The Auron MacIntyre Show - Is Meritocracy Really the Answer to Wokeness？｜ Guest： Nate Fischer ｜ 1⧸27⧸25

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.660 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.180 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.180 With Trump tearing through things like DEI and affirmative action with his own executive orders

00:00:44.460 and a general turning away from many of these ideologies, especially by the right,

00:00:51.500 it seems like they might have been defeated.

00:00:53.100 It seems like the era of wokeness might at the very least have a recession.

00:00:57.060 And so many people are asking, what replaces this?

00:00:59.780 What is the proper system that we should be going back to?

00:01:02.960 And the default answer seems to be a meritocracy, which sounds really good,

00:01:07.320 but is this actually an alternative to DEI?

00:01:10.760 Does this really change the way that we look at things?

00:01:13.480 Or is there more of an overlap between DEI and meritocracy than might first appear?

00:01:19.020 My guest today is somebody who wrote a great piece on this previously.

00:01:23.740 He is the CEO of New Founding.

00:01:25.780 He's an investor and entrepreneur.

00:01:27.760 Nate Fisher, thank you for joining me.

00:01:29.660 Thanks for having me.

00:01:31.480 Absolutely.

00:01:32.100 Before we dive into your piece, many people might not be familiar with the background or

00:01:36.100 what you do, New Founding, those kind of things.

00:01:38.180 Could you let people know what your projects are, what you're working on?

00:01:42.500 Sure.

00:01:42.920 So in many ways, my work centers on solving problems like this.

00:01:49.600 As you mentioned, the question becomes, what's next?

00:01:52.320 Trump's getting rid of a lot of, he's really stripping away a lot of the sort of vestiges

00:01:55.900 of the old order.

00:01:57.020 What replaces that?

00:01:58.400 I think that's a question.

00:01:59.620 It's a question for political thinkers, for philosophers, whatever to answer.

00:02:02.960 But it's also a question for entrepreneurs to answer.

00:02:05.720 And so what New Founding is, is a venture firm that historically we've described as a

00:02:10.300 venture firm for the American right.

00:02:12.600 And that was something that we embraced when it was really a dissident position.

00:02:15.860 We were maybe the only venture firm that was openly focused on the right.

00:02:19.820 Obviously, the winds have moved.

00:02:21.740 And the question is now, what is the right?

00:02:24.340 And it's been a multi-year process of exploring what defines that, what should be the ideals that

00:02:29.120 define that.

00:02:29.820 But really, we invest in companies that achieve outcomes that are consistent with a right-aligned

00:02:37.140 vision for the country.

00:02:38.880 And really, across a range of spaces, everything from an ad network in the firearm space, to

00:02:43.580 pro-life health insurance company, to alternative content for kids.

00:02:49.040 And then we have a real estate division where we're actually building communities built around

00:02:53.180 an aligned set of values, increasing who your neighbors are, matters deeply to people,

00:02:57.100 really that sense of community.

00:02:58.320 So, and then we'll do, we'll explore and delve into specific business opportunities that

00:03:05.580 strategically align with what I would say are critical civilizational problems.

00:03:10.080 So you look at the problems, and I think you'll see a lot of venture firms solving, say,

00:03:14.040 national defense or American re-industrialization.

00:03:16.560 People like to address those.

00:03:17.980 We use the word civilizational for a reason, because what I would say is our lens is particularly

00:03:22.680 attuned to our civilization, to what civilization means.

00:03:26.340 It's more than just our economy.

00:03:28.200 It's more than just our national security.

00:03:30.100 It includes our culture.

00:03:31.180 It includes our people.

00:03:32.020 It includes the American tradition.

00:03:33.940 And so what are problems that we can identify and opportunities, really for-profit business

00:03:39.200 opportunities that we can identify looking through that civilizational lens?

00:03:43.120 And then there's sort of alongside that, I have a nonprofit called American Reformer,

00:03:47.580 which is focused on reforming the church and revitalizing a Christian answer to some of

00:03:52.980 those questions.

00:03:53.640 So ultimately, complementing that question of where should we go from a venture perspective,

00:03:58.180 it's really where should we go from a moral and from a Christian perspective.

00:04:02.780 So I'm involved in both sides of that question.

00:04:05.880 But really, day to day, I like to say a startup envisions a future that doesn't exist and then

00:04:12.420 wills it into existence.

00:04:14.400 And the question then becomes, what future do we want?

00:04:16.840 So it directly ties into questions like this one around meritocracy today.

00:04:21.640 Yeah, and I think that's really important because a lot of people, I'm fond of saying

00:04:25.320 America is not just an economic zone, which is true.

00:04:28.360 But that doesn't mean that America doesn't flourish as an economy when it's working for

00:04:33.700 the good of its people, when it's aligned with a vision that is unified over kind of

00:04:39.420 a moral understanding.

00:04:40.920 These things can win together.

00:04:42.540 These things are holistic and, in fact, often really rely on each other.

00:04:46.860 And so rather than breaking each part of our civilization into constituent parts and trying to maximize

00:04:53.660 them individually, weaving them back together into a whole where we can all thrive across

00:04:59.520 many domains, I think is approach that is really critical to the right.

00:05:03.320 So I'm very glad that you're doing the work that you're doing and other people in the space

00:05:07.300 are also considering these questions in a more holistic way.

00:05:10.180 I want to get to your piece itself and the question of meritocracy.

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00:06:13.860 All right.

00:06:15.780 So like we were saying, the Trump administration is coming fast and hard at a lot of these liberal

00:06:21.680 ideological standards that have been placed on everything in our society, removing the

00:06:27.240 shackles that a lot of people have had to work through this entire time.

00:06:31.600 And many people are saying, well, obviously we're getting rid of DEI.

00:06:36.200 What was there before this?

00:06:37.240 Oh, well, it was meritocracy.

00:06:38.580 And we're returning back to meritocracy.

00:06:41.760 And that's a great thing, right?

00:06:43.360 Because ultimately, meritocracy is about selecting the right people for the job.

00:06:48.880 And I want to say at the outset, because a lot of people will just look at the title or

00:06:52.920 get a little bit into this and say, well, why are you against merit?

00:06:57.440 Obviously, we want merit.

00:06:58.680 We want a doctor who can do surgeries. 0.82

00:07:00.920 We want a scientist who is capable of solving the problem.

00:07:04.600 I would like to make it clear at the beginning that we are not going to be against merit in

00:07:09.040 this discussion.

00:07:10.080 Merit is a critical factor that's going to play into the decisions.

00:07:14.200 But the piece that you wrote was describing why meritocracy is something different and

00:07:19.560 is more itself a system like DEI that reduces people to constituent parts.

00:07:24.720 Could you explain a little bit about that?

00:07:26.840 Sure.

00:07:27.160 Well, I think that it's helpful to think about the word meritocracy.

00:07:30.580 And in a sense, at the broadest sense, you can't argue against it, but it's almost

00:07:36.360 tautological, right?

00:07:37.400 It's like we should have a meritocracy.

00:07:39.520 We should have a country that is ruled by the people who merit rule is like saying we

00:07:45.140 should have a just regime.

00:07:46.560 Of course, you should have a just regime.

00:07:47.920 But what does justice mean?

00:07:49.420 So there's no point in arguing against the broad definition.

00:07:53.100 But I also say the broad definition doesn't actually say much.

00:07:55.900 Really, when people say they want a meritocracy, they're usually implying some particular concept

00:08:02.180 of merit that aligns with some sort of, I would say, sort of secular assessment, neutral

00:08:09.600 secular assessment of capability.

00:08:12.200 Like we should have someone, we should hire the person who has the best resume for this

00:08:16.620 job.

00:08:16.920 We should hire the person who scores the highest on these tests.

00:08:19.400 Because that's the only definition of merit where that actually adds something distinct

00:08:23.640 from other definitions.

00:08:24.820 And I think that what they usually mean de facto is they mean we should rely on credentials,

00:08:33.880 standards, some sort of neutral assessment that separates the assessment of that person's

00:08:39.040 capability, their ability to perform in, let's call it, critical job functions from any sort

00:08:45.260 of identity of the person, any sort of background of the person, any sort of relationship or culture

00:08:49.060 of the person.

