The Auron MacIntyre Show - Shopping-Cart Nationalism ｜ 10⧸28⧸24

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00:00:30.480 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.380 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:34.220 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:36.900 Before we get started, I just wanted to remind you that

00:00:39.640 on election day, obviously you're going to be out there.

00:00:42.900 Maybe you've already done your voting.

00:00:44.620 You've done the early voting.

00:00:46.140 Or maybe you'll be out that day.

00:00:47.940 But on election night, you're going to want to know

00:00:49.900 what's going on.

00:00:51.360 Are there shenanigans happening?

00:00:53.040 Are the votes being counted?

00:00:54.440 Any nefarious actors involved?

00:00:57.240 Is Trump ahead?

00:00:58.200 Did he pull it out?

00:00:59.680 Is Kamala ultimately going to be able to come over the top? 0.99

00:01:03.460 All of these questions will, of course, be answered.

00:01:05.960 Hopefully, the night of.

00:01:07.280 But who knows?

00:01:08.260 Either way, you're going to want to be able to watch the best coverage.

00:01:12.060 Talking about this, breaking everything down, analyzing it, letting you know what is going on.

00:01:17.700 And Blaze TV is the place for you to go.

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00:01:25.380 talking about this, analyzing it as the data comes in, as the results come in.

00:01:30.160 So if you want to go ahead and be prepared to watch us on election night, you need to go

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00:01:41.780 That's blazeelection.com slash Oren.

00:01:45.900 All right, guys.

00:01:46.900 So obviously, the election is coming up.

00:01:50.040 Everything is hectic.

00:01:51.160 We're breaking down all of the different aspects of the election.

00:01:54.440 It looks, it feels like you can feel that momentum building for Trump.

00:01:59.520 Of course, people still have to get out there.

00:02:01.080 They have to do their work.

00:02:02.180 This is not some excuse.

00:02:03.420 I'm just saying people can start to feel a little bit of optimism.

00:02:07.000 You can tell even the news outlets are starting to shift things.

00:02:10.260 We're getting reports that Jeff Bezos is saying that, you know, he needs to have his newspaper

00:02:15.600 shift its editorial to be a little friendlier to both sides.

00:02:19.600 You can feel some of the major institutions starting to turn the ship a little bit.

00:02:24.060 Now, does this ultimately mean that academic agent was right in our bet and that the regime

00:02:28.840 wants Trump, that Trump is actually the candidate of the establishment and that they're going

00:02:33.100 to put the woke away and they're going to install Trump and we're going to go back to 1990s

00:02:38.040 American ideal? 0.63

00:02:39.800 We'll see.

00:02:40.800 I'm a little skeptical.

00:02:42.120 I think ultimately, you know, we can see all of these different people calling Trump a

00:02:46.520 full-on fascist.

00:02:47.380 He had this Madison Square Garden rally recently, you know, over the weekend.

00:02:52.120 And every single commentator on the left is like, this looks just like a Nazi rally because,

00:02:57.400 you know, people standing next to each other.

00:02:59.640 It's in the same building that JFK held his rallies, but maybe he's, maybe he was a Nazi 0.60

00:03:04.060 too.

00:03:04.340 Who knows for the left at this point, they might've declared him one as well.

00:03:07.480 But you wonder how often they can kind of declare someone Hitler and then just do nothing

00:03:11.960 about it.

00:03:12.320 Maybe they will.

00:03:12.900 They've done, they've called like every, you know, presidential candidate of my lifetime

00:03:16.880 and before my lifetime on the Republican side, Hitler.

00:03:19.820 So why not one more?

00:03:21.160 Maybe this doesn't mean anything.

00:03:22.480 Ultimately, they'll back down from their rhetoric or maybe not.

00:03:25.360 Maybe we're going to see a full-on, you know, summer of love, George Floyd style response.

00:03:31.820 Ultimately, we're just going to have to see what happens on election night and what unfolds

00:03:38.000 afterwards.

