1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,820
Johan Kurtz, welcome to the show.

2
00:00:03,760 --> 00:00:04,920
Thank you so much for having me.

3
00:00:05,060 --> 00:00:05,700
Excited to talk.

4
00:00:06,460 --> 00:00:07,120
I am as well.

5
00:00:08,440 --> 00:00:11,700
Thanks for those of you who are unaware of Johan's work.

6
00:00:13,080 --> 00:00:15,600
Substack bestseller, being noble.

7
00:00:15,840 --> 00:00:21,020
He just came out with a book, Leaving a Legacy, which I've been reading through.

8
00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:26,200
Over the last week, opened it on Thanksgiving morning, read a few chapters while my children

9
00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:30,180
And we're playing, watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

10
00:00:30,620 --> 00:00:36,480
And I think it was very apt to be reading this book on that morning,

11
00:00:36,700 --> 00:00:39,780
particularly surrounded by my family on a holiday.

12
00:00:41,300 --> 00:00:44,980
Beyond, like I was saying before, we hit record.

13
00:00:45,500 --> 00:00:49,480
I'm very excited to be speaking with you today because I feel like this conversation

14
00:00:49,480 --> 00:00:54,200
will be a continuation of a long-running thread on this show throughout this year,

15
00:00:54,200 --> 00:01:02,400
particularly about this clash of the generations that we're seeing in the West, particularly

16
00:01:02,400 --> 00:01:09,740
baby boomers, Merce, millennials, Gen Z. It's not even Merce, but I think it's become very clear that

17
00:01:09,740 --> 00:01:21,240
there has been a shift in society philosophically in terms of how the wealthy older generations view

18
00:01:21,240 --> 00:01:27,500
their duty, particularly as it pertains to their kids and how they would pass down wealth.

19
00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:34,300
And I think the work that you're doing and what you have been doing is really highlighting that

20
00:01:34,300 --> 00:01:43,040
there is something's off in terms of the societal norms that are beginning to flourish today that

21
00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:51,100
are very contra to what built Western society over the course of millennia. So I think

22
00:01:51,100 --> 00:02:00,620
maybe starting there um is what how would you describe the state of this sort of positioning

23
00:02:00,620 --> 00:02:05,620
between the generations right now yeah i think i think we're at a very interesting point and we

24
00:02:05,620 --> 00:02:10,740
were discussing before the show that i'm not an expert on bitcoin but perhaps an area of shared

25
00:02:10,740 --> 00:02:16,380
interest is this question of time horizons when it comes to wealth when it comes to projects when

26
00:02:16,380 --> 00:02:21,720
comes to vision. And when I started pulling at this thread that became the subject of the book,

27
00:02:21,760 --> 00:02:28,020
and the sort of central question of the book is, why is it wrong to give your wealth to children

28
00:02:28,020 --> 00:02:32,760
upon your death? Sorry, why is it wrong to give your wealth to charity upon your death rather than

29
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:39,020
your own children? And this is in response to a sort of a wide range of celebrity announcements

30
00:02:39,020 --> 00:02:43,640
that this is what they plan to do, and also sort of mega rich billionaire announcements that this

31
00:02:43,640 --> 00:02:48,260
is what they intended to do. But really, as I started pulling on this thread, I realized that

32
00:02:48,260 --> 00:02:52,800
in many ways, we occupy this culture of impermanence now when it comes to wealth.

33
00:02:53,480 --> 00:02:58,760
So it's not just the billionaires or the ultra wealthy celebrities who announce that they're

34
00:02:58,760 --> 00:03:03,920
planning to give their wealth away, who lose this intergenerational continuity. In fact,

35
00:03:03,920 --> 00:03:08,500
even ones that try to hold on to their wealth actually perform very poorly at that.

36
00:03:09,420 --> 00:03:13,180
So there's this very interesting book by Higani and White, The Missing Billionaires,

37
00:03:13,180 --> 00:03:18,520
who look at the maths across the 20th century. And if you take the wealthiest cohort at the

38
00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:24,160
beginning of the 20th century, and you project how that wealth should have grown if they invested and

39
00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:28,820
achieved normal returns, if they reproduced at the normal rate and spent at a sensible rate for

40
00:03:28,820 --> 00:03:34,340
someone in that wealth bracket, the 1,000 wealthiest families then should have turned into 16,000

41
00:03:34,340 --> 00:03:40,360
billionaire families today, but there are only sort of 700. And this speaks to this wider question of

42
00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:48,780
why are we so bad at constructing permanent things? Why? And what is the root at the heart

43
00:03:48,780 --> 00:03:54,480
of all these weird manifestations of this now impulse where one of the causes of intergenerational

44
00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:58,560
resentment that you mentioned, I think, is older generations choosing to spend their wealth down

45
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:04,020
at the end of their life, indulging in very wealthy, very expensive, you know, cruises and

46
00:04:04,020 --> 00:04:09,480
things like that. Why do some choose to disinherit their children? How do some lose it in other ways?

47
00:04:09,480 --> 00:04:24,380
And really, there is this culture of impermanence that I think both you and I, from different perspectives, are trying to begin to resolve. And I have my theories as to how this arose. But I think there's a rich discussion to be had there.

48
00:04:24,380 --> 00:04:32,380
Well, having read the book, I think the story of King Edward is particularly interesting.

49
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:43,440
In the 1930s, fell in love with an American woman while he was king and decided to resign as king and go live a life with his lover.

50
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:46,500
and the way you describe in the book,

51
00:04:46,580 --> 00:04:49,160
he basically had an abdication of duty

52
00:04:49,160 --> 00:04:52,600
and it wasn't until after he stepped down from the throne

53
00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,840
that he really realized what he was missing out on

54
00:04:55,840 --> 00:05:01,300
and the disappointment he brought the country of England specifically

55
00:05:01,300 --> 00:05:04,940
because he just completely abandoned his duty.

56
00:05:05,060 --> 00:05:08,980
And I think that's indicative of what's happening

57
00:05:08,980 --> 00:05:12,020
at a wider scale here in the West right now.

58
00:05:12,020 --> 00:05:23,480
It's not only a king sort of releasing himself from his duty and not recognizing the profundity of that, but we're beginning to see that seep into the culture more widely.

59
00:05:24,800 --> 00:05:35,380
Yeah, no, exactly. Well, I think there are these behaviors which we sort of assume must come naturally to man and must be inevitable.

60
00:05:35,380 --> 00:05:45,680
But it turns out that a lot of those behaviors, a lot of those healthy expressions of societal cohesion are intimately tied to our beliefs, our sort of foundational convictions about reality.

61
00:05:46,460 --> 00:05:52,120
And as those beliefs shift, actually, a lot of the things that we assumed would live forever just start falling apart.

62
00:05:52,120 --> 00:06:06,400
But, you know, in the case of Edward VIII, who is one of the figures in the book who serves as this cautionary tale about divorcing the notion of wealth, privilege, power from this notion of duty, essentially.

63
00:06:09,100 --> 00:06:11,140
It all starts very early.

64
00:06:11,140 --> 00:06:15,980
So there's this notion that a king should never get divorced, marry a divorcee.

65
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:19,860
They're subject to these actually incredible impositions on their personal freedom, which

66
00:06:19,860 --> 00:06:24,960
is the other side of the coin to being such wealthy, influential figures in society.

67
00:06:25,560 --> 00:06:29,240
You know, to whom, to he whom much has been given, much will be demanded.

68
00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:34,260
And as they lost faith in their own belief system, they started to undermine their own

69
00:06:34,260 --> 00:06:36,240
position, their own credibility in society.

70
00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:45,740
So, you know, Edward VIII was committing adultery with the woman who he went on to marry, an American, but we won't blame you for that.

71
00:06:47,540 --> 00:07:01,200
And as such, you know, wanting then to remain in his position as king when he wanted to marry her, a twice divorced woman who was in fact still married at that point, just became a very messy situation in which the structures that kept society together.

72
00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:07,660
And in that case, the institution of the monarchy were clearly at odds with the lived values of the people who inhabited them.

73
00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:13,160
And I think something like that has happened more broadly to all of us.

74
00:07:13,240 --> 00:07:26,880
And I think, you know, say what you like about Christianity, and I am a Christian, but at least Christianity gave the wealthy men of the West an entire integrated framework of duty,

75
00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:34,040
way of understanding their place in the world, why they had what they had, how they were morally

76
00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:43,140
responsible for their children and charity and so forth. It was a time-tested framework.

77
00:07:43,960 --> 00:07:49,080
And now that an entire class of people has ascended to a position of great wealth,

78
00:07:49,080 --> 00:07:52,560
essentially the boomer generation and some of those who came after them,

79
00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:58,080
outside the context of that moral superstructure of Christendom.

80
00:07:58,920 --> 00:08:02,700
If not Christianity, and I'm a bit partial here,

81
00:08:02,740 --> 00:08:06,420
but if not Christianity, we do need to form this entire

82
00:08:06,420 --> 00:08:13,180
coherent philosophy of duty as to the nature of the affluence we've built.

83
00:08:13,340 --> 00:08:14,500
Like, what is its purpose?

84
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:17,820
It can't just be creating more and then indulging more

85
00:08:17,820 --> 00:08:20,800
because there's this sort of very unattractive culture

86
00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:27,780
of the hedonism of the aged that I think strikes us all as a sort of beneath our elders, um,

87
00:08:28,200 --> 00:08:30,340
that is doing great damage to society.

88
00:08:32,340 --> 00:08:38,740
No, it really is. And it's perplexing as a Christian myself. Uh,

89
00:08:41,620 --> 00:08:47,580
it trying to get out of the phrases because I was actually reading something this morning.

90
00:08:47,580 --> 00:08:52,240
maybe we'll just lean into it

91
00:08:52,240 --> 00:08:55,120
do you think a lot of

92
00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:59,020
what we're seeing in terms of this hedonism

93
00:08:59,020 --> 00:09:03,060
this sort of we're going to spend our wealth before we die

94
00:09:03,060 --> 00:09:05,720
and if we have more left over we're going to give it to charity

95
00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:08,480
because we don't spoil you kids

96
00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:10,600
you need to work hard

97
00:09:10,600 --> 00:09:15,860
is the root problem of this issue

98
00:09:15,860 --> 00:09:21,820
seep to the fact that we've fallen away from Christ as a society broadly in the West.

99
00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:28,160
Because that's one thing I loved about the book is all the biblical passages you have

100
00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:36,660
throughout it that really anchor these sort of core building blocks of a flourishing society

101
00:09:36,660 --> 00:09:39,740
that are being completely thrown to the wayside these days.

102
00:09:39,740 --> 00:09:47,680
Yeah, well, I mean, there's this phenomenon that takes place in really all areas of society.

103
00:09:47,880 --> 00:09:52,060
You can see some reflection of this, which is the Enlightenment comes and it challenges

104
00:09:52,060 --> 00:09:57,220
as the sort of Enlightenment tenants become popular amongst different areas of society.

105
00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:02,040
They challenge the sort of foundations of belief, long-held convictions, traditions,

106
00:10:02,260 --> 00:10:08,320
and so forth. And in some ways that has incredibly positive effects. The separation

107
00:10:08,320 --> 00:10:14,680
of science from kind of natural science, where there's all kinds of like dubious philosophical

108
00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:20,500
priors that are actually inhibiting the evolution of science. In some ways, there are benefits there.

109
00:10:20,940 --> 00:10:26,060
In other ways, it has, I think, fairly detrimental effects on society. But that is not immediately

110
00:10:26,060 --> 00:10:30,440
obvious, because people just have ways of doing things. They have certain assumptions. They grow

111
00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:34,720
up in a cultural milieu that still basically inherits all its traditions and all its assumptions

112
00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:41,200
from what came before. And so the kind of instability at the very base of society,

113
00:10:41,340 --> 00:10:45,480
at the very base of existence is not immediately apparent. And I think something like that has

114
00:10:45,480 --> 00:10:52,920
happened with property, with private property, which is that when Zhong Lok comes in and sort

115
00:10:52,920 --> 00:11:01,060
of establishes this very formalized notion of private property to oversimplify a complex

116
00:11:01,060 --> 00:11:08,220
transition. And he says, this is mine, that is yours. To intermix those two things, we have to

117
00:11:08,220 --> 00:11:15,560
enter into a consensual contract together. My private property is mine to do what I like with.

118
00:11:16,420 --> 00:11:21,660
Nevertheless, people still use their property and assume they had to use their property as

119
00:11:21,660 --> 00:11:26,120
Westerners always had. But interestingly, actually, if you look at the philosophy of

120
00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:29,540
John Locke as it regards to children and the sovereignty of the individual, he has a lot of

121
00:11:29,540 --> 00:11:36,540
trouble integrating this unchosen bond of children's deference to their parents and parents'

122
00:11:36,860 --> 00:11:43,400
irrevocable duty to their children into his framework of what becomes liberalism.

123
00:11:44,740 --> 00:11:49,620
But yeah, I mean, I think one's relationship to property is really part of this. The kind of

124
00:11:49,620 --> 00:11:54,200
older notion that I refer to in the book is not private property as we now understand it. It's

125
00:11:54,200 --> 00:12:00,000
this concept of dominion, which I think is a rather wonderful one, which is, yes, it is licit.

126
00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:04,100
It is justifiable for some people to have this tremendous wealth and power in society.

