How Non-State Actors Capture Power ｜ Guest： Bennett's Phylactery ｜ 3⧸2⧸23
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per Minute
165.6454
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with the founder of Exit, an organization dedicated to understanding the dynamics of power and the flow of power in third-world countries. We talk about the role of non-state actors in capturing power, and how they can be applied in the first-world world.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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I've got a great stream with a returning guest who I think you're really going to enjoy.
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He's the head of the excellent organization, Exit, and he's also a very good writer who
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does some very interesting podcasts and sub-stacks.
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Bennett's Phylactery, thanks for joining me, man.
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So you had this really good piece on kind of your latest episode, latest piece out of your
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sub-stack that I think is really important because it does a great job of taking a lot
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of things that people in our sphere talk about, but really has a lot of application, a lot of
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practical application and practical ways that you can apply these theories of power or the flow
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of power, these kind of things, analysis to kind of what's actually going on today.
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And you started with, by kind of making this review of this book.
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But yeah, he did this book about kind of how the Taliban won and then kind of how the
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modern warfare is moving these insurgents out of the mountains and these far off places
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and kind of into the cities and integrating into the population and competing with other
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people who are supposed to be kind of the legitimate leaders of their country.
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But you also talk about how this isn't related just to, you know, Afghanistan.
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This happens in many other countries and can happen in with non-militaristic, non-insurgent
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And that's the stuff that I want to focus on a little bit.
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But to start at the beginning, can we talk a little bit about kind of setting the table?
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How does one of these factions end up capturing power?
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Or how does one of these non-state actors end up capturing power flows in maybe some of
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these third world countries and then we can kind of translate it over to how it happens
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Well, I think it actually starts by hiding out in the power flows.
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It doesn't begin with, I think often it doesn't begin with a conscious effort to capture them.
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Basically, a lot of things have to be going wrong.
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There have to be sort of the, ideally, if it's a really strong state, what will happen is
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all of the tax revenues will be adequately collected and they'll be collected by the right
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And then the benefits of the taxation, the food stamps and the tuition subsidies and all those
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things will go to the appropriate people determined by policy.
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And that's kind of what we call like in the West anti-corruption, like a function, like
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good governance basically means the state collects all of the resources and it distributes them
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to exactly who it intends to distribute them to.
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But in these cities, his thesis is that basically the crowding and the chaos and the limitations
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on state capacity in cities, especially like cities in the developing world, they make it
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Like the police force can't watch all the cops.
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And so the cops start collecting bribes and they start moonlighting as protection forces
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And in that way, you know, in that case, it would be the gang.
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They begin to capture the state's ability to prosecute violence.
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But it can also be just any place where the state is dropping the ball, like, or even if they're
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not deliberately dropping the ball, where the state is just failing to deliver on a basic,
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thing that we expect states to do, like keep track of property rights.
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And so one of the important things the Taliban did was even in environments where they were
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not in power, like where they were literally like an underground cell in some community, they
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would start building like a shadow county recorder's office, a shadow ledger of property rights.
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And they would adjudicate and actually, from what people said, adjudicate fairly, like
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they would really try to determine who had the best claim on, you know, these water rights
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And what that did was it made it so that the people who basically adjudicated their property
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rights through the Taliban were, had skin in the game for the Taliban to succeed.
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Like when, when the, the old man sends his son to go pick up a rifle and fight for the
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Taliban, he doesn't have to like be bought into the Taliban's ideological program and
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It's, it's really a question of like, well, if the Taliban doesn't win here, then the warlord
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who usurped our property rights and took them away 20 years ago during the post-Soviet
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period, he's going to ride back into town and take away our farm.
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So the Taliban better wins to go pick up a rifle and it's just fighting for the family
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And you think about like, um, the way that Shelby Foote characterized the civil war in
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that Ken Burns doc, you ever see the Ken Burns civil war?
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I don't know, but, uh, the, the union soldiers, they're talking to some captured rebel and,
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uh, they ask him like, you know, you're, you're a dirt farmer, just like us.
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And he's, his answer is because you're here, like he's fighting for his little, little,
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And, and in that guy's mind, the, the, the insurgent, the Confederacy, uh, you know, it
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depends on how you look at it in his, in his mind, they weren't the insurgents, but the
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insurgent party is the guarantor and the defender of his rights.
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And so, uh, you get, you get alignment and, and I guess the fundamental, uh, the way this
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book helped me see the world differently was he was like, they're not actually competing
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They're competing for, uh, the, the compliance and cooperation of the population.
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Um, if I set the rules, who listens both because, and, and it comes down, I don't know how, how
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far you want me to go with this, but, but it comes down to building a bubble that is very
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safe on the inside and very dangerous on the outside.
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And the Taliban had the benefit of like Afghanistan just being an incredibly dangerous place.
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So like, they didn't have to make things much safer to, to make a bubble that felt pretty
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I definitely want to get deeper into that, uh, that aspect as well.
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Cause I think that's really important, but I do want to spend a second, a little bit on,
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on that capturing of power flows first, because I thought that was very interesting that the
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way, you know, you kind of frame that was obviously a lot of these organizations do start out as
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basically just gangs, you know, they're, they're just, they're just, uh, you know, coercing
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compliance, but over time you realize that actually that's not the best game in town and
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providing things that people need, like you said, making them feel safe inside your bubble
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is far more valuable to get them on your side than necessarily just showing up with a bunch
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of guns and breaking things until someone gives you money.
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And so the, uh, you know, the, the ability to kind of capture those essential factors
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from a government, especially governments that aren't able to do those things is really
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And another point you made that I liked was that a lot of times they will specifically
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while they might need to be capable of violence, while they're this proto state inside the state,
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while they are non-state actors at that time, they are careful about the things they usurp
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as to not trigger certain defense mechanisms inside the existing state.
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So if you're distributing food or aid, or you're, you're the one that makes sure that people get
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jobs or, you know, certain benefits from the government get handed down, you become an essential
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So they need you and they can't just dispose of you immediately, but you also are building a
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power base inside that sphere because those people see you as the actual guarantor of the
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And so you can build power inside without necessarily having to directly compete with, for instance,
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I mean, you've watched, we've watched NGOs do this, right?
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They capture so much power just by routing the flows.
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And, um, and people are very grateful for that.
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And I actually, I mean, I think even, even street gangs, primarily, uh, to the extent that
00:11:01.000
they do have the buy-in of the population, it's, it's because they're, uh, they're coercing
00:11:08.460
It's like you, you, you join the gang, like it's like a prison gang.
00:11:11.800
Like, uh, you, you join the gang because if you don't join a gang, then you're all alone
00:11:19.540
But, um, inside, inside the gang, there's protection.
00:11:23.580
And then like, even things like a protection racket, those are, uh, characterizes really
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negative parasitic thing, uh, in developed countries because we, we, we think that we
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have, um, that taken care of by the police, but in an environment where that's not being
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taken care of by the police or the police are even, uh, uh, executing some, some extra
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Then a protection racket, uh, it's sort of just a competitive provider for security services.
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And, and, and, you know, when they, when they say like, you know, nice shop would be a shame
00:12:01.080
They're not just talking about like, we're going to break your windows.
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It's like, well, there's a couple other gangs around here who might shake you down.
