← The Peter McCormack Show
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- [00:00]
Thomas
You can't trust anything right now. And I think it's going to get a million times worse when you know AI is really digging into exactly what is going to piss that individual off on the other side of the computer. I think that the AI society wide AI psychosis that is just around the corner, it's probably starting to begin is going to be a million times worse than the. The COVID loneliness epidemic.
- [00:23]
Circus
I built this little website called show us Receipts. I was within three days able to ingest every tweet a politician had written. Can we scan all government contracts? Can we scan government contracts? Who got the contract? Who awarded it? Who awarded it? Are they friends on Facebook?
- [00:39]
Thomas
Not with platforms that can be censored and easily manipulated like anthropic OpenAI, Facebook, you know, even X to a certain extent. Decentralization and self sovereignty of individuals is the only way out of that mess.
- [00:52]
Circus
So we have to decentralize everything.
- [00:53]
Thomas
Yeah, eventually, certainly, certainly access to knowledge.
- [00:58]
Circus
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- [01:45]
Thomas
Yeah, I think I'm a little tired of looking at stuff on Twitter one way or the other and saying that's weird. I feel like I say that's weird maybe a dozen, two dozen times a day. System, systemic capture, institutions, politics, you know, divide across politics, race, gender seems to be at a fever pitch. I think we're catastrophically without American bitcoiners is my honest take.
- [02:13]
Circus
Yeah, fair, fair. Probably globally I think. I think the uk, Canada and Australia a little bit further ahead on the wrong ideas. But I'm struggling to understand where we end up. I know where we've come from. Yeah, the 90s were great. The noughties were pretty good. Ever since kind of the global financial crisis through Covid, everything's got weird and weirder and weirder and it's almost like we just, we're just going, yeah, okay. With like the craziest shit yeah. Where do we come out of this? Do you think this is like a complete reshift of the world?
- [02:54]
Thomas
I think some of the political structures in the institutions outside of America are like turning the Titanic. It takes a lot longer or you just run into the iceberg anyway, it takes a lot longer to turn these things around. But there's a certain amount of agility within American institutions. It's not perfect. There are still issues and there's still levels of control that are hard to break through. At least that's what it looks like. But if you look at where we were in Covid, going into the Biden administration to where we are now, that's a massive difference across the entire country. And you can see it's emblematic in Washington, D.C. for example. D.C. really does sort of adopt the identity of an administration. And you can clearly see the folks that are having a good time and the folks that are not having a good time. But you have people from all over the country descend on D.C. lots of colleges and universities, and that's pretty clear right now. So I think the advantage for the US Is really that agility, but it needs staying power. If it's just a four year respite from the things that people didn't like during Biden or vice versa, it's a four year respite under Trump and they'll come back in and they'll gut, you know, the things that they didn't like and bulk up the things that they do. Like, you know, if we return to like USAID or something like that, for example, you know, that agility could work against it. But I do think that there's a meaningful difference when we look at the US and how it changes course from a political policy perspective and the ability to do that in the uk, France, Germany, Italy, so on and so forth.
- [04:31]
Circus
So you think the US is heading in the right direction?
- [04:34]
Thomas
I mean, temporarily? I think some things are getting a lot better.
- [04:38]
Circus
What isn't?
- [04:38]
Thomas
What isn't? I mean, I would have liked to see way more out of Doge. Personally. I think that the immigration problem is still, know, a bit severe. And we are supporting, you know, foreign countries way more than taking a look at fixing our own house. I think Thomas Massie had a great quote about, you know, our foreign policy right now is like, you know, watering your neighbor's lawn when your house is on fire. I think a lot of Americans feel that way. And it's why Thomas Massie has become so popular despite losing his race, his popularity been shot out of a Cannon and it looks a lot like Bernie Sanders losing in the primary to Hillary Clinton. And then whatever happened during the primary in Covid that, that put Biden forward. We saw the Bernie Sanders coalition become tremendously powerful and that's really where the DSA comes from. When you look at AOC Mondami, you know, I think Mondame can claim three victories here in New York. We just had our primaries here. So if you, if you believe that analogy and that through line, you have a populist far left faction forming after people were fed up with some of the bullshit out of the DNC and how they really sort of helped guide the outcomes with Bernie Sanders. I think we're in the early, the early innings of something similar with Thomas Massie.
- [06:00]
Circus
Right, okay. So we've got a similar problem in the uk. We, we just lost our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Abject failure, complete failure.
- [06:10]
Thomas
And of course I was watching. Not at the same level.
- [06:12]
Circus
Yeah. But just an expected failure. Typical. Trying to solve every problem through taxation and, and increasing the debt. But the person is about to replace him, probably without a leadership contest, without an election. Andy Burnham is even harder left. He's already talking about various policies regarding devolution, which. How will it be paid for? Council building, how will it be paid for? And then higher taxes. That's how they'll pay for it. But they won't have enough money. We're going harder left in the UK when it's very clear to anyone with a half a brain, it just doesn't work. But we're going there and I'm worried about that.
- [06:48]
Thomas
Is that coalition strong or is it manufactured? I mean, I'm seeing that a lot of.
- [06:53]
Circus
No. Do you ever know?
- [06:54]
Thomas
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous looking at Germany and how they just, you know, boxed in afd. Right. I think similar things in, in France. Italy looks like it might be tacking a little bit further to the right after Meloni. But you know, I'm not as familiar with the mechanisms. But has there been a competent prime. When was the last competent Prime Minister in, in Britain? Isn't it just more the same?
- [07:19]
Circus
I mean, it depends how you define competent. I mean, some people would have said certainly on the left, that Tony Blair was the greatest left wing prime minister we ever had. And most people, again with half a brain, realize he's a warmonger and destroyed the country.
- [07:32]
Thomas
Neocon.
- [07:32]
Circus
Yeah. And he kind of destroyed the democracy in our country by handing all the power out to the institutions. He took it away from the MPs brought in endless new regulations that have destroyed the productivity of the country. So it depends who you ask. For me, the last competent Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher. Liz Truss was competent, probably the best Prime Minister we didn't really have. She was there for 49 days or something. But, like, it was a shame because she saw the problems, she saw the debt problems, she saw the unfunded liabilities and. And the growth issues is she wanted to deregulate, reduce taxes and drive productivity. And unfortunately the institutions didn't like that, so they got rid of her. But sure, I think about this as a parent and then somebody myself who just wants to retire at some point. We seem to not be fully grokking how wealth and prosperity is built. I think, as Bastiat, I always talk about my show that he said there's two phases. There's one of growth and prosperity and there's one of plundering. And during the second phase, it's about securing the power to be able to plunder from the productive part of society. We're definitely in that latter part and we seem to want to plunder more and keep raising taxes whilst we don't increase productivity or growth or prosperity. I mean, we're pretty fucked.
- [08:56]
Thomas
Pretty fucked. But, you know, everybody likes to blame deep state or institutional control or, you know, foreign influence or whatever. What is it in the uk? What is it here? I mean, I can speak to what people, I think broadly speak, think about it in the United States, but this seems to be an epidemic that's certainly global.
- [09:20]
Circus
I don't disagree. I mean, it is. Liz Truss called it the Blob. I used to think of the deep state. Who said the deep state? I was like, this is like secret rumor, lizard people who pulled the levers that controlled our life. Yeah, no, she just said, it's just. It's the managerial class. It is the diseconomies of scale you get when something gets too big. But what you have is a group of people who want to stay safe in their seats and do safe things.