00:08:49.720 And that's where I think what you're doing is you're actually, you're recognizing things

00:08:54.380 that may be important for judging whether the person is qualified, and you're elevating

00:09:00.100 them to an ideal.

00:09:01.480 So what I like to say is I like to say qualification remains a very valid question.

00:09:06.860 You absolutely want someone who is qualified for the job. 0.98

00:09:09.740 Hiring someone who's unqualified for the job is foolish and self-destructive. 0.82

00:09:13.780 But qualification is really usually a threshold that you pass. 0.65

00:09:18.400 So there might be certain jobs where you really want, you really do want to prioritize

00:09:22.700 above everything else their exceptional ability.

00:09:26.260 If you're choosing a brain surgeon, you're usually going to want a brain surgeon who's

00:09:29.100 probably the best possible person you can find for that.

00:09:32.240 For most jobs, and particularly for earlier career jobs, for jobs where there's sort of a

00:09:38.640 significant investment in the person as much as there is any sort of specific skill, there's

00:09:44.300 a huge range of factors that go into what type of person you might choose there, as well

00:09:49.400 as for jobs that involve an element of sort of governance or rule.

00:09:52.780 I mean, remember,ocracy refers to rule by.

00:09:56.060 Ultimately, people say meritocracy, and they usually think of that as hiring people into

00:09:59.700 companies.

00:10:00.800 But really what that means in many cases is that those companies are run, they're ruled.

00:10:05.260 Large segments of our society are ruled by people who meet the standard.

00:10:09.960 And there's a lot of factors that go into the sort of people you want running the institutions

00:10:14.240 that in turn shape your society.

00:10:15.940 They may go beyond simply certain types of, let's say, economic ability to maximize profits

00:10:22.120 or whatever.

00:10:23.320 Yeah, one of the analogies that has been used very regularly, including by Elon Musk when he

00:10:28.960 was kind of having his H-1B debate, was America as a sports team, right?

00:10:33.920 And the idea with America as a sports team is, of course, I want all the best players

00:10:38.580 in every position because that makes sense.

00:10:41.960 I'm going to win with all the best players.

00:10:43.480 I want to pull someone.

00:10:44.440 And if I need to pull someone from Africa and somebody from Europe and someone from Asia 0.75

00:10:48.520 and somebody from South America, that's fine because ultimately I'm assembling the dream

00:10:53.660 team.

00:10:53.960 And of course, they're going to perform better than everybody else.

00:10:56.440 But actually, just serendipitously, there was a article over at the Old Glory Club here

00:11:02.280 today about meritocracy.

00:11:03.780 And the author made a great point, which was if you look at sports teams, all-star teams

00:11:08.840 are usually not that great, actually.

00:11:11.160 They don't work the best together because there's something beyond just raw ability when

00:11:16.840 you do this.

00:11:17.480 Everyone famously points to money ball when it comes to kind of baseball and turning the

00:11:22.660 whole sport into a spreadsheet and statistics and the way that it maximizes everything.

00:11:27.540 But something is lost there.

00:11:28.920 There's a connective tissue that is more important than simply arranging statistics properly to

00:11:34.300 generate the result that you're looking for.

00:11:36.540 And so even if you're looking at this metaphor as America as a sports team, if you optimize it

00:11:41.720 in the way that many people would like, yes, in theory, you are arranging people due to

00:11:47.000 merit, but you lose a little bit of a secret sauce that doesn't always exist if you are

00:11:52.980 just pulling everyone based off these kind of abstract, theoretically quantifiable values.

00:12:00.560 I think that's true.

00:12:01.640 And that's true.

00:12:02.180 Multiple aspects of a sports team too, right?

00:12:04.580 It's true in that it can actually impede the performance itself and the competitiveness.

00:12:08.940 But second of all, why do you watch sports in the first place?

00:12:11.640 What makes a sports franchise appealing?

00:12:15.020 An element of it is it's tied to the fans, the idea of homegrown heroes, the idea of people

00:12:20.100 who remain.

00:12:20.700 I think the more the sports team turns into a pure market where people are moving all the

00:12:25.980 time, the more it loses what would actually make people care about a team, have any sort

00:12:31.280 of loyalty.

00:12:31.820 I mean, the example of the Olympics, I think, is a great example where you don't want to

00:12:35.000 see, you don't want the U.S. to just have all the best people in the world.

00:12:39.000 You watch the Olympics precisely because you want to root for your country and you want

00:12:43.480 your country and people who are your countrymen to be competing.

00:12:46.940 And yes, you want to build a culture where you have people who excel.

00:12:50.000 You want to win at that.

00:12:51.260 But ultimately, you also want it to be your people who are doing it.

00:12:54.580 So I think that that's a great example.

00:12:55.900 But I would say there's sort of there's actually one more thing that's missed there, which is

00:12:59.320 sports is a very definite set of rules.

00:13:01.820 Sports ultimately is, in some sense, zero sum competition.

00:13:05.380 Some people win.

00:13:06.340 Some people lose.

00:13:07.300 It's a game that is a very structured game.

00:13:10.440 The Moneyball approach actually works better.

00:13:12.360 Although I would say the Moneyball approach works best when it's a little bit of an arbitrage

00:13:16.380 when not everyone's doing it.

00:13:17.560 Once everyone's doing it, you actually lose a lot of the edge.

00:13:20.780 But that's not life.

00:13:21.820 Life is not ultimately a zero sum game where we just compete with everyone else to try to

00:13:25.400 win.

00:13:26.020 Ultimately, we're trying to build a we're trying to build successful businesses.

00:13:30.000 Successful businesses, as Thiel has emphasized, have a monopoly of some support.

00:13:33.460 They're not actually just trying to sort of compete in a in a defined rule set competition

00:13:39.220 where you're you're you're on a level playing field with everyone else.

00:13:42.480 They want to build something that's exceptional, which could be an exceptional culture.

00:13:46.200 It could be that serves a particular community distinctly.

00:13:48.440 Not that it's actually just the best in some sort of measurable sense.

00:13:53.280 You want to build a group of companies when you build a country.

00:13:56.420 Ultimately, there's a group of companies.

00:13:58.460 There's there's sort of a broader set of institutions that are trying to elevate your

00:14:04.000 quality of life.

00:14:04.780 They're not trying to win on some sort of global competitive landscape as their ultimate

00:14:09.160 purpose.

00:14:10.060 Their purpose is actually to out to provide good incomes for people who work for them,

00:14:15.500 to provide good services for the people who live there, to help ensure that that country

00:14:19.140 can actually maintain a degree of sovereignty and independence.

00:14:22.240 Those are all purposes that may relate to winning certain types of global competitions.

00:14:26.420 But winning the competition is not the end goal.

00:14:28.480 The end goal is actually elevation on that broad range of factors.

00:14:31.420 So I think that one thing people mistake, Musk in particular, is they're they're easily

00:14:36.080 analogizing to a sort of zero sum competition rather than thinking of the purpose of these

00:14:41.120 institutions in the first place.

00:14:42.860 Yeah, you regularly said guys see guys like Vivek and Elon say use the phrase America needs

00:14:49.540 to win, but never the question of win at what and win for whom.

00:14:54.840 Right.

00:14:55.100 Like what what is the purpose of this winning?

00:14:58.320 Who is actually winning in this scenario?

00:15:00.540 Like you said, a lot of what used to give sports its draw was the fact that it was representing

00:15:06.500 a specific area, a specific region, there was an identity attached to this.

00:15:11.540 The reason that, you know, many people root for a local college football team, even though

00:15:15.640 they never even went to the college, was that it reflected their community.

00:15:19.960 The people that they knew and grew up with had a chance to be elevated through this organization.

00:15:25.100 And that's what gave it its identity.

00:15:27.240 Once you start creating this highly mercenary scenario, this is one of the biggest complaints

00:15:32.040 everyone has with sports today.

00:15:34.120 Hey, yeah, technically the football teams are better.

00:15:36.340 Great.

00:15:37.080 But you don't feel any connection to them.

00:15:39.040 They'll sell you out in a minute.

00:15:40.240 They'll they'll move to a different city the minute they think there's any more money

00:15:43.200 and the fans are just left like you don't want a nation that is governed this way.

00:15:48.440 That's not actually how because it doesn't take in, as you say, the holistic well-being

00:15:53.040 of the culture and the people.

