexity. He refers to “lubrication industries” (accountants, compliance officers) emerging just to navigate red tape ([12:43]).
    • Freddie: “Knut calls these lubrication industries... to ensure that the government dildo is sufficiently lubricated for when it goes in.” ([13:20])
  • Regulatory burden in financial/bitcoin sectors is causing companies to avoid the UK altogether ([15:18]).
    • Freddie: “The UK market is no longer big enough for it to be worth the cost of entering the market.” ([15:30])

• New Crypto Regulatory Regimes

  • Discussion of CAF (Crypto Asset Reporting Framework) and the Travel Rule, which require detailed records and extensive data-sharing for all crypto transactions. Danger cited: this forms a massive honeypot of personal data vulnerable to hacks ([16:18]–[19:37]).
  • Freddie: “If we can’t rely on...the UK Ministry of Defence...to keep our data safe, it’s a fair assumption that all these exchanges will be honeypots of data.” ([18:14])
  • Real-world consequences: personal danger for asset-holders, referencing kidnappings and violence in France ([19:00]).

3. Systemic Rot: Bureaucracy, Civil Service, and Political Parties

• Civil Service as Deep State ([27:31]–[30:22])

  • Freddie: The more insidious issue is not elected government but civil service bureaucracy—“the unelected, behind-the-scenes decision-makers who formulate a lot of the policies the government are the front people for.” ([27:31])
  • Both discuss the persistence of the ‘Byzantine’ bureaucracy, referencing the Byzantine Empire as a metaphor for complex, unaccountable systems.
  • Peter: “Government isn’t just failing at a macro level, it’s failing at a micro level.” ([31:22]) Local councils constrained by central government mandates.

• Democracy, Representation, and the Party Whip ([21:00]–[26:00])

  • Peter compares modern British civic frustrations to those of American colonies under King George (“taxation without representation”).
  • The existence of the party whip makes true representation impossible.
    • Peter: “If you have the whip, where’s the representation?” ([23:01])
    • Freddie: “MPs are not representing the views of their constituents if they’re being told to vote a particular way by their party leader.” ([23:33])

• Parliament vs. Business Experience

  • Critique that too many politicians lack real-world experience, having followed a career path from elite university straight into politics ([46:45]).
    • Freddie: “We’ve got children in charge of the country, inexperienced idiots... very, very intelligent, but in the way that you’re good at passing exams.” ([48:50], [48:57])

4. Demographics and Economic Decline

• Welfare Dependency and Birth Rates ([38:05]–[45:41])

  • Freddie provides numbers: 500k civil servants, 6m public sector workers, and 20m on welfare/benefits ([38:05]).
  • Only 17 million pay more in tax than they take out—a shrinking base supports an aging, growing dependent cohort ([39:39]).
    • Peter: “If you are someone who holds bitcoin, actually some of this is great for you... But for the country, it’s a disaster.” ([44:47])
  • Comparison to Japan’s demographic collapse and the UK’s low fertility rate ([41:16]–[43:38]).

• Failure to Diagnose and Act

  • Peter bemoans the lack of clear, honest government communication and planning.
    • Peter: “If they know it and they don’t make a change, they’re evil. And if they don’t know it, they’re stupid.” ([45:41])

5. Historical Analogies: Rome and Revolution

• Parallels to the Fall of Rome ([51:36]–[62:33])
  • Entertaining but substantive discussion about the expansion/decline of Rome, coin debasement, and how empires rot from within.
  • Freddie: “Certain elements of the way that humans behave haven’t changed that much... People always tend to act in their own self-interest, above the interests of others.” ([61:23])
  • Using Classics background, Freddie explains coinage, governance and the slow degradation of stable systems ([59:18], [59:36]).

6. Reforms, Bitcoin, and Localism as Solutions

• Bitcoin as Treasury Solution

  • Discussion about British government’s bitcoin holdings, and their ignorance of its value ([78:41]).
    • Freddie: “They own enough bitcoin to pay the winter fuel allowance for two and a half years...” ([78:22])
    • UK is third-biggest national bitcoin holder; yet, there’s no strategy, even as government faces a budget crisis ([80:21]).
  • Hopes and risks around strategic bitcoin purchasing or mining as potential national economic strategy ([80:55]).

• Localism

  • Endorsing the idea of localism—change initiated at the community level rather than waiting for top-down reform ([72:42]–[84:41]).
    • Freddie: “Focusing on localism and what you can do in your town, in your local community, is a good place to start. And it may take 30 or 40 years, but everything has to start somewhere.” ([84:16], [84:41])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On public sector bloat

  • Peter: “Because people are so shit at their jobs in government, they need more shit people to deliver their services. Is that a fair summary?” ([01:55])

• On red tape and business burden

  • Freddie: “Knut calls these lubrication industries... or to ensure that the government dildo is sufficiently lubricated for when it goes in.” ([13:20])

• On civil service

  • Freddie: “An unbelievably complex and difficult to unseat bureaucracy of different officials... impossible to get rid of because they were unelected. I think that’s actually more problematic than the government.” ([28:45])

• On MPs’ experience

  • Freddie: “We’ve got children in charge of the country, inexperienced idiots... very, very intelligent, but in the way that you’re good at passing exams.” ([48:50], [48:57])

• On the ‘deep state’

  • Peter: “Government isn’t just failing at a macro level, it’s failing at a micro level. The whole thing’s ready.” ([31:22])

• On historical failure

  • Peter: “We’re essentially experiencing what they [America’s Founders] feared. We’re living through what they feared.” ([68:37])

• On seeking solutions

  • Freddie: “Focusing on localism and what you can do in your town... That’s probably the positive outcome... you can make a difference in your town, in your county, and then once enough differences have been made at that level, then that trickles upwards.” ([74:49]–[75:18])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:16] – Guardian article and public sector jobs debate.
• [04:00] – Austerity, public sector employment, COVID impact.
• [06:27] – Business burden from regulatory and payroll pressures.
• [12:43] – Accountancy costs, “lubrication industries” analogy.
• [16:18] – Crypto regulation, CAF, data privacy concerns.
• [21:00] – Party whip, representation, “taxation without representation” parallel.
• [27:31] – Civil service, deep state, and bureaucratic rot.
• [31:22] – Failures at local government level.
• [38:05] – Demographics: welfare, civil service, dependency ratios.
• [41:16] – Japan as cautionary tale; UK’s aging demographics.
• [46:45] – Politicians’ lack of real-world/business experience.
• [51:36] – Rome, coin clipping, analogies to UK decline.
• [78:22] – Government bitcoin holdings and strategic potential.
• [74:49], [84:16] – Localism as hope for bottom-up change.

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Tone and Language

• Blunt, irreverent, and at times darkly humorous.
• Candid, with frequent self-deprecating asides and mutual teasing.
• Deeply critical of government, bureaucracy, and the status quo—but not nihilistic; focus turns to pragmatic, local action.
• Historical analogies and philosophical references provide depth (Classics, American Founders, Hayek, Friedman).

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Final Thoughts

The episode paints a bleak picture of the UK’s national trajectory—mired by government ineptitude, demographic decline, and systemic rot. Yet, it holds out localism and community-driven reform as a possible route to renewal, echoing ancient lessons about the dangers of unchecked bureaucracy and debased currency. The ultimate call is for realism, honesty, and action—preferably bottom-up—rather than naive faith in centralized salvation.

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“I don’t fully know what the answer is, but I’m hoping that we will steer clear from the unpleasant kinetic and violent collapse. I think focusing on localism and what you can do in your town, in your local community, that’s a good place to start. And it may take 30 or 40 years, but everything has to start somewhere.”
—Freddie New ([84:16])

Transcript

[A]

Personally, I'm a fan of the nhs. I think it would be run more efficiently, but I think most things will be run more efficiently. It's the two world problem, isn't it? You have the commercial world which has to run things efficiently because they don't survive if you don't. I'm at the sharp end of that with two of the businesses I advise right now. And then on the other hand, you have government which doesn't have to run anything efficiently because there are no consequences for it. But if you're in government and there are no consequences for your actions, I mean, it's brilliant for you, isn't it? Why would you ever change it?

[B]

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[A]

Good morning, Peter.

[B]

How are you, my man?

[A]

Very well, thank you. Nice. Nice to be back.

[B]

Yes. I want to start. You pinged me this Guardian article midweek and, and I think this is, I mean, there's a lot of out there at the moment, but this is a strong signal of how bad stuff is and what trying to like sift through the propaganda. I was like, but this is in the Guardian, this isn't in the Times or the Telegraph attacking them. So I was like, or is this the Guardian doing them a favor and trying to soft land this? But either way, just anyone who's listening, by the way, Freddie sent me this article from Monday. UK may need 92,000 extra public workers fall in productivity continues to 2030. I was like, okay, what does that actually mean? And it just means that because people are so shit at their jobs in government, they need more shit people to deliver their services. Is that a fair summary?

[A]

Essentially? I think there's quite a lot actually packed into that headline though, and a lot of assumptions, which is kind of why I pulled it out. I thought it was really fascinating. So just looking at the implications of that, so obviously, 92,000 ex Republic workers means an enormous additional cost to the wage bill as the first point of view. And the second, the ostensible reason for that increase in need for more public workers is because the existing ones, I assume, given the attention to productivity, are not actually doing their jobs. So the solution that Rachel Reeves has come up with is because people aren't working hard enough, we're going to pay even more people to not work very hard. Which is fantastic if you're one of those people who is now getting paid to work less effectively.