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And, and if, if they come to you and you're paying us your protection money, then we'll
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And so like, there's a, I think basically it's a mistake to characterize these institutions,
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even these like informal illegal institutions is totally parasitic because it misunderstands
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why people, why people defend them, why they protect them, why they, you know, tolerate
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And, and so you, you call this the, the system of competitive control, right?
00:12:39.460
Is that, that you have these, these different, uh, actors that are working inside the same
00:12:51.120
And, and, and they might be in, in many ways, butting up against each other.
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They might, they might be hostile, but in many ways, they might also be, like I said, uh,
00:13:01.980
or like you, you say in the piece that they might be reliant on each other in certain areas.
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It might be certain areas of overlap where one of the power flows has been captured, but,
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and now you have these spheres of competitive control because the state can't actually provide
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the thing that the, you know, the warlord or the Taliban or the, you know, political machine
00:13:22.720
inside New York can provide to the people and, or the NGO, you know, all these, all these,
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uh, actors are not necessarily the, the, what makes them hard to discard is the fact that
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they do provide a aspect of the state that is expected that no one else can, can provide.
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Um, now you also talk about the importance of media top cover, um, which I think is very
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essential because, uh, as you point out in the piece, it's very easy for, uh, two different
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conflicts to have two groups with competing spheres of control.
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One of those, uh, conflicts, the insurgent will get very favorable, uh, media coverage every
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time the state actor has some kind of violence that tries to enforce its control of the area.
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In the other one, they'll just get completely destroyed in the press as like horrific terrorists
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So can you talk a little bit about the importance of media top cover and why it's important for
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these organizations that don't get favorable media top cover to understand how to work without it?
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Uh, yeah, I mean, I think it just, it just drastically limits what you can safely do.
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I mean, you, you look at like the Arab spring and because those people had, uh, favorable
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attention, not from, not just from mass media, but from social media companies, uh, they were
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able to like, there was, there was a Russian missile launcher that the Libyans were using
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and like, they were sharing, uh, the intimate details of that missile launcher on Twitter
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And obviously, uh, anyone who didn't have favorable, uh, top cover from, from not just the media,
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not just social media, but also American intelligence, uh, there's no way.
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I mean, that, that would be, uh, you know, imagine if the situations were reversed, imagine if
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somebody, if somebody, uh, uh, uh, you know, who was, who was an opponent of, of that intelligence
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Um, and, and I mean, it, it changes how you can, how you can coordinate.
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I also think like it's, it's not just that, um, outside actors co-opt or usurp elements of
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In a lot of cases, these are rogue components of the state.
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I mean, that's, that's essentially what, what the IC has become the intelligence community.
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That's essentially what, uh, I, I tell a story of this Jamaican gangster who was basically
00:16:04.400
like, uh, a community organizer for the, the, uh, right wing, whatever that means party in Jamaica.
00:16:11.720
Uh, they sort of have a Republican Democrat split, like most sort of, uh, bipartisan systems do.
00:16:18.220
But, um, he, he essentially was like the, uh, the, the, the door knocker for those guys.
00:16:23.840
And, and by securing the ability to get votes, he ended up securing all kinds of lucrative
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government contracts and favorable housing and, and, and by so doing became the, uh, they
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didn't think of those things as services they were getting from the Jamaican government.
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They thought of them as things they were getting from the Don.
00:16:43.700
And, uh, and that, that turned out to be true because if the other party won the election,
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they would come in like bulldoze, uh, the, the housing developments and, and, and shut off
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your water and your sewer and all kinds of things.
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So, um, so like it, it, it can begin either outside or inside the state.
00:17:00.960
It's basically just, does the state have the power to like monitor and control every step
00:17:08.900
And, and that ultimately like where, where we're at right now, it, the thing that, the thing
00:17:17.640
that dissident groups are afraid of has almost nothing to do with like, like, uh,
00:17:24.700
uh, uh, Biden and, and, and like Eric Swalwell talk about like, you know, your AR-15 isn't
00:17:30.360
going to mean much if there's an F-15 or a, or a, uh, a predator drone circling overhead.
00:17:35.720
So why bother like give up your, your AR-15, but nobody's worried about being struck by a
00:17:44.640
They're worried about being targeted by the intelligence community.
00:17:47.260
They're worried about being targeted by the media and, and surveilled.
00:17:50.840
And, and those are the, those are the aspects of state power that are still really ironclad.
00:17:59.940
Like nobody can hack into your, uh, discord like the NSA can.
00:18:06.260
Nobody can watch you from orbit like the national reconnaissance office.
00:18:11.280
Like there's, there's just, uh, um, those are the, like, it used to be like states were
00:18:18.660
in power because they were the only people that could field tanks and jets and aircraft
00:18:23.640
But the, the, actually the media has sort of replaced that tool, uh, because if you use
00:18:30.220
tanks and jets and aircraft carriers and the media is going to have something to say about
00:18:34.120
And that, um, that sort of drives how useful those tools are to you, as you see with, uh,
00:18:42.280
Gaddafi and, and, uh, and, and, uh, Bashar al-Assad, like they, they, they pay a much higher
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price for, uh, for going through neighborhoods and blowing holes in things than for instance,
00:18:59.580
Um, and that's, that's the importance of, of media top cover.
00:19:05.840
Uh, like you said, the optics really do matter even for a government like ours, which theoretically
00:19:11.780
controls all of these, uh, these media institutions.
00:19:18.140
Like you said, the, the, you know, Joe Biden, you know, uh, dropping a bunch of bombs on some,
00:19:24.260
you know, chud neighborhood in, in, uh, Alabama is still going to have a huge impact, right?
00:19:32.120
And so, uh, those, those, uh, finesse instruments are really key.
00:19:37.820
They, they allow people to be, uh, targeted very specifically, very surgically.
00:19:43.220
Uh, and, and this is a part that I really liked that I think is very important without that
00:19:49.120
you talked about, without disrupting the idea that there are rules, right?
00:19:56.460
There's things I can do to avoid being targeted.
00:20:00.600
And most people need to know that there's a stability inside the system where even if I
00:20:06.400
think these rules are totalitarian, even if I think these rules are in a, you know, some
00:20:10.800
infringement on my constitutional rights, whatever that's worth at this point, at least there are
00:20:18.140
And, and the, and, and so these soft implements allow people to say, well, I didn't cross this
00:20:29.560
And the more the regime is willing to violate that certainness and stability in rules, even
00:20:36.920
if there are rules that are harsh and unfair is the more that it makes the, the safety inside
00:20:44.460
And what media can do is they can frame you as out of, out of harmony with the rules that
00:20:54.080
what, like, because, uh, uh, essentially if you believe that, like, for instance, Waco,
00:21:02.960
uh, if you believe that they were just targeted because they were sort of conservative and Christian
00:21:10.200
and, and, and, and all that stuff, then it's like, well, that, that could have been us.
00:21:14.760
Just anybody who, anybody who tries to, uh, build something separate from the system, some
00:21:21.880
like, uh, compound in the woods is going to get Waco'd.
00:21:26.200
But there's another, uh, voice in that conversation that's saying like, no, actually there was like,
00:21:33.520
you know, he married an underage kid and that was like technically legal, but like super weird.