00:03:38.640 But in the meantime, I wanted to do something fun because, you know, we're, we're going

00:03:42.360 to be talking about this nonstop for the next few weeks, of course, and probably longer

00:03:47.260 what the, what happened during the election.

00:03:48.980 What does it mean?

00:03:49.600 All these different things.

00:03:50.680 So today I wanted to explore something a little more entertaining.

00:03:54.540 Elon Musk on Twitter recently posted the classic shopping cart meme.

00:03:59.360 If you're not familiar with the return, the shopping cart meme, we'll be breaking it down

00:04:03.440 and pretty much every other related meme here today.

00:04:05.760 And I wanted to explore the idea of the importance of the shopping cart.

00:04:10.300 We've all been in this scenario where the shopping cart is sitting there, blocking your

00:04:14.520 ability to park, making the normal order that should be a part of your day to day existence

00:04:20.420 in a first world country like the United States, a little less, right? 0.82

00:04:25.040 A little bit of the social fabric has fallen apart.

00:04:27.180 A little bit of the social coordination has fallen apart when people carelessly block the

00:04:31.840 ability of others to park in a parking lot.

00:04:34.440 But it's not just that.

00:04:36.000 It's not just a small thing.

00:04:37.160 This has a wider implication for your society.

00:04:40.440 Are people working together?

00:04:42.320 Are they cooperative?

00:04:43.360 Are they thoughtful?

00:04:44.280 What is their time preference?

00:04:45.820 These are all things that seem minor, but they're the kind of stuff that eventually gets

00:04:49.480 you to the place where you can launch, you can launch rockets into space.

00:04:52.680 So I want to talk about shopping cart nationalism.

00:04:55.280 What does it mean?

00:04:56.340 What are the implications?

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00:06:22.580 All right, so let's get down to businesses, a little bit of the old-fashioned meme review

00:06:29.380 style video.

00:06:31.400 So let's go ahead and take a look at the meme in question.

00:06:36.440 Again, if you haven't heard of the shopping cart, you know, shopping cart meme, the shopping

00:06:43.240 cart nationalism, we're going to be talking a little bit about it.

00:06:46.220 You know, here is the Starship Trooper classic here.

00:06:49.520 What's the difference, what's the moral difference between a civilian and a citizen?

00:06:53.880 A citizen returns their shopping cart, a civilian does not. 0.99

00:06:58.880 You know, the exact words of the text.

00:07:01.300 All right, so what's the actual premise behind shopping cart nationalism?

00:07:06.780 What does all of this mean?

00:07:08.780 Let's turn to the classic post, you know, the classic 4chan post that was talking about

00:07:14.680 shopping cart nationalism to get a breakdown on what the meme is here.

00:07:19.600 So I'll just read it first.

00:07:21.120 The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

00:07:27.200 To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task, and one which we all recognize as the

00:07:35.720 correct, appropriate thing to do.

00:07:37.620 To return the shopping cart is objectively right.

00:07:39.920 There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return the

00:07:46.500 shopping cart.

00:07:47.600 All right, so just kind of a basic, you know, beginning here with the shopping cart.

00:07:52.180 Returning the shopping cart is just always the right thing to do, right?

00:07:55.800 It's not that hard.

00:07:57.640 You know, you might grumble about it, but usually there's a cart corral, just, you know, maybe

00:08:02.540 one aisle, two aisles over the most if you have to.

00:08:05.480 You might have to walk for a minute or two to return the cart.

00:08:08.820 But ultimately, everyone recognizes the world would be better if all the shopping carts were

00:08:14.980 always in the corral.

00:08:16.180 Now, we'll get to the arguments against returning the shopping cart in a moment.

00:08:20.380 But I think, you know, starting from this premise, just understand, I think most people

00:08:23.860 recognize if the cart was not sitting in the middle of the parking lot, if it was not blocking

00:08:29.360 my car, if it was not rolling through the parking lot and damaging my car, if it was not making

00:08:35.680 it difficult for people to get in and out, then the world would just be a better place,

00:08:39.580 right?