00:15:54.600 It's only looking at winning for a very narrow set of people.

00:15:58.660 And yes, maybe you will be represented somewhere in that winning.

00:16:01.780 But ask how representation is going for places like the black community.

00:16:07.120 Ultimately, that is not a real understanding of victory for a community.

00:16:11.780 It's a more holistic understanding that we are elevating the standard of living, the moral

00:16:16.660 vision, the sense of meaning, the well-being of families and everything else collectively,

00:16:21.760 because this understanding is the goal, not just, well, we have a few elite people and they

00:16:27.520 are victorious over another set of elite people who are assembled somewhere else.

00:16:32.360 And therefore, we as a country are somehow winning.

00:16:35.300 Yeah, I think that's true.

00:16:36.640 And I actually think that what they often end up missing is they when you focus on winning

00:16:42.260 of these short term games like a sports game, it often also tends toward a short term optimum

00:16:48.180 rather than a long term optimum.

00:16:49.640 Even if your goal is excellent performance, even if your goal is, let's say, GDP per capita

00:16:54.400 and things, in the sense that my alternative to this and to really put out sort of the

00:17:00.100 direction I think we need to go is not a reduction, is not a significant deprecation

00:17:04.280 of qualification, is not a significant deprecation of exceptional performance.

00:17:09.000 I think our country was exceptional at that, has historically been exceptional at those

00:17:13.080 things.

00:17:13.540 There's no reason we can't continue to excel by those standards, even if we have a, even

00:17:19.120 if we have a model that's something different than this sort of global marketplace model.

00:17:23.780 But ultimately, I think done right, we end up something that's a far more robust system

00:17:27.880 and actually a more dynamic system.

00:17:30.740 So this kind of gets into, this would get into the argument I would make for people, if I'm

00:17:35.260 talking to people who, let's say, don't necessarily value these traditional conservative

00:17:39.520 things, but maybe they're, they're open to them, but that's not what their focus is.

00:17:43.060 I would actually argue that there's, there's more value.

00:17:47.320 So the alternative that I focused on is ownership, ownership and agency really are two of the ones

00:17:54.760 I focus on really that the sort of third interlocking theme is community, ownership, agency, and

00:17:59.820 community are three dynamics that really shape how we think about things at newfounding.

00:18:04.420 And they also, they focus on, they focus on dynamics that tend to produce exceptional

00:18:11.720 output, particularly when you have exceptional people involved, they don't need to be the

00:18:15.640 best people at something, but if you have a class of capable, motivated people, and you

00:18:22.020 focus on responsive, basically, let's say, in terms of who should rule, well, I think

00:18:26.820 owners, owners should be the ones who have a presumed legitimacy in how they rule.

00:18:32.480 If you have a family business, you own that business, you have a presumed legitimacy in

00:18:37.460 who you decide to give the job to, whether it be the person with the best resume from

00:18:41.880 the other side of the world, or let's just say, getting rid of immigration, the person 1.00

00:18:46.780 with the best resume from the top state university who still has no ties to that particular business,

00:18:51.520 or you give it to your son, or you give it to someone who's the son of the friend of

00:18:55.720 someone you know in church who you're willing to bet on because you think that guy's,

00:18:58.700 you just think that that family has good character, and that's someone who will display loyalty.

00:19:02.900 Kind of whichever decision you go, whichever direction you go, there should be a presumed

00:19:07.900 legitimacy that the owner, who ultimately has skin in the game around the success of that

00:19:12.420 enterprise, is making a legitimate decision.

00:19:15.340 Nepotism, the idea that nepotism became a dirty word, that that was treated as something

00:19:20.520 that's inappropriate, sort of presumptively illegitimate.

00:19:23.780 You need to defend it itself, I think, is one of the strongest reflections of this idea

00:19:30.440 of meritocracy.

00:19:32.260 People would commonly contrast nepotism with meritocracy.

00:19:35.540 I would say that sullying of nepotism, that denigration of nepotism, is a fundamentally

00:19:41.900 anti-conservative principle.

00:19:43.720 Ultimately, the idea that if you own a business, you want it to go on to your kids, you want

00:19:47.940 it to go on to other people in the community, very, very conservative principle.

00:19:52.100 It's also a principle that probably does far more to actually preserve the likelihood that

00:19:58.220 that company manages certain risks and avoids, let's say, sort of chasing trends in the financial

00:20:06.000 markets or whatever, if you have that long-term durable mindset to it.

00:20:09.920 Private equity might ostensibly be a little bit more efficient if they buy it and they bring

00:20:13.800 in sort of optimal managers.

00:20:15.280 But they also are very likely to turn it into something that actually looks a lot more like

00:20:21.700 every other company out there and ends up competing more with other companies.

00:20:25.260 And there's a much better chance that it doesn't exist in 20 years if you have groups like that

00:20:30.480 involved as well.

00:20:31.240 So there's a sort of preservation.

00:20:35.800 There's a long-term preservation of the institution and preservation of something that actually has

00:20:42.340 a lot of optionality in terms of value down the road if you focus on things other than those

00:20:47.200 short-term optimums.

00:20:49.440 Yeah, there is a lot I want to break down in there.

00:20:52.300 So I guess let's start with the one that stood at me the most in your piece was this point about

00:20:57.820 nepotism, right?

00:20:58.880 Like this gets the worst rap.

00:21:02.380 And understandably, you know, you can look through history and see the mistakes of sometimes

00:21:07.380 putting an unworthy child in a position of importance.

00:21:10.980 You know, everybody wishes Marcus Aurelius hadn't chosen Commodus, right?

00:21:14.600 Like there are many famous examples of this.

00:21:18.300 But in general, understanding loyalty and bonds is much more important than necessarily always

00:21:25.500 selecting the guy who's like 0.5% more optimal for any given position.

00:21:31.080 And one of the things that kind of giving nepotism a bad name does is ultimately it's a way to

00:21:38.300 kind of tear apart familial and community bonds, right?

00:21:41.440 Well, no, yes, my instinct should be to care for my family first and my neighbor, my church,

00:21:48.440 my community, people like me, people who share my values, people who share my culture and

00:21:52.900 my traditions.

00:21:55.520 However, really, this system, and that's ultimately what we're talking about here is like the rule

00:21:59.620 of the system of meritocracy tells me that all of those things are immoral to consider.

00:22:04.380 They are all suboptimal to consider.

00:22:06.740 And sadly, optimal and moral are the same thing in kind of this understanding.

00:22:11.600 And so therefore, I should tear up all those natural bonds.

00:22:15.040 Why give this to my children?

00:22:17.060 Why pass this on to my posterity when ultimately what I'm looking for is system optimization?

00:22:23.620 And therefore, I should be making my decisions across kind of those domains.

00:22:27.600 And so you really end up in this scenario where the idea of just meritocracy, again, not

00:22:33.780 discarding merit.

00:22:35.580 Of course, you need capability and merit.

00:22:37.620 But rather than saying, well, I need to cultivate that, I need to make sure that the people who are

00:22:41.600 important to my life possess those qualities, instead, you select for those qualities separate

00:22:47.120 from your actual connections, your actual community.

00:22:50.120 And this is what creates a scenario where ultimately Elon is like, America wins if we ship in 80,000

00:22:57.400 engineers from a foreign country, right?

00:22:59.680 Because that doesn't seem like any kind of contradiction to him because there's no connection

00:23:04.700 between the idea that he has some kind of duty to pass this on to people who are directly

00:23:10.600 connected to it and the victory of the system itself.

00:23:15.520 So you've always been picky about your produce.

00:23:17.900 But now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian.

00:23:21.880 So be it.

00:23:22.960 At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first.

00:23:27.220 Restrictions apply.

00:23:28.160 See in-store or online for details.

00:23:32.440 Absolutely.

00:23:33.180 And I think that's the key point you get is really this is a dynamic system.

00:23:37.060 If you have a bias toward your community, if you have a bias toward your family, you have

00:23:41.980 that much stronger of an incentive to make sure that those people actually get the skills

00:23:46.820 needed.

00:23:47.260 I think there's a very popular mentality even in America where you sort of throw your kid

00:23:53.380 out of the house at 18.

00:23:54.440 He's on his own.

00:23:55.200 And he can figure he can sort of find his way in the marketplace.