- [09:43]
Thomas
But we have that here. So, you know, the government hired just an unfathomable amount of people to basically work in the government. That's how they dealt with unemployment during COVID And that just grows. And I think Doge had a lot of promise. It had some polarizing figures. Right. A lot of people don't like Elon, a lot of people don't like Trump. But the goal of Doge should have been something that was broadly accepted by the overwhelming majority of taxpayers. We're going to spend your money smarter. We're going to identify things that are completely ridiculous, that soak up a tremendous amount of the tax, you know, base. But yet you just talk to people that no, you know, doge was a terrible thing. All these people lost their jobs. Like, but what if, what if that person wasn't doing anything? What if there were just, you know, B2B contracts or G2B contracts for, you know, 100,000 landlines that nobody uses anymore? Like, where's the money actually going? And as that started to peter off, we have independent YouTubers like Nick, what's his name?
- [10:46]
Circus
Fuentes.
- [10:46]
Thomas
No, not Fuentes. I mean, Fuentes is certainly doing it, surely. Nick. Shirley, thank you. With some of the hospice and childcare, it should enrage everybody. But the rallying cry from a political perspective, I don't know if it's organic or if you have big donors. People like to talk about George Soros as the boogeyman that's throwing a tremendous amount of funds. You know, where the pallets of bricks come from. And all these things seem fucking weird. And it's impossible to actually dive into it because you don't know if the algorithm is just being pushed, is pushing you in a direction where you're constantly angry or miserable or whatever. That certainly is, I think, a higher quality level of engagement as far as the algorithm and these platforms are concerned. But you can't trust anything right now. And I think it's going to get a million times worse when AI is really digging into exactly what is going to piss that individual off on the other side of the computer. I think that the AI society wide AI psychosis that is just around the corner, it's probably starting to begin. Is going to be a million times worse than the COVID loneliness epidemic.
- [12:00]
Circus
What are we heading towards them?
- [12:02]
Thomas
I mean, I think that there's going to be either a societal collapse, maybe wars. I mean it can manifest in a lot of different ways. But I do, I do have a lot of optimism and faith in humans and their ability to figure these things out. Maybe it's the delusional, like American in
- [12:19]
Circus
me, but sometimes, sometimes we figure them out with war. That is the figuring it out.
- [12:23]
Thomas
Well, there could be, there could be that process for sure. A lot of times there has to be, there has to be a collapse and then, you know, the Phoenix Rises or whatever, we could see that. But this has a lot of hallmarks of that society collapse shaping up. I told you I was pretty black pilled these days.
- [12:43]
Circus
Are you ready for War?
- [12:45]
Thomas
No, certainly not. I mean, I think it would be terrible. My core values stem from don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. And war would be atrocious. We have multiple wars, proxy wars throughout the world happening right now. There's at least three. There's two that are hot, one that's quiet. And, you know, I think we, we could, we could wake up a year or two from now and see a lot more of these.
- [13:10]
Circus
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- [14:36]
Thomas
Yeah, absolutely.
- [14:36]
Circus
You want your kids to be. Have good education, you want to earn a bit of money, have a holiday, you have some fun in your life, be able to forge your groceries. I don't. I think most people want the same thing a lot of us fall into, and I'm a hypocrite here into the trap of having an enemy who's. Who's your brother, right? Having an enemy who's your brother and then doing the bidding of the politicians and ultimately none of them really serving us for a better life.
- [15:04]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [15:05]
Circus
I think most people's lives, when graded, certainly in the uk, are getting worse, yet we still play this game.
- [15:12]
Thomas
Yeah, I would agree. I think a lot of the policies, sort of the DSA or socialist or communist policies that we're seeing being discussed in terms of taking other people's stuff. A lot of that stems from a policy of jealousy or resentment, but that never ends. That's not something that can be satiated, that feeling there's always going to be somebody else. So if, and we've seen this with other countries that have tried hardcore socialism or communism, it ends up just being the government and who's part of the. Who's part of the taking? Team Innovation will grind to a halt. Like, why get out of bed if the government will pay you a decent. A decent wage to just stay in bed?
- [16:03]
Circus
By the way, that's happening in the UK already. People are questioning it and going, well, hold on a second. If I don't work, I have three kids, I can get £70,000 a year.
- [16:10]
Thomas
Yeah. There's something about the poverty line or the unemployment line that wherever you put it, people are just going to move right up to just under it. I think there was a German study a couple of decades ago that was looking precisely at that. And where you put that line, humans, they'll fill it up like a bucket.
- [16:28]
Circus
There's also a flip to that. We've got this thing in the UK now, though. It's just how fucking stupid we are, Thomas. So there's a much better. Oh, man. We have these, like, wage cliffs. One of them's at 100,000. So as soon as you earn a hundred thousand. So if you earn up to 10,000, you don't pay any tax. I think it's about 10,000. I might have some of the numbers wrong, Conchok, but as soon as you get it over a hundred thousand, you lose that 10,000 benefit.
- [16:53]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [16:53]
Circus
So you. So there's no point. I think the numbers is, there's no point earning anything between 100, 115, because your takeover is the same. And then even if you get over that, you start hitting the 55% tax. So what people have started doing is when they get to, like, 99,000, they're like, don't give me a pay rise, just give me more time off. So we're like, killing productivity and we have all these different mechanisms in the UK which are basically killing productivity, killing ambition, killing growth. So for me, Thomas, what We need is kind of obvious, which is a much smaller government and politicians that represent the people with integrity.
- [17:33]
Thomas
Good luck. Amen, brother.
- [17:35]
Circus
Why does it have to be this way, though?
- [17:38]
Thomas
Because there's too much money. There's way too much money in politics. So finding somebody with integrity. I think the last two, like super high integrity politicians, I think are the ones that are going to spark potentially very intense one. Already did it. I would say that Bernie Sanders had a level of integrity, whether he did on certain policy issues or not. I just meant how he presents.
- [18:02]
Circus
Yeah.
- [18:02]
Thomas
How he presented not being part of the DNC machine and the things that he were saying was that he was saying at the time was completely contrary to party beliefs and the party line. That takes a certain level of integrity in Washington D.C. and he did that for a long time. I would say that Massie's the other one. So we have DSA coming out. Who knows what it's going to look like. If there is a libertarian, anarchist, conservative right faction that's going to break away from the Republicans or MAGA control or whatever, it could manifest into something good, it can manifest into something pretty bad like the dsa. But I think something's going to come out of it because these leaders are so hard to come by. That level of integrity and authenticity and the way that it has taken not just Kentucky, but the entire country. And I would bet that a lot of people. I don't know. Do many people in the UK know who Thomas Massie is? It was a pretty high profile battle that he waged.
- [19:03]
Circus
Yeah. So I would say no.
- [19:05]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [19:06]
Circus
Not many people did. You know, Thomas Massey was. Yeah. No.
- [19:09]
Thomas
All right.
- [19:10]
Circus
Yeah. But, but, but if you're close enough, if you're, if you're following US politics a bit, then you did know who he was.
- [19:17]
Thomas
That's not just US politics, though. That was foreign. That was, you know, foreign, quasi, foreign influence that really disliked him. Right.
- [19:24]
Circus
Well, because he pushed on the Epstein stuff. Right.
- [19:27]
Thomas
Well, also voted against the wars. Right. He didn't want more money going to, you know, these, these foreign conflicts and potentially putting American soldiers, you know, boots on the ground. So he was no across all of those. He was no to some of the big bills that were passed because there's lots of pernicious language and every bill that gets passed, somebody slips something in because of a special interest group. So he was pretty steadfast in saying, no, no, we can have smaller bills and more targeted spending. Some things I, I support and I want to spend money on. But you know, in the 11th hour. Senator so and so slipped this absolute toxic garbage into it that I don't want to vote positively for, even though most of the bill is something I agree with, the whole thing is a mess. And then if you look at what happened in. In his race, there's a lot of money that had nothing to do with Kentucky that just wanted him out.