[B]

Is it her saying this? It says reports suggest Rachel Reeves could be forced to spend. It doesn't say she's saying. Is she quoted in here or anything?

[A]

No, that's fair. So I think it may be in unavoidable implication of the drop in productivity that she might have to include additional spending.

[B]

Oh, it's the ons the Office of National Statistics.

[A]

But on whose predictions one should never.

[B]

Rely more public sector workers needed for. What's this? What is this chart?

[A]

So I think that's the. The blue line is actual number of public sector workers. Exactly. And then the red line towards the right hand side of that chart shows what you. The additional number of people we would need in order to maintain the same level of services, given the fact that none of our existing ones are working hard enough.

[B]

So I actually want to know why we dropped in 2010, 2020, from six and a half million to essentially five and a half million. We shared. What's that? About 18% of our public sector workers.

[A]

Yeah. So bear in mind what was happening at the time. So for any listeners, we're looking at a chart which effectively shows an increase in the number of public sector workers till about 22,009, 2010, and then a sharp drop from about 6, just shy of 6.5 million down to about 5.5 million. So about a million lost over a five year period. Bear in mind what was happening during that period. The coalition government had come in 2010 and George Osborne had begun austerity.

[B]

Okay. Yes.

[A]

And so there was a reduction in the number of public sector workers over that period.

[B]

And then during the same Conservative government. Oh yeah, because so it appears that there was a massive increase during COVID and after Covid. I mean, it's one of those things you. There's no individual party here for blame. This is mainly conservative numbers.

[A]

It's completely endemic to the system. The way that it functions.

[B]

To me it's okay, so I sit here as somebody, you know, I'm a businessman You're a businessman, you know what it's like. If your team isn't productive enough, you don't get more people in to fill the gap because your turnover doesn't go up.

[A]

I mean, it's a startling and obvious point when you say it like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes. I mean, being very blunt and slightly facetious about it. The first thing to note is that government is essentially a non productive enterprise.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They do not produce goods and services that people necessarily pay for, at least not at a till in the way that you or I would understand it. And the second point is you've completely put your finger on there. If you're running a business, you have a statement of cash flow which shows your cash receipts and then you have to do what you can with the money that you make because you can't just make up the money. The huge advantage you have if you're running the government is you can. And the way that these 92,000 new public sector employees are going to be paid for is quite simple via debasement and dilution of our money. And that's not an option that is open to anyone who runs a business or who has a shop or runs a business of any other kind. You have receipts coming in the door and then you have to make those stretches as far as you can. I'm speaking with a certain amount of bitterness. Two of the businesses I'm working with at the moment are currently under extreme financial stress. And so we are very much at the sharp end. And you know, it'd be great if I was a government and I could, I could make up money that I could then pay people with.

[B]

Well, you're not on your own with that. You know, like every single business I run has a lot, a lot of pressure on it at the moment because our customers have less money, the things we are buying are costing more and our staff either want more money or I'm being forced to pay them more money. So in every direction there's a squeeze. The squeeze is mainly because of, because of the government. I'm not going to blame all of them. I was listening to that, telling my girlfriend this morning about why socialists are always wrong. And I played her that melee with speech he gave where he talked about how socialism has failed everywhere and just talks about market forces and all government intervention is a distortion on the market. And so I was like playing her, playing her that this morning. And, and it's almost like a refresher course, a reminder of like, okay, are we right? Am I right about this? And then when you start to play it, start to think about it. I was like, well, you know, if I wanted to pay a staff eight pound an hour because my business can allow for it to have, I don't know, two 20 year olds as a part time job who would accept eight pound an hour, that's, that's fine. But I'm forced to pay them, whatever it is, 12, 1175 an hour, 1223 an hour. But I also have to pay them a pension over a certain amount and I've also got to do these new national insurance contributions and 12.7% of their time has to be holiday allowance. So actually I'm really paying 13 pounds 75 an hour for a job where I know there's plenty of people who do it for eight pound. And so that's a distortion, that's a, puts a pressure on us. We have to raise our prices, our customers have to pay more. And then you throw into that the business rates. I'm like, okay, because of the business rates, I started to realize the majority of pressure on the business comes from government.

[A]

Oh absolutely. National Insurance is a fantastic example and so much has been said and written about that since the change was made. One of the most egregious things I find about national insurance is that those who pay it, whether businesses or employees, assume that they're paying into a pot that they'll see the benefit of in the future. Of course, national insurance, it's simply another form of tax which is not going to pay you in the future. It's going to pay people who are currently old and in receipt of pension that right now. And it's so interesting to look at this from through a mathematical lens because the way that the population is trending, there are not going to be enough. I mean you and I both, generation X, we're a relatively small generation and by the time we're old there won't be enough people paying national Insurance to keep pension benefits at the level that they currently are. And so that money, it provided that the government's still going to make pension contributions to, to us when we're old, that money's going to have to come from, from somewhere else. And if it's not coming from sufficient tax receipts, then again, the only solution is more creation of more money and more, more debasement and, and all of the unpleasant cycle that you just talked about.

[B]

Well, I hold on, I thought national Insurance was to pay for the nhs. Is it also for pensions?

[A]

Also for pension?

[B]

Right, okay, okay.

[A]

Predominantly for pensions. I Believe so.

[B]

Okay. I mean, there was a suggestion recently that having a separate national insurance is a dumb idea because it's additional work for the government where really it should be wrapped into a. Into our income tax.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's a very much more sensible way of doing it. And there are a lot of proponents for flat tax rates, which would greatly simplify the tax code. I forget how big the English and Welsh tax code is, but I know the United States one is. If you stacked it all on top of each other, it'd be taller than I am. And no human has read all of it, and very few humans can understand it. I mean, have you read the. There's a great letter that Rumsfeld used to send to the IRS every year. Have you ever seen it?

[B]

No.

[A]

Oh, it's one of. It's like a one pager, because obviously it's an offense in the US not to make your tax filings correctly. And Rumsfeld used to put his taxes. He'd file his tax return, and then he'd send this letter saying, you know, dear, dear irs, I appreciate that it's an offense if I've made a mistake here. I like to think I'm a relatively intelligent guy. I'm Secretary of the State for Defense of the United States of America. I am incapable of understanding the tax obligations I owe to the federal government. I've done my best.

[B]

Oh, here it is.

[A]

Oh, here you are. Wonderful.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Brilliant. Nice one. You found it.

[B]

Okay. Dear sir, Amanda, I've sent in our federal income tax and our Gift Tax Returns, 2013. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The tech code is so complex and forms are so complicated that I know that. I know that I cannot have any confidence. I know what is being requested, and therefore, I cannot and do not know and suspect many great Americans cannot know whether or not their tax returns are accurate. That reads a bit like the known knowns.

[A]

And, yeah, he liked that known unknowns thing. I like this one. So I say that. But as in prior years, it's important for you to know that I have absolutely no idea whether our tax returns and our tax payments are accurate. I say that despite the fact that I'm a college graduate and I try hard to make sure our tax returns are accurate.

[B]

Isn't this a guy who, like, lost 2 trillion, had a 2 trillion black hole in his.

[A]

It's possible. I mean, he probably lost a large number of American citizens and Iraqi civilians in the Middle east, so perhaps the money is not the worst thing he did. But, no, the point is he's a bright guy and he was trying to honestly file his tax returns, and they were so complex that it's impossible for him to know if they were right.

[B]

I mean, I find it funny, but I also find it difficult to consider Donald Rumsfeld as an honest person personally.

[A]

Well, you can be funny and still be a dick.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck. Well, there's another additional distortion that comes from this that hadn't at all crossed my mind until recently in that my accountancy bills are getting bigger and bigger. And I was like. I realized if we didn't have government, you wouldn't actually have to have an accountant.

[A]

That's an interesting question.

[B]

Well, hear me out, because what does my account to do? Files my VAT returns, files my tax returns, does my account, so they can do those. But I essentially run a mini P and L for each one of my businesses privately on my own anyway, so I know the state of them. And so I only need them for the bits where I do my. That ultimately to the filings. And I'm spending now over six figures a year on accountancy fees. And so how much am I spending on accountancy? Hr, legal and tax that disorder, the businesses.

[A]

Knut calls these lubrication industries. He says they're there to make and can think of that either as a lubrication for, you know, for. For. For industry in general or to ensure that the. The government dildo is sufficiently lubricated for when. When it goes in.

[B]

It's. To me, it's basically racketeering.

[A]

Yes, A lot of it. Turning it on his head, though. If there wasn't a government and we simply lived in, like, under martial law, you probably still need those people in order to make sure that you were paying the warlord the right amount of protection money.

[B]

Look, don't get me wrong, that's not. That's not the solution I want. I just think. I. I just think there's a lot of stupid people setting the rules by which we have to operate which are distorting our companies quite severely.

[A]

Oh, completely.

[B]

It's all a mess. Do you know, just. Just to throw it in there. Did you see Australia's just pass.