00:21:38.060
And like, he was stockpiling guns and, and, and since I don't do that, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
00:21:43.200
Like, like there's, there's specific sets of things that he did that like triggered that
00:21:51.080
I can still be, you know, um, it's a question of like, even if you're the hegemon and you're
00:21:57.320
in control of everything, including the media, uh, you, you are limited in your ability
00:22:02.520
to just target anybody you don't like, because like you say, and the more you do that, the,
00:22:10.600
the, the more people start to think, I have no idea how to be safe within this system.
00:22:17.960
And so my buy-in to my, what the state provides me essentially is predictability is order.
00:22:25.460
And, and if, and if, if the state becomes to me the equivalent of like just a gang that
00:22:33.980
hasn't shook me down yet because I haven't caught their attention yet, um, then you start
00:22:46.480
And the more dramatic that violation is, uh, the more of those types of alternatives prop
00:22:53.540
crop up and the more, uh, extreme they become in their methods.
00:22:59.000
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00:23:29.380
Now, another thing related to this that you talked about is how people just want equilibrium.
00:23:36.340
Like we're talking about, they just want a system where they know they're safe, they
00:23:39.740
know they're secure, and a large amount of people are just non-political.
00:23:44.360
They just want the state to resolve these state, these questions for us.
00:23:48.580
And that's really weird for a lot of people to hear, I think, because today we look around
00:23:58.300
And we feel like this is just a natural state of humanity that like every person is just walking
00:24:03.740
around hypercharged up with this obsession about politics and ready to just, you know, disown
00:24:09.180
their family and their friends and leave their church and never see anyone again if they have
00:24:14.740
the slightest disagreement on some kind of, you know, trade policy or whatever.
00:24:19.460
And so I think it's hard for people to understand that.
00:24:22.780
But I think that a big part of that, like you said, is the lack of equilibrium.
00:24:29.160
It's that our system is specifically designed to constantly be in revolution, in a state
00:24:39.200
And because of that, we're just tricked into believing that actually everyone wants to
00:24:43.620
constantly be involved in this democratic process.
00:24:45.800
When the vast majority of time, you don't need to win everybody all the time.
00:24:49.800
You don't need to convince everyone all the time.
00:24:53.760
The vast majority of people will just go where power is going as long as they know that that
00:24:57.600
power is going to be stable and reliable, and they're not going to get got by that quick
00:25:02.120
shift of frame and rule when they're just going about their day.
00:25:07.940
Yeah, because if you live in the 90s in America, or like almost any time besides right now, freedom
00:25:19.140
to you is like low and stable inflation and low taxes and, you know, being sort of left
00:25:40.440
Like, freedom is a question of what you want to do in the world.
00:25:50.020
So for most people, the First Amendment is almost irrelevant to them because they don't
00:25:57.760
actually want to talk about politics, certainly not in public.
00:26:01.580
And, you know, some of them want to go to church, and, you know, it's important to them,
00:26:05.600
I guess, that they are allowed to go to their church.
00:26:07.660
But, like, the big, like, philosophical questions of, like, of, like, what rights do we have
00:26:18.560
They're just concerned about, like, tell me what I got to do to be able to ignore all
00:26:24.440
Like, to not have to think about it so that I can get back to what I actually care about,
00:26:29.180
And I think what's increasingly happening in our system is the basics are being interfered
00:26:41.440
with, the basics of being able to raise a family, the basics of being able to find a
00:26:47.300
maid, the basics of being able to get an education and a job.
00:26:49.960
Like, it's starting to hit apolitical people where it hurts.
00:26:56.200
And then they all, and then they get interested in politics, right?
00:27:02.260
But ultimately, yeah, I mean, it's the same group of people who are shrieking on social
00:27:11.400
media about whatever the current thing is, especially, like, the 40, 50-year-old white
00:27:19.360
women, like, in the 90s, they were, like, 20, 30-year-old white women.
00:27:33.940
It's, there's, something's happened to the incentive structure.
00:27:45.240
They're trying to find what the rules are and stabilize them so that they can be safe.
00:27:53.600
And so, paradoxically, you've got conservatives who are trying to find equilibrium by saying,
00:28:03.940
We already agreed on some things, and I'm asking you to hold to your agreement.
00:28:07.980
I want to, I just want to live in the America of the 90s, or the America of the 2000s, or
00:28:12.680
the America right after Obergefell, which is a lot of what these, where these conservatives
00:28:17.560
Like, just take me back to the golden days of 2016.
00:28:22.340
And, and, and that's how they're searching for equilibrium.
00:28:26.220
And then, and then progressives, their search for equilibrium is, is more like, just tell me
00:28:40.660
You know, and one sympathizes kind of, like, there's, there's like a, there's a, there's
00:28:45.280
a, they, they do, I think most of them have a belief that, like, because they're not, they're
00:28:54.540
They've been told that there's this injustice, and once this injustice is rectified, then it'll
00:28:59.740
be rectified, and we can all just, we can, we can live in a better world.
00:29:03.380
And, and, and what they are failing to, to understand is that it's never going to stop.
00:29:16.700
So, yeah, that's, that's, that's how that works.
00:29:21.880
Well, yeah, one of the things about why it won't equilibrate that you bring up is the,
00:29:29.620
Is, is the, the system is optimized to bring the most number of people under the mediating
00:29:34.120
power of not just the United States, but the actual Western hegemon, right?
00:29:40.620
And so the, so this need to, to kind of destroy the equilibrium is, is always because you're
00:29:48.440
trying to include more and more people being able to negotiate the needs of more and more
00:29:53.340
subgroups in order to kind of add them under the coalition.
00:29:56.820
This is kind of a dovetails into one of the, the general liberal critiques of liberalism that
00:30:01.900
it can't possibly mediate all these, that eventually you hit these existential conflicts and you will
00:30:07.640
get necessary, you know, that kind of these necessary conflicts will occur.
00:30:13.800
But I think it was very interesting that like the, the search to bring as many people under
00:30:19.580
the control of the system is the thing that is constantly forcing it to actually destabilize
00:30:26.200
or de, de-equilibrialize, however the best proper way to say that is.
00:30:34.280
Yeah, and it becomes a procrastinate bed, right?
00:30:37.940
Because in order to make, in order to make Muslims and Christians and Jews and Buddhists
00:30:43.880
and Satanists all get along, you have to like chop off all the rough edges of all those,
00:30:51.520
And you have to say like, well, okay, like you can be Christian, but you can't, you can't
00:30:56.480
You know, you can be Muslim, come on, like you gotta, you gotta compromise with us.
00:31:00.280
And the more people you bring into that tent that have more diversity of, of opinion and
00:31:05.980
values, the more you have to chop off of everybody to, to, to make them fit.
00:31:11.220
And yeah, it's, it's, and it is, I mean, it's the essence of democracy, really.
00:31:17.540
One of the things that is interesting about this, like this Jamaican gangster is he had
00:31:25.880
immense power because there were like tens of thousands of people whose, whose vote was
00:31:38.040
worth a lot, like, especially as you bundled them, right?