00:08:40.020 Objectively, however the carts get back into the cart corral, you know that's the right

00:08:46.040 place for them to be.

00:08:47.320 And it's relatively easy to get them there.

00:08:50.000 It's just the right thing to do.

00:08:51.620 So unless you have a very serious emergency, you know, if your car's on fire, if someone

00:08:57.500 is holding you at gunpoint, you know, if someone's having a heart attack as you're unloading

00:09:02.360 your car, okay, you get a pass, you can leave the cart there.

00:09:05.780 But people are like, oh, well, you know, the car is hot.

00:09:08.180 I have kids when they look, guys, like, they're, again, if they're emergency situations, I understand.

00:09:13.480 But ultimately, you know, you'll be there for a minute.

00:09:17.280 It'll be okay.

00:09:18.140 You should be returning the cart.

00:09:19.480 Back to the meme here.

00:09:22.360 Simultaneously, it is not illegal, not illegal to abandon your shopping cart.

00:09:28.040 Therefore, the shopping cart represents itself as the apex example of whether a person will

00:09:33.880 do what is right without being forced to.

00:09:37.120 No one will punish you if you're for not returning the shopping cart.

00:09:40.660 No one will fine or kill you for not returning the shopping cart.

00:09:44.200 You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart.

00:09:46.900 So it's a situation where law is not enforcing this, right?

00:09:51.080 And this is mainly going to be a fun stream, but it does tie into deeper issues.

00:09:56.000 So, you know, forgive me if I'm ruining the meme by being a little more serious about it.

00:10:02.080 But I do think it ties into some really important issues.

00:10:05.340 There is no law sitting on top of you.

00:10:07.820 There's no police officer.

00:10:09.240 You're not going to get in trouble.

00:10:10.200 No one's going to carry you away.

00:10:11.580 Ultimately, there's no penalty.

00:10:13.720 You know it's the right thing to do.

00:10:15.560 Everyone around you watching you knows it's the right thing to do.

00:10:20.080 But no one is probably going to yell at you for not taking the cart back and you're not

00:10:24.580 going to get fined and, you know, they're not going to get arrested.

00:10:27.720 There's ultimately no formal mechanism of the state or the municipality that is forcing

00:10:33.000 you to put the cart back where it should be.

00:10:36.420 It is simply an action of whether or not you will do the right thing.

00:10:40.760 There's nothing to gain.

00:10:42.320 There's nothing to lose.

00:10:43.920 It's simply when I have the opportunity to walk away and not do the right thing, will

00:10:51.000 I do that or will I go ahead?

00:10:52.820 And even though there's no celebration of it, no one's going to come by and give me a

00:10:57.180 gold medal.

00:10:57.920 No one's going to think of me, this amazing person.

00:11:00.520 Most people probably won't even think me a significantly worse person.

00:11:03.900 However, in that moment, will I still do the right thing?

00:11:09.420 You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart.

00:11:12.800 You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do, because it is

00:11:16.240 correct.

00:11:17.180 A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can

00:11:21.840 only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind

00:11:27.740 it.

00:11:28.240 The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is good or bad member of society.

00:11:33.100 So, again, funny meme, but there's a lot behind this, right?

00:11:39.040 We don't want to live in a society where law is actually the ultimate decider.

00:11:45.300 I know we hear this phrase, we live in a society of laws and not men or kings or whatever, and

00:11:51.280 that's supposed to be like a thing that inspires us.

00:11:54.540 But the law itself, like the formal application of the law, should be a last resort.

00:12:02.180 We have a hard time with this because we live in an environment where law is highly artificial.

00:12:07.900 Law is very positive in our existence.

00:12:11.180 The law is there to shape the world around us, to push us towards a specific type of behavior.

00:12:17.340 But in a healthy society, you know, the law is only there to formalize what already exists

00:12:23.920 for the people, right?