127
00:12:04,780 --> 00:12:10,800
But dominion, as the theologian Andrew Willard-Jones put it, carries with it the burden of rule.

128
00:12:10,960 --> 00:12:18,180
It's much closer to this notion of kingship than merely being rich, as in you have your wealth for

129
00:12:18,180 --> 00:12:24,300
purpose. It comes with demands upon you. And, you know, dominion, the root word there, this is the

130
00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:27,980
biblical term that sort of transforms into our contemporary notion of property through the

131
00:12:27,980 --> 00:12:33,360
enlightenment. The root word there is domus, it's house, like it's a living relationship with what

132
00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:39,240
you have. And it implies the necessity to nurture the inhabitants of that house, be they children

133
00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:45,920
or servants or, you know, even animals. It is this living relationship of mutual dependence that the

134
00:12:45,920 --> 00:12:50,920
King has with his subjects. And as we transition into private property and it becomes more about,

135
00:12:51,380 --> 00:12:55,840
well, I earned that thing and therefore it is mine to use as I please. And the way that it

136
00:12:55,840 --> 00:13:01,780
pleases me to use it is indulgence. And we sort of lose all natural restraints on the extent to

137
00:13:01,780 --> 00:13:08,580
which people feel ashamed about indulging in themselves. You end up with very strange things.

138
00:13:08,580 --> 00:13:16,840
It's like, there's this book that I really don't like, although I think, you know, well, it's called Die with Zero.

139
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:18,580
I imagine it's a very popular book.

140
00:13:18,700 --> 00:13:20,500
I imagine many of your listeners have read it.

141
00:13:20,500 --> 00:13:23,860
It's by a guy called Bill Perkins, who's an energy trader, hedge fund guy.

142
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:29,540
And in a way, he's trying to grapple with the same root issue, which is like, we have all this abundance.

143
00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:31,440
We only have a limited time on this earth.

144
00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:33,180
What are we trying to do with it?

145
00:13:33,300 --> 00:13:35,500
What do we want to accomplish before our days are through?

146
00:13:35,920 --> 00:13:37,640
And I think that provocation is actually very good.

147
00:13:37,640 --> 00:13:50,602
The instinct at the heart of the book is the right one But without this deep anchoring in philosophy and history and theology and the kind of very foundations of reality he can come up with good answers

148
00:13:50,742 --> 00:13:54,902
So he starts talking about these amazing birthday parties he had on a beach in the Caribbean,

149
00:13:54,902 --> 00:13:58,582
which gave him memories, which will last forever, which is like, it's great.

150
00:13:58,643 --> 00:14:02,683
You had a birthday party and it's great that you had your favorite band come and play with

151
00:14:02,683 --> 00:14:07,303
you, but that is not the calling that is, that cannot be the central message of existence

152
00:14:07,303 --> 00:14:14,402
of life. We have to get back to something more profound. To come up with a notion that is

153
00:14:14,402 --> 00:14:20,082
compelling enough to get the wealthy older generation to start using their wealth in

154
00:14:20,082 --> 00:14:28,663
a more righteous fashion. That's a great example. It seems like the older wealthy of today,

155
00:14:28,663 --> 00:14:35,202
they like these ephemeral experiences. You'll have those memories forever, but you'll have them.

156
00:14:35,202 --> 00:14:46,722
And they're ephemeral for not only you, for zooming out and putting your life on a longer timescale, but for society at large.

157
00:14:47,482 --> 00:14:53,742
And you talk about the concept of dominion in the beginning of the book, too, which I think is important to dive into.

158
00:14:53,982 --> 00:15:01,222
You really dissect what the Bible meant by the concept of neighbor, too, and talk about the story of the Good Samaritan.

159
00:15:01,222 --> 00:15:27,923
And I think that's another thing that's been lost. And if you look at the new valve rich of today, particularly in the tech sector, really trying to give all their wealth to these international charities as possible, they're really losing sight of what's most important, which is having a dominion and loving your neighbor, which is somebody living within that dominion.

160
00:15:27,923 --> 00:15:39,202
And there's just this whole trend of thinking that you can save the world by giving all your money to charities that are completely disconnected from your local dominion.

161
00:15:40,482 --> 00:15:46,783
Yeah. And when you refuse to recognize this, so the core question here is what's called partiality in philosophy.

162
00:15:47,322 --> 00:15:56,082
It's can it ever be defensible to preference those to give especially to those who are close to me, either relationally or geographically, just because they're close.

163
00:15:56,082 --> 00:16:02,742
In other words, if I have five pounds, can I ever defend giving it to my son as opposed to giving it to someone who's starving in Africa?

164
00:16:03,283 --> 00:16:04,622
And I'm convinced the answer is yes.

165
00:16:05,102 --> 00:16:16,683
And it's funny when you start, and I can explain that, but when you start ignoring that principle, you very quickly run into these crazy paradoxes, which I think are at the heart of why America is suffering, Britain is suffering right now.

166
00:16:17,242 --> 00:16:19,902
You know, there's this famous example in effective altruism.

167
00:16:20,003 --> 00:16:23,462
I think it was Peter Singer that put this forward, but it might have been another philosopher.

168
00:16:23,462 --> 00:16:43,242
But the essential question is, the provocation is, if I'm walking by a river and I'm wearing a very expensive coat and I notice a child drowning in that river, and if I climb into the river, I will ruin that jacket and therefore destroy its resale value.

169
00:16:43,242 --> 00:16:50,362
but I do manage to sell the one child, save the one child. Is that preferable to going to the

170
00:16:50,362 --> 00:16:55,402
nearest shop, selling the jacket, sending the money by an effective altruist charity to Africa

171
00:16:55,402 --> 00:17:01,183
where it could save 10 children? And some of the people in the effective altruism movement,

172
00:17:01,183 --> 00:17:06,543
because they've lost this moral foundation of partiality, their answer to that question is

173
00:17:06,543 --> 00:17:12,682
actually yes. And they present this as some kind of like a checkmate against anyone who wants to,

174
00:17:12,682 --> 00:17:17,242
who thinks of themselves as a patriot or thinks of themselves as someone who's rooted in a

175
00:17:17,242 --> 00:17:22,703
particular community, which is they try to expose hypocrisy using this example. It's essentially

176
00:17:22,703 --> 00:17:27,242
always preferable to earn as much money as possible to send that money to Africa.

177
00:17:27,742 --> 00:17:33,943
I think actually, when you start dissolving, we can go into the richer theological and

178
00:17:33,943 --> 00:17:39,623
philosophical version of this if you're interested, if you like. But the core question here is one of

179
00:17:39,623 --> 00:17:44,902
love. If you walk past a child and you don't save them, and you instead turn to this cold,

180
00:17:44,902 --> 00:17:52,402
rational calculation about effect maximization, you've lost love. And it's really love for those

181
00:17:52,402 --> 00:17:55,922
around us, love for those in our family, love for those in our community and our nation,

182
00:17:55,922 --> 00:18:02,482
that is the fundamental animating principle in the very bonds of society and of selflessness

183
00:18:02,482 --> 00:18:09,402
at all. And if you, yes, it is true that in this instance, if you sold your coat, you might

184
00:18:09,402 --> 00:18:13,763
save 10 children's lives and who knows what circumstances they're going to be raised in.

185
00:18:13,822 --> 00:18:18,322
You have nothing to do with them. You'll never meet them. But as soon as you sever that,

186
00:18:18,322 --> 00:18:22,602
that sort of animating principle of love, it is only a matter of time before everything falls

187
00:18:22,602 --> 00:18:26,742
apart. And I think that's what you're seeing now, which is like this trend of the kind of

188
00:18:26,742 --> 00:18:32,963
oligarchs distancing themselves from actual rooted communities living in societies as the kind of

189
00:18:32,963 --> 00:18:38,902
kings that they should be, like actually personally responsible for networks of less well-off people

190
00:18:38,902 --> 00:18:42,902
around them, you know, talking to them about their problems and so forth. Instead, living in these

191
00:18:42,902 --> 00:18:48,982
slightly atomized bubbles with increasingly weird ideas about the right thing to do with their wealth.

192
00:18:49,463 --> 00:18:54,482
Like that question of love and the philosophy, theology, and history there is a very interesting

193
00:18:54,482 --> 00:19:03,203
an important one to explore yeah well let's dive into it because i believe i recall correctly like

194
00:19:03,203 --> 00:19:10,943
the biblical etymology of neighbor the greek word agape right like that's really what it seeps in

195
00:19:10,943 --> 00:19:17,822
this and there's three types of of love in christianity agape being one of them um but this

196
00:19:17,822 --> 00:19:24,082
is i think it's an important topic to dive into like what are the different types of love and

197
00:19:24,082 --> 00:19:30,982
particularly why should you love your neighbor and what does that do to help build not only a

198
00:19:30,982 --> 00:19:36,582
legacy, but a functioning society in the long run? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's,

199
00:19:36,582 --> 00:19:43,502
it's kind of this, every so often you come across an assumption that deserves to be challenged. And

200
00:19:43,502 --> 00:19:47,563
as soon as someone questions it, you sort of smack your head and you'd be like, oh yeah, of course,

201
00:19:47,742 --> 00:19:52,902
like that's, that's an assumption built on a really shaky foundation. And everyone, the kind

202
00:19:52,902 --> 00:19:59,482
of core, there are a few, but one of the most important biblical passages on charity is the

203
00:19:59,482 --> 00:20:06,263
parable of the Good Samaritan, which most people are familiar with. And that parable tells us to

204
00:20:06,263 --> 00:20:11,943
love our neighbor. And in common parlance, everyone says, everyone uses it as if that

205
00:20:11,943 --> 00:20:16,662
phrase says something different, which is you have to love everyone, everywhere, the same,

206
00:20:16,662 --> 00:20:23,303
all the time. And that is actually not the same thing at all. We at least should question that.

207
00:20:23,303 --> 00:20:29,623
The parable of the Good Samaritan, the word it uses for neighbor is derived from the coin Greek

208
00:20:29,623 --> 00:20:37,142
plesion, which is akin to proximity. It's akin to, it means basically it's a spatial component.

209
00:20:37,362 --> 00:20:44,142
It means who you're close to. And the parable of the Good Samaritan, that's actually, that theme

210
00:20:44,142 --> 00:20:50,123
is integral to the entire parable. It is someone who meets someone else, who has an encounter with

211
00:20:50,123 --> 00:20:56,703
someone else, and as a result, inherits these diverse responsibilities for their well-being

212
00:20:56,703 --> 00:21:01,723
because of that personal encounter. So it's not about a financial transaction. Money is a small

213
00:21:01,723 --> 00:21:06,443
element of it. Later on, money pays the innkeeper to look after him before returning to the destitute

214
00:21:06,443 --> 00:21:11,742
man. But he pours oil and wine on the man's injuries. He puts him on his own donkey. He

215
00:21:11,742 --> 00:21:16,023
personally takes into the innkeeper. In other words, again, there's this relational component.

216
00:21:17,283 --> 00:21:21,303
And that, of course, is integral not just to the word neighbor, but to the word charity.

217
00:21:21,502 --> 00:21:25,023
Charity is derived from the Latin caritas, which is in turn exactly, as you say,

218
00:21:25,563 --> 00:21:31,602
derived from the biblical Greek agape, which is this higher expression of love. And so again,

219
00:21:31,803 --> 00:21:35,803
you sort of discover when you start probing into these terms that are at the very root of our

220
00:21:35,803 --> 00:21:43,963
thought, people operate on these very shaky foundations to justify these grand projects,

221
00:21:44,082 --> 00:21:48,523
these philanthropic projects, foundations, which they present as obviously moral good.

222
00:21:48,803 --> 00:21:54,523
And everyone, you, I mean, I, probably you and many of your listeners look at some of these

223
00:21:54,523 --> 00:21:59,322
foundations and you think like you have this instinctive negative reaction. Like there is

224
00:21:59,322 --> 00:22:05,783
something that is really off about what they're doing, but because of the confused term of the

225
00:22:05,783 --> 00:22:10,182
language and therefore that kind of poisons the philosophy that builds off language,

226
00:22:11,182 --> 00:22:17,662
you're kind of robbed of any moral language to question or criticize those activities,

227
00:22:18,043 --> 00:22:23,582
short of like obvious conspiracy theories or just like obvious misdoing, some of which exist,

228
00:22:23,703 --> 00:22:28,643
of course. And I go into some of that in the book. But more than that, the actual foundations

229
00:22:28,643 --> 00:22:34,242
of the project is pretty questionable. Well, this whole concept of locality,

230
00:22:34,242 --> 00:22:54,303
I mean, it's applicable to a number of things, not only your duty to your neighbor, another human being, but in the context of this neglect of duty to build legacy over your dominion, within a dominion, I think another place in which you manifest is the physical architecture.

231
00:22:54,303 --> 00:22:58,543
something we've covered over the years here is urbanism

232
00:22:58,543 --> 00:23:02,203
and how the physical environment sort of affects your mentality.

233
00:23:02,203 --> 00:23:05,722
And I think pulling on this thread of loving your neighbor,

234
00:23:06,102 --> 00:23:10,763
I think it highlights the importance of really focusing on a locality

235
00:23:10,763 --> 00:23:11,463
for your neighbor.