00:31:42.920
And so he could go to these people who have essentially no, um, no economic role in the
00:31:50.080
And, and, and never have intergenerationally and say, you got to vote and, and, and, and
00:31:57.220
I'll get you, I'll get you the housing project and I'll get you the food stamps and we'll,
00:32:00.780
you know, you know, school supplies and all this stuff.
00:32:04.540
And by its nature, sort of this, this, this democratic meme, this democratic system of,
00:32:13.300
of, of elections with one person, one vote, it, it, it almost has to expand because whichever,
00:32:21.120
whichever component of that system can pull in new people gets power over the other side
00:32:28.080
of the system, you know, uh, uh, one political party says, well, we ought to let, uh, white
00:32:33.740
males vote, even if they don't own land and then they win tons of elections.
00:32:36.580
And then they, well, we ought to probably let, um, these freed slaves vote.
00:32:43.740
And, you know, ultimately, and, and now basically it's like, well, we're not gonna, probably
00:32:50.120
So, uh, how are we gonna, how are we gonna gain power over our enemies?
00:32:54.040
Well, we'll just import, uh, voters and that's how we'll do it.
00:32:58.080
And then it becomes, uh, rather than, um, sort of borders of, of, of gender, borders
00:33:06.060
of ethnicity, borders of, of, of class, uh, being sort of, uh, dissolved in the soup.
00:33:13.200
Now it's the, now it's the borders of the nation, uh, because, you know, you have to talk to them
00:33:19.740
as if they matter just as much as Americans, uh, to you personally.
00:33:23.660
Like, even if it's your job to care about Americans, well, it's no longer your job to
00:33:32.060
Well, yeah, just, just, just, just hoover up whatever power there is in the system.
00:33:38.780
It's, it's, it's sort of you, uh, so yeah, there's, there's no equilibrium in that system.
00:33:44.100
And, and the, uh, the benefits that you can throw to like a weird minority group, for
00:33:55.520
instance, um, I, a lot of the, a lot of the like sexual culture war stuff is that the, the
00:34:03.200
little minority, I mean, it works the same as like sugar subsidies.
00:34:06.040
You got, I don't know if you know this, we have like, we have like outrageous sugar subsidies
00:34:09.000
in the U S and it's because, uh, the sugar farmers care way more about sugar subsidies
00:34:16.860
So like, there's not a coherent constituency that's like real mad about sugar subsidies,
00:34:22.760
but the, but the, but there is this huge incentive gradient to support sugar subsidies because
00:34:27.560
the, the, you get the farmers on your side and, um, and lobbying dollars, et cetera.
00:34:33.580
And I think it's the same with these like boutique sexual minorities.
00:34:39.100
It's like, like they're gonna, they're gonna go to the mattresses for that stuff.
00:34:43.600
And right up until very recently when it became about kids, there wasn't, uh, there wasn't
00:34:52.680
like a really headstrong constituency against any of that stuff.
00:34:55.880
And now it's, it's like, it's really up against the wall of like, all right, but, but, but
00:35:01.680
these are my kids were not like, they're starting to be a, an, an opposing constituency to some
00:35:08.240
Um, but yeah, that's, that's kind of how democracy eats all of these distinctions.
00:35:17.320
There's, there's, uh, an, an activation energy.
00:35:19.780
It's like, it's like, uh, it's like burning fuel.
00:35:23.800
This was actually, it was just talking to Paul Gottfried about this, that the Carl Schmidt
00:35:28.160
coined the term, the total state by saying that this is something.
00:35:31.500
That's going to happen in any democracy because by necessity, now the state, which used to
00:35:37.400
have monopoly on the political now must penetrate the social.
00:35:42.660
And now that these two spheres have crossed, there's no way to keep the state from eventually
00:35:46.880
just consuming every other sphere of influence because every one of these is a possible way
00:35:54.520
And leaving it alone is a play is a way that another non-state actor could secure one of the
00:36:02.260
And so the total state has to come eventually into democracy, because if you don't control
00:36:07.260
every power flow as the state, then someone else does and you could lose sovereignty.
00:36:15.000
And like you said, they have to chop off all these rough edges, which again is, is also
00:36:21.460
something predicted by the man, you know, managerial revolution that the managers would
00:36:30.080
So you can mediate most of these conflicts and you can also manage most of these people
00:36:37.180
Though I do think it is funny that, uh, while everything else, it seems to have the edges
00:36:43.660
It seems to fit just fine into this, into this scene.
00:36:46.100
So it seems, seems like every aspect of Satanism from, you know, uh, from transgender surgeries
00:36:51.360
to the sacred ride of abortion fits right into the whole managerial scheme.
00:36:58.800
Yeah, it's, uh, it, well, I mean, ultimately it's the, the only rule is there's no rules.
00:37:05.160
Do what thou wilt should be the whole of the law.
00:37:07.180
Like, I mean, that's, those are, uh, kind of two ways, like the, the paradox of tolerance
00:37:15.280
is basically the same thing as do what thou wilt should be the whole of the law.
00:37:21.760
And, and, and yeah, it's, it's, it's necessary to the survival of liberalism that, uh, that all,
00:37:29.900
all, uh, personal and institutional boundaries be abolished.
00:37:37.180
So one other thing that you talked about that I wanted to make sure that we got to was the
00:37:44.160
importance of aggression framing, uh, this, this dovetails with, uh, media top cover, but
00:37:50.860
how important it is for people, uh, who are, who are doing this stuff to frame, uh, themselves as
00:38:00.560
kind of the defender and the other person as the aggressor.
00:38:03.180
So for instance, as we see with the United States, uh, in kind of this Russia crane conflict,
00:38:10.060
it doesn't matter if the United States and NATO in general have broken like a large number of their
00:38:14.960
promises in the attempt to like hedge in Russia.
00:38:18.000
Russia, if Russia throws the first punch, even though this punch was going to happen inevitably,
00:38:24.380
And so it's really important for these non-state actors or just even state actors to be very careful
00:38:31.620
about their, their aggression framing and show it, you know, showing casting is who's the one who's
00:38:36.580
actually throwing the first move, move, especially if you don't have that media top cover that can
00:38:44.520
Yeah. And it, it takes a lot of effort, even for a state actor to engineer the circumstances such that
00:38:51.820
they don't look like the aggressor. I mean, you know, uh, I don't know that, I don't know that
00:38:58.500
necessarily there's any nefarious plan to, um, to hurt Russia, uh, on the, on the part of NATO.
00:39:08.200
I think, I think NATO is an anti-Russian alliance. Yeah. And so it's just doing its job. Yeah.
00:39:13.680
It's just doing its job. And, and, and there's not, there's not like a, not like a person at the
00:39:18.780
wheel of that thing to say like, maybe this is stupid. Like, why are we, why are we mad at the
00:39:22.800
Russians again? I don't know. But it's just like, this is our sort of mission is to, is to oppose
00:39:27.960
these people. And, and, um, and this absorption of new allies, um, who then get access to all sorts
00:39:38.660
of new, uh, weapons manufactured by the, uh, military industrial complex. You know, there's
00:39:45.920
just, there's just this really strong incentive gradient to find it's, it's finding markets,
00:39:49.860
basically, uh, uh, markets for markets for fighter aircraft, markets for artillery and
00:39:55.300
missiles. And, and, uh, the more you can expand that sphere of influence, the more you sell
00:40:01.520
and, and just by vert, like they framed it in this really interesting way. It's like,
00:40:06.180
oh, we're not, you can watch the map of like NATO, like creeping East toward Russia. And it's
00:40:12.000
like, oh no, no, we're not, we're not, uh, actually like becoming the hegemon of these. It's
00:40:16.540
just, we're just protecting this guy and we're protecting this guy. We're protecting, we're
00:40:19.420
just keeping everybody safe. We're just in the business of keeping everybody safe.