[A]

Pass this wealth tax, the superannuation? Yes. Unrealized gains over 3 million.

[B]

Yes. 30%. Is it?

[A]

Yeah. I don't know what. I haven't read enough about it yet, but it's. And I don't know if it's actually passed.

[B]

I think it just passed. Yeah. I was chatting to Danny this morning because, you know, he lives out in Australia.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

He was saying it's passed. He said it's 30% every year.

[A]

And I've heard that they wanted to extend it to things like your family home, which is ordinarily most tax jurisdictions exclude that from the ambid.

[B]

I mean, it's. Can you. Are you looking for it? Conversation. I mean, just the whole thing is like, it's not just here, it's everywhere you look. You're like, they're just trying to take a bit more here and trying to take a bit more there.

[A]

You said something a second ago I wanted to go back to. So the distortion of the requirement of those kind of industries imposed on you by government, I think that's particularly acute and perhaps most noticeable in financial services industries for regulatory and compliance. So, and I know, particularly from the bitcoin work that we do, that the regulatory compliance burden imposed by the FCA on bitcoin companies in the UK is so high and so expensive that a lot of them are looking at the UK's market and saying, you know what, we're not going to bother.

[B]

It's not a big enough market anymore.

[A]

It's not a big enough market. Will US is favorable. MENA is favorable. Even the eu, even though MICA is not perfect, at least it exists and is being applied. We'll go there, we'll go to Switzerland. But the UK market is no longer big enough for it to be worth the cost of entering the market.

[B]

I did. I also see they're bringing in a new thing now where to keep quite extensive records for every single transaction and transfer.

[A]

Do you want me to go into that?

[B]

Yeah, let's. Let's do it now.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So, by the way, funny story, funny story for you on the podcast now in the comments regularly again, why do you go on about bitcoin all the time? Stop shilling bitcoin. I'm bored of hearing about bitcoin. And I'm like, just scroll back, just scroll back. 860 shows on Bitcoin.

[A]

Do you know who I was?

[B]

Do you know who I was? No. Fuck off.

[A]

So the interesting there, it's a piece of legislation called cough, which is the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework. Well, yeah, it's not. It's not the most prepossessing of government. It is the. What's really disturbing about this though, is the reporting requirements, not just to your own domestic tax authority, to hmrc, but for that information to be shared with all global tax authorities everywhere. Now, most jurisdictions hold that you don't need to report transactions above or below a particular amount. Those are de minimis if they're too small for the tax authority to bother with. The approach that Europe, and I'm afraid the UK has followed, is to require reporting of all crypto asset transactions by all crypto asset service providers. So Coinbase would be a crypto asset service provider. Non custodial wallets shouldn't be cord because they're technically not crypto asset service providers. They simply provide software and you hold your own crypto assets using their software. So one of the recommendations we made in our feedback to HMRC was, could we please make that clear that this doesn't apply? I think it's implicit in the legislation, but it's not in black and white, so that would be improved by that. The most important bit though, is that in conjunction with something called the Travel Rule. Now, the Travel Rule requires you, when you make a transfer from your crypto asset service provider wallet, say to yourself, custody. So if you.

[B]

I see them. Gemini.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you, if you move from a Gemini wallet to a self custody wallet, you need to effectively dox a self custody address. And we've talked about this before, you need to say, yeah, I'm sending it to myself. But then of course, the receipt address is doxed. And the interesting thing about Caf, where they collect your personal data, how much you hold, how much you buy, how much you sell, in conjunction with the Travel Rule, we've argued to HMRC that is an enormous data honeypot. And history has shown that no institution, even from the US Department of Treasury, the UK Ministry of Defence, both of those, have recently been hacked. Huge amounts of personal data have been stolen from the Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom. I mean, you'd have thought if anyone was good at protecting stuff, it would be the mod, but apparently not. So if we can't rely on those institutions to keep our data safe, it's a fair assumption that all of these exchanges will be honeypots of data. And the interesting thing that we've actually, I was explaining to an FT journalist just this week the nature of crypto assets because their bearer instruments exposes their holders to extreme personal risk. And you'll know as well as I do there have been stories in the last couple of weeks about people being kidnapped and. Yeah, kidnapped on the streets in France.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

People losing their fingers to kidnappers.

[B]

That was the Ledger. Yes.

[A]

Co founder.

[B]

They cut his finger off.

[A]

Yep. And there was another one also lost a finger in France. Yeah, also in France.

[B]

So France is a problem at the moment.

[A]

Seems to be. I don't know why France is particularly bad at the moment, but. No, no, anyway, but sort of just finishing that off that point, the we're being. These institutions are being required to collect a huge amount of data which we argue is disproportionate in terms of the amount of potential risk and harm it causes to regular law abiding citizens who might just be, you know, buying and selling an asset that it's lawful to hold.

[B]

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[A]

That's an interesting question. I think not in the short term, but eventually in the long term, but. And again returning to our original point, that's the way that the government and the civil service ultimately functions.

[B]

I'm becoming, becoming very anti government, becoming more and more and more every day anti specific, specifically the Labour Party, but anti the institution of government. Having to check myself a lot in that, you know, if I'm very critical of the labor government, I find myself having to be critical of the previous 14 years of conservatives because they were particularly. And then also trying to not be just sucked into. Well, if we vote for reform, everything will be better because a new party also faces challenges. Can they change any of this shit? But I'm becoming very, very anti government at the moment because, you know, I'm just sick of watching stupid people make rules that govern the, the wealth creators and the business owners and the electorate and just making everything worse and harder for people. Like how have we b. I mean, look, let me go back a step. I'm so drawn into American History at the moment, a particular period which I've made very obvious to people that I'm quite interested in, which is pre and post Revolutionary war. Yeah. The grievances that they had with the king. And it's fascinating. Would you compare the colony's grievances with the king? They're almost identical to our current electorate's grievance with government.

[A]

Well, taxation without representation is a, is a key one. And everything you've said there shows that people don't feel as though they're being represented.

[B]

Yes. So, yeah, so there's like these slight twists in that. Okay, we do have representation, but they just lie to us. We're not going to raise taxes. We raise taxes. They've treated our. Well, actually, actually it's a fair point. You could argue without that representation, because really isn't, I think I don't like the whip. For me, the whip is anti democratic. And so if you have the whip, where's the representation?

[A]

Yeah. Because your MP is not representing the views of their constituents if they're being told to vote a particular way by their party leader.

[B]

Yeah. And if we, and I don't believe that, I don't believe that's democratic. We had David Starkey and he basically said, and I'll butcher this, but democracy is the will of the people. So the vote of the people, either as us as the electorate voting or as represented by our MPs. But if our MPs are whipped into doing things, then they're not representing us or they can't even represent us.

[A]

I think it's interesting to examine the different types of democracy, maybe sort of unpacking David's idea a little bit there. So very, very going back a really long way to like the gold standard of personal democracy, which was 5th century Athens. So in 5th century Athens there was obviously a small pool of voters and that was restricted by whether or not you were a man and whether or not you were a slave and things like that. But those voters who did have the franchise, that was a direct democracy. And the interesting thing about the Athenian democracy at the time was it was relatively representative of political democracy. Now politics comes from the Greek word polis, which meant city. Oh yeah, polis polite. And so Greece was divided into a lot of little city states.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So Athens was a polis, Sparta was a polis, so was Corinth and and so on.

[B]

So it's kind of a republic.

[A]

Yes, exactly. It's kind of a. But again, direct democracy. And the interesting thing is you were directly affected by what you voted for. So if the Athenians gathered in assembly and then they voted to go to war, the next day you were you packing up your spear and your armor and you were heading out to war. You would roam in a trireme or you would be on the battlefield and you had, you had voted for that. That was a, that was a decision that you had made. And if you voted not to then, you know, you stayed at home. That kind of represent, that kind of. So personal democracy only works in, as we've seen, in relatively small groups. When you extrapolate that out to the size of a modern nation state, it doesn't really work anymore. And that's why we developed the parliamentary democracy we currently have where you elect a representative to make those decisions for you. And obviously we here elect them every four to five years. America, the executive changes every four years and most representatives democracies function in a similar kind of way. But the whip thing is a really good example. That's been in the same way I think as, as it always existed.

[B]

That's a good question.

[A]

So our voting was very odd in, in Parliament. Like the, the sort of the rotten borough period of our parliamentary democracy. I don't think there was, I don't think there would be a stuff and.

[B]

See if the whip has always existed and is it mandatory? Does each party have to have the whip?

[A]

It doesn't have to. It is worth controlling your, your MPs. You get thrown out if you don't. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

But the. With the assisted dime free vote weren't there. There was no whip. So. But I just, it just feels anti democratic.

[A]

It does feel unfair. But again we've got a number of different systems all competing with each other. Here we have the party political system which is the way of, of maintaining and, and gaining and maintaining control. And that sits on top of a direct democracy which has been replaced by a parliamentary representative democracy on top of 1880s.

[B]

What the whip first came.

[A]

Yeah, and started in Ireland.

[B]

Where did it come from? What's the. Why did they. Does it say why?

[A]

Probably actually used to whip each other.

[B]

Yeah, probably. Probably still do. H. Go. Oh no, no, you finish all.