- [20:19]
Circus
Where did that money come from?
- [20:20]
Thomas
Where did the money come from?
- [20:21]
Circus
Why did they want him out?
- [20:22]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [20:23]
Circus
Was there a lobby?
- [20:25]
Thomas
There were many lobbies. There were many lobbies. And, you know, I think it's too easy to fall into the trap that it's like one specific country or one specific lobby that wants them out. Certainly could have played a role. But, you know, there's a lack of transparency. And then it just goes into the. The washing machine. You got different spin cycles that are going to kick it out depending on where you are on the algorithm. Maybe some people are movable. I don't think that many. But it is a lot easier to get some folks to have an open dialogue in person or on a podcast than others. Like, in my experience, if we look at, let's say, libertarian or conservatives, if we can just look in their directions, like, yeah, I'll come to Pub Key, I'll hop on. You know, we'll have an honest dialogue about, you know, whatever issue. And Thomas did that, Thomas Massie. It's very, very difficult, and it's been a real bummer to see how difficult that is to get Democrats to do the same. And we've hosted a lot of Democrats, a lot of great Democrats. The very first one was Senator Gillibrand. Richie Torres has been here many times, but there is a. There is a fear of having a lot of conversations in an open way to finding common ground. And when you won't even approach an open conversation about some of the issues that people are saying. Right. Like, we could sit down. I'd love to sit down with people and say, so this is what I saw. This is fucking weird. Is this the algorithm, like, messing me up? Because I'm not a bad guy. Like, I'm not looking. I'm not looking to be, you know, angry about these things. But, like, is this real or not? And why does. Why don't other people care about it? It should be pretty straightforward. Like, even. I don't know if you want to get into this, but even.
- [22:06]
Circus
Yes, I don't know what it is, but I want to get into it
- [22:09]
Thomas
as an American seeing, you know, the, the systemic rape scandal in the uk. Yeah, pretty mind Boggling.
- [22:16]
Circus
Yeah.
- [22:16]
Thomas
What do I know about it? Like, I don't have any firsthand knowledge. I'm seeing this on. On. On X and some people covering it on YouTube. You know, Tucker will talk about it. I don't see it elsewhere. I see some videos posted by, I don't know, NGOs or lawyers or media personalities effectively just mocking this report and insinuating that their base should mock it, too. But that's. That. That seems like something that, you know, you kind of put your pencil down on pretty much everything else in the country to figure out whether or not there's something real to it.
- [22:50]
Circus
Fake world. Real world.
- [22:51]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [22:52]
Circus
BBC Sky News. They don't really want to come online and talk about whatever the number is. Tens of thousands, some say hundreds of thousands of young white girls being systematically raped by groups of Pakistani men. And the reason they don't want to talk about it is the same reason some of the politicians don't want to talk about it. And there's the reason some of the influence don't want to talk about it. Look, this should be one of those issues. It doesn't matter if you're lefty. Right. You got to come out and say, okay, the systematic rape of young girls. Just say young girls is a terrible thing. We can all agree on that.
- [23:29]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [23:30]
Circus
Okay. If there's a per capita issue here that, like, one group, maybe men from Pakistani Muslim descent are doing it, well, surely we need to look at it. It's a bit like if there's a fire, like the firemen want to know what started it. Like, was there an oily rag? Was there a match? Was there a stove that was broken? You want to know? You. The problem is there was a per capita issue that broke the. That broke the brains of those people who pushed multiculturalism. Yeah, because you had to go, hold on a second. This part of multiculturalism hasn't worked. This part of multiculturalism has led to a disproportionate amount of young white girls being systematically raped by Pakistani Muslim men. Now, you're not a racist to say this, because if there's issues with young white men, we should talk about that, too. And if there's issues with young black men, we should talk about that, too. We should. It's almost like we. We want. We want multiculturalism, but we don't want to accept that there are some realities related to culture. Right, But. But you have to accept that. Just look. Look what happened in Lebanon, what happened in South Africa. Like, there are issues with. With cultures mixing at times. Different values, different countries who come from. But. But. So they didn't want to have the conversation. So it broke people. So what you would get is, I don't know, say they exposed a. A gang of white people who are systematically raping somebody. They'll say, oh, you won't hear Nigel Farage talk about that because they, they don't want to admit there's a per capita issue.
- [25:02]
Thomas
How, how many, how many HBO shows still will have that either at the forefront or in the subtext if they're. It's a show about the Catholic Church. Right. We had, we had a similar scandal in some parishes. You know, there was also a pretty big scandal with the boy Scouts here. That one was like, less elevated. But like, now it's almost in the Zeitgeist, where they will continue that thread when it has to do with the Catholic Church and the scandals that they had in some parishes around. Around the world.
- [25:34]
Circus
Spotlight was a great film on that. You see Spotlight?
- [25:36]
Thomas
No, I don't think I did.
- [25:37]
Circus
I'm real film covering that. There's one bit in it which just kind of like blows your mind at the scale of it, but you've got to watch it to see it.
- [25:45]
Thomas
Okay, I'll put it on my list.
- [25:47]
Circus
Yeah. But I even feel like that was brushed under the carpet. But the problem is, is sure. I think the main issue we have with politics is that people are so involved with it. It's such. Becomes such a part of their life is that winning has become more than being right.
- [26:04]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [26:05]
Circus
So, like, we had this lady, Narinda Kaur on our show.
- [26:09]
Thomas
It's sports ball for people who don't like sports.
- [26:11]
Circus
Yeah. Narinder came on our show and fair play to her. She's from the left. We. We struggled to get leftists on our show. We had a good chat with her. We got into the economics, and I tried to slowly explain to her things like the minimum wage, why it's a terrible idea, like why it will cost jobs and cost businesses and we made some ground. But she cannot support it even if she thinks I'm right, because it is a conservative idea, not a left idea. And the left have to win. My team have to win. And this is where we've lost all sanity. It's like people will. Andy Burnham now in the UK will become prime minister. And the people who hated Keir Starmer on the left, who went to Zach Polanski on the left for something new, will now go back to Andy Burnham. And when an Andy Burnham fails, I'll Go back to Polanski. They will go to the promises of the people who are on their team, but they'll never go to the reality of the people on the other team. And that works both ways. By the way, I can get things totally wrong as somebody's more conservative and go, But I can't vote for Zach Polanski because the guy's a fucking moron. And it has become a team sport. And your team spot analogy is great because we do it all the time. Like there'll be an incident where our player will get fouled in the boss. You're like, that's a definite penalty. But if you're the home side, it's like, well, that's not a penalty. And we've just done the same. And so really what we have is a group of people on the left who won't move, a group of people on the right who won't move. There's the rational conversation in the middle, but you can't get people to go in there and go, hold on a second. It's the whole left right thing's just broken us. And now we're all like on every single fucking issue there is. That's why I don't vote. I mean, what's the point anymore?
- [27:48]
Thomas
I think it's going to get a lot worse than that, though. It's not the two party system. It's not conservatives versus the left. I don't know if you, if you've been following this, but there's, you know, a rising, you know, political star from the, the Democratic Party who I think was in, is. Is in the mix to take over Nancy Pelosi's seat when she retires. Scott Wiener, I believe he's been a champion for gay rights. San Francisco assembly or something. I don't know. Huh.
- [28:19]
Circus
Awesome name.