00:40:23.020
And, um, and so, yeah. And, and, and then, and then Russia, uh, hits one of them and it's
00:40:28.900
like, ah, we're, we're vindicated. You know, we, we, uh, we told these Eastern European countries
00:40:34.180
they had to watch out for you and, and here, look what you did. You, you, uh, you earned all
00:40:40.180
of this, uh, all of this effort on our part retroactively.
00:40:46.540
So yeah, it makes them look like the, uh, it makes them look from, from, uh, the perspective
00:40:52.740
of an idiot in a hurry, you know, just sort of watching the news and sort of accepting
00:40:56.860
whatever the framing is. It, it, it, it makes them look like the good guy and it makes the
00:41:04.080
Yeah. And so that means it's, it's really important for anyone who's doing this to, to
00:41:08.040
kind of understand. And again, not all this needs to be military. Again, one of my favorite
00:41:12.900
points that you made in here is that how effective the, you know, the, again, the NGO type stuff
00:41:18.360
is, right. That has nothing to do with, with any kind of, uh, any kind of violence. They're
00:41:24.100
just people who are, you know, in, who are insinuating themselves in the core actions of
00:41:28.980
the state without, you know, uh, with that are, that are totally peaceful, but the state
00:41:33.900
can't, can't completely control. And therefore these people kind of gain power. But I wanted to
00:41:39.460
talk a little bit now transitioning to, uh, the practical application of this in our
00:41:44.340
scenario. Cause for instance, I, we do have people, I think finally in the conservative
00:41:49.860
or right-wing movement that are understanding and taking action on pieces of this. Uh, Chris
00:41:55.120
Rufo is probably the most prominent, but people like Corey DeAngelis are also doing this. They've
00:42:01.480
really targeted, especially the education system, which is, I think really important because
00:42:07.740
it's, it's a power flow. People expect the state at this point for better or for worse
00:42:14.100
to educate their children, to, to basically create childcare, uh, to, to credential their
00:42:20.000
children, uh, so that they can get, uh, employment opportunities, socialize their children. They
00:42:26.040
expect all of these things. And the fact that the democratic party, the left, the progressives
00:42:31.080
have a almost entire monopoly on this and that there's an entire NGO complex.
00:42:37.440
I mean, you know, uh, Bill Gates builds common core so he can basically just standardize and
00:42:43.580
monopolize education policy throughout the United States, uh, means that there's just a vast amount
00:42:50.440
of power that is controlled by these organizations and guys like DeAngelis and Rufo understand this
00:42:58.240
and they're actively targeting this monopoly and trying to wrest control of it from the state
00:43:06.580
through, you know, uh, uh, vouchers and through conversion of, of, uh, you know, legislation,
00:43:12.980
this kind of thing in order to, to, to kind of create, uh, a parallel or, or a, or a, a, some
00:43:20.500
kind of option outside of the system so that the state doesn't, doesn't completely control this.
00:43:25.400
Do you think that's a, an example? Do you see other examples where this is happening?
00:43:29.760
Yeah. I mean the, the sexual revolution, women, women, uh, going into the workforce, I mean,
00:43:36.480
that was like the splitting of the atom in terms of the energy that was released by that, because
00:43:40.600
what did that do? It all of a sudden made like every American family dependent on, uh, childcare
00:43:47.060
and the state had this apparatus of like, oh, we would be happy to acculturate your children
00:43:54.700
for 12 years of their lives. Uh, like by all means to go to work and, and, and leave your kids with us.
00:44:02.040
And, um, for a long time, I, you know, I don't, I don't think it was, I don't think in my lifetime,
00:44:07.820
that's been the smart move. Uh, like I don't, I don't, I think, I think a lot of what I was taught
00:44:12.060
in school was pretty screwed up too, but now it's becoming this like really existential problem
00:44:16.300
of like, wow. Um, I need to, I need to be able to support my family on a single income
00:44:21.220
because I cannot send my kids to these schools. And I, I mean, it's, it's an enormous, enormous
00:44:28.680
power flow, both, both in terms of the, the activist apparatuses that it, that it nourishes
00:44:35.320
both, you know, because there's so many academics, there's so many like stupid
00:44:41.800
master's degrees that the only way those master's degrees earn a living is because there's a public
00:44:48.100
school system. And, and so there's that, the activist network in the universities, and then
00:44:54.120
you've got the sort of activists on the ground, which is the teachers, um, who, uh, you know,
00:45:00.460
they, they get paid to basically, um, inculcate the state's values into your kids. And if you take
00:45:07.600
that power flow, I've said this more than once, if I could get them to just take my education tax
00:45:14.760
dollars and light them on fire, it'd be a massive improvement, a massive improvement, because then
00:45:20.880
at least that power flow is not being captured by people who are inimical to everything. I like,
00:45:26.620
they, they hate my guts and want me to die. Like just light it on fire, please. But, but yeah,
00:45:32.660
I mean, it, from, from, from Rufo's perspective, he's got this really interesting, he's placed a
00:45:39.820
wedge between what people are told about the purpose of the school system and what its actual
00:45:45.200
purpose is. And, um, I think, I think what I said was it's, it's bullshit, but it's load bearing
00:45:51.140
bullshit. I don't know if we can, but anyway, um, it, it's, uh, because what people are supposed
00:45:59.200
to believe about the schools is that the schools are employed by you, the taxpayer, right? Like
00:46:04.620
you're in, there's the PTA and you're, you're in, you're in control of what your kids are,
00:46:09.300
are learning. It's just, uh, you know, you don't have the time and you maybe don't have the expertise
00:46:14.180
to teach them, you know, uh, uh, derivatives and, and, and, and so, uh, or, or, or history or
00:46:22.180
whatever. So, so you, you, you outsource that to people who basically share your interests.
00:46:27.080
Um, and so Rufo is saying like, well, there's all kinds of people who could teach your kids that.
00:46:32.280
And, uh, you know, these, these, these tax monies ostensibly belong to you. They're for this
00:46:35.980
purpose of, of, uh, educating your children the way you want them educated. Right. So let's,
00:46:39.880
let's just take those monies and let you, uh, decide where you want them.
00:46:44.180
And he's daring the state to go like, actually, you're not allowed to do that because it's
00:46:49.500
really important to us to be able to tell your kids about butt stuff. And, um, and, and, and so,
00:46:57.000
uh, so that's, I mean, that's genius. And I think, um, another power flow that is being,
00:47:05.520
uh, left on the ground, so to speak, there's a massive amount of talent.