[A]

Oh no, no. It was, it was something you said that you, you, you were saying earlier you're increasingly anti government.

[B]

I'm frustrated by it because I've always like argued with the libertarians that look, I love what you stand for. I just think if you get rid of government, government will rebuild itself. It's like this natural monopoly and so you, you know, and Starkey Got me to read this book last week, Reflections on the Revolution in France. And he. And it's basically a warning about big drastic changes because you don't know what will come and will it be worse. And fundamentally, if you have the big red button to get rid of the government, which some libertarians have won, I think you end up in just absolute chaos and probably a worse scenario.

[A]

Well, you can see what happens in someone like Mogadishu.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I was going to explore a little bit your frustration with government because one of the things that it's interesting to ask is why when we change government, does nothing ever seem actually to change? And I think the body that I get more frustrated with is not government, but it's the civil service bureaucracy who are ultimately the unelected, behind the scenes decision makers who formulate a lot of the policies that the government are the front people for, the people at the FCA who come up with rules relating to things that they don't understand. The people at HMRC who refine tax rules and secondary legislation. So I think that's actually a much both more insidious problem and much, much harder to deal with because no one really focuses on what they're doing. And, and remember, these people have. I mean, I'm talking about my own people. You know, I went, I went to Cambridge, half of my friends went into banking and finance and the other half went into the civil service. So I'd like to feel I've got a relatively clear view. And my dad was a civil servant as well. And these, these people will have careers spanning 40 to 50, 60 years in civil service. Fantastic pension paid for by the productive sector. And I've got some numbers that I looked up just before the chat.

[B]

They probably get better pensions.

[A]

The numbers of. Well, maybe we'll get into this in a minute. The numbers are really depressing about how many productive people support how many unproductive people. But the really interesting thing is, and you probably know the adjective Byzantine relating to bureaucracies, and that obviously comes from the Byzantine Empire, which was the Eastern Roman Empire, which became a watchword for an unbelievably complex and difficult to one seat bureaucracy of different officials who had obscure titles and extraordinary influence and reach throughout society, but were impossible to get rid of because they were unelected. I think that's actually more problematic than the government, but it's been spoken about.

[B]

A lot more now.

[A]

It is. I think people are becoming more. Steve Beckett, you had Steve in here, for example.

[B]

Liz Trust spoke about it a lot. She Basically explained what. That's the deep state. Cause when you first hear about the deep state, you're like feels like a little secret room where people make decisions. So it's the blob.

[A]

Yes. And again, I think it's important to approach this with very clear eyes. A lot of these people are very good hearted and they start from a place of good intentions, wanting to do good things and help society. You know, again, a lot of them, my, A lot of my best friends do this. They went into the civil service because they think that's a good way of helping to run society. So I think it's important not to tar these people with nefarious brushes. They, a lot of them are very good people, very intelligent, very hard working, but they're part of an enormous apparatus of a machine that possibly is malfunctioning and isn't doing what it was originally supposed to do.

[B]

Possibly.

[A]

Well, almost certainly just look at the roads near where you live.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And anyone, I guarantee you there'll be no one listening to this pod who doesn't have a road near where they live, which is basically one giant potholder.

[B]

Yeah, but I mean that's a local government issue. But that's the separate issue. So I've been digging, I've been digging into that as well. So I think one of the two biggest issues that local government have is that they are essentially constrained by central government. Two of their statutory duties. One is social care that they have to provide and the percentage of their budgets going up and up and up and up. Of that actually there's three pressures. There's that business rates is something that is a statutory government requirement, so they can't even provide the economic opportunity or create economic zone of interest just if they choose to, because it's a statutory duty to collect business rates. There's a third pressure for now, which is the Equalities act, which is seeing many councils, certainly. So with Birmingham.

[A]

Birmingham's gone bust because of this.

[B]

It's gone bust because of this. And so there's all these pressures at a local level. So government isn't just feigning at a macro level, it's failing at a micro level. It's. The whole thing's ready.

[A]

Yeah, everything's. I think it's completely right. There's a. I forget who it is. I mean it could easily be Hayek, might be Nelson Friedman actually. He said there are sort of four, four or five things that he, he's, he thinks government should do in which they was a freedman, I think.

[B]

So I Feel like. I feel like I watched him say this.

[A]

It's like foreign defense.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It's diplomacy. It's domestic security, and it's setting up a framework of laws that enable personal bodily freedom and businesses to be protected. So property rights effectively to be. To be protected. So the court system insure. So the court system, the police, the army and the foreign Office.

[B]

So life, liberty and property, basically. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And to hear that from Friedman is quite interesting because you wouldn't necessarily have thought that he would be a proponent of that kind of government. I think to those you should give. Given what everything's happened since the Second World War, you would probably add in an element of education and health as well. Although, as we know, there are. Oh, here we are.

[B]

Here we go. One, Protect national security. This includes defending the nation against foreign threats, ensuring its safety. Enforce the rule of law, maintaining order. Preventing coercion within the country is crucial. Three, provide a mechanism for dispute resolution. Establishing a system for resolving legal social disputes is essential for a functioning society. And set and enforce rules. Government should establish a force of rules that govern the economy and society. Maintain a stable money supply.

[A]

I actually didn't know about the fifth one.

[B]

Yeah. Freeman advocates for a stable money supply to avoid inflation and economic instability. That needs all that needs expanding. Because a lot of what government currently does. You could fit into one of those.

[A]

Yeah. Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It definitely doesn't do number five.

[B]

No. Well, that's one of the biggest problems.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But I can't. Can you just bring up the US Constitution? This is. Honestly, I'm starting to get angry. I think there are. You know, we've complained about central government. You also said the civil service. I think there's a third proponent in that. I don't think we as an electorate are angry enough and making our anger heard enough. And I don't know if that's because people. Some are gaslit into believing we're in a good situation. I don't know if people feel like they can't be effective or we really take our democracy seriously enough. If you go back. Conor. Sorry, can you get the. Apologies. The Declaration of Independence. This. There's one line in this. There you go.

[A]

We hold these truths to be self evident.

[B]

Well, that was kind of. That was a hypocritical line, really. Code. Can you just zoom in? Because I haven't got my glass on. That's one. To secure these.

[A]

All men are created equal.

[B]

Yeah, well, they weren't really, because they're slaves. Didn't they? So they were kind of bullshitting themselves. But hold on. Well, I also like this, by the way. Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly all experience has shown that that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms of which they become accustomed. But this is a bit runny. Okay? But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evidences are designed to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is the right, it is their duty to thrive Such a government provide new guards for their future security. Such has been patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of England is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having a direct and objective establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. Okay, so I'm not saying we're in exactly the same situation, but I do think we're in a situation where government is no longer serving the purpose it's meant to. I think we're at a time now where it isn't a change of government that's going to make a difference. I don't believe in the next election. If the conservatives won that election, it would change this downward trajectory we are on, this moral, ethical, economic down. I just don't believe it will. I'm not wholly confident that a reform party will. I think they could come in with some great promises. I wonder if they get into government, go, fuck, we can't do this. It's impossible. I think we're at a time. I'm gonna sound quite revolutionary here, but I fundamentally believe that. I think we're at a time where we need a fundamental shift or change, a revolutionary change. And I'm not saying we need to go into some kind of bloody revolution, But I think something has to change. Something has to.

[A]

I think most people would agree with you. But I also think you're right in thinking that voting for a different party won't necessarily change anything. And one of the reasons for that is that a new party comes in and they're effectively a very thin layer of icing over a gigantic, very stodgy civil service bureaucratic cake. And, you know, no matter, you can change the icing and the cake's gonna stay the same. And I think some of the other politicians you've had sitting at this table have found exactly the same thing. I remember I listened to the Steve Baker interview, and he's he's talked about how incredibly difficult it is to. To change anything. And Liz Truss obviously found exactly the same thing. So I think the conclusion you can draw is that change of the government's not going to. Not going to change anything. Much like you, though, I'm at a loss as to what could possibly change things because the United States changed that via a physical, a kinetic revolution and then the development of a new constitution. Our constitution is so extraordinarily complex and it's a combination of written and unwritten principles, documents. It's not contained in any one single body, which is good in that it's extraordinarily flexible and open to interpretation, but it's also very, very difficult to change. And at the back of my mind is the practical consideration that perhaps the way some of this fixes itself is simply via a nonviolent more of an economic collapse rather than a kinetic revolution.

[B]

Peaceful revolution.

[A]

Well, exactly. If it's some. I mean, looking at the cost of what we spend on the state, at some point that's going to become completely unsupportable. And how bad is it now?

[B]

Do you have numbers now?

[A]

I've got a few numbers. Dug these up just before the call. So in terms of the number of civil servants, we have 500,000, roughly. These are 24, 25 numbers. 20, 24, 20, 25.

[B]

In what categories are those? That doesn't include teachers, firemen, police.

[A]

No, that's, that's much bigger. So those would be public sector workers. So the, the staff of the quango. Yeah, so the civil servants, like my friends from. From Cambridge, for example. About 500,000 of those. Yeah, it's a lot, lot of people from. And about 6 million public sector workers. So NHS, local government, education and so on. Firemen, police, teachers, military. 20 million on welfare of one kind or another. And that includes pensioners, universal credit, disability payments and so on.