236
00:23:11,643 --> 00:23:14,643
It's like, hey, you have to live with this person and these people

237
00:23:14,643 --> 00:23:17,362
and you should make sure that they're taken care of

238
00:23:17,362 --> 00:23:22,582
and living good lives and aspire to be something greater

239
00:23:22,582 --> 00:23:31,362
and that manifests in the architecture as well to an extent where if you basically abdicate

240
00:23:31,362 --> 00:23:38,563
yourself of any duty to build long-lasting, aesthetically beautiful and sound architecture

241
00:23:38,563 --> 00:23:44,803
that's inspiring and makes people feel good to live in a certain place, it's not going

242
00:23:44,803 --> 00:23:48,623
to be conducive for a productive society either.

243
00:23:48,623 --> 00:24:02,662
Yeah. Architecture is this wonderful sort of canary in the coal mine that something is really wrong, really sick at the heart of our society, which is just that like most cities now are so spiritually innovating.

244
00:24:02,662 --> 00:24:17,063
Like you walk around and you're just confronted with a sense of ugliness, of cheapness, that you are in some sense being treated like a completely dispensable cog in a machine that can just inhabit any old thing that's as cheap as possible to erect.

245
00:24:17,063 --> 00:24:24,963
and it's getting to the heart of why that has happened is so interesting and so important.

246
00:24:25,123 --> 00:24:29,783
And I think it pulls in a lot of related themes here. I think my most basic observation is

247
00:24:29,783 --> 00:24:37,922
anyone that builds in that way does not have a conviction that their family will be inhabiting

248
00:24:37,922 --> 00:24:42,842
the same spot next to that building for generations to come. In other words,

249
00:24:42,842 --> 00:24:50,523
the most beautiful buildings in the UK tend to be the great aristocratic estates, which Britain is

250
00:24:50,523 --> 00:24:57,362
famous for, the lovely country houses, precisely because they were constructed as a recognition

251
00:24:57,362 --> 00:25:01,922
of the dignity of the estate that was handed to the builders and the fact that the builders'

252
00:25:02,063 --> 00:25:07,263
future generations would inhabit the same spot. But why, if you're not tied to the land in some

253
00:25:07,263 --> 00:25:12,002
way, if you're just a floating entity that could live anywhere in the country or internationally,

254
00:25:12,002 --> 00:25:16,883
Why would you bother to invest in something heavy and beautiful and lasting?

255
00:25:17,563 --> 00:25:22,303
Something that sort of speaks of the timelessness of values, which I think is this other thing.

256
00:25:22,383 --> 00:25:23,662
I've written about this elsewhere.

257
00:25:24,803 --> 00:25:36,922
If you look at the great architectural marvels of the West, to give an example, the Cluny Abbey, which is very, very famous and influential.

258
00:25:36,922 --> 00:25:43,883
abbey in France that influenced a lot of cathedral design, monastic design across Europe in the 10th

259
00:25:43,883 --> 00:25:50,883
century. And it was really one of the reasons that Europe looks like it looks, that the land,

260
00:25:51,182 --> 00:25:57,043
the Duke of Aquitaine who commissioned that, he spoke of wanting to transform his temporal goods

261
00:25:57,043 --> 00:26:03,763
into something lasting. Like he had this notion that his beliefs connected him with eternity,

262
00:26:03,763 --> 00:26:07,822
but not just looking forwards in time. It wasn't a sort of progressive vision of the world.

263
00:26:07,822 --> 00:26:12,563
It was an eternal vision of the world in both directions, like that which has always been

264
00:26:12,563 --> 00:26:18,422
beautiful and that which always will be beautiful. It was this kind of, um, the statement of values

265
00:26:18,422 --> 00:26:22,943
interwoven into the physical world through this commission and the sense of the permanence of

266
00:26:22,943 --> 00:26:27,982
morality and the human condition and man's struggles. And the need for beauty is this kind of,

267
00:26:27,982 --> 00:26:34,102
this kind of breakthrough into something, into something transcendent. And without those values,

268
00:26:34,242 --> 00:26:39,143
without, you know, the kind of like tension between the solidity of existence and place

269
00:26:39,143 --> 00:26:45,222
and rootedness and belief in the higher world that you can manifest through the creation of

270
00:26:45,222 --> 00:26:51,662
beautiful things, the kind of ethics of aesthetics and value belief, it's very difficult to build

271
00:26:51,662 --> 00:26:56,082
beautiful things. And even like, if you think about the way most people build companies now,

272
00:26:56,082 --> 00:27:01,402
They build them to sell them. So there's no conviction that a corporate building will be

273
00:27:01,402 --> 00:27:06,222
in your family's possession 30 years from now. So again, why invest in it as something beautiful?

274
00:27:06,463 --> 00:27:13,682
The best thing to do is to build it as cheaply as possible so that your company has the best

275
00:27:13,682 --> 00:27:20,082
balance sheet possible, can therefore be sold for the maximal sales number, and then your family can

276
00:27:20,082 --> 00:27:23,443
move somewhere else. And who cares about the people who have to inhabit that building? Because

277
00:27:23,443 --> 00:27:35,485
you have no personal connection to them no moral responsibility to them over and above providing jobs precisely because you lost this agape the sense of love for a neighbor

278
00:27:36,145 --> 00:27:38,885
So I think it's all deeply interlinked here.

279
00:27:38,965 --> 00:27:39,705
But I like you.

280
00:27:39,765 --> 00:27:42,185
I just lament the built environment that we live in now.

281
00:27:42,285 --> 00:27:44,965
I think it's one of the great sadnesses of our time.

282
00:27:46,665 --> 00:27:47,225
It really is.

283
00:27:47,225 --> 00:27:51,465
that's why I feel fortunate I recently moved back to the Philadelphia area,

284
00:27:51,465 --> 00:27:59,325
which certainly has its areas where it's lacking in beautiful aesthetics,

285
00:27:59,525 --> 00:28:00,265
but we're,

286
00:28:00,265 --> 00:28:04,485
we're spoiled with quality builds throughout the city,

287
00:28:04,545 --> 00:28:07,605
particularly in the part that I'm living in right now.

288
00:28:07,605 --> 00:28:08,005
It is,

289
00:28:08,085 --> 00:28:09,385
and it's truly inspiring driving,

290
00:28:09,505 --> 00:28:09,905
driving around.

291
00:28:10,005 --> 00:28:14,785
I was driving back from dropping the boys off at school today.

292
00:28:14,785 --> 00:28:17,005
And I always take the scenic route on the way home.

293
00:28:17,005 --> 00:28:20,305
because there's beautiful stone homes and it is inspiring.

294
00:28:20,465 --> 00:28:24,265
It makes you really think like, wow, this is something worth preserving

295
00:28:24,265 --> 00:28:27,105
and something I hope I can contribute to.

296
00:28:27,825 --> 00:28:30,725
And I mean, on the point of business building too,

297
00:28:30,805 --> 00:28:38,905
I think there's a great example of the book of a dynastic American family

298
00:28:38,905 --> 00:28:41,585
that made a very poor decision.

299
00:28:41,785 --> 00:28:46,505
Maybe we can jump into this topic of the importance of an individual family

300
00:28:46,505 --> 00:28:54,365
particularly leaders of a family, controlling the wealth and controlling what happens with your money as you pass it on.

301
00:28:54,425 --> 00:29:06,145
And you tell the horror story of the Ford family and the Henry Ford Foundation that they were sort of forced to start because of a new tax policy.

302
00:29:06,145 --> 00:29:20,165
But over time, slowly but surely, gave up control at the board level. And that foundation turned into something that would be unrecognizable to Henry Ford and his sons today.

303
00:29:20,165 --> 00:29:26,765
Yeah, no, exactly. One of the central contentions of the book, one of the central sort of philosophical

304
00:29:26,765 --> 00:29:32,965
arguments as to why dynasty is necessary is that there are certain projects, the kind of projects

305
00:29:32,965 --> 00:29:37,105
that build the West and our most beautiful buildings, cathedrals, and so forth, which are

306
00:29:37,105 --> 00:29:42,145
necessarily intergenerational in nature. They take a long time, great resources, and careful

307
00:29:42,145 --> 00:29:47,085
stewardship of a chain of custodians with the same transcendent values to achieve.

308
00:29:47,085 --> 00:30:05,725
The Ford Foundation is a good example of what happens when you commit to a seemingly benign endeavor in the most massive way, assuming that good effects will result, but you lose that sort of virtuous family at the heart of the whole thing.

309
00:30:05,725 --> 00:30:20,785
So the Ford Foundation, essentially what happens is Edsel, Henry Ford, the elder are confronted with the Roosevelt administration tax policy that you mentioned, which demands 70% of large inheritances.

310
00:30:20,785 --> 00:30:26,185
they're then presented with this very difficult situation because they risk losing literally

311
00:30:26,185 --> 00:30:31,505
everything in that they have their fortune, yes, but they also treasure, I think quite rightly,

312
00:30:31,645 --> 00:30:35,745
control over the Ford Motor Company, this incredibly important institution in America

313
00:30:35,745 --> 00:30:39,745
at that time, which bears their name and which is really transforming the world and the experience

314
00:30:39,745 --> 00:30:45,205
of American life. And they want to continue in that legacy. And if they have to sell 70%

315
00:30:45,205 --> 00:30:49,885
of their estate, they lose the controlling factor in that. So what they decide to do is

316
00:30:49,885 --> 00:30:57,645
they decide to give away 70% of their estate preemptively as a tax exemption and retain

317
00:30:57,645 --> 00:31:01,945
basically only the controlling shares, the voting shares in the Ford Motor Company and

318
00:31:01,945 --> 00:31:02,665
some other assets.

319
00:31:03,665 --> 00:31:07,685
But what they think is, okay, there is a way of doing this that allows us to sort of retain

320
00:31:07,685 --> 00:31:11,745
power, charitable control over what we're giving away at least.

321
00:31:12,105 --> 00:31:14,905
And that's the motivation for setting up a foundation with their name on it.

322
00:31:15,865 --> 00:31:19,205
So they can't spend this money on themselves anymore, but at least they can sort of control

323
00:31:19,205 --> 00:31:24,665
how good is done in the world. Henry Ford II becomes the chairman of that upon the death of

324
00:31:24,665 --> 00:31:29,765
Edsel and Henry Ford the Elder. And he becomes quite literally one of the most powerful men in

325
00:31:29,765 --> 00:31:34,745
the world. Ford Foundation is the largest foundation in the world, immensely wealthy

326
00:31:34,745 --> 00:31:40,665
and powerful. Henry Ford II is a very wealthy and powerful person in his own right with his

327
00:31:40,665 --> 00:31:46,005
personal fortune. And the only other people on the board of the Ford Foundation are men who are

328
00:31:46,005 --> 00:31:51,505
employed by Henry Ford, essentially, that Ford Motor Company employees. And the future seems

329
00:31:51,505 --> 00:31:59,225
bright. But then what happens is, is Henry Ford II starts doubting the importance of continual

330
00:31:59,225 --> 00:32:05,865
family control of this chain of custodians with a family legacy, with a name, with values in common.

331
00:32:06,325 --> 00:32:11,205
And he becomes persuaded that he has to democratize control of this foundation as a result.

332
00:32:11,205 --> 00:32:31,105
And to cut a very long story short, what happens is the board grows, different people with different values, many of which conflict, enter the board. And essentially, Henry Ford II loses control of the Ford Foundation. And the Ford Foundation becomes what Dwight MacDonald, the historian, described as a great pile of money with a lot of surrounded by people who want some.

333
00:32:31,105 --> 00:32:38,045
It just becomes this kind of like totally unmoored, but massively powerful due to its wealth factor in society.

334
00:32:38,325 --> 00:32:47,025
And it just, it starts finding completely contradictory things, many of which, I mean, I, and I imagine you would just view as like morally reprehensible.

335
00:32:47,025 --> 00:32:59,845
There's Douglas Ensminger in the 70s establishes this massive sterilization infrastructure in India, elsewhere, which becomes made mandatory by Indira Gandhi's regime.

336
00:32:59,845 --> 00:33:15,185
So there's a sterilization of literally millions of men a year using the infrastructure set up by the Ford Foundation, this kind of weird eugenics, completely false theory about the so-called population bomb which gripped the world, this kind of Malthusianism which gripped the world in the 70s.

337
00:33:16,325 --> 00:33:18,145
There's loads of other weird stuff they do.

338
00:33:18,265 --> 00:33:26,165
I mean, Ennis Lyons, who's a prominent substacker and a very intelligent guy, did this investigation a few years ago.

339
00:33:26,165 --> 00:33:38,825
And there's this huge amount of money going to defunding the police department in Minneapolis, going to building grassroots Muslim power, going to building a ESG system with Chinese characteristics.

340
00:33:39,265 --> 00:33:40,925
All this just weird stuff.

341
00:33:41,145 --> 00:33:44,285
And that is totally like all of this is essentially political stuff.

342
00:33:44,385 --> 00:33:45,365
It's governance stuff.

343
00:33:46,005 --> 00:33:48,185
But it's totally unaccountable to anyone.

344
00:33:48,405 --> 00:33:49,285
It's unelected.

345
00:33:49,545 --> 00:33:51,285
It's like they don't.

346
00:33:51,365 --> 00:33:55,765
The Gates Foundation, for example, doesn't accept any proposals to them.