00:47:14.180
In the corporate, uh, employment system that is being, uh, either explicitly forced out
00:47:25.260
through like, Hey, we're just not hiring any white guys anymore or implicitly forced out
00:47:31.000
through, you got to get the jab and you got to wear the flare and you got to put your pronouns
00:47:35.640
and you got to do like, there's, there's a massive outflow of talent. Um, and I think
00:47:41.720
it was, uh, I think it was on your show, uh, uh, mold bug was saying, you know, I'd still
00:47:46.940
rather go to Harvard than, uh, than Lambda school. Um, but I think you were right to say,
00:47:54.880
um, there is an inflection point at which the people outside there are so high quality and
00:48:02.620
the people inside there are so mediocre, uh, that if you want anything meaningful accomplished,
00:48:08.720
you have to look outside and it would be good to be one of the people who was running the
00:48:15.180
institution that's, that's outside. Um, I think, I mean, uh, ultimately, um,
00:48:21.320
um, the, the capital that, that it's about owning your capital, right? Like on an individual level,
00:48:28.260
personal level, uh, I'm not thinking about like the big political system, but like,
00:48:32.060
um, and, and, you know, there's just endless debate on like right-wing Twitter about like,
00:48:37.560
should we all go be plumbers, uh, you know, or farmers or whatever. And I, I think that's a stupid
00:48:42.660
argument because nobody who shouldn't be a plumber is, is, is trying to be a plumber right now.
00:48:47.400
But, but, uh, but basically what a plumber has, what a homesteader has, what a software developer
00:48:55.580
has that like a project manager at Amazon does not have is ownership of their capital. Um, they own
00:49:03.680
the tools that allow them to do their job. They own their book of business, their customer base,
00:49:07.300
they get to decide, um, whether or not and how they make money. And that's immensely liberating.
00:49:13.900
And so, uh, I mean, my whole thing, the, the, the way that I'm trying to, uh, to, to, to capture
00:49:21.940
some of those power flows is I'm, I'm getting guys together to, to learn, uh, how to build those
00:49:27.520
kinds of businesses and, and, and, and be more sovereign in terms of their income so that they
00:49:32.400
can go, uh, they can send their wife home to raise the kids so that they can get their kids out of the
00:49:37.760
government schools so that they can move jurisdictions if they need to, uh, all of the
00:49:43.840
things that put pressure on, uh, these, these institutions that really that, that, that take
00:49:53.920
Is there a name for this organization? Someone, you know, if they were interested in this
00:49:57.900
group, exit group.us. Yeah. Come check us out. It's, it's, uh, it's basically, um, it's fraternal
00:50:09.100
organization where we're working on both individual projects and group projects. Uh, some of the guys
00:50:13.880
are trying to start a shrimp farm, doing a literary competition. We're doing, uh, a, uh, um, we're doing
00:50:21.920
a code bootcamp. There's a bunch of different projects. Uh, we're launching a conference later
00:50:25.980
this year. Um, but like on the individual level, it's like meet people who can explain SEO to you,
00:50:34.160
explain marketing, explain web design, like get in touch with people who are like-minded, who,
00:50:39.160
who have answers to some of your questions about, uh, about starting a business or, or a side hustle
00:50:44.420
or whatever it is. So, um, so yeah, I mean, that's like, and, and, uh, is that the, um,
00:50:50.520
is that going to save America? Uh, maybe I, it's, but I'm trying to tend my little garden,
00:50:58.300
you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to carve out my little slice. And, um, and ultimately what I see
00:51:05.400
happening is you get enough people who are, are sovereign in that respect. And again, freedom is
00:51:11.560
a question of what you want to do, right? Um, but, but, but sovereign enough to speak their minds.
00:51:17.340
And, and this is something that I talk about and that, that Kill Cullen talks about in his book
00:51:20.840
is the ability to absorb punishment and how important that is to the, um,
00:51:28.060
to the framing of yourself as the good guy and, and, and the other, the bad guy is the aggressor,
00:51:35.340
right? Is if you can, if you can take the first punch and that's, that's why the strong horse is so
00:51:41.260
powerful in like, in like, uh, Ukraine, right? Part of the reason that Russia is in the situation
00:51:47.140
they're in is that they really couldn't afford to take the first hit. Like they wouldn't survive
00:51:53.800
that. And, but, but the U S could, they could, they could let Ukraine kind of absorb that first
00:52:00.440
blow and then just pump, pump. I mean, just like they did with the Russians in world war II,
00:52:04.360
you know, let, let the Nazis get all the way to Stalingrad, but then there's just Bradley after
00:52:10.000
Bradley after like just, just tons of, of, uh, American material to, to win the war.
00:52:14.260
And that ability to, to, to absorb the, uh, the, the blitz, the initial attack, um, really changes
00:52:21.300
the framing. And so I want to create a world where there's lots of people who can absorb that
00:52:26.300
initial attack. Somebody, somebody, uh, was talking about libs of Tik TOK. Uh, it was some,
00:52:31.880
some journalist was like mad because, because, um, the libs of Tik TOK lady is now making all kinds
00:52:39.540
of money and, and, and very successful and much, much happier and better off than she was before.
00:52:43.980
And I was like, yeah, I want every one of those guys to have this like sick feeling in their gut,
00:52:48.240
this rock that's like, oh no, if I expose this person, uh, I might just make them like way happier
00:52:54.500
and like blow them up. And, and I, I want them to be like looking over their shoulder for that.
00:52:59.640
And, and so, uh, so yeah, the ability to, to, to, to absorb and metabolize punishment, um, is,
00:53:07.940
is really powerful as far as, as far as the, the optical channel, like if you're, if you're dealing
00:53:13.060
with hostile media, the more you can engineer a situation, you know, where you, uh, I mean,
00:53:19.620
that's what Trump did, right? He, he just metabolized hostile media attention all day long. That was,
00:53:23.820
that was his magic. That was his power. Yeah. It is really important to learn those strategies.
00:53:29.180
Like you said, you know, you're going to have a hostile media, you know, you're going to have
00:53:32.520
this lack of media top cover. So you need to develop your strategies with that in mind,
00:53:37.280
not only in mind, but you need to be judoing that, right? You need to be turning that against
00:53:42.000
your opponent and then using that to your advantage. So Rufo knows that just asking for the formalization
00:53:49.640
of what the school system already does hurts the school system. So just going to them and saying,
00:53:56.120
Hey, can you just admit, can we, can we just do the thing you're doing or can you admit what you
00:54:01.400
actually do? And just that simple thing is really damaging. It is, he doesn't have to do anything
00:54:08.160
and there's no escape. There's no, there's no way to spin it. Like it's, it's either they say,
00:54:12.820
no, you can't take care of your child and it's really important to teach them butt stuff,
00:54:17.000
like I said, or, or they have to say, yes, we will hand you this power flow.