[B]

That's nearly a third of the country. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then the boss, sorry, of the.

[A]

Adult working age, that would include some who aren't necessarily on. On it. Aren't necessarily of working age.

[B]

Okay, so. So non children. What's the population of the UK, Connor? Over 18. I go over 21. We'll be liberal because everyone goes to uni now.

[A]

And then this number.

[B]

So a third are on some kind of welfare. Yeah, so anything from pension to universal.

[A]

Credit to disability benefit. Okay, okay, so only 17 million. So roughly 25% of the working population, I think, are paying more in taxes than they consume in services. So at the moment you have 17% are supporting everyone else.

[B]

Not entirely supporting everyone else, because if you're on universal credit, you could still be contributing.

[A]

The data I saw was that 70% are the people who are paying into the system. Okay, so they're paying in more than they take out. Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, yeah.

[A]

So some people on universal credit might be earning enough to pay for it to be net positive contributors to the potential.

[B]

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[A]

I think, to look at a country like Japan, who's effectively undergoing a form of demographic collapse at the moment.

[B]

160% debt to GDP, I read.

[A]

Well, exactly. And Japan have always been quite an interesting model to study, certainly from the point of view of the demographic transition model, which models population. Really interesting model to look at as a bit of a harbinger, I suppose, as to what might happen in other countries. So Japan, I remember at school, were always a bit ahead of us. So population and birth and death rates used to be relatively high in the model, and population is relatively low. And then you get to the second phase of the demographic transition model, where the birth rate remains relatively high, but the death rate massively drops because of improvements in medicine, particularly in child mortality and survival rates, which is a good thing. And population at that point absolutely explodes. And then you get to another point, which is where populate, which is where the death rate is relatively low, but the birth rate has dropped as well. And that's when the population is relatively stable for a short period, but birth and death rate are now both comparably Low. And then Japan was just beginning to tip into the next stage of the model, which is where the death rate was actually accelerating and population was beginning to decline, which is quite an interesting phase.

[B]

Why was that happening?

[A]

No one's entirely sure why, but it seems to be happening. And in fact, if it weren't for nets migration in the, in the UK and I think most of Western Europe, we'd probably see declining populations at the moment because our birth rate is now below replacement rate.

[B]

Right. But it's a, still a shift into a aging demographic.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

Yeah. Which is a problem because more people and, and if there's more people being squeezed. We know, we know more leaving. Hold on, what's this called? Median age. Okay. Is up from 40.1 from, I mean that's too. Well, let's go 1990, 35. So about six years, about five years. Fertility rate in that same period has dropped from 1.83 to 1.54. Because these small numbers make a huge difference.

[A]

They do. And a drop in. And replacement rate is actually above 2. I think it's a 2.2 or 2.4.

[B]

Yes. To. Yeah.

[A]

To account for infant mortality.

[B]

The problem is all, every indicator points.

[A]

In the wrong direction, unfortunately. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. So we've got people living longer. We haven't moved the retirement age in, in a while.

[A]

I don't give them any ideas.

[B]

It's not a bad idea. We have got a dying economy, growing tax rates, more people on welfare, and then we're driving some of the wealthiest wealth creators out of the country.

[A]

Yes, that 17 million number will be dropping. Yeah, the number, the number, it's, it's effectively like, like we said at the beginning, government's a non productive enterprise. And if the, if the state is having to pay for 25 million people then I mean in raw numbers you've got 25 million people being supported by 17 million. So each, each taxpayer who's putting more into the bottom they're taking out is supporting more than more than one other person. And that's only going to, that's trending negative at the moment.

[B]

See, people like you and I sit and think about this. It's not a good thing. Right?

[A]

It's not a good thing.

[B]

It's not a good thing. Some of it's. If you are somebody who holds bitcoin, actually some of this is great for you. Like if you're an asset holder, you can benefit from this. Right. If you know how to play it.

[A]

Interesting you say that because the British are obsessed with housing as Assets. Right. But if your population is beginning to decline, then are houses such a great asset to hold anymore?

[B]

It depends how, it depends how you run the math. And it depends if you've got a mortgage. Depends on an asset or liability, blah, blah, blah. But generally speaking, I'll stick with Bitcoin and gold. Some people have really benefited from this.

[A]

Hard assets that can't be inflated.

[B]

Yeah. Or, yeah, the stock market essentially run as a Ponzi scheme. You know, if you own equities, you've, you've been able to outperform inflation over the last two decades, let's say long term. But, but either way, either way, I forgot where it's fucking going.

[A]

With this now trending negative, we're going the wrong direction.

[B]

So everything. Yeah, but everything's going. So. No, no, I know what I'm saying. So we sit and think about this and we're like that, what's the solution? How do we fix this? What can be changed? Government's terrible. I, I mean, I know and I don't know, but I sit there and think, why? You know, if you've got your cabinet there, you've got all this economic data, you've got this birth rate data, you're sat there going, all right, we're kind of fucked, right? How do we fix this? Well, we know we're gonna have to have mass austerity. We need to incentivize people to have children, more like, what are all the things we can do? And they don't do it. Government don't do the things they're meant to do to make the country better. And so in my mind, I'm like, they're either evil or stupid or a combination of the two. But if they know it and they don't make a change, they're evil. And if they don't know it, then they're stupid. So neither of them should be in the position. But you can't get an honest conversation, because we need to have an honest conversation as a nation. We need to say, people in this country need to know the reality of where we are and where we're heading and what that's going to look like. And we either make the decisions now or we make it later, or you're.

[A]

Forced into making a decision. To your point, are they evil or stupid? I actually think it's everyone, everyone's the hero in their own story. I'm always very hesitant about accusing people of being evil. I think they are very, very well intentioned and also predominantly quite clever. But in terms of book smarts. You've made a point before, and this is an interesting distinction, I think, between those who sit in the House of Commons and those who sit in the House of Lords. You've made the point before that very few people who are on the front bench currently have ever run a business or had a job in the real world. And I think that's a real. That's a really, really fundamentally important point. So many of the people who become politicians basically have a career path not dissimilar to the one that I had. You go to Oxford or Cambridge, you study ppe. I did Classics. That's what saved me. Then you go and you become a parliamentary researcher. You. You run for a local council, then you become an mp. So you've never actually had a real job, you've never had to produce anything. You've never understood a balance sheet. You've never seen a cash flow statement where, you know you have X amount of money in and you know if your outgoings are X +1, then you're making a loss.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So they don't. They don't operate like that and they don't understand how that works. I had to learn that when I moved into industry. The House of Lords, I think, is slightly different. And weirdly, in a lot of the advocacy work that we do, we get better results from people in the laws because they've had businesses, they've run things. Timpson, I think, is a great example. I think he's a really honest, decent guy and he's super focused on rehabilitation of prisoners and he gives them jobs within his shops. So he understands the balance sheet, he understands a cash flow statement. We find that a lot of the laws that we speak to who have had businesses or worked in financial services or any other kind of business understand the points that we make much more quickly than an MP who's been a career politician all their lives. I'm not sure that's a. That's going to solve anything, but you're basically saying we've.

[B]

We've got children in charge of the country, we inexperienced idiots.

[A]

Yes, but they're. They're an interesting kind of idiot because they're very, very intelligent, but in the way that you're good at passing exams. So I think the key question is, do you want people who are good at passing exams to be the only talent pool that you can draw from when you are electing MPs?

[B]

Well, it's funny you should say that. I mean, I think back to when I had my advertising Agency, we put out a job, we get 80 applications. I wasn't looking at their grades. We'd regularly pass on people who got a first at university. It's like, what experience you've got. And you know that little box at the end, like, my hobbies. Some people really put some interesting things in there. And so it's like, okay, we've got 80 CVs here. Let's go through very quickly. Anyone who's got actual experience goes into the first part. Okay. And anyone without experience goes to the second part. Because it's like, I don't know whether you can get first. I mean, I'm a university dropout again, I know plenty of people who aren't particularly good at passing exams, who are great employees. So we just forget that part. Okay. What experience have you got? What have you done? Where have you worked? You know, oh, I took a year out and went and worked here, or I went to Africa and I built a school and taught English. And they're the people that are interested to us. We've got 80 applications. They're the ones you want. So. No, I don't want people to pass exams. I do if they're doing surgery on me.

[A]

Yes, Yes. I think for working in aviation or building a car. Yes, that's important.

[B]

Yeah. Flying an aircraft, I think that's a really good one. Doing air traffic control. Yes, completely agree with that. But, yeah, being a lawyer, in some ways.

[A]

Thank you. Well, I mean, my degree was, you know, reading the Aeneid in the original Latin, which is. It doesn't enormously equip me for his career in advertising.

[B]

You had to read the latter.

[A]

Yes, it's very good in the original.

[B]

And the Iliad and the auditor. I did Classics at A level. No way. So I never knew that. Yeah, well, it was the DOS subject, so I had two that I wanted to do. And, you know, somebody just said, oh, two Classics. It's easy. You can basically do nothing and. And get a. You can pass. And it's true. I read the Iliad, the Aeneid, in the Odyssey. The Odyssey is the only one I truly remember because it's a great story.