347
00:33:55,765 --> 00:33:59,865
they have to handpick the people who they're going to make donations to to go on projects.

348
00:34:00,285 --> 00:34:03,905
So it's totally inscrutable, totally out of control, but massively powerful.

349
00:34:04,625 --> 00:34:09,205
And I think basically whatever your politics, that's just such an unhealthy influence on society.

350
00:34:09,585 --> 00:34:16,525
So my conviction is that, yeah, you need this kind of dynastic control, this careful set of

351
00:34:17,525 --> 00:34:23,345
stewardship, responsibilities, intergenerational values. And you really need a conviction about

352
00:34:23,345 --> 00:34:27,345
what you're trying to achieve, which I think is really the key thing that's lacking here.

353
00:34:28,305 --> 00:34:37,465
Well, it's also indicative of what happens when you sort of neglect dominion, right? Because

354
00:34:37,465 --> 00:34:43,305
another consequence of this is, I think at least partly consequence of this was the degradation of

355
00:34:43,305 --> 00:34:50,285
Detroit, which obviously the Ford family had helped build up. And once they ceased control

356
00:34:50,285 --> 00:34:57,525
of the board of the Ford Foundation. That's when it began going out and doing these things outside

357
00:34:57,525 --> 00:35:02,145
of the dominion of Detroit, Michigan. And Detroit is now completely hollowed out.

358
00:35:04,085 --> 00:35:08,545
Yeah, quite so. Yeah. I mean, the Ford family, say what you like about Henry Ford,

359
00:35:08,545 --> 00:35:14,905
the elder, and I'm sure people have their issues with him, possibly justifiably. But he was loyal

360
00:35:14,905 --> 00:35:20,305
to his city. I mean, he built the Henry Ford Hospital. He bought Dearborn Village. He hired

361
00:35:20,305 --> 00:35:26,565
a huge number of different communities, including African-American communities at strong wages over

362
00:35:26,565 --> 00:35:31,205
and above what he had to pay. And indeed, often when he didn't have good work for them to get

363
00:35:31,205 --> 00:35:37,465
these communities like Inkster through the depression. And there was that sense of stewardship

364
00:35:37,465 --> 00:35:43,165
there, a relationship between a man and his city. And I'm not going to present myself as

365
00:35:43,165 --> 00:35:49,065
an authority on what happened to Detroit, because I know it's complex. There's an interesting

366
00:35:49,065 --> 00:35:52,445
dimension of this that's covered in the book, Strong Towns, which is very good as well,

367
00:35:52,505 --> 00:35:57,665
which is about the financialization of the infrastructure. But a lot of it has to do with

368
00:35:57,665 --> 00:36:04,505
this complete divorce of people and wealth from sense of place, like the globalization of the

369
00:36:04,505 --> 00:36:10,785
market, reduced tariffs, but also like when wealthy families stop viewing themselves as

370
00:36:10,785 --> 00:36:16,045
rooted in a particular community, whose generations are intimately tied to the future of that

371
00:36:16,045 --> 00:36:22,105
community, and who have to live in the center of that community, then you get these security

372
00:36:22,105 --> 00:36:26,685
issues. I mean, imagine if there was a family worth whatever the Ford family would be worth

373
00:36:26,685 --> 00:36:31,985
today, tens of billions of pounds, who had to live in the center of Detroit and was responsible

374
00:36:31,985 --> 00:36:37,565
for the security situation there. And the security situation, once that goes, just means that you get

375
00:36:37,565 --> 00:36:42,045
tremendous flight of all kinds of productive communities, businesses, and so forth. And it

376
00:36:42,045 --> 00:36:47,825
just massively accelerates the process. Charles Murray has a good book about this coming apart,

377
00:36:47,945 --> 00:36:52,985
which is like all the kind of intractable problems that come when you move from this model where the

378
00:36:52,985 --> 00:36:58,365
elites are dispersed throughout the country, each bringing elite competence and resources to bear

379
00:36:58,365 --> 00:37:04,365
against the problems of a diverse array of communities to just concentration and Martha's

380
00:37:04,365 --> 00:37:09,765
Vineyard and a few other places in the community. And then they can get away with the most

381
00:37:09,765 --> 00:37:15,285
ridiculous luxury beliefs because they're totally insulated from all of the consequences of those

382
00:37:15,285 --> 00:37:20,625
beliefs. And the rest of the country is kind of left to rot. So yeah, no, I think you're absolutely

383
00:37:20,625 --> 00:37:26,485
right to call out that what happened to Detroit was just this travesty.

384
00:37:27,205 --> 00:37:32,745
Yeah. Strong Towns, another great book. Make sure you read it. Chuck Morona. That was another book

385
00:37:32,745 --> 00:37:34,825
that really opened my eyes.

386
00:37:34,825 --> 00:37:40,405
And I think if you're looking for a sort of playbook

387
00:37:40,405 --> 00:37:42,105
on how to build a strong town,

388
00:37:42,245 --> 00:37:45,185
particularly if you are somebody with a lot of wealth

389
00:37:45,185 --> 00:37:48,525
who would like to bring back some of these core concepts

390
00:37:48,525 --> 00:37:52,785
and build a legacy, that's definitely a must read.

391
00:37:52,865 --> 00:37:55,425
But on this subject of building a legacy,

392
00:37:55,425 --> 00:37:59,905
I think one concept that you touch on in the book

393
00:37:59,905 --> 00:38:05,945
that people have a natural aversion to is the concept of nepotism.

394
00:38:06,685 --> 00:38:09,345
And you make the case for why it's good.

395
00:38:09,465 --> 00:38:10,965
Why is nepotism good?

396
00:38:12,465 --> 00:38:13,705
That's a great question.

397
00:38:14,705 --> 00:38:22,725
One thing that I really encourage people to do is not to reason about claims,

398
00:38:22,725 --> 00:38:26,605
like to reason about the most important issues in their life

399
00:38:26,605 --> 00:38:32,965
using these terms that they only tenuously understand and that have this uncertain history

400
00:38:32,965 --> 00:38:39,345
that have all kinds of like hostile claims smuggled into them. And then without that,

401
00:38:39,345 --> 00:38:43,545
that sort of deep reflection on what they're actually saying and believe make these very

402
00:38:43,545 --> 00:38:50,625
consequential decisions. So like nepotism, let's say everyone uses that term, they throw it around,

403
00:38:50,705 --> 00:38:55,225
right? Like, oh, so-and-so is a Nepo baby. And that's this incredibly personal slight,

404
00:38:55,225 --> 00:39:07,265
But why should that be so? I mean, like acting has always been a family business, right? A hundred years ago, two, three, four, 500 years ago, these, these particular domains, these cultural domains are always family businesses.

405
00:39:07,265 --> 00:39:16,765
and and business families have this unique capacity to to to bring forth genius in their

406
00:39:16,765 --> 00:39:23,525
children like if you go and and look at the great geniuses of history and perhaps unfortunately many

407
00:39:23,525 --> 00:39:28,545
of the most contemporary examples are like sporting stars many of them were raised in the

408
00:39:28,545 --> 00:39:35,465
context of a family business of being raised from a young age to achieve tremendous things

409
00:39:35,465 --> 00:39:39,065
and being raised amongst other people who are excellent in that domain.

410
00:39:39,325 --> 00:39:43,865
This is actually the theory of a Hungarian figure who's interesting called Laszlo Polgar,

411
00:39:44,425 --> 00:39:49,445
who was the father of Judith Polgar, who's by far the strongest female chess player to ever live,

412
00:39:49,445 --> 00:39:57,065
and whose sister Zuzsa was the second strongest chess player in the world after her.

413
00:39:57,305 --> 00:40:02,805
And Judith was such a strong player, she's almost a living refutation of the idea that women can't be

414
00:40:02,805 --> 00:40:09,085
as good as the very top men in chess, which is like she's the only paradox that somewhat brings

415
00:40:09,085 --> 00:40:16,465
that assertion into question, which does speak to this conviction of Laszlo that

416
00:40:16,465 --> 00:40:21,505
a young specialization has all these factors which bring forth excellence.

417
00:40:22,045 --> 00:40:25,025
So if we're going to reason about nepotism, we should at least understand what it is,

418
00:40:25,025 --> 00:40:30,165
because there seem to be all these confounding factors. Family businesses outperform publicly

419
00:40:30,165 --> 00:40:35,385
traded companies in the marketplace. This is actually a well-established financial phenomenon.

420
00:40:35,885 --> 00:40:39,565
You can look at the work of John A. Davis, who's a former professor at Harvard Business School,

421
00:40:39,685 --> 00:40:43,645
MIT Science School of Management. It is pretty well-reflected and well-understood that family

422
00:40:43,645 --> 00:40:49,545
businesses have these unique advantages, like their ultra-long time horizon planning,

423
00:40:49,905 --> 00:40:57,165
carefully managed and planned succession strategies, like the fact they have an intrinsic loyalty to

424
00:40:57,165 --> 00:41:01,885
the institution that is not simply a mercenary one, that people can count on being with the

425
00:41:01,885 --> 00:41:07,965
same institution in five, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 years, and so are willing to make sacrificial

426
00:41:07,965 --> 00:41:23,748
decisions in the short term that pay off in the long term There a variety of reasons there So in the face of this observation that like a many of the best sporting players of our age Floyd Mayweather you know Max Verstappen I give many examples Tiger Woods the Williams sisters et cetera et cetera

427
00:41:23,748 --> 00:41:29,088
You can really go on to like the greatest of all time in pretty much any sport. And you'll find that they were raised by a family who played the sport.

428
00:41:29,768 --> 00:41:39,227
Given that this is reflected in sports and business, we should really question the idea that like nepotism breeds incompetence and raises ineffectual people to the top.

429
00:41:39,227 --> 00:41:45,868
So what actually is nepotism? Nepotism means something specific, and it doesn't mean the way that almost everyone uses it today.

430
00:41:46,368 --> 00:41:57,388
Nepotism comes from this very interesting work called Il Nepotismo di Roma, which is the nephews of Rome, but it's a reference to it's a Gregorio Leti book in the 17th century.

431
00:41:58,048 --> 00:42:04,008
It's a reference to this very specific and interesting history, which is this institution called the Pope's Nephews.

432
00:42:04,768 --> 00:42:09,948
And it's always been in the Catholic Church up until quite recently, a tradition to bring

433
00:42:09,948 --> 00:42:14,188
in a family member of the Pope, traditionally a nephew, to the papal court because it was

434
00:42:14,188 --> 00:42:19,427
understood as a place of intrigue and inherent instability that required someone of absolute

435
00:42:19,427 --> 00:42:23,188
loyalty close to you to help you navigate that court to bring stability in.

436
00:42:23,188 --> 00:42:30,068
At a certain point, which had radical ramifications in pretty much every domain of Western life,

437
00:42:30,068 --> 00:42:36,268
there was a string of popes who were quite clearly corrupted in their role. And they had illegitimate

438
00:42:36,268 --> 00:42:40,608
sons and they brought them into the church under the pretense that these were popes' nephews.

439
00:42:40,668 --> 00:42:46,168
And they basically ransacked the church using this illicit connection. And that was what became

440
00:42:46,168 --> 00:42:52,968
nepotism in the English language. In other words, it was a practice of deception, of infiltration

441
00:42:52,968 --> 00:42:58,828
of institutions that were intended to be public by private families in order for enrichment

442
00:42:58,828 --> 00:43:04,088
of the individual family under a practice of deception. In other words, it's much closer to

443
00:43:04,088 --> 00:43:10,948
what we would now term corruption, as in political corruption, than it is merely familial preference

444
00:43:10,948 --> 00:43:15,908
within a particular industry for one's own children. And if you stop and think about it,

445
00:43:15,908 --> 00:43:21,108
of course, if you have a particular excellence within a particular field,

446
00:43:21,528 --> 00:43:25,948
it is advantageous to pass on that excellence to your children. You have a unique understanding

447
00:43:25,948 --> 00:43:30,288
that you have, that you can potentially pass on using your incredibly high fidelity,

448
00:43:30,468 --> 00:43:34,808
high bandwidth relationship to your child. You have relationships that it would be a tremendous

449
00:43:34,808 --> 00:43:41,968
shame and it would be a universal loss if you didn't pass on. And you have, as I argue,

450
00:43:42,088 --> 00:43:47,288
this particular moral responsibility to your child. And done correctly, that echoes outwards

451
00:43:47,288 --> 00:43:55,668
as this tremendous advantage to society at large. And so, yeah, I mean, like nepotism means

452
00:43:55,668 --> 00:44:04,588
something specific. And there are instances in which corrupting factors conducted under the

453
00:44:04,588 --> 00:44:11,028
table can undermine the integrity of a necessary institution or domain. And we should be very

454
00:44:11,028 --> 00:44:18,968
cognizant of that. I think quite rightly, it's been brought up in, for example, deceptive

455
00:44:18,968 --> 00:44:22,288
practices. I think there's a family in the States, obviously, this isn't my country,

456
00:44:22,288 --> 00:44:28,528
that has basically been, has been applying for loans, fortunately.

457
00:44:29,148 --> 00:44:32,968
And I think this is in the motel industry,

458
00:44:33,368 --> 00:44:36,828
has been using a whole financial infrastructure to enrich their own family

459
00:44:36,828 --> 00:44:42,128
under the pretense that this is an objective policy that is suspect.