00:54:22.020
There, there's only, there's only two, there's only two ways to do that unless they just do
00:54:26.840
billion dollars. Yeah. Right. And so, um, and so, uh, you know, Trump says, okay, you know, just,
00:54:34.500
yeah, just, just punch yourself out screaming at me so that I can just come back and embarrass you
00:54:39.980
with one quick jab, you know, and, and just, just collapse you. And so developing that on,
00:54:46.000
obviously those are, those are particular media tactics that are important for, for the,
00:54:49.340
for the macro game, but in the micro game, like you're saying, just having that situation where
00:54:55.180
people have avenues, they have mutual aid societies, they have fraternal orders, they have organizations
00:55:01.780
that are setting them up for success. They're networking, they're building alternatives when
00:55:06.760
the media comes for them, when, you know, the, the, those weapons that have replaced the F-15
00:55:12.060
are being turned on them, they can go, you know, okay. And then they can just go back to making
00:55:19.980
way more money and maybe have their life improved. And all of a sudden the, that weapon that was so
00:55:24.640
essential to your enemy is now sitting there useless in their hand or making, or they're hesitating to
00:55:31.740
pull the trigger because it doesn't have a reliable effect anymore. And they might just, they might just
00:55:36.580
making raise someone's power level by freeing them from the shackles of the system. So I think that is
00:55:42.980
really important. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible. The, the effect that, I mean, our
00:55:52.500
whole, our whole, uh, HR secret police situation is created by a, an incentive structure generated by like
00:56:02.740
a handful of lawsuits, right? It only took a handful of lawsuits for every, every corporation in America
00:56:10.540
to understand like, oh, I'd better have an internal investigatory service to like, to like look for
00:56:19.360
crime thinkers and root them out before I get a lawsuit. And, and it was, it was this very
00:56:26.000
straightforward thing to, to generate this like multi-billion dollar, uh, like, like what a,
00:56:33.200
what a flex that the state, the state could get them to hire their, like on their own dime, hire
00:56:38.020
their own political officers. And, uh, and it was just a handful of, um, bad consequences to those
00:56:47.520
corporations. And, and that system now has those corporations hamstrung there. They are, they are,
00:56:53.900
they are absorbing enormous amounts of cost to keep up with all that nonsense. They're making
00:56:59.760
terrible hiring decisions that they know are terrible and they're making bad investments.
00:57:04.500
They know are bad investments because of this incentive structure. And so anybody who's operating
00:57:08.920
outside of that system, you only have to be like halfway competent to compete. Um, you know,
00:57:15.640
obviously they have the benefit of like economies of scale in a lot of these industries, but there's like
00:57:19.520
so much outside the system that, uh, if you're, if you're light and quick, uh, you can give them a
00:57:27.280
run for their money. I think that's especially true in creative fields. I mean, like, I don't,
00:57:32.360
I don't think it's a, I think it's like a policy choice that Hollywood's as bad as it is. Um,
00:57:38.480
I think that's, that's rooted in like, it's like some bad hiring practices that are,
00:57:42.320
that are sort of mandatory. And, and, you know, our guys like, you know, I think of like passage
00:57:48.940
prize Loma is running that, that literary competition. And he, he posted a link about
00:57:53.020
like how Pulitzer winners on average, they sell like 300 books. If you won the Pulitzer, which used
00:57:58.400
to be this enormous, huge deal. It's like these, these institutions are rotting from the inside.
00:58:04.320
And, and, uh, you know, um, I know, I know mold bugs like expecting a thousand year bug man, right?
00:58:11.300
I'm really not. I, I think, uh, I, I think we're already seeing a lot of, a lot of holes that you
00:58:19.300
could cracks in the concrete that something could grow through. And, uh, that doesn't mean that it's
00:58:25.760
going to be like storming the Bastille and like the day is saved, but I think there's going to be lots
00:58:31.120
of maneuver, uh, in the next, in the next 10 or 20 years. And, and so, so yeah, that's, that's,
00:58:39.400
that's where I want to be. And that's where I want my guys to be is, uh, in those spaces where we are
00:58:44.380
not bound by the rules that these people are bound by and, and people see us, they watch us operate
00:58:51.480
outside that framework safely. And then you've got, and then you've got your bubble. Like we talked
00:58:56.980
about your, your, your safe zone where, uh, it's, it's possible to operate and, uh, and we don't
00:59:03.740
have to do anything like that's, that's where the violence comes in, right? Like, uh, uh, how are you
00:59:07.720
going to make the world outside your bubble dangerous? You don't have to do anything to
00:59:10.480
make that outside the bubble dangerous. Cause it's already dangerous. It's already chaotic and screwed
00:59:13.920
up. And if you just create a political formula, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. I was just going to say the
00:59:19.240
political formula of the state is almost required to make it unsafe for you specifically. So yeah,
00:59:25.040
it's already doing that job. Yeah. Right. And that's, and that's, that's the beauty of it is
00:59:28.940
we get to be unambiguous good guys. We don't have to hurt anybody. Um, and, and I, I honestly
00:59:34.900
think that, uh, I honestly think that, that these like, these like billions must die guys, um,
00:59:42.900
are, are making both a moral and a political error that like you, you can be the good guy. You,
00:59:52.260
you, you, you don't have to hurt anybody. Well, you know, this is, you know, South Africa,
00:59:57.180
you know, I've had Ernst, uh, on conscious caracal, um, uh, Ernst Van Zell, he's been on
01:00:03.600
from Afroforum and what are they doing down there? They're, they're building universities.
01:00:08.400
They're, they're creating alternative power plants. They're making sure that neighborhoods
01:00:13.020
have water and they fill potholes because the governments just can't do it anymore. They don't
01:00:17.960
have the capacity. And so as you know, rolling brownouts turn into just complete blackouts
01:00:23.560
and people have an inability to just get safe access to utilities and stuff that, you know,
01:00:30.360
they, they look like the heroes because they are, they're doing the work that no one else
01:00:35.760
is doing. They're planting the trees so other people can sit under them, you know? And, and,
01:00:40.960
uh, like you said, I, I, I am, I am also skeptical of, uh, of mold, uh, mold bugs, a thousand year
01:00:49.660
bug man, right? I, I really, he's got this idea that the only way any of this gets solved it like,
01:00:55.600
like blue state, like blue state, uh, you know, tech CEOs will reign in perpetuity. So the only,
01:01:02.860
the only way they can possibly, uh, have that, have any kind of good, uh, thing happen in the United
01:01:08.620
States if there's some kind of revival among blue state aristocrats. Uh, but I just don't think
01:01:13.080
that's true. Like, I, I, I don't think that in many ways they're capable of it. And I don't think
01:01:17.460
that they're the only people capable of, of making positive change. Um, no, I, yeah, it's, it's,
01:01:23.960
I think he has a lot of faith in the capacity of the system to select for excellence.
01:01:31.680
And I think he's probably right. Uh, but like his information is a little old. Like I, I think,
01:01:39.080
I think, uh, we used to be pretty good at selecting for excellence. And so there's a lot of, uh, there's
01:01:44.280
a lot of ruin in a nation, right? And there's a lot of still really excellent people in the elite,
01:01:48.520
but there's also a lot of really excellent people who are not. And, uh, to some extent,
01:01:53.560
because they've always been hard to find, but to some extent, because they're getting,
01:01:57.980
uh, the system is deliberately making itself worse at identifying them and elevating them.