- [28:21]
Thomas
There's been a couple of videos coming out where the f. The left is kind of eating itself right now. Like he hasn't said the right things in terms of the Israel, Palestine, you know, conflict, genocide, whatever you want to call it. And there are factions of the left that are just openly harassing him at restaurants and parks. Like he can't really go out into public anymore. And it's just a guy with a phone in his face screaming bloody murder, attracting a crowd. And then there's a swarm in the background. It's not civil dialogue under any circumstances, but I think that we're seeing a fair amount of that on the left. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we also see it on the right. I think that that's in the early stages of fomenting because similar to how the America. The point I was making earlier about how America is quite agile and can change directions quickly, I would say that the DNC is able to do that very strategically focused. Whereas, you know, the, the gop, the Republicans were a little bit more methodical, slow moving. So it takes them a bit to sort of catch up to the new ballgame and, or the new, like, mode of how the party is evolving. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised we start to see a, you know, conservatives eating conservatives faction or conflict fomenting like we've seen with the dnc, the traditional Democrats and the dsa.
- [29:45]
Circus
This is why I come back to like, where does this head? Because if it's, if it's just a team sport and I'm just going to go with whatever the latest person on my side says and I'm going to agree with everything. I'm not going to think things through rationally. I can't listen to rational arguments. Where does it lead? I mean, was, was civil war just a, was that Hollywood telling us what's coming like? And is maybe a split a good thing?
- [30:14]
Thomas
There are many different Americas right now. It seems like Trump had basically an impossible job. He had to be perfect across a number of things and he's been mired in a bunch of things that are slowing down and I think cheapening some of the progress that he has made. I think that, look, I see what you see. I don't know what happened to Doge. It looked like it was a great program. It didn't deserve 10 months. It deserved, you know, four years to continue to, like, go through. Who wouldn't want AI identifying good uses and wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars? But for whatever reason that's thrown out and relatively, you know, it's abandoned sort of in short order. Same thing is true on immigration. Like, immigration is a mess in this country and we don't have to pick on specific individuals and families and what happens there. But you can look at legal and illegal immigration and you can see just tremendous problems across, you know, the entire, the entire system. Both parties are complicit in allowing this to continue. Like, the Republicans have the executive branch, the legislative branch, and, you know, you can make the argument that, you know, it's kind of stacked a little bit more for the conservatives and the judiciary. And with all of that, House and Senate, by the way, with all of that, it does feel like progress was blunted a little bit. And I think, you know, there is a machine that is, Is quite good at protecting itself, and it's death by a thousand cuts.
- [31:43]
Circus
This is why I think the libertarians were ultimately right. Not because they have a great argument.
- [31:48]
Thomas
Feckless as a political part.
- [31:49]
Circus
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:51]
Thomas
But as a political party.
- [31:53]
Circus
Well, Nick Carter, our mutual friend, acquaintance, had a really good point on this, but it always stuck with me. He said, the problem with libertarian politics is that for it to be successful, it has to accumulate power, which is antithetical to being libertarian.
- [32:08]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [32:08]
Circus
And I was like, that's a really good point, but.
- [32:10]
Thomas
Sure.
- [32:11]
Circus
But it took me a long time to really understand libertarianism because there's like some really. I think there's some solid arguments. Who will build the roads? Yeah, it's a fair thing to discuss. Let's discuss who will build the roads, who will protect the borders, etc. What kind of happens to society if you have private police forces and private. All that stuff. They're all interesting conversations to have, but where I came to have, like, real sympathy for them is that the state itself will always grow, but more so, not always. We may have wars to shrink it, but, like, generally speaking, continues to grow. But it's its own kind of organism. And the bigger the surface area of the state is, the biggest surface area, it's the grift. And even like, what Michael Malice said to me, he said, look, if you just see the state as rival gangs competing for control of territory, it's a lot easier to understand politics. I was like, you're totally right. And all we see is. Or what we don't see is like, Trump came in with these promises, no wars. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And then he hasn't done it. Is there a tap on the shoulder? It's like, yeah, by the way, Mr. Trump, we're going to go into Iran because of XYZ reason, and you're going to fucking do it. I. I don't know, but all I know is, is like, the bigger the surface area the state gets, the worse life gets. Always.
- [33:29]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [33:29]
Circus
In every direction. Unless you're one of those people who gets to steal by being part of the state, or you're like a super rich billionaire, gets a lobby for what you want, but, like, you are essentially handling human incentives.
- [33:43]
Thomas
Have proved that that is extremely attractive for a lot of people.
- [33:46]
Circus
Yeah. And, I mean, I don't know what I would do if I was running Facebook and I wanted some legislation through to help me, like, would I lobby. Would I make political. I don't know until I'm in that position. Like to think I wouldn't. But you don't know. But the bigger the surface area of the state, the more chance there is for grift and corruption. And so I think the libertarian is 100% right. The state should be as small as possible.
- [34:08]
Thomas
Yeah, anarchists unite is not a viable strategy. At least a few of them will say fuck you, don't tell me what to do. But one thing that I, that I do think is very core to central to like core American values and core Bitcoin values as well. I think there's a lot of overlap here. Building parallel systems is one of the only, I think optimistic pathways through the state's going to state all the countries, all of the, if they're the globalist agenda or you know, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And it's so malleable depending on what the issue is. I think the only way through is to build parallel systems that empower individuals and allow them at least an option to do their own thing for the betterment of themselves, for their family and for the community. A much more, you know, bottom up perspective. No one's coming to save anybody at the end of the day, certainly not from the government. But I think, you know, neighbors helping each other, brothers helping each other, that's a far more powerful decentralized network to get out of this mess. And even then it's fucking hard, right? Like there's I think a lot of promise in decentralized AI and you know, running your own local, local model, protecting privacy so that it doesn't just go to anthropic open AI and they can gobble it up and put it through, you know, Oracle and Palantir and you know, just increase the surveillance Panopticon. But there's a real like technical barrier to that, right? There's a level of capability, responsibility. And we know this from our days in Bitcoin. Not everybody is necessarily interested in self custody. They're not comfortable running their own node and figuring out how to keep their assets safe. The same thing's going to AI is speedrunning all of the, you know, problems of the last 10 years or challenges the last 10 years of Bitcoin. And you know, one frustration that I have, and that's one of the reasons that we started PubKey was to actually make people a little bit more comfortable with taking control for the benefits that they could have if they understood the technology. Whereas you know, the last couple of years with ETFs and the treasury companies. I think that people were more focused on Bitcoin as an asset that could increase in value and make their lives better. Sure they need to pay more taxes, but who gives a shit? But the self sovereignty mission is, I think, in a really precarious stage for Bitcoin. And we're going to have another bite at this apple. If you talk about it from a libertarian perspective in building parallel systems. But the technical barriers I think are pretty high right now. Maybe the computer is going to help you build them and it can do it step by step like I'm a five year old. But it requires a certain level of accountability, responsibility and desire to go and accomplish those things. And the desire really comes from, in the first place, full circle back to what we were talking about. Do people even recognize that this is a problem or are we crazy? Yeah, I don't know.
- [37:17]
Circus
It's tricky. I think. I think most people are trapped.
- [37:21]
Thomas
If you ask, they feel trapped.
- [37:25]
Circus
I think most people are trapped. I think life is hard.
- [37:29]
Thomas
They even know they're trapped.
- [37:30]
Circus
Maybe they don't, but. But there's like, I've made and lost money a few times, right?