00:24:00.560 It's not surprising that people who have that mindset end up getting to the point that they're

00:24:05.620 70 years old and they don't have anyone to take over their family business.

00:24:08.920 And in many cases, it turns out there's not really anyone interested in moving to that

00:24:12.360 town and taking that business.

00:24:13.580 I mean, if you think about it, it's a much less appealing job ultimately to move to, say,

00:24:18.200 a sort of smaller city or something.

00:24:21.400 If you don't have any ties there and taking over a moderate sized business, cultivating

00:24:27.160 a class of people internally who both have a loyalty to that community, have a vested

00:24:31.580 interest in it, and you've actually developed with the capabilities to run that kind of thing

00:24:35.860 is actually a much better long term move even for that town.

00:24:40.120 And ultimately, it's a much better move for this country.

00:24:42.700 I think you see a very, very common theme where you have people who do not prioritize the

00:24:48.460 cultivation of discipline in Americans.

00:24:50.680 And it's interesting, Vivek actually talked about this.

00:24:52.540 He doesn't like how we raise kids.

00:24:54.160 He doesn't like our values.

00:24:55.680 But he wants to bring in a bunch of immigrants. 0.62

00:24:57.800 And there's actually, in many ways, bringing in immigrants can become a cope for failures 1.00

00:25:03.860 to actually invest in our own citizens and failures to create a culture that cultivates

00:25:08.100 those virtues in our citizens.

00:25:10.300 And I would say, I'm with him.

00:25:11.800 We need to do a much better job cultivating virtues in the American populace.

00:25:17.680 But there's a very American way of doing that.

00:25:19.940 There have been American cultural attributes that have been elevated and have largely been

00:25:27.120 allowed to fall.

00:25:28.620 And they've been allowed to fall partially because of largely left-wing ideologies that

00:25:32.760 sort of treat it as virtuous, let's say, not to discipline people in school.

00:25:39.640 So you end up with a bunch of people who never grow up with discipline.

00:25:42.620 They go into drugs.

00:25:43.420 They go into crime.

00:25:44.180 And what do you do?

00:25:45.340 You replace them with the more meritorious immigrants who are willing to work hard. 1.00

00:25:49.420 And now you get virtue points both sort of in the first batch because you didn't discipline

00:25:55.240 these people because you recognize their hard background or whatever.

00:25:58.280 You get virtue points over again when you let these poor refugees come into the country 1.00

00:26:02.360 and work hard and better their lives.

00:26:04.700 And in both cases, it's actually just the product of a failure of courage and a failure

00:26:08.000 of willingness to actually do the hard work of investing in your own citizens.

00:26:12.020 I think that applies at the top level, too, where you actually the same managerial mindset

00:26:18.740 that celebrates meritocracy is also the one that encourages you to send your kid away

00:26:25.540 to some other university, let's say, and sort of major in whatever his heart desires rather

00:26:33.340 than raising him to take over a family legacy and have something.

00:26:37.780 And ultimately, he just turns into sort of another guy competing in this sort of broad

00:26:41.920 sea of people, whether it's the arts, whether it's writing, whether it's law, sort of an

00:26:46.400 undifferentiated mass of professionals, rather than, again, building on a legacy where family

00:26:51.540 ties can be developed, where loyalty can be developed, ultimately where trust can be built.

00:26:57.100 And this is why I think this is such a self-destructive mindset, is we're seeing a broad decline

00:27:01.920 in societal trust.

00:27:02.940 In a world where societal trust declines, trust will be one of the scarcest resources.

00:27:09.660 It'll be one of the most valuable resources.

00:27:11.780 And when you have longstanding ties in a community, the time involved in building those is something

00:27:18.820 that cannot be replaced.

00:27:20.380 There's a skin in the game associated with those ties that ultimately is non, there's no

00:27:25.480 substitute for that when it comes to the creation of trust.

00:27:28.360 And those communities potentially have trust-based relationships that can be incredibly valuable,

00:27:35.280 that can both allow, let's say, their companies to thrive.

00:27:38.200 They can allow things like access to credit in a world where that sort of personal relationship

00:27:42.380 is scarce, ultimately can be the basis of customer relationships, ultimately are something

00:27:47.960 that becomes incredibly scarce and is different from but complementary to the sort of qualifications

00:27:55.560 that are often considered in merit and devalued by a managerial society where the only sort

00:28:02.740 of, essentially the only sort of trust-based model or trust-based credential that matters

00:28:08.020 are those sort of general, universal sort of university credentials that go on your resume.

00:28:14.200 So again, what you're doing is you're sort of flattening the world by stripping people

00:28:18.120 out of these environments where they can build something that actually increasingly, I think,

00:28:22.320 will prove more valuable. So I would say this sort of, what I like to say is this is a,

00:28:27.700 it's certainly an argument popular with GDP maximalists, but it's actually a self-defeating

00:28:32.700 argument even if your goal is GDP maximizing because sort of unsurprisingly, I think,

00:28:39.800 for anyone who understands the sort of conservative viewpoint, they're actually destroying things

00:28:43.620 that have value in a sort of longer time horizon, actually have a lot of value

00:28:48.680 that often are not appreciated. Yeah, one of the things I like about the piece is you address

00:28:54.000 managerialism several times, and one of the points that you make is that DEI and meritocracy

00:29:00.120 are ultimately both relying on a certain form of managerial mindset, which is people are simply kind

00:29:06.440 of these values on a spreadsheet, whether it be their racial and sexual characteristics, because

00:29:11.840 diversity is our strength, or, you know, number of degrees and credentials and these kind of things

00:29:17.760 because, yeah, the credentials are our strength. Either way, they're flattening people, as you say.

00:29:23.480 They're selecting for only that criteria rather than understanding that most of our social

00:29:29.320 organization is far more complex than we grasp. You know, everyone from Polybius to Aristotle to,

00:29:36.180 you know, Gaetano Mosca recognized that the mixed constitution is the best type of government

00:29:42.340 because different social forces bring different criteria for selection into them, and any one

00:29:48.820 selection for criteria tends to corrupt the whole. But if you have multiple selection criteria for the

00:29:55.580 different sorts of elites and power structures that are involved in your ruling class and your elite,

00:30:01.020 that's actually going to strengthen things rather than weaken them because you're not going to have

00:30:04.940 this kind of really thin ideological selection process that ignores everything else. And like you said,

00:30:11.720 a lot of the GDP maximizers are like, well, if we just get enough, you know, guys with X IQ or credential

00:30:17.820 into the slot, then we win. But what they're kind of counting on is that social fabric, those connections,

00:30:24.500 that tradition and culture that was already there. And they're just saying, well, if we can drive the

00:30:29.120 other numbers up on top of that, then we will win. We'll outcompete everybody else.

00:30:34.060 But as you're pointing out, if you maximize for that one thing, if you maximize for that one selection

00:30:39.360 criteria, and you don't understand that you are wearing away all of those foundations on which you were

00:30:45.560 stacking it, then inevitably, when it comes apart, yes, in theory, you could have outperformed. But in reality,

00:30:51.860 you're going to do much worse because you've got a lot of highly credentialed or IQ people who have no way to

00:30:57.020 trust each other, interact with each other, build systems together, unify a vision together. And so therefore,

00:31:02.400 they just come apart. And so that's why you're saying, you know, the robustness versus necessarily

00:31:08.520 optimization, right, we can get very, very, very, very good at one thing. But the minute a storm comes

00:31:13.740 by and blows that really thin thing over, we just collapse because there's no resilience built into

00:31:19.140 the system as we're something that is more organic has more of a network effect, understands those

00:31:23.980 connections in a more real way. It's going to be much stronger in general, even if it's not as

00:31:30.620 competitive in one specific area.

00:31:33.500 Absolutely. And I think a great, just a great example that has become much more visible over the past

00:31:39.120 year. So I wrote this piece a year ago. And I focused on this idea of going back to sort of elaborate on this

00:31:45.620 idea of DEI is just a manifestation of managerialism, just like meritocracy is, both of them are something that

00:31:53.540 really reduce, reduce organizations to spreadsheet models. And in meritocracy, you're sort of optimizing

00:32:01.340 for one view of the world. DEI, you're sort of assuming, well, we can tweak these inputs and tweak

00:32:06.060 these inputs. And we can sort of re-engineer it in a way that ultimately corrects for these market

00:32:11.380 inefficiencies or these biases or whatever. And both of them have this engineering mindset of the world.