460
00:44:42,128 --> 00:44:46,227
But the basic idea of helping your children into the industry

461
00:44:46,227 --> 00:44:48,348
that you are excellent in and trying to ensure

462
00:44:48,348 --> 00:44:50,128
that they are also excellent in the industry

463
00:44:50,128 --> 00:44:53,248
is like a cornerstone of Western society.

464
00:44:53,588 --> 00:44:58,268
Up until about 1950, that is how literally the entire West was built.

465
00:45:00,268 --> 00:45:05,548
Well, this gets back to duty and dives into the topic of

466
00:45:05,548 --> 00:45:08,368
how do you actually pass along this knowledge?

467
00:45:08,368 --> 00:45:13,068
What should the relationship with your children look like?

468
00:45:13,068 --> 00:45:20,268
How do you fulfill your duty of making sure that you have a legacy?

469
00:45:20,568 --> 00:45:22,768
Because it just doesn't happen.

470
00:45:23,148 --> 00:45:25,808
You need to actually work towards it.

471
00:45:26,328 --> 00:45:34,328
What are the best practices to make sure that your children understand the gravity of what you're passing down to them?

472
00:45:35,788 --> 00:45:36,707
Yeah, great question.

473
00:45:37,348 --> 00:45:41,808
So this was a dimension that I didn't anticipate being an integral part of the book when I started it.

474
00:45:41,808 --> 00:45:48,988
I thought it would be a philosophical defense at a conceptual level of dynasty, of generational

475
00:45:48,988 --> 00:45:51,608
wealth, of a stable upper class.

476
00:45:52,908 --> 00:45:58,788
But actually, what I realized as I went on was that it was actually not possible to defend

477
00:45:58,788 --> 00:46:06,548
that proposition if people did not have a framework to pass on stability, virtue, and

478
00:46:06,548 --> 00:46:09,028
ambition for greatness in the context of wealth.

479
00:46:09,028 --> 00:46:13,928
And that's something that I think we've really lost in our society for reasons I'll go into in a second.

480
00:46:14,448 --> 00:46:21,488
So what I did was I went and I looked for the great families of the West who had successfully passed on wealth stably.

481
00:46:21,707 --> 00:46:23,628
They'd grown it over many generations.

482
00:46:24,207 --> 00:46:31,568
Typically, these are aristocratic families, although they're not exclusively aristocratic families, and who would achieve the kinds of things that I argue we need in the book.

483
00:46:31,568 --> 00:46:36,468
these kind of great projects, beautiful architecture, artistic patronage, cultural sophistication,

484
00:46:37,188 --> 00:46:42,428
concepts like fair play, manners, etiquette, taste, the upholding of the physical and spiritual

485
00:46:42,428 --> 00:46:47,808
health of particular communities. And there really are examples of that. So I tried to

486
00:46:47,808 --> 00:46:55,488
distill out of them these principles for raising healthy families that are capable of these things.

487
00:46:55,948 --> 00:47:01,048
And without that, if you don't have access to a framework like that, I do actually totally

488
00:47:01,048 --> 00:47:07,568
understand why people feel like disinheriting their children, because they're conscious that

489
00:47:07,568 --> 00:47:12,648
they simply don't have a methodology to ensure the children raised in the context of wealth

490
00:47:12,648 --> 00:47:17,727
that experience these tremendous wealth events will be able to be virtuous, will find purpose,

491
00:47:17,908 --> 00:47:23,608
will find discipline and drive and entrepreneurship. I get it. If the only way you know how to pass

492
00:47:23,608 --> 00:47:28,188
those virtues on is by putting someone in this kind of dog-eat-dog competitive marketplace,

493
00:47:28,188 --> 00:47:34,048
place, then that's the only way of ensuring you have hardworking children. And I understand why

494
00:47:34,048 --> 00:47:38,128
that's your instinct. However, history shows that that is not necessary. And indeed, if that is the

495
00:47:38,128 --> 00:47:42,528
route that you pursue, you can never have these multi-generational great works, which I argue is

496
00:47:42,528 --> 00:47:49,888
a tremendous shame. I think basically what's happened is it used to be that society was

497
00:47:49,888 --> 00:47:56,948
naturally set up so that you could pass on wealth to your children without corrupting them. In other

498
00:47:56,948 --> 00:48:03,928
words, if you go back to 18, 19 before in the US, almost every family, 90% of families are agrarian

499
00:48:03,928 --> 00:48:09,828
workers, typically working small, personally held farms. And when a patriarch passed on his wealth

500
00:48:09,828 --> 00:48:14,148
to his children, what he was actually doing was passing them a farm and some other assets, perhaps

501
00:48:14,148 --> 00:48:19,468
a house, et cetera. And so, yes, you're passing them on wealth, but this isn't highly liquid wealth.

502
00:48:19,568 --> 00:48:23,448
This isn't wealth that it's easy to squander. This is wealth that makes demands of the children.

503
00:48:23,448 --> 00:48:38,448
They don't have to work that land. They have to use it for its purpose. What happens is in the 20th century, there are these two overwhelming trends, which have healthy upsides, which are why they're accelerated, but which also have these unforeseen downsides.

504
00:48:38,448 --> 00:48:44,688
downsides. Those two trends are a massively increased class mobility. So you get people

505
00:48:44,688 --> 00:48:48,388
who come from quite humble backgrounds to being some of the wealthiest men in history,

506
00:48:48,548 --> 00:48:53,528
particularly in the tech sector, but elsewhere as well. And those people don't have the rooted

507
00:48:53,528 --> 00:48:58,268
aristocratic practices, which I talk about in the book, the traditions, the ways of raising children

508
00:48:58,268 --> 00:49:02,588
in the context of wealth, because they're first generation wealth. They have no contact with the

509
00:49:02,588 --> 00:49:10,068
tradition of raising healthy, wealthy Western children. The second thing is this overwhelming

510
00:49:10,068 --> 00:49:16,388
trend towards the liquidity of wealth. So it used to be that, yes, even aristocrats were very wealthy,

511
00:49:16,588 --> 00:49:20,128
but again, their wealth was bound up in physical estates that they couldn't sell,

512
00:49:21,168 --> 00:49:25,048
productive land around the estate that had to be managed if not actively worked,

513
00:49:25,688 --> 00:49:31,588
art, which was particular to their family and was therefore not liquid, etc., etc. So they had some

514
00:49:31,588 --> 00:49:35,828
liquid wealth, but they were basically inheriting these assets that were tremendously luxurious,

515
00:49:36,028 --> 00:49:38,848
but made, again, these great demands of stewardship, of dominion.

516
00:49:39,808 --> 00:49:46,148
That all changes in the 20th century. So you can now pass on wealth in entirely liquid assets,

517
00:49:46,227 --> 00:49:50,628
as is in fact now the norm. It's expected that children will sell their parents' house.

518
00:49:50,968 --> 00:49:54,528
If they even inherit a house, they might just inherit liquid cash or stocks and shares,

519
00:49:54,528 --> 00:49:59,548
which are easy to... And even during a patriarch's lifetime, it's likely if they

520
00:49:59,548 --> 00:50:07,308
start a family business, they'll sell it. So it really is essential to actually ask at a

521
00:50:07,308 --> 00:50:13,348
foundational level, how can we achieve a level of stability in the midst of all this chaos?

522
00:50:14,128 --> 00:50:22,048
And I have a few chapters on this. And they basically fall into three categories. Let me

523
00:50:22,048 --> 00:50:28,268
sign my contents page here so I can accurately describe. The first is raising children worthy

524
00:50:28,268 --> 00:50:39,268
of Empires. That's a chapter name. And the principles there are essentially how to raise

525
00:50:39,268 --> 00:50:46,368
children in a context where they intensely feel this sense of duty, this call to greatness from

526
00:50:46,368 --> 00:50:52,768
a young age. And that takes on a variety of forms. It takes on faith and the very presence of virtues

527
00:50:52,768 --> 00:50:59,148
in their lives. It takes on the intensity of their contact with family heroes, the greatest

528
00:50:59,148 --> 00:51:04,248
men of the family and civilization that they're particular to who have went on before. It takes

529
00:51:04,248 --> 00:51:10,948
on the playing of dangerous games, sports, the aristocracy have always engaged in more dangerous

530
00:51:10,948 --> 00:51:16,168
games than the rest, precisely because they need to learn to master self-discipline in the face of

531
00:51:16,168 --> 00:51:21,188
risk, of pain, of hardship. That's why the aristocracy have always engaged in this paradoxical

532
00:51:21,188 --> 00:51:26,388
relationship where they have the most to lose. And yet they frivolously, it seems, engage in

533
00:51:26,388 --> 00:51:32,128
hunting wars and jousting and combat tournaments and so forth, because it brings out this self

534
00:51:32,128 --> 00:51:39,768
sacrificial relationship with difficulty that is necessary. The importance of ritual, which is

535
00:51:39,768 --> 00:51:46,888
the assumption of these lived practices, which your forefathers did before you, which your

536
00:51:46,888 --> 00:51:52,048
your generations which follow you will take on themselves. And so it shifts you from this

537
00:51:52,048 --> 00:51:58,068
moment into eternal time. And I talk particularly about Christmas as this very interesting example of

538
00:51:58,068 --> 00:52:03,348
an institution in which all generations are sort of contemporaneous. Like they all return

539
00:52:03,348 --> 00:52:07,868
for one day a year to the same practices, the same values, the same vision of the world.

540
00:52:08,648 --> 00:52:12,088
And there's a lot else. I mean, I'm not just going to provide you with a huge list, but

541
00:52:12,088 --> 00:52:14,568
But tell me where you want to go with that.

542
00:52:15,368 --> 00:52:18,207
But this was the most fun series of chapters to write,

543
00:52:18,288 --> 00:52:22,028
just because researching all these strange aristocratic families

544
00:52:22,028 --> 00:52:24,727
that had achieved tremendous things was very fun.

545
00:52:25,548 --> 00:52:29,428
How much importance does the extended family come into this?

546
00:52:29,468 --> 00:52:32,588
Because I think of my family, I feel very fortunate.

547
00:52:32,588 --> 00:52:34,428
I come from a large Irish Catholic family.

548
00:52:34,508 --> 00:52:36,988
My mom was the youngest debate,

549
00:52:36,988 --> 00:52:44,748
and they started this tradition of bringing the whole family down to the beach every summer.

550
00:52:44,928 --> 00:52:47,308
And we still keep that going to this day,

551
00:52:47,528 --> 00:52:53,108
where now between myself, aunts, uncles, cousins, and now they're children,

552
00:52:54,008 --> 00:52:57,328
we've got a pretty big group that returns to the beach.

553
00:52:57,508 --> 00:53:02,727
And I like to think this is sort of anchoring us in this ideal of like,

554
00:53:02,727 --> 00:53:05,908
hey, we're a strong family and this is how we do things.

555
00:53:06,988 --> 00:53:23,207
Yeah. I'm not sure. And this is the first time I've thought about this, so don't take this as a canonical answer. I'm not sure it's the fact of the size of the family itself that is the important factor there. It's the two things that are implied by that.

556
00:53:23,207 --> 00:53:30,888
large families tend to have a series of values and often transcendent religious beliefs,

557
00:53:30,888 --> 00:53:38,727
which are motivating the family to, to like, they are, they are making sacrifices for higher ideals.

558
00:53:39,348 --> 00:53:44,568
Having a large family is a difficult thing. Uh, I I've got a few kids myself, uh, and I've had

559
00:53:44,568 --> 00:53:48,288
them since I was quite young and it, it, I mean, it certainly makes your life more challenging.

560
00:53:48,288 --> 00:54:07,727
It's a wonderful and rewarding experience. But in my case, and as in the case of many of my friends, although we knew it would be inconvenient to have children young before our careers were fully formed, we did feel this divine mandate to have children to sort of create new souls to worship God.

561
00:54:07,727 --> 00:54:21,148
Now, that might not be your religious conviction, but nevertheless, it is a common observation that these very large families are motivated by transcendent ideals, which they are placing their family at the service of.

562
00:54:21,568 --> 00:54:34,628
And whenever you do that, whenever you have this transcendent framework that the family is subject to, you again build this capacity for stability, for greatness of vision, for discipline in the face of temptation.

563
00:54:34,628 --> 00:54:40,388
The other thing is that it's a very healthy behavior and it's the sign of a well-functioning

564
00:54:40,388 --> 00:54:45,288
family when they make an effort to all get together several times a year.

565
00:54:45,288 --> 00:54:49,468
It shows that they value family, they value their identity as members of the family, that

566
00:54:49,468 --> 00:54:58,727
they place personal investment in the integrity of the family, the owner of the family name,

567
00:54:58,727 --> 00:55:00,707
that their self-conception, their identity.

568
00:55:00,744 --> 00:55:07,804
integration is well established. And also it's just like a logistic task. Like a lot of people

569
00:55:07,804 --> 00:55:11,304
have this inertia when it comes to family, like, yeah, I'll call my dad a few times a year,

570
00:55:11,384 --> 00:55:16,844
but it takes a motivated, disciplined family to all get together several times a year, especially

571
00:55:16,844 --> 00:55:22,524
to enact these very healthy sort of civilization, the affirming rituals. Like, again, I'm not

572
00:55:22,524 --> 00:55:29,704
American, but I really appreciate the importance of something like Thanksgiving, where the family

573
00:55:29,704 --> 00:55:34,164
gets together, they inhabit these rituals that every other family in the country shares,

574
00:55:34,504 --> 00:55:38,004
that their forefathers have before them, that hopefully their children will after them.