- [37:36]
Thomas
And
- [37:39]
Circus
having money does not make you happy, but being broke does make you unhappy for sure. But one of the best things that comes with the times where you've got a bit of money is a bit of freedom to think, choose, speak, whatever. And okay, if you work in Hollywood, are you free to speak your mind? Free to speak every thought you have? Probably not, because you won't get the role. Right. We all know Matthew McConaughey is a Republican, but he has to talk like a Democrat who just like wears a cowboy hat sometimes and some cowboy shoes because what happens if he comes out as a hardcore Republican? If he said I voted, he probably voted for Trump. But if he said he voted for Trump, he's done. Yeah, cooked, right. We know that. So, like, all those people are trapped. You can't have a free conversation in Hollywood. Let's just admit that. You can have trans kids, but you can't have a free conversation. That's it. We have the same in the uk. If you work in sports, if you're a footballer, it's very hard to have a free independent thought on certain ideas we just had.
- [38:43]
Thomas
It was pride month in June and I think in every single.
- [38:48]
Circus
Have the left claimed every month now? Huh? Have the left claimed every month?
- [38:53]
Thomas
I mean, there's. Yeah, there's probably like. Well, I don't know if it's the left. The holidays are out of control. We have, like, a national hot dog day, which we're happy about here at Pubkey, but, like, you know, there's a day for everything. But I think that there was an example from just about every major sports league in terms of whether or not being forced to wear the pride flag or, you know, salute the pride flag or whatever would be in conflict with. With, let's say, religious rights. And you'd have baseball players. I think there was an NBA player recently who also got into hot water over this saying, like, no, I'm a devout Christian. Like, I don't believe in that or whatever religion. And it came in conflict with the, you know, corporate league, the corporate sponsorships at the league level. And then there's rules of conduct and everything that gets forced on it. One of my favorite things, Tim Dillon recently, I think, was on Rogan talking about this, like, why does the bank. Why does Chase need to be gay? Like, why does Chase have to change their logo on LinkedIn? Like, who is that servicing? Like. And, you know, Tim, as you know, is, you know, a gay comedian here in the US Has a fantastic podcast, and he's like, this is absolute bullshit. I don't need, you know, Chick Fil? A to have to honor Pride Month. It's okay for them to do what they're doing, but, you know, it's certainly not expressed in major industries, media, Hollywood, you know, entertainment, certainly sports are part of that.
- [40:19]
Circus
Well, so this is where the left have done a really great job. They've done a great job at shaming people into following the party line. And so if you work in London, I know this. I know this for a fact, because I know some of my friends, they're like, they may be saying they're going to vote reform or even restore God, God forbid, but they will not.
- [40:37]
Thomas
Feeling a little bit naughty.
- [40:39]
Circus
They will. Oh, man. I'm telling you, they. They cannot have open conversations in their offices about that because they will be ostracized for just even trying to have a conversation. Like, why? Like, people say to me, why would you vote Restore you race. You're a fascist.
- [40:55]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [40:56]
Circus
I'm like, oh, because he's the only person who understands economics. And if we don't solve that, it doesn't matter what you talk about, anything else all going to be broken. This is going to be. We're going to be like some weird combination of Argentina, South Africa and Lebanon, and the country's going to collapse and fall apart. I just want to fix the economics, you can't have that conversation. But you can if you've got the freedom. If you've got financial freedom or career freedom. You run a podcast and you're financially free. You can say what the fuck you want, but most people can't. And so there's this like natural drift towards accepting bullshit because. And I think it's a job the left have done really well at. They've been really good at shaming people into agreeing with any. Yeah, we want to. We're have men going boxing rings and beat up women. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, freedom, liberty. Yeah, they've done a really good job of that. And, and I think that's the. I still think that's the old fake world and I think we're drifting back to the real world. But that transition's tough, man.
- [41:45]
Thomas
Yeah. One of the biggest mask off moments for me was election night. Trump versus Hillary Clinton, 2016. I had been, you know, getting into bitcoin. You know, I had worked for law firms previously. Come from, you know, liberal family. My wife is, you know, they're a liberal family. I loved pbs. PBS is, you know, pbs, yes. State sponsored American news. The news hour is one of my favorite things. Used to religiously give money to it, watch it religiously, you know, on YouTube or live on, on TV, whatever. So of course that's the channel that I had on. I didn't like you know, the spin on Fox or the spin on MSNBC and the, you know, really watered down version of whatever CNN's throwing. So I went with PBS because I thought it was the most, you know, academic, no nonsense approach to whatever issue that they're covering. The mask off moment for me was Judy Woodruff and the two other. I forget the co anchors at the time. I think it was Ahari Srinivasan and somebody else. They looked like they were going to fucking vomit like the second it changed and it, like it was a party. This is absolutely going to be the first female precedent. It's going to be, you know, a historic day. As it started to turn, jitter started to be visible on camera and you know, announcing it that we have elected a new president and President Trump is going to be number 45. They looked like they were going to vomit on their desk and I was like, what the fuck is that? That's insane because they were just high fiving the whole way through. And now it's like a funeral. And I won't say where I was working at the time, but, you know, I went, I went to Work the next day or, or whenever the next time. And it looked like people like everybody's dog died in like a horrible fashion, except for like one or two people. And that was actually really funny.
- [43:38]
Circus
But that was like Brexit in the. Brexit in the uk. When, when that vote happened, we were at Glastonbury and I don't know when was. When was Brexit con? I mean, Connor would have been about 10 or 11 and Scarlet like six years younger. Anyway, you get up at. We get up Glastonbury every morning. We go get some breakfast, whatever. And we're heading up to get some breakfast. This is woman wandering around the field, like crying, holding her face. What the going on there?
- [44:04]
Thomas
And I go, because of Brexit?
- [44:05]
Circus
Yeah, but I didn't know that at the time. I was like, poor woman. Was she okay?
- [44:09]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [44:09]
Circus
And because that was the same, like Brexit was not going to happen. Like all the polls, all the exit polls, all the predictions was is going to be a narrow win for Remain. And I was following on my phone and then obviously it turned during the night. Anyway, this woman's wandering around crying. I got to her and I was like, are you okay? She's like, no. What's the matter? She's like, I can't believe it. Brexit. We've exit. Like she's in tears. I don't. And I think there would have been a lot of people crying up and down the country, but if the vote gone the other way, I don't think there would have been many people crying that we've remained that are gone. Nah, that's bullshit. Yeah, carry it on. And there seems to be this again from the left side, this much more emotional kind of catastrophizing about losing anything, which is why I think they organize themselves better, which why they're activists, why they shout and scream at people because they're so convinced they're right.
- [45:04]
Thomas
There's emotion. There's too much emotion. I think emotion in politics is, you know, on. On the same level as the money in politics being a really, you know, bad thing. But I don't know how you fix emotion in politics. Maybe there. Maybe there is a way.
- [45:19]
Circus
Thomas, I think that's a bigger question that I would ask for people on the left, people who voted on the left. I'd like to ask a broad range of people. Can you explain to me how your life has got better under this administration? Yeah, name me what has got better for you. Yeah, your taxes are up, your cost of living is up. If you're one of those middle class champagne socialist voters, your school fees are going up for your kids, your job's under threat. What, what's got better? So what is it you want? Why are you voting for this? Like, are you happy with it? And look, I know for some people, because what's starting to happen, this is the turn, this is the change that's starting to happen is that unfortunately it takes too long. But there are people who are being affected by their pocket and their bank accounts. They're starting to see this stuff and go, hold on a second.
- [46:06]
Thomas
People literally die over this stuff.
- [46:08]
Circus
Yeah.
- [46:08]
Thomas
You guys built. What was it for? The bats. The tunnel for the bats.
- [46:12]
Circus
The bat tunnel.
- [46:13]
Thomas
And how many people have air conditioning?
- [46:15]
Circus
I mean, we don't do air conditioning.
- [46:17]
Thomas
I know, exactly. But we only died.