00:32:16.520 And in both of these, you, as a worker in the system, are just an interchangeable cog. Or the

00:32:23.700 more you're an interchangeable cog, the more conveniently you're actually going to fit into

00:32:27.880 these organizations. So a great example is large, you know, large multinational corporations.

00:32:35.640 They're, they try to, let's say they try to be meritocracies. Let's take that for granted. Well, DEI is

00:32:41.160 still useful because they're meritocracies that want to be able to run the same operation

00:32:46.500 effectively, whether it's in Thailand or whether it's in the U.S. or whether it's in, in Sao Paulo.

00:32:52.900 And so the more the people who are the inputs into those systems are interchangeable, the more

00:32:58.060 potentially they even sort of can get on a plane and move from one to the other, sort of at moments

00:33:03.200 notice as the, as the sort of spreadsheet model says you need more resources over here. The better you

00:33:08.800 fit into this model, the more you're sort of a pure, the more, the more the sort of meritocratic

00:33:13.700 metrics become the pure, the pure descriptors of the person. And I think what's, what's relevant

00:33:21.260 here is AI has massively developed in the last year, just as an example of sort of dynamic, dynamic

00:33:29.580 resilience. The more you as a person can be reduced to a few cells on a spreadsheet that describe you and

00:33:37.500 describe your job, guess what can do that even better than you? An algorithm. So you're going to

00:33:43.000 be replaced by an algorithm. Now you might say that's actually very convenient for the organization

00:33:46.700 you work for. It's nice for a company to build a meritocracy where they can then gain even more

00:33:51.640 efficiencies by replacing people with algorithms. But if that's the entire way you run your organization,

00:33:57.360 you're also going to be competing with a bunch of other companies that also run those same

00:34:01.980 algorithms. So you're going to have nothing that actually makes this organization durable or

00:34:06.000 differentiated. If you actually understand people as people understand, for instance, how they

00:34:10.860 complement algorithms, how they complement, there's always going to be a sort of spreadsheet

00:34:15.140 component of the business. There's going to be that sort of process and that sort of numbers and

00:34:20.040 that sort of analytical component of the business. But the more you understand your people as people

00:34:24.840 and you focus on their distinctly human traits, whether that be relationships, whether that be communal

00:34:30.040 ties, whether that be the way they have sort of creativity in ways that fall outside of really

00:34:35.640 probably things that would be measurable even on a resume or measurable in a sort of head-to-head

00:34:41.000 analysis in a pure meritocracy, the more you actually have something that is valuable and

00:34:47.860 distinguishing at an organization level that will actually be complementary to growth in technology

00:34:54.680 like AI. So if you have a bunch of, if you have those sort of truly human attributes of your

00:35:00.340 organization, really as the centerpiece of the organization, you now are positioned to sort of

00:35:07.960 lever more and more valuable technology very, very quickly because you understand the part that's not

00:35:12.900 changing, the technology is changing very quickly. If you've reduced the human side to essentially a bunch

00:35:18.640 of de facto human algorithms, yes, you can sort of substitute algorithms for those people, but someone else can

00:35:26.080 substitute an algorithm for your entire business.

00:35:28.900 Right. Well, and really that's what we're talking about at the end of the day, right?

00:35:32.860 Managerialism is itself the attempt to replace human judgment with systems, right? I don't want to make

00:35:41.300 an evaluation on every individual that walks in my door. There's a lot of responsibility for that.

00:35:47.700 So if I have the ability to point to their credentials, point to the number of points that they've

00:35:53.140 accumulated in the spreadsheet, then if they fail, if they did something wrong, it's not that my

00:35:58.720 selection criteria was bad. It's not that my judgment was bad. It was, it was the system. The

00:36:03.920 system is what chose them. And if they fail, then it's the system's responsibility for selecting them

00:36:09.940 or something, you know, something was wrong there. And what you're really advocating for, whether it's,

00:36:15.480 you know, returning to an understanding of, you know, nepotism as the negative conversation,

00:36:20.580 but really loyalty to one's community, family, social bonds, or whether it be, you know, looking

00:36:26.640 at a wider variety of evaluation, what you're really saying is we have to get back to a place

00:36:31.760 where we are no longer reliant on abstract systems, be it DEI or meritocracy, but we are taking

00:36:38.000 responsibility at an individual level for the choices that we make. Leadership, real human leadership

00:36:44.580 means evaluating people across many different domains and taking responsibility for their success

00:36:51.000 or failure, investing in them as people and your community is something valuable rather than using

00:36:56.700 it as some kind of, you know, uh, you know, tax farm or talent farm that you can draw on to create

00:37:02.580 larger, uh, you know, uh, bureaucracies or institutions. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think

00:37:09.040 that is, that is really the key differential, right? Are we looking at, are we looking at this

00:37:15.120 in a holistic sense? And I think you can apply that economically where you say there's actually

00:37:19.100 an understanding of, there's really an understanding of economic value. I mean, what I just made is an

00:37:23.580 argument that you as a CEO running your company purely focused on what makes you competitive five

00:37:29.540 years down the road, 10 years down the road, what makes you, what makes you survive and maintain

00:37:33.340 your durable ability to generate profits should be considered. You don't even have to care about

00:37:37.180 the human aspect in, in and of itself for that argument to be valid. Uh, but at the same time,

00:37:43.720 there's also the sort of horizontal, what do people actually value? What is the purpose here? What is

00:37:48.400 the, what is, what is the goal that we're optimizing for? If we're optimizing for anything,

00:37:52.880 I think as a general rule, optimizing itself is a word that should make us suspicious. Cause I think

00:37:57.220 anytime you're optimizing for something, you're often flattening out other things that are good,

00:38:02.360 often actually, often actually good on a dynamic basis, even for the thing that you're, you're

00:38:07.740 supposedly optimizing for. And so in many ways, I think managerialism focuses on optimizing, whereas

00:38:13.800 human systems often will focus on sort of achieving goods in a more holistic sense.

00:38:18.820 So one of the issues that we have to address and it's, you know, it's my hobby horse. So I've got to

00:38:26.280 mention it every time. Um, you know, there, while we are bagging on managerialism and one of its

00:38:32.560 descendants here, uh, you know, in the form of meritocracy, ultimately these systems weren't

00:38:37.820 adapted without a reason, right? Like scale is a problem when you want to evaluate people holistically,

00:38:44.880 you need to understand them. You need to understand their community. You need to understand their value

00:38:50.580 set. You probably need to share many of those things to truly evaluate them across the board.

00:38:56.140 One of the reasons that we got managerialism was so that we could massify. One of the reasons we got

00:39:00.940 meritocracy was so that we could quickly evaluate someone we've never met that we have no connection

00:39:05.840 to. Yeah. They, they just got off, uh, you know, the plane from the entire, entirely different,

00:39:11.420 uh, part of the country, or they literally got off a boat from a different, a different country

00:39:16.380 entirely across a different continent. And we want to be able to look at them and immediately evaluate,

00:39:21.720 are you good for this? Can I slot you right into the system and keep on running?

00:39:26.300 The downside of that is all the things that we have just listed, but to be fair, there are upsides,

00:39:32.100 right? This does create many of the advantages of scale and efficiency that we have seen in our

00:39:38.620 current world today. Now I would argue and have argued, uh, that we are reaching the end of those

00:39:44.420 goods, right? Like we're, we are getting a return on the margin and utility of optimizing for those

00:39:49.920 traits. However, they are still there and we will lose some level of that if we decide to go with a

00:39:55.900 different system. Right? So I, I think this is a question that is actually hard. It's a very,

00:40:00.780 very high stakes question. Obviously it's one that I've discussed before, uh, with mutual friends of ours.