[A]

Odyssey is a fantastic story.

[B]

I actually watched Gladiator 2 yesterday.

[A]

Did you? I've steered away from it because I love the first one so much.

[B]

Let me ask you a question. Sorry, just. I knew we would do this on films, so I just watched it and, like, the opening part is, like, 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. I'm like, I like Marcus Aurelius I like Meditations and they reference that in the book and then they talk about these twin brother brothers who arrived after them. But basically, is it all factually true? How much?

[A]

Some of it. So Commodus was a real emperor. Marcus Aurelius was obviously real, so was Caracala. The sequencing isn't completely accurate and a lot of it is drawn from Edward Gibbon's Decline of Fall of the Roman Empire.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And he had a very. He. He set out to show that over time the empire decayed, doing owing to its own internal pressures and the introduction of Christianity and various other things like that.

[B]

Ah, so that's why they were killing the Christians.

[A]

Yes. So they were. They were keen on killing Christians. So I forget who the brothers are. Is one of them Caracala?

[B]

I can't remember their names. One was a total weirdo. So in it, I mean, am I giving much away? Plot, spoiler. He kills his brother and then he makes his monkey his advisor. Is that true?

[A]

I mean, there are all kinds of stories like that. The most famous one is Incitatus. So Caligula made Incitatus, his horse, a senator. Again, though it's disputed whether that actually happened. That's in Suetonius. 12 Caesars. And a lot of this stuff is because when the new emperor came along, it became sensible for people to tell rude stories about the previous emperor. So you'd go on about how insane the previous emperor was. The stories about Caligula are brilliant. You know, he supposedly killed his father and slept with his mother, slept with his sisters, made his horse a senator, had a huge golden statue of himself which he would dress depending on which God or goddess he was pretending to be that day.

[B]

I love this movie. He was like, like as a celebration, he said, we're going. We're going to have a games and mass executions and everyone. Cheers. Could do with some of those now.

[A]

I mean, it's very. Were fairly certain they did have mass executions and as a celebration. Well, I mean, sometimes there are stories about one of the emperors. I forget. It might have been Diocletian crucifying Christians along the Appian Way. And you know, some of them allegedly lit a lot wrapped in tar and set alight as sort of street lighting.

[B]

So why was Christianity part of the fall of Rome?

[A]

Gibbon had a strange theory that the introduction of this foreign religion corrupted the, you know, the old pure Roman religion and effectively an outside influence that then led to a, I suppose a splintering of. Of the. Of the power base within Rome.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I think it's that's largely disputed now. Most. I think most people would argue the Roman Empire began to fall apart partly because it stopped expanding, because a lot of the. Well, it's an interesting analogy to think about. Oh, God, we've done it, haven't we? We're talking about the Roman Empire.

[B]

That's okay.

[A]

What time today do you think about the Roman Empire?

[B]

Oh, God, oh, God. It's the meme, the prophecy.

[A]

So, I mean, the way that a lot of the. The Roman economy worked, certainly during the early age of expansion, was the empire was getting bigger and bigger. And we saw that it's fundamentally how the British Empire function as well. You expand territorially and you pull more wealth into the center and you see the benefits of that which lasts for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. Britain today is wealthy in no small part because we're still reaping the benefits of empire. And the same goes for Rome. And then when Rome stopped expanding, which happened mainly in the time of Augustus. So Augustus had pushed beyond the river Rhine, and then there was a terrible military disaster. He lost three legions in the Teutoburga world, which were commanded by a general called Varus. And legions would no one. No one lost legions. But then how big's a legion? About 6,000 men.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Horrific defeat. It was a German called Arminius or Herman who'd come to Rome and trained. Oh, yeah, there we go. Yeah. So the Augustus pulled back beyond the river Rhine and so that they wouldn't push further into Germany. And then in the east, a Trajan pushed the empire out to its biggest extent. Trajan was in the century following Augustus and the far eastern provinces, they didn't hold on to particularly long. They pulled back not long after Trajan.

[B]

It's a massive empire to rule without any real modern technology.

[A]

One of the most interesting things about it is that the size of the empire changed depending on the seasons. So if you think about it in terms of how quickly could information travel from Rome to Babylon, let's say. So, like in the winter, the empire was, I think, 120 days wide, but in the summer it was only 90 days wide, very roughly. So in terms of. And actually going back to our point around governance, because information travels so slowly, particularly in something like the year of the four emperors, sometimes if you were a provincial, if you were like a provincial governor on the outskirts of the empire, by the time you'd heard the first emperor had died, you might be already two emperors late. So it was Otho, Galba, Vitellius and Vespasian all became emperor in one single year. By the time you'd heard that Otho had died, Vespasian was probably on the throne. So in terms of decentralization, it was an interesting governance model. So the Romans would empower people with citizenship, and they would effectively have what were called client kings. So let's say you were in Mauritania or in Biase or Belgica, you're quite a long way away from the power center in Rome. They would devolve power to smaller people locally, but incentivize them with citizenship. And as a model, it worked really well for a very, very long time.

[B]

How would they maintain loyalty?

[A]

They give you citizenship. So citizenship of Rome, like getting a passport, was extremely important. And you didn't automatically become a citizen simply because the Romans had happened to conquer you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You then had tax benefits. One important benefit of being a citizen was that citizens couldn't be crucified. St. Paul, for example, when he was martyred, was beheaded because he was a Roman citizen.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And Peter was crucified.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So given the great incentive model there.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, given the propensity of. Of Roman emperors to execute people, you kind of wanted to take the non crucifixion option, if you could.

[B]

There were considered five good emperors. Right. Am I right? Depends.

[A]

How Augustus is generally thought of being pretty good, but I mean, he was as barbaric as they come. Hadrian, I'd call him a decent one. Marcus Aurelius.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Trajan. Reasonably good reputation. Diocletian. Diocletian's an odd one. He's one of the only ones who retired and who wasn't murdered. But at the same time, he did kill an awful lot of Christians.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because he thought that was the right thing to do.

[B]

I bought Common Meditations for Christmas.

[A]

Oh, it's a good one. I've been getting into this so much. It was the five before Aurelius. Right. Because they used to pick who would be the next emperor, but then Aurelius just picked his son and he went a little bit mad. Yeah. It wasn't that Nero was the last Caesar. So the family line died with. With Nero. And then after that, it was very often chosen by the. By the generals or by some kind of military coup. And then you had various dynasties. The Vespasian dynasty lasted for two or three generations, I think. And then Aurelius family again.

[B]

Do you think a lot about the fall of the Roman Empire? Once or twice a day.

[A]

Good man.

[B]

Do you know the meme? Do you know I found out something also while I was away on holiday. You might even know this, but obviously you know about the coin clipping, the inflationary thing. Do you know that's why we got ridges on coins? Yeah, I didn't know. That's why we.

[A]

No, well, I suppose it's not very obvious, is it? Unless you know the story.

[B]

Where was I? It wasn't anything like tied to this. I was reading a magazine, I think. Was I reading on a plane or something? And it was like affecting. Why do we have ridges on coins? It's because that was to stop the clipping. I was like, huh, yeah, very clever.

[A]

And actually on coinage, it's really interesting to look at the extent to which the Roman denarius kept its value over time. So for, I think between 150 to 200 years, the value of the. Certainly in terms of the pay of the regular soldier retained almost all of its value and then began to go off a cliff after the. After the Vespasian, I think it was actually Caracala, potentially one of the guys in Gladiator 2, they began to mingle base metals with the coins and it literally to debase the currency in. In a way that we only do, I suppose, non, physically.

[B]

Now, was it. Was it greed or was it a necessity?

[A]

Bit of both.

[B]

Bit of both.

[A]

They had. It was absolutely key for the empire to keep paying their soldiers.

[B]

That was it.

[A]

And if you weren't able to do that, then you were probably not going to remain Emperor for very long. But, you know, that's an interesting. If you map that onto what happens now, what is it absolutely key for the government to keep doing and can it continue to afford doing that? And if it can't, you then reach a point where you have a systemic collapse. That was a bit of a. Bit of an intellectual jump.

[B]

So for you, how. Look, I did classics for two years at a level red, those three books I mentioned, did a few of the poems which I couldn't get into at all and then kind of forgot about it. And when I did study it, I thought the Odyssey is this great journey. Tell us about what Odysseus did. But. But you actually studied. Studied it. How analogous is it, what we're experiencing now to the fall of the Roman Empire? Is it a fair analogy that people use?

[A]

I'd say it's not unfair. Obviously our societies are so incredibly different, but certain elements of the way that humans behave haven't changed that much. As in people are always going to. I think generally people are always going to try and do what they think is the right thing. But at the same time, people will always tend to act in their own self interest, above the interests of others, no matter how good a person they are. So I think those elements of human nature and human behavior remain the same. And then back to your sort of. I suppose the theme of this chat is how do you fix that? And at the moment, the people to whom you would look to fix it are the people in whose benefit the system currently works. And Jeff Booth writes a lot about this, doesn't he? You can't fix a system from inside. So if you stood up in Parliament and you suggested that we cull, you know, 20% of the civil service, you would be laughed at. Or should we suggest reducing civil service pensions? You'd never be able to affect that kind of change.