- [46:18]
Circus
We have two weeks. What was the back tunnel, Conor? 150 million. 150, yeah, 150 million. But there's multiple points on that. Like, who got paid. Sure. Who had the conversation, by the way, we got to protect these bats and
- [46:36]
Thomas
some old pensioner is just like getting cooked in their apartment or freezing in
- [46:41]
Circus
winter because we can't give them winter fuel payments. And that goes to the grif side though, the consultant who said we should have it, who's got a friend in the government who said, yeah, you should definitely do this, I can get you this. But we, we know. So there's the whole grift and corruption side of things, but the just absolute stupidity of it, like, they're bats. They started Covid apparently, like, fuck em. But it goes back to the point. It's like I say the same to the Conservative people. You voted Conservatives. What's got better in your life? Because then it becomes a question for everyone. It's like, name me one thing that's got better in the last 15 years in the UK. Name me one thing. The roads haven't got better. Like, have you heard about the potholes? Do you have potholes here, do you?
- [47:25]
Thomas
In New York? Yeah. We're good at them.
- [47:27]
Circus
So use. Okay. So in the uk, you cannot drive anywhere at the moment without hitting a pothole. We used to go and fill them up. We don't. You look down the side of the road, there's just rubbish strewn everywhere.
- [47:38]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [47:38]
Circus
So the roads have gone to shit. All right, the nhs, has that got better? No. Wait in this longer. You can't get a doctor's appointment. Phone up is three weeks. Actually, you can't even fucking phone up these days. You go on to like, One of those like answering things that kind of filters you through. You try and book an appointment, the appointment fails. So the NHS is not worse yourself,
- [47:57]
Thomas
like you can in Canada, like it's a better outcome.
- [47:59]
Circus
Only if they want you dead.
- [48:01]
Thomas
Okay, yeah.
- [48:01]
Circus
If they don't want you dead, it's illegal. But if they want you dead, they'll, they'll put you on a trolley and take, you know. So we've had like I joking but we've had the vote on it recently in it and it went through the first, we have multiple rounds and then it goes to the lords. But so, so the roads haven't got a better. The NHS has got a better. We haven't had growth, wages have stagnated, so people are generally poorer. We've had masses of inflation. The borders, have the borders worked? Is the UK known for its borders? No. So the borders aren't working. What about our military? Well, our ships don't work.
- [48:36]
Thomas
Even worse as an island.
- [48:37]
Circus
Yeah, and we tested our nuclear weapons and they failed. Okay, so that's defense, health, roads and infrastructure. We couldn't build HS2 the train we wanted to build. I mean China probably built 10,000 miles of fast super speed trains in the time they built buckle they spent 100 billion achieve about 100 billion I think they spent achieving nothing. I might be slightly off there, but it's definitely in the tens of billions. Okay, education, has that got better? No. Outcomes are getting worse. We've removed, we've added VAT to school fees unless people go to private school where you do get a better education, whether you like it or not is the, is the truth. Okay, so education's worth. Health is worse, roads are worse, defense is worth, Borders is worse. What have I missed out? What else has got? There's nothing you like, you cannot name.
- [49:30]
Thomas
How are the airports?
- [49:32]
Circus
We're pretty good at airports. All right, yeah, we're pretty good at airports. But we want to build a new Runway at Heathrow. It's going to take 15, 20 years.
- [49:38]
Thomas
Yes.
- [49:39]
Circus
Like 90% of the time we'll be spending money with consultants and having judicial reviews to get it passed through. When we are the hub that connects you guys with Europe. Like it's so obvious we should do it, but nothing in the public sector has got better. And a lot of stuff we've privatized got shit as well. I mean we're pumping shit into our waters at the moment. But the point is, it's like, look guys, if I asked you the question, name me one thing that's got Better in the last 15 years and you can't name one thing. And we have had Conservative and Labor parliaments. Do you think the problem might be the state itself? Do you think that might be the problem? Can, can we, can we have that? Because I don't even want to have a left with right conversation anymore. I want to have enough us for them conversation. Thomas, I want to say, yeah, I agree. If we can agree nothing's got better. Can we at least have the conversation that maybe the state isn't very good at stuff?
- [50:35]
Thomas
Yeah, I would say that they're pretty bad at stuff. I mean there's doordash now, right? Like it's kind of ridiculous that there's all this innovation, right. Living in the modern world that people enjoy calling a car to come pick you up because you want to go have a couple of drinks at night, it'll bring you home. You know, these are really superficial, like examples, but for all of that to be built, all of that digital infrastructure and technological advancement across a lot of different industries and to see the critical services like healthcare and education go to shit at the same time and become way more expensive. I think this is probably worse in the United States than it is in the uk. I'm not an expert on this. I haven't spent that much time in
- [51:16]
Circus
the UK Healthcare, I think your system is completely and utterly fucked. But if you've got money, the outcomes are good.
- [51:23]
Thomas
Well, that's, that's what I was getting at. The same for education? Yeah, I think, I think if for, for folks that have money, healthcare and education in the United States is world class. Like it's, it's phenomenal. You can navigate it, but it's extraordinarily expensive. But you know, as a government service, it's gotten way more expensive. It's gotten hit. It's not included in our inflation numbers. It's, it's carved out because it's an absolute joke. But you know, we can get cheaper flat screen TVs. That's pretty cool.
- [51:50]
Circus
Well, but then it poses another question. Like if we can have an honest conversation about health outcomes and education. Say, look, people who get privately educated seem to do better. They seem to be smarter. People who got the money seem to have better health outcomes. So why is that? What, what is the private education system doing and the private health care system doing that makes those outcomes better.
- [52:15]
Thomas
You want to keep that quiet, right?
- [52:17]
Circus
Yeah, but like, like, of course the state doesn't like it. But, but let's have.
- [52:22]
Thomas
The state does like it. The state doesn't for their kids.
- [52:25]
Circus
I think that their kids are their family.
- [52:27]
Thomas
Sure. But look at, look at, you know, the color revolution or whatever. I think that we were talking about this a little bit earlier in terms of when you inject envy and jealousy into the equation. We're just going to tax the trillionaire guy, Right. The South African trillionaire guy needs to pay more for social services because that'll solve all of our problems. That is a, that is an emotional argument or an emotional policy that is never satiated and it just runs out of control. And I think that we're getting to the point where in a lot of countries, out of control can get really fucking ugly.
- [53:01]
Circus
Yeah, but it goes back to like, if it's working, why is it working? Do you want better outcomes for your kids? Like, can we change the argument? Okay, look, let's just talk about your kids. Do you want them to have a better education?
- [53:15]
Thomas
Scarce resource at the end of the day.
- [53:16]
Circus
But you, but do you want to have your kids to have a better education? Do you want them to have a better health outcome? Yeah. Do you want to be in the position to give them those? Okay, so how do we do it? Well, we have to have smarter people. We have to have more people qualified. We have to have more wealth and prosperity. The only way you build good stuff. I think you know what, we've lived in a period of luxury like, and I've lived entirely during the period of luxury which forgets the shoulders that this luxury was built on, of hard work, craft. And like my fucking granddad working on the train lines going up and down the country and then my dad working the airports doing every shift. A lot of hard working people built a world where fuckos can have iPhones and complain on them. And I just think we need to get people in the real world. I would love Thomas, the way the place I'd love to shift the conversation is forget your left, I get you right. If nothing has got better and we know the outcomes of the people I've got money are better because they can afford stuff. Can we at least try and like, let's identify why the government, when they run stuff, it doesn't work very well. What are the incentives? What's going on there? Shall we try and have less of that and more of the stuff that means your kids get a better education, better healthcare. It's not necessarily right. It's us and them.