00:40:06.520 And I don't know, I guess is the, the point we certainly lose. Managerialism is certainly

00:40:13.980 convenient if you are trying to manage a global organization. Absolutely. Uh, whether the global

00:40:21.340 organization even remains the most effective way at generating the goods that people care about

00:40:26.840 at scale is another question. Uh, ultimately, uh, ultimately a key to generating wealth is all,

00:40:33.920 is actually knowledge more than anything else. And knowledge can be copied and knowledge can be

00:40:38.580 scaled without an organization necessarily scaling with it. So, uh, the example I give, and as I use

00:40:45.160 a sort of alternative to managerialism, let's say you're trying to sort of replicate something

00:40:50.140 across, uh, across the entire country. You can have the managerial approach where you have,

00:40:55.660 uh, processes in place. You sort of reduce the person's job description to as much of a sort of,

00:41:00.920 uh, a set of boundaries and a set of rules as possible, a set of standards. You have middle

00:41:05.980 managers monitoring them, or you have an ownership based model. You have a bunch of companies around

00:41:11.200 the country owned by people who ultimately have the accountability and the responsibility that comes 0.96

00:41:16.380 from ownership, all trying to deliver those. And they're still competing with each other. They're

00:41:20.200 not pure monopolies. Ultimately they're there. And if they make missteps, if their kid is a total

00:41:25.640 loser and they give the business to their kid, then business probably declines and someone else buys

00:41:29.760 it or someone else takes market share. Uh, but that itself actually incentivizes sort of very case 0.93

00:41:35.060 by case discussions. I mean, there's a great example talking about meritocracy, about the limits.

00:41:39.420 You certainly don't, let's say, let's say your daughter is getting buried. It's certainly not a

00:41:44.620 pure meritocracy where it's just an audition and sort of the person with the best resume gets it and

00:41:49.220 there's a set of things, but if you have a business historically, it might've been a significant

00:41:53.860 consideration that you actually wanted to marry the sort of person who could come in and take over

00:41:58.720 your business for you. That was, that's, that's historically been a very, very strong consideration

00:42:03.660 for people like that. So there's all sorts of decentralized ways people will try to, uh, in a,

00:42:10.920 in a distributed fashion, try to sort of mix those human factors with things like qualification that

00:42:17.120 are relevant for the preservation of this. And that in itself is an alternative to managerialism.

00:42:21.800 That in itself is a situation that's a far more complex and far more personal, uh, or familial type

00:42:29.380 of situation than anything that a managerial org can possibly, uh, can possibly achieve. Uh, and yet

00:42:36.780 if you have sort of a patchwork of, let's say hundreds of these businesses delivering the same thing,

00:42:42.280 that may end up being a more robust system. And then you say, well, they can't achieve the

00:42:46.820 economies of scale that the big company can possibly, possibly not. In some cases,

00:42:51.780 the economies of scale do actually highly benefit, let's say a highly centralized operation.

00:42:56.320 You're not going to produce the starship through a patchwork of sort of thousands of companies.

00:43:00.200 That's there's, there's going to be one company that can do that. But in many cases,

00:43:04.500 ultimately the innovations are primarily knowledge-based innovations, which then could be

00:43:10.480 replicated. They could potentially be sold. The IP can be preserved. And maybe the there's,

00:43:14.300 maybe it's encoded in some software that sold to these other companies, but the companies in a

00:43:18.860 distributed fashion can become nearly as efficient or even more efficient in some cases. Let's say

00:43:23.580 they're as efficient at certain dynamics and they're better on others because you have better,

00:43:28.060 uh, you have better ultimately skin in the game and responsibility to the ownership level than

00:43:32.700 anything you could achieve through any sort of management incentive or process. Uh, I think French, 1.00

00:43:37.900 the franchise system actually approaches this where in many ways, the franchise system ultimately is a

00:43:43.020 ownership based system. And yes, there's lots of rules and franchise manuals in different cases,

00:43:47.980 but in many cases, what they're doing is they're replacing a whole lot of management controls with

00:43:53.500 something that is much more centered on ownership and recognizing ultimately an owner is going to

00:43:58.460 handle and be responsible for, uh, all sorts of things that you could never manage through a managerial

00:44:05.180 model. You could never ultimately, uh, you could never ultimately come up with a sort of classic

00:44:11.020 meritocratic way of judging people as well as just the reality of owning this business will.

00:44:17.260 And so I don't know that you, I don't know that you even need to lose many of the benefits that people

00:44:23.020 think of. Uh, I think in some cases you will, in some cases you won't, in some cases you'll be offset by

00:44:28.140 something that's actually, uh, better even in the short term and other cases you'll be offset by

00:44:33.260 something that's better in potentially intangible dimensions, more dynamic long-term dimensions.

00:44:39.820 Uh, but I'm not convinced that this is necessarily something that requires even significant material

00:44:46.300 sacrifices. Yeah. I think you're definitely right about the long-term implications. I think that long-term,

00:44:52.780 the current paradigm is failing. We can see that all around. Uh, and so even if there was some level

00:44:58.860 of short-term sacrifice, and like you said, that, that may or may not be the case. Ultimately, if you

00:45:03.420 have the vision, if, if you're focused on the future of a community of people, of, of a tradition that you

00:45:10.460 actually care about, uh, then that long-term survivability and robust nature is far more important than,

00:45:16.140 uh, than kind of the short-term maximization. Uh, again, if that even is a cost, a trade-off that

00:45:22.140 you have to pay, uh, but, but in a, in a little bit of a pivot, uh, since I have, uh, a right-wing

00:45:28.060 focused businessman on, I have to ask you a question that is always burning, uh, for me, uh, which is,

00:45:34.380 we look at the left and they seem to understand long-term, of course, you know, many leftist

00:45:40.460 businessmen want to make money, that kind of thing, but they seem to understand at some level,

00:45:45.740 they wouldn't call it a noblesse oblige because they, you know, they don't quite have that understanding,

00:45:50.140 but they understand that investing in culture, investing in institutions that don't immediately

00:45:55.500 turn a profit is both good morally, but also importantly, actually critical to their long-term

00:46:02.300 success. You know, if you own the culture, if you own the system, if you own many of these critical

00:46:07.740 institutions, education and such across your civilization, then yeah, you may not see the

00:46:13.660 immediate, you know, five-year return on that investment, but long-term you will be making much

00:46:19.580 more money, be more powerful. And if you have the right culture that you built, be much healthier,

00:46:24.460 you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll raise the standard of living and everything else, uh, of the people

00:46:28.940 that you're kind of serving. That seems to be something the left understands though. You know,

00:46:33.260 I often hear someone say, oh, well, how are these leftist news organizations operating? They don't

00:46:38.140 have any subscribers. They don't make any money. It's like, well, yeah, because the leftist

00:46:41.900 businessmen who operate them usually just see them as some kind of, you know, they're a patron

00:46:46.460 more than they are an owner in many scenarios. We're seeing a little less of that now because

00:46:50.380 they've become so radically, uh, un, un, uh, profitable, but, but in, in many other domains,

00:46:56.220 they, they will make these investments. And yet when you bring this to many right wing businessmen,

00:47:01.900 it's just like, okay, but like, how do I make money in this in six months? Like, how does this turn a

00:47:06.780 profit for me and immediately? Sure. Maybe I could fund a proper redo of like, you know,

00:47:12.300 Shakespeare. That's true to it. That strips out any of these stupid DEI elements are there. And I

00:47:16.780 could actually perpetuate, you know, this tradition can carry on the English canon, but like, how do I

00:47:21.980 make money off of that in two months? And that seems to be a mindset that really blinds a lot of

00:47:27.660 what has been done. I know that's part of what you're trying to break out of, but why did we see

00:47:31.020 that for so long on the right? Well, so, so much of that, I would say comes down to two factors.

00:47:35.820 One is even the profit perspective is not necessarily informed by a long-term vision.

00:47:42.220 So what you describe is true, certainly of, uh, it's true, certainly of culture,

00:47:46.620 but you also had this view that the right historically was very bad at even things like

00:47:50.940 venture investing. And I would say many of those people have pivoted over to the right,

00:47:55.340 but they're not necessarily sort of culturally on their right and their vision. That's actually a

00:47:59.020 gap we're trying to fill. There's a lot of things where I actually believe there's an

00:48:02.060 opportunity and it's a massive opportunity, but you need to be able to sort of look at that

00:48:06.540 often a 10 year J curve where you sort of recognize there's this investment. It takes time to pay off.