575
00:55:38,724 --> 00:55:43,024
And in so doing, society and the family attains a solidity and an integration,

576
00:55:43,804 --> 00:55:47,244
metaphysically speaking, which I think is tremendously important.

577
00:55:48,144 --> 00:55:55,084
Yeah, it really is. And it's, I mean, this dovetails into what I think is one of the biggest

578
00:55:55,084 --> 00:56:02,244
problems in society right now, particularly in the United States, and I imagine in England

579
00:56:02,244 --> 00:56:12,484
as well, is this delay in family formation, which many are attributing to the economic

580
00:56:12,484 --> 00:56:14,884
stress that younger generations are under.

581
00:56:14,884 --> 00:56:21,384
And others would extend that further and attribute it to the fact that the older generations

582
00:56:21,384 --> 00:56:29,284
refuse to throw millennials and Generation Z a bone financially to help get them on their feet.

583
00:56:29,284 --> 00:56:34,644
And again, going back to duty, it seems like there's a dereliction of duty on the older

584
00:56:34,644 --> 00:56:43,144
generations to seed the continuation of their families, for lack of a better phrase there.

585
00:56:44,464 --> 00:56:44,544
Yeah.

586
00:56:44,544 --> 00:57:04,444
I think this question of family and society's very ability to reproduce the sort of natalism birth rate question is intimately tied up across every generation in different ways to this question of wealth and duty being divorced from each other.

587
00:57:06,524 --> 00:57:10,304
So in some sense, well, let me give you an example.

588
00:57:10,824 --> 00:57:14,384
There's a very important demographer in this exact space called Lyman Stone.

589
00:57:14,544 --> 00:57:27,164
He's one of the common sources. Whenever you see a study on the effects of X and Y on birth rates, it's often Lyman Stone or the Institute of Family Studies, which is where he works, that is the root of that.

590
00:57:27,324 --> 00:57:29,804
So he does very important work, and I'd encourage people to check him out.

591
00:57:33,384 --> 00:57:43,304
It's his conviction, and I don't totally share it, but it's his conviction that almost all of this is reducible to the fact that fewer people are getting married now.

592
00:57:43,304 --> 00:57:48,864
that birth rates tend to be downstream from the marriage rate. And the marriage rate is,

593
00:57:49,464 --> 00:57:53,104
but like if you isolate like married couples, especially couples who married young,

594
00:57:53,204 --> 00:57:59,544
they're still having children at a relatively high level that is broadly representative of our

595
00:57:59,544 --> 00:58:04,424
forefathers. And so actually what is happening is that we're downstream of a relationship recession,

596
00:58:04,424 --> 00:58:11,604
as it were, rather than a total lack in having interest in having children in and of itself.

597
00:58:11,604 --> 00:58:15,684
because actually if you poll people, the majority, although it is going down, but the great majority

598
00:58:15,684 --> 00:58:19,844
of people still say that they want to have children. And yet most of them will go on to

599
00:58:19,844 --> 00:58:26,864
never have children. I think that that's like, there are a range of reasons for this, but in my

600
00:58:26,864 --> 00:58:33,924
opinion, a central reason for it is, you know, it's often lamented now that, oh, I wish people

601
00:58:33,924 --> 00:58:39,344
just had this instinct for marriage, like previous generations that like weren't the novels of Jane

602
00:58:39,344 --> 00:58:43,504
Austin so wonderful because there was such a lived sense of romance and people just had this instinct

603
00:58:43,504 --> 00:58:48,544
for marriage and stable relationships and so forth. But actually, if you look at the

604
00:58:48,544 --> 00:58:54,924
civilizational practices of those prior generations, the whole of society was making a huge investment

605
00:58:54,924 --> 00:59:00,884
in ensuring that institutions were maintained and patronized that got young people together

606
00:59:00,884 --> 00:59:08,244
in these stable pairings again and again until they pair-bonded. So in Georgian London, which is

607
00:59:08,244 --> 00:59:15,904
the context of the novels of Jane Austen, there was this whole marriage circuit. There's what was

608
00:59:15,904 --> 00:59:21,804
called the marriage season where all people from the same social class would coalesce around London

609
00:59:21,804 --> 00:59:26,724
for three months. There would be a specific calendar of events, which was maintained and

610
00:59:26,724 --> 00:59:31,884
patronized, funded by the older generations who would expect their own children to participate.

611
00:59:32,704 --> 00:59:37,884
And they would make it attractive to do so by introducing an element of luxury to these balls,

612
00:59:37,884 --> 00:59:44,604
to the opera, to social visits, to visits to pleasure gardens and so forth. And there was a

613
00:59:44,604 --> 00:59:49,124
compact. Yes, the young would be expected to pair bond and to produce marriages and grandchildren

614
00:59:49,124 --> 00:59:54,464
to make their parents happy. But at the same time, it was understood that the parents were

615
00:59:54,464 --> 00:59:58,484
expected to make a tremendous financial and personal investment in maintaining this infrastructure.

616
00:59:59,484 --> 01:00:04,944
And I think it is true that the younger generation, especially, they've lost their faith

617
01:00:04,944 --> 01:00:11,104
in this, the single importance of marriage, taking that oath in front of a community of

618
01:00:11,104 --> 01:00:15,124
eternal, you know, commitment to your spouse. They've lost their faith in that. And I think

619
01:00:15,124 --> 01:00:19,584
that is, that's a travesty in and of itself. But, you know, for anyone older out there,

620
01:00:19,584 --> 01:00:23,544
I would really encourage you to think carefully about all the ways in which you're not helping

621
01:00:23,544 --> 01:00:27,784
your children getting married and having children that you could be, because that is of

622
01:00:27,784 --> 01:00:29,844
civilizational importance.

623
01:00:30,864 --> 01:00:38,904
Yeah, and I mean, this gets into the effect of tech, technology on the interpersonal relationships,

624
01:00:38,904 --> 01:00:46,764
particularly of younger people, because the Jane Austen scenes that you just described,

625
01:00:46,964 --> 01:00:49,924
I mean, they don't really happen anymore.

626
01:00:50,024 --> 01:00:56,404
People are literally looking at their phones, looking for a partner to potentially pair up

627
01:00:56,404 --> 01:01:03,504
with and meet 101, these sort of long-held traditions of, I mean, here in the United States,

628
01:01:03,544 --> 01:01:06,644
remember when I lived in the South, I went to Cotillion, you had the debutante balls.

629
01:01:07,304 --> 01:01:13,024
You were sort of forced to go learn etiquette manners and learn how to dance with a girl.

630
01:01:14,404 --> 01:01:19,104
And you were expected to go to those classes. And then eventually when you get old enough,

631
01:01:19,164 --> 01:01:25,144
you had the debutante ball. I think that's still alive and well in parts of the South,

632
01:01:25,144 --> 01:01:27,204
when I think of here up north.

633
01:01:27,564 --> 01:01:30,704
I guess we have dances and things like that,

634
01:01:30,804 --> 01:01:36,864
but particularly for children or later teens, early 20s,

635
01:01:36,884 --> 01:01:41,604
it seems like those types of events have been completely replaced

636
01:01:41,604 --> 01:01:48,304
with this sort of fast-moving dating scene enabled by these apps,

637
01:01:48,364 --> 01:01:53,924
which I think are terrible for men and women of this age.

638
01:01:53,924 --> 01:01:58,444
And again, I don't want to harp on my family too much, but I met my wife.

639
01:01:58,484 --> 01:01:59,724
My wife's best friends and my cousin.

640
01:02:00,824 --> 01:02:04,504
My mother and father-in-law are friends of my aunts and uncles.

641
01:02:04,864 --> 01:02:10,084
We often joke we're as close to an arranged marriage as you can get.

642
01:02:10,304 --> 01:02:18,204
But there was, and we met participating in the tradition of my family going down the shore, going to the beach in the summer.

643
01:02:19,084 --> 01:02:23,204
And I think we did have conditions that sort of led us to each other.

644
01:02:23,924 --> 01:02:24,964
which are being lost.

645
01:02:26,784 --> 01:02:27,344
Definitely.

646
01:02:27,544 --> 01:02:27,744
Yeah.

647
01:02:28,304 --> 01:02:28,584
I mean,

648
01:02:28,604 --> 01:02:29,404
there's this,

649
01:02:29,404 --> 01:02:29,544
there's this,

650
01:02:29,544 --> 01:02:34,484
there's this odd thing now where it's,

651
01:02:34,544 --> 01:02:38,404
it's the upper classes who are able to weather the storm best to impart to,

652
01:02:38,584 --> 01:02:38,684
you know,

653
01:02:38,724 --> 01:02:39,244
Rob Henderson,

654
01:02:39,724 --> 01:02:41,124
who calls this luxury beliefs,

655
01:02:41,224 --> 01:02:44,944
this idea that they're making very bad social and,

656
01:02:44,944 --> 01:02:46,204
and sort of ethical decisions,

657
01:02:46,204 --> 01:02:57,874
but they able to insulate themselves from the worst effects of that by sheer resources And it really the people further down the socioeconomic ladder that really feel this

658
01:02:57,874 --> 01:02:58,334
the worst.

659
01:02:58,514 --> 01:03:02,534
You know, when poor people get divorced or are never married in the first place and have

660
01:03:02,534 --> 01:03:05,874
children, whether intentional or not, it creates all kinds of stresses that you just can't

661
01:03:05,874 --> 01:03:06,394
escape from.

662
01:03:06,634 --> 01:03:08,354
And that becomes a very destructive cycle.

663
01:03:08,774 --> 01:03:13,254
But if you actually isolate the top elements of society, many of them are still quietly

664
01:03:13,254 --> 01:03:17,994
making sure that a lot of that infrastructure is there for their own children. There's a very

665
01:03:17,994 --> 01:03:23,854
interesting example in France. France, it's actually unlike other countries. There's an

666
01:03:23,854 --> 01:03:29,354
element of the French elite who are quite radically conservative. They're not necessarily outspoken

667
01:03:29,354 --> 01:03:34,834
about it, but unlike in England, where the wealthy elites are very liberal, same in Germany, same in

668
01:03:34,834 --> 01:03:41,054
America, largely, although obviously there are geographic divides in America. The French old

669
01:03:41,054 --> 01:03:47,534
aristocracy are still quite conservative. And Pascal Emmanuel Gopry, who's a commentator on

670
01:03:47,534 --> 01:03:53,934
Twitter and Substack, who has sort of proximity to this class, he wrote this essay that I reference

671
01:03:53,934 --> 01:03:58,994
in the book on his publication, Accelerationist, about how these people act in private. And it's

672
01:03:58,994 --> 01:04:03,894
very, very interesting. They have a system called Les Jalets, which is like a calendar of social

673
01:04:03,894 --> 01:04:09,414
events, carefully happens under the table, invite only to introduce their children to each other

674
01:04:09,414 --> 01:04:14,234
from quite a young age to do dancing, cultural activities, exactly as you describe, etiquette,

675
01:04:14,614 --> 01:04:19,814
and still quietly, they recognize the enduring necessity of these institutions.

676
01:04:20,594 --> 01:04:25,554
But I think the whole of society would just be a better place if everyone engaged in something

677
01:04:25,554 --> 01:04:29,594
like this. I mean, you read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, which is about the social fabric

678
01:04:29,594 --> 01:04:35,874
of 1950s America. People are going out multiple times a week to social events, to civic associations,

679
01:04:35,874 --> 01:04:44,434
to local performances. The social fabric is so intense, so interconnected that it's just this

680
01:04:44,434 --> 01:04:49,954
incredibly life-affirming existence. And if you go back into old England, there's this whole

681
01:04:49,954 --> 01:04:57,954
calendar of festivals, fates, pranks. It's this wonderfully colorful, intensely social environment

682
01:04:57,954 --> 01:04:59,434
that we've really lost.

683
01:05:00,494 --> 01:05:03,714
So yeah, anything that people of means can do.

684
01:05:04,114 --> 01:05:07,034
And again, it's rooted in a community.

685
01:05:07,034 --> 01:05:08,594
It's rooted in love.

686
01:05:08,634 --> 01:05:10,434
It's rooted to personal relationships.

687
01:05:10,614 --> 01:05:12,194
All of these, like that's how you thicken

688
01:05:12,194 --> 01:05:13,594
the social fabric around you.

689
01:05:14,074 --> 01:05:17,594
Anything you can be to not be maximally

690
01:05:17,594 --> 01:05:19,294
sort of transient and ephemeral,

691
01:05:19,494 --> 01:05:20,734
that's very poisonous.

692
01:05:20,734 --> 01:05:24,234
So this question of like rooted patronage

693
01:05:24,234 --> 01:05:27,274
becomes essential.

694
01:05:27,954 --> 01:05:31,714
So what are the first steps to get back to this?

695
01:05:31,954 --> 01:05:38,094
How do we climb out of this morass that society seems to be stuck in right now?

696
01:05:39,894 --> 01:05:47,234
You know, there's sort of two things, two core themes to the book.