- [54:34]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [54:34]
Circus
How do we get people there?
- [54:35]
Thomas
Well, I think when you hosted, when you hosted Curtis Yarvin twice on your show I think you got into this and he's more of an expert in this than I am for sure. But unwinding, deeply entrenched political hierarchies or political structures, it's, you know, near nearly
- [54:52]
Circus
impossible unless we call their heads off.
- [54:55]
Thomas
Well, it usually ends with revolution like the French Revolution, the you know, CCP revolution like, you know, the Bolsheviks. It gets really ug, really want to live through those times, but that's how you completely upend political hierarchies or structures that are not working for lots of people. And what do they want the outcome to be? It's different in every case, but I think that the, the through line with all those circumstances just shows you, you, you get to an absolute powder keg moment in unwinding the structure that's not working and all the forces. I mean if you look at, you know, the United States, you have foreign influence, you have lobbyists, you have special interest groups, you have industries with tremendous, tremendous, you know, sums of money that are pushing for their self interest. And when it's a corporation that's not necessarily an individual or it's a group of individuals that are promoting shareholder value or something that is even more permission is like if it's on ideological lines, whether it's, you know, religious values or whatever, conquest of other religions, finding ways to divide, you know, us v. Them, we're certainly seeing that, you know, bubble up more and more. Unwinding the political structures though, I think, you know, requires probably conflict. It either has to collapse or there has to be a parallel system. The parallel system is really the libertarian, I think, you know, rosy day scenario where there's something that just outcompetes it can't be stopped. I think the closest thing that we have to that and, and it's the, you know, I would say Bitcoin is very fragile, but it is, you know, a candle in a very large dark cave. And I would say decentralized AI having access to thoroughly jailbroken LLM models that you can use on your own privately and restore data privacy and self sovereignty are light spots in very, very dark world at the moment because otherwise I think it just ends in collapse and conflict.
- [56:59]
Circus
Yeah, so I kind of have this utopian bull case optimistic view with AI and certainly if we have the decentralized AI, I think it's going to help. But it's the ability to build accurate information systems very quickly. And so obviously Thomas, recently you see me on my laptop quite a bit.
- [57:25]
Thomas
Yeah, you're full blown psychosis.
- [57:27]
Circus
Well, I don't know if it is psychosis. But what I know is we are in a short period of time. I think we've got a year where you've got a. Well, as individuals, we have a year to kind of like stake our claim in that world. I've been building lots of different things and learning about various things, but actually the most interesting thing I've built. I don't think I even showed you. I built this little website called show us Receipts.
- [57:52]
Thomas
Yeah, did I show you that?
- [57:53]
Circus
And I was within three days able to ingest every tweet a politician had written. And the only reason I didn't grade them all is that was a very expensive token project because it had to go through like large scale reasoning on every tweet. So I just took the last 50 tweets of every politician. It cost me five grand. If I want to do all of them, it may be 50, 100, 150 grand, which I may do, by the way. But I ingested their tweets and it went through and it just fact checked everything they said. And it said, is this true? Partly true. Misleading, false or you can't classify it. And so I did it. And the only reason I didn't release it is when I started looking them, I found some errors. Like one thing it put as a false. But what happened, somebody had retweeted a tweet referring to that tweet. And actually that was correct. So I had to building. Okay, we now need to grade if there's retweets and there's a lot of work to get it there. When I say a lot of work, it's really a week of work, a few people testing it and fixing it and like some tokens. My second point is like, if I do release this because of the way the UK is, I risk a libel lawsuit if I class something as a lie that isn't a lie.
- [59:11]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [59:12]
Circus
And when I was checking the gradings, you know, I've got to get the algorithm right. But the point is, if there was no risk of litigation, I just fucking release it. And just, you know, if I was in America, I'd just say, look, by the way, like there's some grading here. You can, if you're not, if you disagree with the grading, please write to
- [59:29]
Thomas
us for entertainment purposes.
- [59:31]
Circus
No, but, but it's a, it's a bigger thing. Because when I did that, I was like, ah, that's, that's interesting. Well, the biggest political TV show is a thing called Question Time. We have every week in the uk, It's a TV show. They get six politicians on with Fiona Bruce. The audience asks questions, they answer them the topic of the day. I was like, I can at the end of that, very easily ingest that, convert it into a transcript and identify what each person said and have them fact checked. Cool. Oh, what else can I do this with? Oh, I can do this with political podcasts. The rest is propagate. But, sorry, the rest is politics, which I think is a propaganda show. Again, we can just put it out there. And so with that, I was like, oh, now what I can do, I can find every single news article and have that fact checked. I can just provide a AI fact check service for everything. And with that, I was like, do you know what I really need to build onto? This is a check my bias. You personally, I show you, like, this is who you vote for. Here's a bunch of times, well, I can prove they've lied. How does that make you feel? And just try. But the point was on this, it was like me on my own, no coding experience, was able to build something in three days. Give me two weeks, I'll build something incredible. Well, what else can we do? Can we scan all government contracts? Can we scan government contracts? Who got the contract? Who awarded it? Who awarded it? Are they friends on Facebook? That's kind of interesting. Let's look at every decision the government makes and put it through. Like, if we are able to build skills of every single skill set in the world, can we go through every government contract they've awarded and wine challenge it? Like, can we get to an ultimate source of truth that constantly exposes the bullshit that people. Because I think if you can get it to a point where you get people to realize I am being ripped off, even the people I vote for ripping me off, can you connect the outcomes of your life to the decisions they make and just make people go, oh, the problem of them, the problem's them. Can we get there? And that's my hope.
- [61:31]
Thomas
Not with platforms. Not with platforms that can be censored and easily manipulated, like anthropic OpenAI, Facebook, you know, even X to a certain extent. Like, you know, X will shut off or, you know, shadow ban large accounts. I think Bronze Age, Bronze Age mantis, Bronze Age pervert on Twitter is, you know, getting a lot of this.
- [61:51]
Circus
I thought Elon would have liked him.
- [61:52]
Thomas
Huh?
- [61:53]
Circus
I thought Elon would have liked him.
- [61:54]
Thomas
I don't know what's going on, but, you know, lots of people are posting that. You know, you search his name and it'll come up with like 100 derivative accounts. But his is not searchable. Well, that's also been removed from Twitter multiple, multiple times.
- [62:06]
Circus
That was a bit like when Rogan interviewed Trump. You couldn't search for the interview on YouTube.
- [62:10]
Thomas
Yeah, exactly. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So as long as we have these platforms that can receive, you know, as long as it's humans receiving influence from other powerful humans, then it'll always be a problem. Decentralization and self sovereignty of individuals is the only way out of that mess.
- [62:27]
Circus
So we have to decentralize everything.
- [62:28]
Thomas
Yeah, eventually, certainly. Certainly access to knowledge. Right. And you know, I think that AI is certainly making that ubiquitous, but you can't access everything. And this is not an American problem or a UK problem exclusively. Deep Seek doesn't let you ask questions about Tiananmen Square.
- [62:46]
Circus
It does. You can ask it. It tells you it's a really nice place to visit. Yeah, it's a holiday. Of course, apparently there wasn't a protest there. And a guy with a shopping bag standing in front of tanks.
- [62:54]
Thomas
It was a big misunderstanding. Yeah, yeah, he was just asking for directions.
- [62:59]
Circus
But this is so I, this is my favorite thing about AI. AI is going to be for everyone. It's going to be like your, you know, your mate who calls you out on your bullshit. We can just call all the bullshit out because we have the entire history of information and we can build a skill set of the perfect people to analyze research data. We can build everything. Right. Eventually. So if we do have that, one or two things happens. There's potentially the world where AI gets too good and maybe it isn't allowed to be used like Fable or ChatGPT. 5.6, 100%.