00:48:11.180 And it may even be an incredibly profitable business. And I think that

00:48:16.220 most conservatives, because of the sort of segments of the economy they've moved to,

00:48:21.100 they're, you know, they're fine at understanding how to do that in real

00:48:23.500 estate development or something there. They know how to do that in certain categories,

00:48:26.700 but they really don't know how to do that in categories like technology and venture.

00:48:31.740 Uh, I w and I would say there's an element to which they're often rightly suspicious of the sort

00:48:36.300 of intangible claims about, I think a more conservative economy often is actually just

00:48:41.900 going to value the tangible a little bit more in certain ways. I would say the broader one though,

00:48:46.540 is they're not averse to those sorts of things, but they do it in ways that I think are flawed.

00:48:51.180 So they'll give money to their church all day long. And those churches are certainly doing things that

00:48:57.660 are not profit oriented, but in many ways, even the conservative churches have adopted a very

00:49:03.580 anti-institutional mindset, a very sort of low church mindset where our approach to what is a

00:49:10.300 worthwhile investment is, are we, let's say doing this mission project that will win, you know, 10 souls

00:49:15.580 over the next year or whatever. That's a very short term mindset. Are we building an, are we

00:49:20.140 building the cathedral, right? Are we building an institution that will be a great institution

00:49:24.060 in 50 years, not something that's considered. And that in many ways, that long-term mindset,

00:49:28.700 I would say due to sort of fairly complex sociological factors actually related to kind of

00:49:33.420 how conservatives were able to preserve who remained a conservative, what types of people remain

00:49:39.820 conservatives during a period of, of largely left-wing dominance of the institutions probably

00:49:46.220 encouraged conservatives to adopt a sort of anti-institutional mindset. Now, what I like about

00:49:51.740 in many ways, the Silicon Valley mindset is it's not necessarily an anti-institutional mindset,

00:49:56.140 but it's one that is perfectly happy to sort of challenge and disrupt the institution. With your

00:50:00.540 own project that might take 20 years to, to achieve, uh, uh, to really achieve the kind of results

00:50:07.020 you're envisioning. If you, if you have that mindset, that Silicon Valley willingness to exit,

00:50:12.860 but disrupt toward build something greater rather than just sort of exit and sort of put your head

00:50:17.100 down and try to avoid the institutional world because it's inherently corrupt. And you combine

00:50:21.340 that with a right aligned cultural landscape. So you're recognizing opportunities grounded in culture.

00:50:26.380 They may be profitable opportunities. They may be opportunities for your nonprofit giving,

00:50:30.220 similar to how you would give to your church. But if you recognize that, if you're looking at that

00:50:35.020 perspective, if you're applying that lens kind of coming from the outside, recognizing that we

00:50:39.260 can build institutions that will challenge the incumbents, that mentality I think is largely missing.

00:50:44.700 And that's a huge part of what I'm trying to solve is really so much of it, I think comes down to

00:50:48.940 imagination. I was going to say, this comes down even to the back to the question of meritocracy,

00:50:52.940 to the question of whether the managerial model versus the distributed model, uh, ultimately yields higher

00:50:59.100 returns. So much of it is the product of human creativity. If you believe, if our sort of elite

00:51:04.620 class has been catechized to believe that the managerial model is necessarily the most efficient

00:51:10.060 one, all of their efforts and all of their innovation is going to go into improvements

00:51:16.060 that fit that model. You're going to have software, you're going to have SAS or whatever,

00:51:20.780 this can be designed to make managerial organizations more efficient. You're going to have credentials

00:51:25.820 designed to be sort of as universally recognized as possible. All of these creative efforts are going to

00:51:31.420 go into that. To a large extent, I think there's just a, there's an opera. And this is really one

00:51:36.780 of the greatest opportunities I see is the opportunity merely for imagination to recognize

00:51:42.700 that there's potential and often more potential in another model. And sometimes it's as simple as

00:51:48.140 spend an extra hour thinking using your human creativity to think about a solution that actually

00:51:55.100 gets you to the same place, but in a way that's building on concepts like ownership and responsibility,

00:52:00.940 rather than managerial systems. You could either, you know, you can either tweak your process,

00:52:05.900 tweak your managerial process to improve the metric you care about, or you can think about

00:52:10.940 the ultimate purpose of that metric and come up with a tool that allows the independent businessman or

00:52:16.220 whatever to, to get there as well. And then you can sell the tool to him and you have a business that

00:52:20.380 way. And, and I think if, if society as a whole sort of presumes that the former model is where

00:52:25.980 the opportunity is and where the path of history is going, that's where most people are going to

00:52:30.860 default, spend their time. If you realize that that's not the permanent model, and I would argue

00:52:36.620 actually the macro trends are going against that managerialism or disrupting managerial institutions,

00:52:42.780 you might spend that same hour of creativity on solving a problem that actually works for,

00:52:47.740 for distributed communities. You're going to see a lot more, you're going to see a lot more solutions

00:52:52.220 that work for those communities work for those, those, those, those, those alternative non managerial

00:52:57.740 models. So that's why I'm so optimistic. I think there's, I mean, at this point, I think there's massive

00:53:01.900 amounts of low hanging fruit, focused on those problems, just being willing to realize that if we

00:53:07.260 believe in people, if we believe that this, this alternative is on the rise, and the managerial model

00:53:12.780 is on the, on the decline, or is facing growing disruption, there's going to be a lot of low hanging,

00:53:17.980 low hanging opportunities to, to deploy what are often very new and very powerful technologies

00:53:25.340 to serve these alternative models.

00:53:27.260 Nope, that makes sense. All right, guys, well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. Nate,

00:53:32.060 do you have time to answer a few questions from the audience?

00:53:34.540 I could do three or four minutes, Bryce, so.

00:53:36.780 Okay, great. All right, we're going to move over to the questions of the people. But before we do,

00:53:40.380 is there anywhere that you want to direct people anything that you want them to check out?

00:53:43.980 So I, I post a lot on X at Nate A. Fisher, New Founding, my organization has our website,

00:53:51.340 newfounding.com, as well as our own X account. So that's really, that's really where we're active.

00:53:56.460 We're very, very public with what we're doing. And we, we talked about it a lot.

00:54:00.140 Excellent. Well, we'll start doing the questions. And if you need to bail out,

00:54:03.740 because you got to go, just let me know. And I'll finish them up myself. All right. So JGJ says,

00:54:08.860 critique of embracing nepotism, doesn't that lock in a individual to a specific class and role? Because

00:54:16.620 your dad did this job seems cast-like. So yes, I think that at an extreme,

00:54:23.180 if you believe that you're always going to hire your son for that, and he inherits the role,

00:54:27.820 that's, that's, that's the extreme. I think the version and the version that our American founders

00:54:32.220 accepted and really the Anglo world is always, and going back to even the Roman world, right? They would 0.98

00:54:36.780 adopt, Julius Caesar adopted Octavian, I believe, has always been a sort of fluid system where

00:54:42.220 there's a, I would think of them as sort of biases rather than absolute rules. You have a

00:54:47.820 sort of preference for hiring your son and you can, if he's, if he's capable of putting the effort in, it's

00:54:54.060 good, but there's going to be times where you're going to hire someone else or using the sort of

00:54:58.140 son-in-law example, you're bringing other people into the family even. Likewise, if your son is just

00:55:02.860 really not interested in that, there's probably something else that he's going to see a

00:55:06.460 return on. But if your default is to kick him out of the house and say, go to NYU and study whatever,

00:55:11.020 and, you know, don't have any sort of, don't have any sort of anchoring. I think that's, that's the

00:55:16.540 opposite extreme. And that's really where we've gone. And that that's resulted in lots of family

00:55:20.220 businesses that don't have anyone to take them over. And in some cases, no one even capable of

00:55:24.460 taking them over. And they're literally just shutting them down. Yeah. Again, the, the ability for

00:55:29.500 humans to make decisions is key, right? We're not locking in entirely to meritocracy, but you're also not

00:55:34.620 entirely locking into a caste system because that lack of dynamic ability inside a caste system is

00:55:40.540 also a problem. So again, the point being, you know, keep those family ties, understand that is

00:55:45.580 an important thing, but that doesn't become the only metric anymore. Then merit becomes the only metric,

00:55:50.780 if you're, if you're being wise. Michael Robertson says the creation of Moneyball should be considered

00:55:56.540 a war crime. It's the ultimate lib think. Yeah. Again, might work better in the short term in baseball, 0.94

00:56:02.060 but doesn't really improve the quality of enjoyment. I think overall, when it comes to sports,

00:56:07.900 uh, William McDuffie, uh, thank you very much for that donation. Very generous. He says, uh,

00:56:12.700 but he, that is, uh, uh, a hireling and not the shepherd who, uh, whose own the sheep are not

00:56:19.660 seeth the wolf coming and leave with the sheep and fleeth and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the

00:56:25.900 sheep. John 10, 12. Yeah. Once again, you know, skin in the game, right? Ownership is key.