697
01:05:47,234 --> 01:05:52,254
The first is about raising children.

698
01:05:53,774 --> 01:05:57,594
The book is sort of framed in raising children in the context of wealth.

699
01:05:57,954 --> 01:06:03,354
to go on to achieve great things. But really it's, it's universally applicable in that we all live in

700
01:06:03,354 --> 01:06:08,574
an incredibly material, uh, materially abundant culture now, even if a lot of those material

701
01:06:08,574 --> 01:06:13,254
abundances are in kind of cheap and disposable items like TVs and who knows what on the internet

702
01:06:13,254 --> 01:06:19,894
and so forth. Um, and, and that brings intense temptation that really it was, it was only some

703
01:06:19,894 --> 01:06:24,974
members of the upper classes that would have had, uh, in, in the past. I mean, if you think about

704
01:06:24,974 --> 01:06:30,834
the temptations of lust. Now every young man has that in his pocket all the time, and young women,

705
01:06:30,954 --> 01:06:36,894
whereas that kind of seeming scale of choice would have been available to a very select few

706
01:06:36,894 --> 01:06:40,954
members of previous generations. The point there is to say that there's actually a lot we can

707
01:06:40,954 --> 01:06:47,174
learn, all of us can learn from the great families who raised virtuous children in the face of

708
01:06:47,174 --> 01:06:54,474
temptation from generations that went before. And some of this is incredibly basic. It's fun,

709
01:06:54,474 --> 01:06:58,714
life-affirming stuff, it's not grueling. It's having dinner with your children,

710
01:06:58,934 --> 01:07:02,594
talking to them, teaching them values and so forth, which a surprising number of people don't

711
01:07:02,594 --> 01:07:06,394
do, including in the nouveau riche, there's this kind of accepted thing of grinding,

712
01:07:06,654 --> 01:07:12,094
working super long hours to make as much money as possible to maximize shareholder value.

713
01:07:12,674 --> 01:07:20,714
And the glorification of the 6am to 9pm grind, which is actually very destructive to

714
01:07:20,714 --> 01:07:24,714
raising children and you won't be able to pass that wealth onto them if they're not ready to

715
01:07:24,714 --> 01:07:29,474
receive it. So, uh, so there's that element of it. There's like raising children. And then I think,

716
01:07:29,574 --> 01:07:33,854
I think the second thing is like, there's a lot of very wealthy people who I consider to be

717
01:07:33,854 --> 01:07:40,854
fundamentally well-intentioned, but misled due to this, uh, slightly pathological, uh,

718
01:07:40,854 --> 01:07:47,474
culture of philanthropy that has arisen. And it really does concern this rootedness of community,

719
01:07:47,474 --> 01:07:53,674
this love of neighbor as a proper understanding of charity. And the final chapter in the book is

720
01:07:53,674 --> 01:08:00,954
attempting to provide inspiration on all of the ways that you can start reviving the social fabric

721
01:08:00,954 --> 01:08:07,374
of your particular community and family, looking at examples from contemporary charity and the

722
01:08:07,374 --> 01:08:13,294
great families and men of the West. But I think those two things, like children and place,

723
01:08:13,294 --> 01:08:17,794
are neglected in today's society to our great detriment.

724
01:08:19,734 --> 01:08:21,854
Yeah, that's, I mean, particularly the tech elite.

725
01:08:22,314 --> 01:08:23,894
I tweeted this out on Thanksgiving.

726
01:08:24,114 --> 01:08:26,274
I saw that you saw it, but that's all I could think of

727
01:08:26,274 --> 01:08:29,114
after reading a few chapters that morning.

728
01:08:29,274 --> 01:08:33,314
If you look at the tech class, the billionaire class there,

729
01:08:33,314 --> 01:08:39,774
it's a lot of childless men who have billions of dollars

730
01:08:39,774 --> 01:08:46,274
that are extremely philanthropic, no connection to any particular locality.

731
01:08:46,274 --> 01:08:51,734
And I didn't mention this in the tweet, but a lot of them are transhumanists.

732
01:08:51,814 --> 01:08:57,934
It seems like they're trying to separate themselves from our humanity.

733
01:08:58,134 --> 01:09:03,214
And it is actually incredibly frightening when you think that the wealthy elite,

734
01:09:03,694 --> 01:09:08,434
the upcoming wealthy elite of our age think this way.

735
01:09:09,774 --> 01:09:13,974
yeah i couldn't agree more yeah it's sort of like one step removed from being

736
01:09:13,974 --> 01:09:21,634
um being removed from your community is actually being removed from the very essence of the self

737
01:09:21,634 --> 01:09:28,714
you know and attempting to transcend your your mortal existence um and there's a lot i could

738
01:09:28,714 --> 01:09:33,954
say about that that that's a that's a whole that's a whole other let's expand on because i think it's

739
01:09:33,954 --> 01:09:41,594
important and i hope some of the individuals in this particular class would be introspective

740
01:09:41,594 --> 01:09:46,414
about this and it is like i watch it like that brian johnson guy who's trying to live forever

741
01:09:46,414 --> 01:09:51,614
he's doing all these experiments live streaming himself doing five grams of mushrooms like it's

742
01:09:51,614 --> 01:09:56,394
some sort of public experiment that people are going to get value out of it's like what are you

743
01:09:56,394 --> 01:10:05,374
doing? What is the purpose of all this? Well, for me, it's difficult to discuss this subject

744
01:10:05,374 --> 01:10:11,634
in a compelling way to people who don't already believe what I believe. And the reason for that is

745
01:10:11,634 --> 01:10:20,094
when it comes to morality and this life, fundamentally, I believe what I believe,

746
01:10:20,094 --> 01:10:25,314
and I act what I act, and I argue what I argue because of the most foundational truth claims

747
01:10:25,314 --> 01:10:27,034
that I hold dear about the world.

748
01:10:27,094 --> 01:10:29,414
And those are basically theological convictions, faith.

749
01:10:30,534 --> 01:10:34,834
And I can nevertheless go out and I can argue on secular podcasts.

750
01:10:34,834 --> 01:10:51,544
I been on some finance podcasts and so forth with non quite confidently because I believe in natural law In other words I believe that like every aspect of our material reality is in some way reflective of fundamental truths

751
01:10:51,544 --> 01:10:55,604
which is why even from the pre-Christian cultures, you know, the culture of Aristotle,

752
01:10:56,204 --> 01:11:02,824
Aristotle had so much access to the truth, to correct ideas about the good, the beautiful, and so forth,

753
01:11:02,824 --> 01:11:08,364
despite not having a Christian faith, because he was an intelligent, perceptive, contemplative

754
01:11:08,364 --> 01:11:13,344
person who looked about and he saw the sort of reflection of the divine in creation itself

755
01:11:13,344 --> 01:11:14,764
and was able to reason from there.

756
01:11:15,624 --> 01:11:24,824
Now, because of the fact that existence itself sort of aligns with divine truth, you can

757
01:11:24,824 --> 01:11:29,404
therefore make these kind of like secular practical arguments with people who don't

758
01:11:29,404 --> 01:11:32,164
believe about like why it's right to believe certain things.

759
01:11:32,824 --> 01:11:38,644
The problem is, is that when you start talking about eternity itself, like in some sense,

760
01:11:38,644 --> 01:11:40,284
I believe that it is good to die.

761
01:11:40,904 --> 01:11:47,084
And even, I mean, you know, God willing, should I, should I die not in a state of mortal sin?

762
01:11:47,644 --> 01:11:49,204
It would be a good thing to die.

763
01:11:49,324 --> 01:11:55,624
Like you want to, you want to ultimately meet your maker, gaze upon the beatific vision

764
01:11:55,624 --> 01:11:57,304
in eternity forevermore.

765
01:11:57,304 --> 01:12:06,044
but it's difficult to argue with someone that believes that like death is it it's the end uh

766
01:12:06,044 --> 01:12:12,604
there's nothing after that when it comes to life itself you know and so like that is not to say

767
01:12:12,604 --> 01:12:17,784
that there is no discussion to be had on the subject of transhumanism it's more to say that

768
01:12:17,784 --> 01:12:24,504
like the discussion that needs to be had is is a really deep philosophical and theological

769
01:12:24,504 --> 01:12:30,864
discussion about the very substrate of existence itself, which is difficult to sort of casually

770
01:12:30,864 --> 01:12:31,704
transition into.

771
01:12:31,884 --> 01:12:39,224
I mean, you can, of course, make observations like, it's very unclear to me what good a

772
01:12:39,224 --> 01:12:42,604
lot of these people are actually doing in the lives of the people who surround them.

773
01:12:44,364 --> 01:12:48,284
But yeah, I mean, that's a big discussion.

774
01:12:48,284 --> 01:12:49,284
Yeah

775
01:12:49,284 --> 01:12:52,804
And so

776
01:12:52,804 --> 01:12:55,664
I'm sure you've seen the trend too

777
01:12:55,664 --> 01:12:56,924
A few

778
01:12:56,924 --> 01:12:59,264
Most famously Nicole Shanahan

779
01:12:59,264 --> 01:13:01,744
Of the ex-tech wives

780
01:13:01,744 --> 01:13:03,824
I think they're beginning to have

781
01:13:03,824 --> 01:13:05,224
This realization

782
01:13:05,224 --> 01:13:08,124
She very publicly converted to Christianity

783
01:13:08,124 --> 01:13:09,784
In the last couple of years

784
01:13:09,784 --> 01:13:11,644
And more recently I believe

785
01:13:11,644 --> 01:13:12,704
Last week was

786
01:13:12,704 --> 01:13:14,624
Opining on

787
01:13:14,624 --> 01:13:15,884
How

788
01:13:15,884 --> 01:13:22,844
disappointed she was in herself for thinking that she could change the world through the

789
01:13:22,844 --> 01:13:30,264
world economic form specifically. And I do have optimism and hope that we are getting to

790
01:13:30,264 --> 01:13:41,824
such an extreme polarized part of, I guess, the pendulum swing of time where people are

791
01:13:41,824 --> 01:13:48,484
beginning to wake up. There's something innate and intuitive that comes into play when things

792
01:13:48,484 --> 01:13:53,364
get off track too much. And I feel like we're reaching that point where people

793
01:13:53,364 --> 01:13:58,944
are really beginning to become more introspective and think, what are we actually doing here?

794
01:13:59,064 --> 01:14:03,244
Is this the right path moving forward? Which is a good sign, in my opinion.

795
01:14:04,784 --> 01:14:10,024
Definitely. Yeah, I mean, the kind of devil's bargain of philanthropy is

796
01:14:10,024 --> 01:14:14,984
we're not going to take care of our like personal relationships first and foremost

797
01:14:14,984 --> 01:14:19,764
because the classic model of like community centered religious charity is essentially

798
01:14:19,764 --> 01:14:24,344
palliative in that it goes to people who are suffering in society and tries to ease their

799
01:14:24,344 --> 01:14:29,124
suffering so it typically takes the form of like arms giving to the poor or donations to hospitals

800
01:14:29,124 --> 01:14:32,984
or like feeding the needy sheltering you know so it's like taking someone who's suffering and

801
01:14:32,984 --> 01:14:38,364
trying to ease their suffering as an expression of love and kindness what philanthropy does is it

802
01:14:38,364 --> 01:14:42,184
says, actually, we're going to dispense with the theological convictions. This comes out of

803
01:14:42,184 --> 01:14:45,744
Andrew Carnegie, the gospel of wealth, a whole set of interesting changes.

804
01:14:47,644 --> 01:14:51,224
And we're actually going to go to what we perceive to be the source of these problems,

805
01:14:51,224 --> 01:14:57,104
because we believe in our fundamental power, now that we have these sciences of sociology,

806
01:14:57,384 --> 01:15:03,484
psychology, and so forth, to actually alter the fundamental things, which are giving rise to

807
01:15:03,484 --> 01:15:07,484
suffering in the first place. So we can actually eliminate poverty. It's like a fundamental claim

808
01:15:07,484 --> 01:15:12,044
someone who's a committed philanthropist. The problem there is that once you do that,

809
01:15:12,804 --> 01:15:18,184
you are no longer engaging in charity. You're basically engaging in macroeconomic management,

810
01:15:18,504 --> 01:15:22,884
politics, and so forth. And as soon as you make that transition in your mind,

811
01:15:23,124 --> 01:15:27,644
you are faced with this tremendous temptation that I think many great men of our age have

812
01:15:27,644 --> 01:15:32,944
fallen prey to, which is like, oh, if I only had a bit more power, then I could really solve these

813
01:15:32,944 --> 01:15:37,444
root issues. If I only had a bit more power, I could really... You know what? Maybe my foundation

814
01:15:37,444 --> 01:15:40,804
is not big enough, maybe I should convince other people to donate their billions to my

815
01:15:40,804 --> 01:15:44,524
foundation as well. And maybe I can partner up with the World Economic Forum and maybe I can.

816
01:15:44,904 --> 01:15:52,084
And it just becomes this centralization of power, this confluence in their minds of

817
01:15:52,084 --> 01:15:59,744
some misconception of charity, plus bureaucracy, plus very spurious scientism, plus powerful

818
01:15:59,744 --> 01:16:05,964
government, centralized institutions, international action. That is like, at a certain point,

819
01:16:05,964 --> 01:16:10,744
you have to stand back and be like, oh yeah, wait, there's actually more people living in

820
01:16:10,744 --> 01:16:14,584
absolute, there's twice as many people living in absolute poverty in Africa as there was in the

821
01:16:14,584 --> 01:16:18,944
nineties. Like, what are we doing? Like people all over America are dying deaths of despair.