01:02:03.460
Yeah. Um, but I do, I, I love what he says about seduction and revival. I, I, I do think
01:02:12.860
that, uh, when change comes, it's going to be a beautiful thing. It's going to be something that,
01:02:18.180
that, that is, uh, is joyous and, and, and beautiful. And I think, um,
01:02:23.440
um, he's, he's, he's, he's right about, uh, our situation, like, like the, the South Africa,
01:02:34.560
you know, if, if those guys took this really, um, aggressive, hostile tack to, I mean, you know,
01:02:43.260
the South African government's Marxist and hideously corrupt. And if they took this like really
01:02:50.840
aggressive, like justifiable tack against that state, um, it would go worse for them than if
01:02:58.360
they were to just build shit and make things better. And, uh, I, I, uh, yeah, I, I think that,
01:03:08.640
I think that has to be the approach and it's more fun anyway. Yeah. Well, we are going to pivot over
01:03:14.840
to the questions of the people here real quick, but before we do, can you tell everybody where to
01:03:18.920
find your stuff, exit all that? Yeah. So, uh, uh, it's extra dead JCB.substack.com is the
01:03:25.380
sub stack exit group.us is for the group. Um, there's exit group.substack.com if you want to do
01:03:30.520
that. And then, um, extra dead JCB on Twitter. Awesome. And let's go to creeper weirdo here for
01:03:37.400
$5. People get interested in politics because politics becomes interested in them. So like
01:03:43.320
gamer gate. Yeah, absolutely. Actually I have an old video, uh, that specifically says that,
01:03:48.740
uh, gamer gate was, uh, kind of the instance that revealed the total state for a lot of people,
01:03:53.840
a lot of people, uh, who otherwise would have been completely apolitical, wouldn't have thought
01:03:57.920
about this. It wouldn't have mattered to them as silly as it might seem in some ways. Um,
01:04:03.200
gamer gate was the thing that opened their eyes because if this theoretically, totally trivial
01:04:07.480
thing had to be completely permeated with state propaganda, then what else had to be completely
01:04:14.040
delusioned state propaganda. And once you've seen it, once you've noticed, it's hard to take that
01:04:18.720
blue pill again. It's like, you know, and the accusation of like, uh, the sort of basement
01:04:24.520
dwelling chud, right. It's like, like lean into that. Like, like, okay. Yeah. I'm, I'm an unemployed.
01:04:33.460
I live with my mom. I sit in my basement and you can't leave that guy alone. Like, what do you got to
01:04:39.900
do to be left alone? I just wanted a game. Yeah. I just, just wanted to play video games.
01:04:45.400
All right. Uh, creeper, we go again for $2. Hey, groomer, leave those kids alone. Yep. It's,
01:04:51.560
it's not rocket science. All right. So let's see here. No, we got a few more,
01:04:58.600
uh, super Joe's midlife crisis for $10. Thank you very much. The problem is that the total state
01:05:06.140
wipes out all voluntary legal attempts to exit, uh, skip homesteading, uh, go straight to mafia
01:05:12.680
triad, Yakuza, Omerita. So you're right that eventually they, they try to do this, right?
01:05:19.680
This is a slow thing, but as Bennett pointed out every time they do, uh, their power gets more brittle
01:05:26.300
and it becomes more obvious. And, uh, if you, if you get rid of every option to exit, if you get rid of
01:05:34.500
every option to stabilize and create, create that equilibrium, then as Bennett pointed out, people
01:05:40.600
will be looking for something else. Right. So, so the very act of trying to shut all the exits down
01:05:46.280
creates the desire to find power flows outside. And that's, that is where, that is where mafias come
01:05:52.580
from. I mean, that's like, they, they do, they, they, they grow in response to the inability or
01:05:59.120
unwillingness of the state to create security. Uh, and I would say, you know, everybody's got to
01:06:05.360
manage their own business, but like, don't, don't show up early to that party. That's all I can tell
01:06:09.580
you. It seems like a bad, bad move. Don't be the first one on that. Yeah. Uh, Cooper weirdo for
01:06:15.640
$5. Even if the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today. Let's see.
01:06:23.580
And then Maddie ice here for $10, uh, building alternatives is the way to go, but it seems to
01:06:30.180
me that they will come after your successful institution doing its own thing shows a failure
01:06:34.600
of the ruler. Your success equals legitimacy. Yeah. I hear this a lot. I've asked, uh, I've asked
01:06:39.560
Ernst this when he's been on, um, and, and we'll definitely get your response, but his response is
01:06:44.500
like, okay, so we just give up. We just pack it in. We just call it a day. Like, are you going to be
01:06:49.660
the last generation? Are you the last man because you're so weak that you're, you're scared? Like,
01:06:54.160
yes, of course, there's a possibility that the state will come for you, but if you don't do
01:06:58.500
something, there will never be an alternative if people need it. If the state is unable to,
01:07:04.320
you know, to do its job. I, you can make their lies ridiculous. You really can like, they'll,
01:07:12.600
they'll lie about you. Sure. But you can make those lies silly and, and you can, you can,
01:07:17.400
uh, you can make their propaganda job harder. And I would say, yeah, fundamentally any, anybody
01:07:29.340
who, who, who comes into my replies on Twitter and is like, you know, give up cope what like
01:07:36.560
they love cope. It's like, it's like, all right, then go crawl in a hole, man. Like, get out
01:07:41.500
of my, like, why is it so important to you that like nobody else tries anything? Like
01:07:48.280
why, like, why do you, like, if, if it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. Get out of my
01:07:55.140
I used a cope in an article today and, uh, the, the blaze was like, we don't know what
01:08:01.220
that means. I was like, yeah, I guess that is a little online, isn't it? I should probably
01:08:08.000
use a different, different phrasing there. Um, but, uh, KG there for $5. Uh, thanks guys.
01:08:16.360
Great chat. Well, thank you, KG. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate everybody, uh, who came by
01:08:21.480
everybody who donated. Your questions are always great. A lot of fun. Um, great talking to, uh,
01:08:27.620
to Bennett, of course, as well. I think this is a really excellent piece. You should go check out
01:08:31.600
the original. It's a hundred percent worth listening to, uh, all the way through to, to, to make sure you get
01:08:37.760
all the nuances, uh, make sure you're checking out stuff, make sure you're checking out exit. Uh, so,
01:08:42.840
you know, you, you can't complain about, uh, not being able to do something if you're not taking those,
01:08:48.020
those really basic step guys, steps guys. So make sure that you're looking into options like that.
01:08:53.960
Anything else you wanted to plug or anything we should be looking for anything like that before we go,
01:08:58.680
Mr. Bennett? Uh, well, there's also the exit podcast where I interview some of the guys in the
01:09:03.640
group. I interview, uh, I posted this episode on there as well. Um, it's pretty easy to find on
01:09:09.500
Spotify. I don't know if you want to put in the show notes or something, but, uh, but yeah, that's,
01:09:12.760
that's the other one. Sure. Absolutely. All right, guys. Well, again, if you, it's your first time
01:09:17.200
here, of course, make sure to subscribe. If you haven't gone ahead and joined the podcast,
01:09:22.380
you can do so at any of your major podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, all that stuff.
01:09:26.900
If you do make sure you leave a rating and a review, uh, should have a new piece up on the
01:09:32.020
blaze, probably like right now ish. So you can go check that out. If you want talking about the
01:09:37.540
lab leak theory, the COVID ratchet and all that stuff that has been coming out recently this week.
01:09:43.180
Thanks for coming by guys. And as always, I will talk to you next time.