00:56:31.180 Absolutely. Non-substit, non-substitutable. There's no possibility of hiring someone who

00:56:37.420 has the same skin in the game. The only real exception would be, let's say it's a hireling

00:56:43.020 who has deep, deep community ties to you, right? If it's a, if the hireling is the, the son of one of

00:56:48.460 your longtime family friends and your family has a multi-generational relationship, you're starting to,

00:56:53.820 uh, you're starting to approach that. That's again, not something that resembles meritocracy.

00:56:58.860 Precisely. Uh, JGJ says, not everyone can stomach being George Bailey, perhaps,

00:57:03.820 but that's what leadership looks like, right? Those are the people that you do want to elevate.

00:57:07.420 You want the guy who can make the evaluation. You want the, you, you know, uh, my, my buddy, uh,

00:57:13.500 Kevin Dolan had a great, uh, article on this actually specifically about it's a wonderful life,

00:57:17.900 talking about why George Bailey is loved. He has the ability to make the decision. He has the

00:57:22.860 sovereignty to make the decision on behalf of the community. He's not just looking at the ones and zeros

00:57:27.580 of it, but they trust him that ultimately he's still got in the right direction because he has

00:57:31.820 earned that trust from the community. I would also say there's a lot of people who maybe didn't think

00:57:35.980 they wanted to be George Bailey and they went to New York and spent five years as an associate at a

00:57:40.780 prestigious law firm and realized that, you know, that path's not all it's cracked up to be either.

00:57:44.780 So yeah, very true. Very true. Uh, Norwegian cross says, do you think a won the bet or is it 0.99

00:57:50.300 the woke still out there? I'm still waiting for a good movie, but I'm not holding my breath. Yeah.

00:57:54.860 Again, I don't want to rehash this bet too often because it's already been declared over. Uh, but to

00:57:59.180 be clear that the, the bet was that not that the woke was undefeatable, but that the ruling elites could

00:58:06.700 not choose to put the woke away that this, that they would not be able to themselves to make that

00:58:11.820 determination. That is not the same as the woke losing. It's not the same as the woke being

00:58:16.460 defeated. So is, is woke on the retreat? Yes, it is. But was it on the retreat, uh, retreat because

00:58:23.820 all of the elites decided simultaneously, we are intentionally going to end doing this,

00:58:28.780 or did it prove to be a failure lose to somebody like Trump and his movement and then end up getting,

00:58:35.820 you know, basically outlawed. And, and again, I'm still very doubtful that we don't have a long

00:58:40.140 road ahead of kind of rooting this out, but ultimately that, that was my point.

00:58:44.140 Well, and I would argue jumping in, tying to the meritocracy. I think we have a non man, 1.00

00:58:49.340 the political parties have become have sort of the managerial regime versus managerial opponents and

00:58:55.580 everything from Silicon Valley to the original mega caucus. They're all opponents of the managerial

00:59:01.260 regime. I don't think the managerial regime has given up or changed their mind on this. I think that

00:59:05.740 we've just seen a crystallization of a group of people have invested interest in displacing that.

00:59:10.780 Yeah. At some point I need to pick your brain on, uh, on kind of the Silicon Valley managerial

00:59:15.420 distinction and whether or not they're going to try to replace that with AI, but that's a whole nother

00:59:20.300 can of worms. Uh, that's a fun one that leads into questions of whether we see a return to monarchy.

00:59:25.180 So, uh, JGJ says, uh, franchise, it all goes back to the Panda express. Yeah, that's right.

00:59:31.500 Hey, I'll, I'll point out even at Panda express, uh, and I don't know if that's a franchise system

00:59:36.940 or not, but, uh, there's a big difference between being an employed assistant manager and a career

00:59:41.500 that leads to your ownership of the Panda express. A lot of franchise owners have pretty good lives,

00:59:45.500 but, uh, if you're, uh, if you're just, uh, an employee there, I think that's a, uh, less glorious career

00:59:51.820 path. Yeah. Again, the, the, the hope that ownership, uh, you know, if you're working 80

00:59:56.940 hours a week to own your own business, that's a much different thing as opposed to, you know,

01:00:02.380 managing another business for someone else who you, you know, you will never acquire,

01:00:05.820 you'll never pass it on to anybody. You'll never have real ownership over it. Uh, Jacob Zendel says,

01:00:10.780 does the principal, uh, principal agent problem play into the meritocracy nepotism dichotomy,

01:00:16.300 uh, is abandoning merit for familiar bonds worse if the executive is appointed by

01:00:21.740 shareholders who don't share those bonds? I think this is a massive question. Uh,

01:00:27.740 this is why I would make the argument that in many cases we need to actually, I think,

01:00:33.180 I think there's a real appreciation. I kind of came into this reading guys like Taleb and George

01:00:37.660 Gilder, who I think do some really good, uh, really good evaluation of why even from a,

01:00:44.540 if you're thinking about a longer time horizon, even if it's sort of purely economic, it actually

01:00:49.900 makes sense to consider approaches. The managerial approach, the McKinsey approach is not necessarily

01:00:54.540 the best one for sure. That idea that ultimately, you know, if you can reduce everyone in your company

01:00:59.180 to an algorithm, then someone else can replace your company with an algorithm. Uh, that applies,

01:01:04.380 even if you're thinking about the good of the, the company, purely from a shareholder standpoint,

01:01:08.700 but certainly yes, the principal agent problem means that ultimately the principal,

01:01:15.340 there's things the principal can do that an agent cannot do and should not be able to do and should

01:01:20.140 not do. So, uh, this is why I think ownership tied to agency is actually really good. If you have

01:01:26.300 active, if you have a world where there are active, engaged owners of businesses, that is a world that

01:01:31.900 is capable of maintaining far more richness than a world that tries to separate ownership from,

01:01:38.220 uh, ownership from agency. All right. And our last one here, uh, autism says, uh, prescript, uh,

01:01:45.420 autonomy, uh, uh, virtuosity. Sorry. Can't, can't pronounce that today. Virtuocracy, uh, cardinal and

01:01:53.500 theological for subordinal, uh, restoration of subsidiary and solidarity, Catholic samosis. Uh, I think you're just 0.93

01:02:01.980 trying to do this to have fun with me. Initization, uh, Avalon W plus E of heaven and earth is his

01:02:08.220 good time. I understood some of those words. Anything that you drew out of that night, Nate?

01:02:13.580 It looks like themes, uh, subsidiarity, uh, solidarity. There's, there's themes here that, uh,

01:02:19.180 and that it looks like they're coming from a Catholic angle, but have, have analogs that would be

01:02:24.300 very, very, uh, relevant to a lot of these considerations. So all right. New principles.

01:02:30.060 That, that was definitely a good try on that one. It was better than I would have done. All right.

01:02:33.340 So let's go ahead and wrap this up guys. Once again, thank you, Nate, for coming on. Everybody

01:02:37.740 should check out new fan founding and what they are doing over then or there. And of course,

01:02:41.980 if it's your first time on this channel, you need to go ahead, subscribe on YouTube,

01:02:45.740 click the bell and notification to make sure that, you know, when these streams go live,

01:02:50.060 if you want to get the broadcast as podcasts, make sure that you subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show

01:02:54.620 on your favorite podcast network. Thank you everybody for watching. And as always,

01:02:58.700 I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 27, 2025

Is Meritocracy Really the Answer to Wokeness？｜ Guest： Nate Fischer ｜ 1⧸27⧸25

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 27, 2025

Is Meritocracy Really the Answer to Wokeness？ ｜ Guest： Nate Fischer ｜ 1⧸27⧸25

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Is Meritocracy Really the Answer to Wokeness？｜ Guest： Nate Fischer ｜ 1⧸27⧸25