[B]

Get rid of the nhs, all these things you can't.

[A]

Personally, I'm a fan of the nhs. I think it would be run more efficiently, but I think most things could be run more efficiently and that. I think it's the two world problem, isn't it? You have the commercial world which has to run things efficiently because they don't survive if you don't. And I'm at the sharp end of that with two of the businesses I advise right now. And then on the other hand, you have government, which doesn't have to run anything efficiently because there are no consequences for it. But if you're in government and there are no consequences for your actions, I mean, that's brilliant for you, isn't it? Why would you ever change it?

[B]

This show is sponsored by Gemini. We live in a really strange time with governments driving inflation with their reckless spending and endless money printing. There is a way out of this. There is a way to protect your money and, and that is by stacking bitcoin. I've made loads of shows about bitcoin. You can go and research this, you can go and read the books, but the truth is, it is the hardest money ever created. If you are interested in protecting your financial future, it's time for you to get on the bitcoin train. I have. I've been stacking bitcoin personally and through my businesses since 2017. It's protected me, it's secured my family's future, and it also strengthens all of my businesses. So if you want to start stacking bitcoin, where do you do it? Well, for me it's with Gemini. They're a fully licensed, full reserve exchange and custodian, so they give you a secure way for you to buy and own your bitcoin. There's no risks and no funny business. So if you're serious about stacking bitcoin the right way, head over to gemini.com, which is g-e m I-N-I.com all right, I, I asked the, I was playing around with chat GBD and I was asking it what would the if the forefathers arrived in the Constitution today, what things would they have to add in to consider modern. See if I can find it. Yeah, advances in technology, banking, what we know be good if we can find it. Actually probably better if con you bring up your chatgpt. Can you put in this question if the US Constitution was written today, what additional amendments would exist to take into consideration advancements in technology and what we understand about banking and central banks money, yada yada.

[A]

I mean you might want to include something in the second amendment around fully automatic weapons. But I mean the way, the way the second amendment's drafted is quite interesting when you consider how powerful modern weaponry is. I forget what the wording is.

[B]

If you need a well armed militia, it needs to be able to compete with the. Yeah, tyrannical government's army as well.

[A]

I'm going to get the wording wrong. It's something like Congress shall not impede the ability of the citizens to hold arms or something like that.

[B]

So what's quite interesting is I, I don't know about you how much you're using AI at the moment, but I pretty much don't publish anything that hasn't been through an AI grammar and spelling check and usually it comes back and writes things just much better than I do. I use it a lot for research on that but I really find it interesting with questions like this. So a digital rights amendment to protect individual freedoms, digital aid, right to digital privacy, right to data ownership, right to encryption, information integrity and free speech reform to balance free speech with modern information ecosystems. Protects from algorithmic manipulation, combat intensive. I don't like that, that feels anti free speech.

[A]

I think free speech reform is probably adequately defended by the First Amendment already.

[B]

In the U.S. it's not just not done a good enough job as what I had. Let's see if I can find mine.

[A]

The first one's impressive.

[B]

Here we go, I've got it. I've got mine here anyway. God, I had a long debate with it. Come here one second.

[A]

Do you use the paid version?

[B]

Yeah, I use the expensive paid version. Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go. Right so what did I say? Can you identify anything the forefathers of America could not have predicted? For example, with central banks, EBDCs and other technical innovation which they might have rightly feared and passed collapse, We've done about it. So what they couldn't predict is a centralized quasi private institution with immense control over money supply, interest rates and economic cycles. What they would have feared it deep. They deeply distrusted paper money and centralized control of currency. Yeah, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson, all explicit, explicitly opposed national banks. They feared inflation as a stealth tax and a way to fund war on empire without consent. So what they would have done Hard money mandate codified gold and silver as the only legal tender as the Constitution originally implied in Article 1, Section 10. I didn't know that. By the way. Ban central banking, explicit prohibition on monopolistic control over money issuance mandate congressional control. If money supply must be changed, it should be under direct democratic oversight, not unelected boards. Fiat currency, inflation, monetary policy. What they couldn't predict a fully fiat system where money is printed at will. And they would have feared it, saw inflation as a form of theft. A hidden tax without representation enables limitless war. Funding hyperinflation and moral decay were well known from classical history. What they were done about constitutionally enshrined sound money. Balanced budget amendment, make deficit spending illegal outside of declared war, which I think is interesting. Monetary transparency laws, full public accountability of any monetary body, including audits and term limits. CBDCs, this was great. Ban CBDCs outright, codify cash rights, protect anonymous transactions. They also cover mass surveillance. But what I'm saying is quite interesting just putting that prompt in the things they would have thought about. And that's why fear is like everything they thought about was their fear. Fears were based on the weaknesses of men or group of men who get together and women of course. But like they feared power and control and so they did everything to protect against it, but couldn't plan for everything. We're essentially experiencing what they feared. We're living through what they feared.

[A]

Yes. I'd say though that these things tend to be cyclical and although the specificity of the problems will change because we remain human, there's a certain common thread that you will see in problems. And you know, we were talking minutes ago about the Roman Empire. A lot of the. A lot of the same problems around corruption. And I think it's important. A lot of it is mission creep. So the bank of England is a good example. The bank of England originated as a new bank to fund the King's wars, which other banks wouldn't fund him for at the time. And then if you look at the mission creep that the bank of England has undergone today, it's all over the place. It's got responsibility for monetary policy and it's setting interest rates and the, the knock on effect on the wider economy. As we talked last time around, the interest rate setting ability is utterly vast. It feeds into literally everything. So having that one power really gives you the power to control the availability of money, availability of credit, whether or not people save or spend what they spend on how they think they should deploy their capital, all kinds of things like that. So maybe if the central bank just went back to funding wars, we would be, we'd be in a better place and it would also be more transparent because when you look at the bank of England today, you don't think, oh that, that that institution exists to, in order to kill people, which is a bit of a strange thing to say, but it's how it started.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know, Freddie. I'm just, I'm very, very unhappy at the moment with the state of things and I have no trust or belief that things are going to improve and I'm in this position where a lot of people I know are leaving and I've looked at the options and I don't want to leave and I'm not going to leave.

[A]

No, I don't want to leave either. In fact, I think that's, I may be biased but I think that's the wrong choice. Why, why would you, you know, because I, I was obviously born in the uk, I grew up overseas. I came back and I remain very fond of the United Kingdom and I think it, it remains a very good place to, to live despite all its faults and I've been like it to improve and I don't, I don't want people to, to run away to Dubai or to.

[B]

I wouldn't go there. Why would be there? It be like Ireland.

[A]

Yes. I mean I'm temp, I'm tempted by Greece obviously. I've always, always had a hankering about living, about going to live in the Mediterranean. But at the same time I'm, I'm not sure yet whether I've fully got in my head a, a possible solution other than, I mean obviously if we look at extreme examples, one extreme example is a complete collapse and that's really not what you want because then you end up in a Somalia type situation and, or Zimbabwe type situation and you know, South Africa seems to Be heading that way as well.

[B]

How bad is it? Because I. I mean, look, I. I'm aware of what's happening in South Africa but like how bad is it getting? Because you're probably a little bit closer to.

[A]

The people I know who are there are very worried and depressed.

[B]

Worried for safety.

[A]

Yes, the security situation is not good. I mean if you are able to pay for private security or. But you need to be very, very careful around your personal safety, driving around. How you, how well you lock your house up at night. Are your windows or bars. Do you have a dog? Do you have a weapon? The infrast, the load shedding that the, that the grid is undergoing, for example, is not getting any better. The inbound investment, I don't think, I mean I can't. I don't have any data on this, but I don't imagine that inbound investment is particularly fulsome at the moment. I mean it's inevitable react. It's inevitable truth that complex systems do collapse and societies collapse and so do countries. We've been relatively well insulated from that in Western Europe. And I personally don't think a systemic collapse of the United Kingdom is particularly likely. We may be seeing a bit of a fragmentation in terms of control. I think the. The emergence of more powerful local mayors is probably a good thing. Maybe one close to your. To your heart as well. What you're doing, Bedford, I think is super interesting. So I read your manifesto. Yeah.

[B]

What did you make?

[A]

I was really, really impressive. I mean I. I spent a long.

[B]

Time thinking about it.

[A]

Yeah. And I can't. Couldn't really imagine anyone reading that and not wanting to get on board.

[B]

A few. Did you hear what happened in Froome?

[A]

You flagged it to me.

[B]

Did I send it to you the other day? Yeah, you did. I'm really intrigued by this. The idea that a local council should be run entirely by independence without any political loyalty which might affect their voting or decision making. I kind of like that idea.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I've just. So I've just got back the guy who did. I can't remember his name. Pete McClintock. I can't remember his name. He wrote the book the Flat Pack Democracy about how they did it. So my plan is to get home and read that and just trying to understand what he did. I've actually become quite friendly with the council. I've become friendlier with the mayor.

[A]

That's all. Your nice photo with him in a.

[B]

Yeah, well, we had to just. Yeah. Cars on the table. Let bygones be Bygones. You tell me about what you're trying to do and actually kind of understood each other a lot better. He as he wrote an open letter to the police recently and he's got him. I think he said he's got a meeting coming up with them and so there's progress there. It's like. It's almost becoming like a public private partnership. And so I. And I. I've got this other book, New Localism.