00:12:25.560 So Bertrand de Juvenal talks a lot about this in his book On Sovereignty.

00:12:30.320 And in On Sovereignty, he tries to kind of explore this idea of where we get our laws

00:12:36.760 and why they're enforced and when they feel artificial and when they feel justified and

00:12:42.180 how this kind of relates to the subject of the sovereign of the governing authority.

00:12:47.240 So kind of in a normal situation, an organic society, you have these ways of being, these

00:12:55.120 folk ways, the ways you approach things, the way that people in your community that has

00:12:59.560 kind of assembled itself over time because you have lived in the same place and you have

00:13:03.980 shared the same experiences.

00:13:05.440 You're familiar with the rhythms necessary to survive in the area where you are and you've

00:13:11.200 only met people who are familiar also with this experience.

00:13:14.720 You tend to share these things and this is where you get the emergence of religion and

00:13:19.300 the emergence of social orders, you know, that kind of link to these things, these patterns

00:13:24.400 of life, these traditions, as we often call them, start to instill this knowledge and this

00:13:29.880 pattern of life over and over through generations.

00:13:32.700 And no one usually at first formally writes these things down, right?

00:13:37.080 Like it's just the way things are done.

00:13:39.640 You look at someone, you expect them to behave a particular way, and they expect you to behave

00:13:45.600 in a particular way because you share a culture, you share a tradition, you share a history,

00:13:50.400 you share a way of being, right?

00:13:52.300 And so in an ideal situation, this is how law works.

00:13:57.640 Law is simply reinforcing, formalizing the shared understanding of the good.

00:14:04.700 How should society work?

00:14:06.160 How should it be ordered?

00:14:07.900 Well, we have this culture, right?

00:14:10.620 We have this folk way, this way of being that has emerged from how we live our lives, how

00:14:17.080 we interact with each other, our language, our religion, all of these things come together

00:14:21.420 and they build social expectations.

00:14:24.240 And most of the things that we do day to day don't need to be enforced by law, even to this

00:14:29.860 point, right?

00:14:30.400 Even though our society has fallen very far away from this situation, most of what makes

00:14:36.580 the world work today is still largely a function of this social coordination, this perpetuation

00:14:44.440 of a moral understanding.

00:14:46.380 In the West, it's largely a Christian understanding that still exists.

00:14:50.820 Even through all of the iterations, all the attempts to kill God, all the attempts to strip

00:14:55.320 away, you know, Christian understanding, this emerges.

00:14:59.060 Now, there are other factors in this, right?

00:15:00.880 Like, you know, even though the United States is a Christian society and Germany is a Christian

00:15:05.880 society and Ethiopia is a Christian society and, you know, these things look very different,

00:15:12.860 right?

00:15:13.060 So it's not just Christianity, but that is a big part of it, right?

00:15:16.960 That informs a big part of it.

00:15:18.160 Either way, the point is, these things emerge from people working together on a regular basis

00:15:23.660 and the most coherent societies, the ones that tend to work together best are those where

00:15:30.460 the, you know, the social coordination is organic.

00:15:34.460 You have laws for the most, you know, important aspects of this, right?

00:15:40.540 Like, you know, don't murder each other, things that you really need the state to crack down

00:15:45.260 on right away or otherwise stuff falls apart.

00:15:48.040 You have like a level of law enforcement there, but you're probably not writing a law for every

00:15:53.020 single aspect of society.

00:15:54.860 Like, you're not writing a law for whether or not the shopping cart gets put away, right?

00:15:59.880 That's something that is part of social convention.

00:16:02.880 It's part of something that you would want to happen.

00:16:05.600 It's something perhaps that you would expect to happen, but there's not a specific law

00:16:10.400 that is going to enforce that from the state.

00:16:12.980 And so, you know, we have kind of this very natural organic emergence of law, but then

00:16:18.780 when we start layering a bunch of expectations on top of that that are not natural or not

00:16:23.440 organic to, you know, different people, that's where things start getting contentious.