822
01:16:19,164 --> 01:16:24,984
What are we doing? Like clearly whatever this is, is not, it's not only spiritually dead.

823
01:16:24,984 --> 01:16:29,104
It's like materially bankrupt. Like I'm sure, I'm sure you could point to victories, right?

824
01:16:29,224 --> 01:16:33,344
Because there's just, there's so much effort and so much money going around that I'm sure there are

825
01:16:33,344 --> 01:16:36,084
defensible and important lines that some of these foundations have done.

826
01:16:36,244 --> 01:16:40,244
But fundamentally, their model of the world is broken, and that's leading to a lot of harm.

827
01:16:40,964 --> 01:16:51,924
Yeah, my favorite sort of LARP in the realm of us Americans who are going to go save Africa,

828
01:16:51,924 --> 01:16:58,024
I believe it was the actor Ashton Kutcher, ran this big malaria net drive.

829
01:16:58,304 --> 01:17:00,904
They've raised millions of dollars to get malaria nets.

830
01:17:00,904 --> 01:17:03,984
I forget in exactly what country

831
01:17:03,984 --> 01:17:06,124
in Africa and they came to find

832
01:17:06,124 --> 01:17:07,344
that they just used the nets

833
01:17:07,344 --> 01:17:10,164
as fishing nets

834
01:17:10,164 --> 01:17:12,864
and drained part of the area

835
01:17:12,864 --> 01:17:14,444
of all their fish

836
01:17:14,444 --> 01:17:15,524
and the highlights again

837
01:17:15,524 --> 01:17:17,524
if you have this dislocation

838
01:17:17,524 --> 01:17:20,024
physically from Dominion

839
01:17:20,024 --> 01:17:22,364
and it goes back to central planning

840
01:17:22,364 --> 01:17:23,484
more broadly which is something

841
01:17:23,484 --> 01:17:25,444
I like to focus on a lot

842
01:17:25,444 --> 01:17:28,044
particularly as it pertains to monetary economics

843
01:17:28,044 --> 01:17:30,244
and the effects of central planning

844
01:17:30,244 --> 01:17:37,544
on monetary economics have very perverse negative externalities. No one individual or small group of

845
01:17:37,544 --> 01:17:42,024
individuals should be able to control the most important tool, arguably, that we use as humans,

846
01:17:42,024 --> 01:17:49,864
which is money. It's the lack of proximity to the actual problems that are hurting everyday

847
01:17:49,864 --> 01:17:55,044
Americans, particularly in the middle of the country that cannot be solved by a bunch of

848
01:17:55,044 --> 01:18:01,644
people in the Eccles building making minute lever pulls on what the interest rate should be or how

849
01:18:01,644 --> 01:18:06,964
much money should be in the system at any given point in time. And similarly with the malaria in

850
01:18:06,964 --> 01:18:13,024
that case, it's like you do not know what's actually happening on the ground and the very

851
01:18:13,024 --> 01:18:18,984
nuanced variables of the problems that exist and how the introduction of another variable

852
01:18:18,984 --> 01:18:23,504
will be received where Ashton Kutcher thought like, oh, they're all just going to

853
01:18:23,504 --> 01:18:28,184
use the malaria and that's protect themselves from from mosquitoes and it

854
01:18:28,184 --> 01:18:39,734
turned out to be a laughable sort of example of the the hubris of somebody to think that they could actually know what is needed to

855
01:18:39,734 --> 01:18:46,774
solve the problems in that exact locality. Thousands of months. Yeah. My conviction is like,

856
01:18:46,874 --> 01:18:50,894
it's not that we should be ignoring Africa. It's just like, if you feel that's your calling,

857
01:18:50,894 --> 01:18:55,534
then move there. And I'm like completely serious about that. I mean, there's, there's someone,

858
01:18:55,534 --> 01:19:00,494
um there's someone who's quoted in the book called robert lupton and robert lupton is a

859
01:19:00,494 --> 01:19:06,714
career charity guy and i think he's a real hero and he he runs this uh organization called fcs

860
01:19:06,714 --> 01:19:12,794
focus community strategies and he wrote this expose called toxic charity which actually looks at

861
01:19:12,794 --> 01:19:16,654
the real world effects of these very large philanthropic endeavors and often they cause

862
01:19:16,654 --> 01:19:22,114
like complete chaos i mean like the classic model that they all follow is something like

863
01:19:22,114 --> 01:19:30,854
uh you know people in uh sudan south sudan need clothes so we're going to ship uh you know 500

864
01:19:30,854 --> 01:19:35,914
tons of clothes into south sudan and you just wipe out the entire textile industry of south sudan and

865
01:19:35,914 --> 01:19:41,374
they never recover from that it's just like these silly blunders like that and what robert lupton

866
01:19:41,374 --> 01:19:45,874
does is he he actually just moves to whatever community he lives in the middle of whatever

867
01:19:45,874 --> 01:19:52,374
community, he wants to improve and he commits to like 10 years. Yes, he solicits donations. Yes,

868
01:19:52,394 --> 01:19:56,954
he deploys financial resources, but never without having a deep and intimate relationship

869
01:19:56,954 --> 01:20:02,474
with everyone who is interacting with those resources and their downstream effects.

870
01:20:03,134 --> 01:20:08,934
And it's a gradual process. It's a layered, nuanced, complex process. It's a process which

871
01:20:08,934 --> 01:20:17,494
never divorces cause effect or shies away from complexity. It's iterative. And, uh, and yeah,

872
01:20:17,494 --> 01:20:20,834
it's just like, where's the spirit of adventure? I mean, there's always been eccentric Westerners

873
01:20:20,834 --> 01:20:26,794
who have moved to like remote places in the world and, and try to achieve great things. And I think,

874
01:20:26,834 --> 01:20:31,474
you know, the age of adventure is upon us again. So, uh, so yeah, I mean, people should do that.

875
01:20:32,614 --> 01:20:35,454
Yeah. If you want to solve the problem, you got to be close to the problem.

876
01:20:35,454 --> 01:20:52,594
And then I guess just to wrap up, I know you mentioned before we hit record, you're not really well-versed in Bitcoin, but I do think we both agree that to achieve some of these legacy goals, you need to be able to store wealth and pass it on.

877
01:20:52,594 --> 01:21:01,194
And I think that's where we align very tightly is this idea that being wealthy is not a bad thing.

878
01:21:01,274 --> 01:21:15,214
It is virtuous, especially if you're bringing good things into the world and doing good things within your dominion and following your duty, living up to your duty to do good in the world and love your neighbor.

879
01:21:15,214 --> 01:21:32,174
And I think one of the ways in which that's been corrupted is the fact that it has actually been harder for people to build and more importantly preserve wealth to lower their time preference to think about legacy and improving their dominion.

880
01:21:32,174 --> 01:21:42,474
And that's one thing I truly believe and have witnessed within my own life and observing others who have been in Bitcoin for a while.

881
01:21:42,574 --> 01:21:55,894
I think it is possible to use Bitcoin to build wealth and then focus on these legacy questions and really be intentful about it.

882
01:21:55,894 --> 01:22:02,994
I think it's actually one of the biggest parts of the equation is how do you actually preserve that wealth?

883
01:22:03,294 --> 01:22:05,134
What are the mechanisms, to your point?

884
01:22:05,874 --> 01:22:14,574
Earlier, the wealth that's passed down these days is in completely liquid assets that are certainly liquid,

885
01:22:14,794 --> 01:22:25,314
but they're being continuously debased because we're just printing money and debasing the unit by which we measure wealth more broadly.

886
01:22:25,314 --> 01:22:30,834
And so I think there is a very important role for Bitcoin to play in all this.

887
01:22:33,014 --> 01:22:33,694
Yeah, I buy that.

888
01:22:34,014 --> 01:22:36,474
I mean, I think two things are in tension.

889
01:22:36,634 --> 01:22:47,414
The first is like, to the extent that Bitcoin can protect you from inflationary pressures, where a centralized institution is essentially devaluing your money in order to pursue their own agenda.

890
01:22:47,734 --> 01:22:53,734
That could be a very good thing for the empowerment of specific communities because you actually have sovereignty over your wealth.

891
01:22:53,734 --> 01:23:08,634
On the other hand, there is a tension that I see in Bitcoin, which is one's relationship with money can become pathological when one loses sight of the fact that it is ultimately intended to bring about real world goods.

892
01:23:09,254 --> 01:23:12,834
In and of itself, money is not a moral quality.

893
01:23:12,974 --> 01:23:13,854
It's not a moral good.

894
01:23:13,974 --> 01:23:15,494
In fact, it's a source of temptation.

895
01:23:15,494 --> 01:23:25,094
but lived as a tool to achieve real world effects that do good for the people around you to whom you have a moral responsibility and whom you can uplift and love.

896
01:23:25,334 --> 01:23:26,554
It's a very powerful tool.

897
01:23:27,174 --> 01:23:33,954
So I think like Bitcoin is a fascinating endeavor and potentially one that can do a lot of good.

898
01:23:35,014 --> 01:23:40,374
But like conviction in Bitcoin alone is possibly not enough.

899
01:23:40,374 --> 01:23:51,234
It has to be accompanied with a vision of how to transform that asset into real world goods and what those goods should be and why they should exist and so forth.

900
01:23:51,594 --> 01:23:54,734
So avoid the sin of, I mean, this is turning into a sermon.

901
01:23:54,814 --> 01:23:55,654
I don't mean it to be a sermon.

902
01:23:55,854 --> 01:23:59,914
But if, you know, avoid the sin of avarice, which is like obsession with money, qua money.

903
01:24:00,374 --> 01:24:06,874
And like have, I think, greatness of vision, a very invigorating thing is to imagine the things you can actually do in the world.

904
01:24:06,874 --> 01:24:09,274
No, I'm very happy you said that.

905
01:24:09,274 --> 01:24:19,074
I think it's very important because there are many within Bitcoin and view it as like, I mean, Michael Saylor, most famously, I'm going to buy as much Bitcoin as possible and then I'm burning my keys when I die.

906
01:24:20,134 --> 01:24:21,774
Another childless billionaire.

907
01:24:23,154 --> 01:24:35,494
And I completely disagree with that view of Bitcoin or that perspective on what Bitcoin is and what it's meant to achieve.

908
01:24:35,494 --> 01:24:41,394
I think it's incredibly important to use it as a tool to do good in the world.

909
01:24:41,694 --> 01:24:44,234
And so I'm very, very happy that you brought that up.

910
01:24:44,434 --> 01:24:51,854
And for our audience particularly, which is filled with a lot of Bitcoiners, to think about that because it is important.

911
01:24:52,694 --> 01:24:56,974
There's many people too focused on the end state of Bitcoin's full monetization.

912
01:24:56,974 --> 01:25:07,654
It's like, well, you can use it as this tool to do good along the way, because who knows how long it will actually take to reach the full potential that you believe it will.

913
01:25:09,514 --> 01:25:10,634
Yeah, absolutely.

914
01:25:13,014 --> 01:25:17,174
Leaving a legacy, inheritance charity, and thousand-year families.

915
01:25:17,814 --> 01:25:20,294
We can get on the thousand-year families, but maybe we can do that another time.

916
01:25:20,394 --> 01:25:23,554
Johan, this was an incredible joy for me.

917
01:25:23,634 --> 01:25:25,174
Thank you for joining us.

918
01:25:25,234 --> 01:25:26,034
Thank you for writing the book.

919
01:25:26,034 --> 01:25:30,554
Thank you for all the work that you do with your sub stack, becoming noble.

920
01:25:31,114 --> 01:25:33,334
It's incredibly important work.

921
01:25:33,414 --> 01:25:34,214
I truly believe that.

922
01:25:34,314 --> 01:25:42,374
I think we need a shift in the mentality, particularly in Western society, in terms of what are we doing here?

923
01:25:42,934 --> 01:25:44,254
How are we building for the long term?

924
01:25:44,394 --> 01:25:52,014
And what is our legacy going to be for our generation, particularly as millennials, Gen Z, boomers?

925
01:25:52,874 --> 01:25:54,814
It's not too late to start thinking about it either.

926
01:25:56,034 --> 01:26:00,614
I think there's a lot of boomer hate out there,

927
01:26:00,694 --> 01:26:03,874
but I know there are many good boomers out there

928
01:26:03,874 --> 01:26:05,774
that are thinking about this stuff as well.

929
01:26:05,934 --> 01:26:09,314
But we just need, I think, these ideas to become more popular

930
01:26:09,314 --> 01:26:13,494
and people need to think more intently about these things.

931
01:26:15,434 --> 01:26:17,454
Well, it's been a complete pleasure,

932
01:26:17,634 --> 01:26:19,774
and I'm really really grateful for the invitation.

933
01:26:20,134 --> 01:26:20,674
So thank you.

934
01:26:21,294 --> 01:26:23,874
You enjoy your night, and that's all we have today.

935
01:26:23,994 --> 01:26:24,594
Peace and love, freaks.

936
01:26:24,994 --> 01:26:25,214
Okay.