- [63:34]
Thomas
We're already there.
- [63:35]
Circus
Yeah, of course we're already there. Being facetious, but the.
- [63:39]
Thomas
Yeah, but that could accelerate. Claude's also been kind of garbage lately. It slowed down. There was degradation across the entire, like, platform. It wasn't just fable.
- [63:46]
Circus
Is, is that, is that just like moaning about wi fi not working on an airplane?
- [63:51]
Thomas
I don't know. I mean, who knows? But the reality of the situation is. But you know, I noticed it. I saw lots of other people noticing it in my algorithmic bubble. I, I have no, I have no knowledge as to the veracity of that situation. But I did think it was weird. The timing was weird. Tired of saying it's weird.
- [64:10]
Circus
Yeah, it's weird, man. But like, if we have, okay, let's just go and have these open source, because you can even run Deepseek. You can reprogram Deepseek too.
- [64:21]
Thomas
Yeah. Jailbreaking LLMs and models is I think, the only way out.
- [64:26]
Circus
So if we have a broad network of open source LLMs AIs that people can put on their desktops and we have a world of people building stuff, intelligence, information, transparency. We can give. We can arm people with the information to think clearly. It's where. Where are they mentally trapped? Like, can I tell? Can I. Can I show you everything that's wrong with the political party, how they're making your life worse? And you will still vote for them, will you? Will you. Would it just be. Will you just avoid that? I don't want the truth. I don't want the truth. I just want to vote for them. Can we get people to that point?
- [65:03]
Thomas
It's not just that. Who wants to be the next Aaron Schwartz or Ross Ulbricht or Snowden or Assange? Like you see what happens in some of these cases. Aaron Schwartz was trying to effectively do this right, make information free. Yeah. Academic articles. And they were going to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. And he killed himself before sentencing or close to it or whatever.
- [65:25]
Circus
Yeah. I spoke to his mom.
- [65:26]
Thomas
She. Terrible story.
- [65:28]
Circus
Yeah, terrible.
- [65:28]
Thomas
I get choked up every time. She still tweets on his birthday.
- [65:31]
Circus
Yeah, I know.
- [65:32]
Thomas
Like that. And every time I see it in my feed, it's just. It's devastating.
- [65:35]
Circus
Yeah. But I think people will. And the thing about AI, when it gets bad enough.
- [65:41]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [65:41]
Circus
But also the thing about AI is you can produce so much so quickly. Like, can we flood the world with trusted, useful information or. I mean, the other might happen, Thomas, is that we might get flooded with more bullshit and propaganda. Can you tell the source of truth?
- [65:58]
Thomas
Yeah, 100%. This is a really powerful tool. And I think if you believe there's lizard people, I think they've known about the power of this tool a hell of a lot longer than you and I have.
- [66:12]
Circus
So do you think the whole fable and 5.6 probably going to have the same. Well, already kind of hinted at the same conditions because they're only releasing it to certain people at the moment. Do you think that is because they know how powerful these tools are and they don't want us to have them, or do you think it is a national security risk?
- [66:30]
Thomas
I think both can be true, yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of these systems, government systems, some with super sensitive information, some, you know, maybe not, are probably pretty fucking vulnerable. If you only knew how bad things truly are.
- [66:47]
Circus
Should we just Comply.
- [66:49]
Thomas
Look, that is, that is what most people do. It's, you know, Matrix was great, right? Like compliance and ignorance is bliss if it's working for you, if it's good enough. Like, who, who wants to be the next Aaron? Aaron Schwartz? Yeah, I, I think it's a really difficult thing to sign up for. And, you know, I think that that's also part of the reason why
- [67:14]
Circus
I
- [67:15]
Thomas
would say men are in the position that they're in right now. Like, you can talk about the Boy Scouts, we can talk about sports sanitization. You know, having. Having a strong male base within a country probably makes compliance a little bit harder to achieve.
- [67:32]
Circus
So we need to raise up the men again.
- [67:34]
Thomas
Yeah.
- [67:34]
Circus
Hell yeah. Yeah.
- [67:35]
Thomas
What's your.
- [67:36]
Circus
Okay, give me your, Give me your. Give me your optimistic outlook. Give me, Give me something to leave happy with. Thomas, we're gonna watch some World Cup.
- [67:44]
Thomas
I think that we've been in this position, this super bleak position many, many, many times throughout human history. And I think that we're going to see a strong resurgence back to organized religion. You know, the church across the street, lying around the block, mostly Gen Z, really? Yeah, absolutely. It's a barbell. You have your blue hairs, almost nobody in the middle and like super young. And it's every day of the week. I think we're going to see two places come out of this. And I've had this thesis for a while and I apologize for talking my own book a little bit, but I think churches and bars return to the traditional role of pubs and taverns where you can meet and discuss really complicated topics in person, find common ground, really identify what the differences are over a couple of beers is going to be. Is going to be tremendously important. Having community and congregation at church and structures that are thousands and thousands of years old, I think are going to provide a certain level of sanity and comfort. And I think one of the ways to deal with the problems is just the way that we always have at churches. I'm sorry, at pubs and taverns where we can get together, look at each other, say, is it me or does shit suck out there? And somebody says, no shit sucks. Let's go overthrow the government.
- [69:08]
Circus
Salud.
- [69:10]
Thomas
But you know, that's a way to really discuss. All these things that I'm seeing seem really weird, but it requires people to actually want that and to join in. Like, the compliance is very attractive.
- [69:24]
Circus
Well, the compliance is attractive, but the, it's very unattractive to dissent because of what happens. Like you, I mean, you mentioned Russell Bright And Aaron Schwartz. But like, there's plenty of other cases, certainly in the uk, where people's lives have been destroyed just for saying. Not the popular thing, just challenging.
- [69:44]
Thomas
I think pretty much everyone.
- [69:45]
Circus
Yeah, we just. It's. It's why we need free speech, why we need people to be able to. We need free thought. We need people to have free thought and be able to express it and discuss it and not worry about the end of their career. We need people not punished for a tweet they sent 12 years ago.
- [69:59]
Thomas
You need privacy for a lot of those things. Right. You need to be able to choose when you opt into a conversation. And I think the Fourth Amendment has been the one that's been so badly destroyed out of all of them, starting
- [70:13]
Circus
with legal search and seizure.
- [70:14]
Thomas
Yeah. Basically general privacy, like right to privacy. And it can express in a lot of different ways with the Bank Secrecy act and the Patriot act, there's no such thing as financial privacy in America to really pernicious laws that, you know, I think should be taken, repealed, or substantially reformed on the grounds of privacy. And then with, you know, web, Web two, Web three, whatever you want to call it, Web three is a joke for you. But, you know, I think we've seen privacy is at odds with convenience and people like convenient things. So being compliance with sort of the erosion of privacy in so many different facets of life has been acceptable because Google Maps works really well. And, you know, if somebody's hammered at a bar, you know, somebody else is going to take them home. And pretty soon the robot's going to take them home, but they're going to need a lot of information. Who's in the robot car? And somehow that's been okay.
- [71:15]
Circus
Right? World Cup's on Thomas.
- [71:18]
Thomas
Thank you, Circus.
- [71:19]
Circus
Hey, if you're ever in New York or Washington, go visit my buddy Thomas's Bars Pub Key there in both cities and get the Smash burger and get the waffle fries and the cheese dip and you can get the fat belly like me. Love you all. Peace out. See you later. Thanks.