[A]

I've heard of that.

[B]

Yeah. It's very interesting talking about the. That there's been, you know, globally, all across the world, there's been like this massive growth in local projects. Localism, where people have felt like they can't get anything for central government. Central government is so focused on, you know, the demands of modern time, the jobs they have to do, that there's no connection between central government and local governments. It's all been forgotten. So there's like this push locally for people to try and enforce change and do things differently. So I think we're in an interesting time and this is where I think the quiet, peaceful revolution might come from. It might come through localism, I think.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe looking at it through a positive lens, I think that's a really heartening development. And it's correct to say that central government is so vast and so much of a supertanker, it's so difficult to change. So focusing efforts on central government is probably a waste of those efforts. But you can change stuff locally. You can make a difference in your town, in your county, and then once enough differences have been made at that level, then that trickles upwards.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think that that's probably the positive outcome. So we've got Mogadisha on one side and then we have Froome on the other. So you probably couldn't name two places on earth that are more different from each other. I've been to Froome.

[B]

Have you been to Mogadishui?

[A]

I have not been to Mogadishu, but I've been to. I've lived in Damascus and in Harare.

[B]

So some pretty wild places.

[A]

Yeah, you can imagine. You could imagine either one of those places heading Mogadishu way.

[B]

Just conscious while we've got you here, your experience of working with government. And you might have to be diplomatic here, but what are the biggest. Because you look. And some people who don't know, who haven't listened to our previous interviews, that you should have probably explained what you're doing with Bitcoin Policy Institute.

[A]

I should. So I'M obviously a lawyer by training and I work in mainly fintech and engineering businesses, but I also work on bitcoin advocacy. Bitcoin only, not crypto. I've a reasonable amount of advocacy experience of my career. My first job out of university was actually trying to put together a deal between the British Museum and the Greek government to loan the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles to athens for the 04 Olympic Games which were being held back.

[B]

They would never have given them back.

[A]

They would never. Well, we had reasonable. But you know, again, if you look at the discussions being had right now, the things that George Osborne in particular is saying, they're making the same kind of arguments that we were making 20 odd years ago around a temporary loan. The sticking point is that in order for that loan to happen, the Greeks would need to acknowledge that the Brits have good title to them. And then once you get over that stumbling block, then you can have an agreement for the stuff. And they had a reciprocal idea. So they were going to send like the Mycenaean gold, the Mask of Agamemnon to the British Museum. And so effectively you'd have a swap.

[B]

Of artifacts so they'd have an incentive.

[A]

Exactly, yeah. So it was a reasonable.

[B]

Because otherwise they just wouldn't return. Yeah, fuck off.

[A]

But then, and then again, completely different subject matter. But the Bitcoin advocacy we do is again trying to explain a relatively new and complex idea to people who are non experts in that. And there's a certain level of similarity that people tend to have a lot of preconceived ideas around who owns something or how a financial system should work. And there's a lot of using analogy or trying to think your way into how someone else thinks in order to make those particular points. And I think a key one, certainly on bitcoin that we mentioned earlier, the regulatory and compliance burden that's imposed by the FCA has certain demonstrable consequences which directly result in a lack of growth in that industry and a lack of revenue for HMRC in the uk and the fact that the UK happens to own a lot of bitcoin through confiscations, but doesn't seem to know what to do with it. I think that's also an important point.

[B]

Yeah, what is the fear they're just going to sell it all off?

[A]

I mean, honestly, I wouldn't mind. They own enough Bitcoin to pay the winter fuel allowance for two and a half years. So at one fell, you know, the removal of the winter fuel allowance Seems to have been a big own goal for the Labour Party. They could literally fund that for most of the rest of this Parliament just using their bitcoin.

[B]

But they wouldn't do that.

[A]

Well, they don't think the bitcoin has any value. And then when you point out to them that it's actually worth $4.5 billion. No, that's a $6 billion actually, 4.5 billion pounds. They, they don't seem to have a response.

[B]

But do they almost not know they've got it? In some ways?

[A]

I think so. So we've looked into it, into who seems to hold it. We think it's currently controlled by the Metropolitan Police.

[B]

That's good. Let's keep it there. Yeah, I would rather they owned it and spend it on police. Police officers.

[A]

Well, the amount they have is sort of two and a half, maybe three years worth of their annual budget, their entire budget.

[B]

I wonder if it's just like on one single hardware wallet.

[A]

It's possible to see the wallet so you can find it on chain. The reason we think it's not moving at the moment is because there are two outstanding criminal cases around title to it. So the nation confiscated it from certain criminals who had conducted a scam in China, who had actually defrauded people of yuan, so they'd lost local currency in China and then converted it to bitcoin. And then we, the police, confiscated the bitcoin. Now those victims need to be compensated, but I think they'll be compensated in yuan rather than in bitcoin. Which means that under the Proceeds of Crime Acts, the UK will be left with a very large chunk of bitcoin even after they've been, those victims have been made whole. And under Proceeds of Crime act, half of that goes to the Home Office and half to law enforcement. But you're now talking about, you know, two and a half billion to the Home Office, two and a half billion to law enforcement, potentially. If that case, if those cases are wrapped up within the next year and a half.

[B]

We need a bitcoin strategic reserve in the uk.

[A]

Well, we've already got one with the third biggest nation state holder after China and the us. And again, it's a source of frustration to me that we have this windfall, we have this first mover advantage. We keep on hearing about our 22 billion black hole. There are things that we could do to plug that practically to change that. Yeah, but it's. I mean, a lot of this talk has been about our frustration with the slow pace of change. It's Very, very difficult to communicate these points to people in government.

[B]

Yeah, it's one of the areas I wouldn't mind government getting to. More debt would be to acquire more bitcoin to get out of debt in the future.

[A]

Well, we could mine it with our wasted wind power. We waste a billion pounds worth of money every year paying wind farms to turn off. If we had a slightly more open planning regime or an explicitly friendly regime towards bitcoin mining as an industry, we could plug miners on a national level into our wind farms and turn that wasted power into money.

[B]

Have you not explained this to Ed?

[A]

We have. This is a direct quote from Miliband. But bitcoin is pointless.

[B]

He's a frustrating man.

[A]

He is a frustrating man because I share a lot of his. You know, I share a lot of his concerns and his aims and goals, but he doesn't seem to want to even entertain the remote possibility that there could be a commercial solution to our wasted wind power.

[B]

By the way, what do you think of this idea that so. So many new strategic reserve companies are.

[A]

I'm a bit on the fence.

[B]

Yeah. Microstrategy replicas. Are.

[A]

We chatting about this earlier, just before you. Before you came? I think my main concern would be around servicing any coupon or debt that such companies acquire. So if you can combine a demonstrable cash flow business plus a strategic reserve, then I think that's probably fine.

[B]

Like microstrategy.

[A]

Yes, exactly. So if you. If you have an underlying business which can potentially service the coup or your. Or there's demand for your equity and so long as. So long as the flywheel continues, what I would be wary of is a zombie company purchasing bitcoin and then simply selling shares if that business doesn't have any underlying source of cash flow.

[B]

So I'm not sure if they exist yet, but I know of at least two who want to do it because twice I've been asked if I want to be an advisor and I'm like, no.

[A]

Interesting. Because I may know one of those as well.

[B]

We'll talk about it offline. Yeah, I've said no to both just because I don't understand it enough and it's just not my role. But it just felt a little bit gimmicky.

[A]

Yes. My strong reservation is whether or not they have a demonstrable model and business plan. If they do, then that's one thing in much the same way. And you know, forget. Forget about bitcoin. If you, as a company were saying that we want to diversify from U.S. treasuries and hold gold instead. And, you know, we have a. We, we have a cash flow and let's do we make. Make and sell widgets. The widget business is going to make enough money for us to deploy some of it into our gold reserve. And we're going to hold that because we think that will maintain value over time and that the value of our holding will increase demand for our shares. So if, if your flywheel works. Okay. What I don't want to see is a Lunar foundation guard style scenario where suddenly you, you have some idiot like Do Kwon who dumps 800,000 Bitcoin on the market. And also I slightly resent the fact that Michael Saylor's buying up all the bitcoin. He needs to leave some for other people.

[B]

Was it over half a million coins?

[A]

Yes. Half. As many as Satoshi.

[B]

Oh, mate. It sends me mad. Freddy. Anything we've not talked about you want to.

[A]

No, I think it was a. That the localism is a nice, nice place to finish. I don't. I don't fully know what the answer is, but I'm hoping that we will steer clear from the unpleasant kinetic and violent collapse. And I think focusing on localism and what you can do in your town, you know, in your local community, that's a good place to start. And it may take 30 or 40 years, but everything has to start somewhere.

[B]

We can explore that more. Man. Let's go and get a beer and talk about it. There's some things I wanted to talk about I didn't want to talk about on here. We'll do over a beer. Oh, Freddie, love you, man. Thank you.

[A]

Love to see you again. Thanks so much for having me.

[B]

Cheers. Thank you for listening, everybody.

[A]

Bye. Thank.

[B]

You.