00:16:28.580 And when you have in a society that is assuming that a large part of its day-to-day existence

00:16:36.020 will not be governed by these formal, you know, laws of the state that have to be enforced

00:16:40.600 by a policeman, but will be more like the shopping cart meme, right?

00:16:43.740 Where like we can think of all kinds of things, you know, returning the library book, rewinding

00:16:48.760 the tape, you know, doing the right thing in all kinds of different scenarios where there's

00:16:55.020 no formal law about what it is, but the fact that people do it and are courteous and thoughtful

00:17:00.540 and think about the future and other people around them because they have a shared expectation

00:17:05.940 of the way we should live our lives, that makes society better, right?

00:17:10.520 That just makes society better when we have that level of social coordination.

00:17:14.300 So there's a couple of things going on inside this that I want to talk about.

00:17:18.640 The first thing attached to the shopping cart meme that I want to talk about is the idea

00:17:24.700 of high time preference and low time preference.

00:17:28.940 Now we've mentioned high and low time preference before, especially when talking about the writings

00:17:35.200 of people like Nick Land and Hans Hermann Hoppe, you know, they famously built this into Democracy,

00:17:40.620 the God that Failed and the Dark Enlightenment about what time preference is, but I want to

00:17:44.740 take a second because I've never done a video dedicated to this.

00:17:47.740 We've only kind of just brushed up against the topic and I've seen some confusion, excuse me,

00:17:51.980 I've seen some confusion online.

00:17:53.800 A lot of people say, oh, you know, the high time preference is bad.

00:17:57.600 The low time preference is good, very confusing, usually high is good and low is bad.

00:18:01.680 So I want to explain what time preference is first before we move into the other aspects

00:18:06.380 that the shopping cart represents, because the shopping cart represents, the interesting

00:18:10.340 thing about the shopping cart meme is it's a nexus of several different societal expectations

00:18:15.820 and high and low time preference is just one of them.

00:18:18.940 But I want to get into that first.

00:18:20.920 So I want to explain the difference between high and low time preference.

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00:19:54.300 All right.

00:19:55.080 So back to our shopping cart here.

00:19:56.600 You can see the shopping cart trolley problem meme.

00:19:59.080 You know, there is no dire emergency.

00:20:01.280 Do you accept the duty to return the cart even though you gain nothing?

00:20:04.840 All right.

00:20:05.260 So high time preference and low time preference.

00:20:08.460 It seems pretty basic, but a lot of people don't think very deeply about these issues.

00:20:14.340 And then this is something that really matters very significantly for the way your society

00:20:18.560 is ordered.

00:20:19.300 So high time preference.

00:20:21.440 The idea of high time preference is that you want things immediately.

00:20:24.940 You value, you prefer to have things right away.

00:20:29.000 That you're, you have a high time preference because your time is very valuable to you.

00:20:34.160 You are not going to delay gratification.

00:20:37.180 You want things immediately, very quickly, right away.

00:20:40.280 Your time isn't valuable to you is the wrong way to phrase that.

00:20:43.300 But you want things immediately.

00:20:45.000 You don't have a lot of impulse control or self-control.

00:20:47.720 You are valuing the immediacy of a reward above anything else.

00:20:52.520 So, you know, people with high time preference are really going to not plan for the future.

00:20:57.780 They're not going to plan ahead.

00:20:58.780 They're not going to delay gratification.

00:21:00.680 They're not going to think about the implication of their actions down the road.

00:21:04.160 I don't feel like taking the cart back or I'm busy.

00:21:07.600 I'm tired.

00:21:08.940 You know, I'd have to go an extra aisle or two over.

00:21:12.360 So my time is just, you know, I have a high time preference.

00:21:16.680 I'm not going to do that, right?

00:21:18.640 That's one way to look at it.

00:21:19.960 Low time preference is realizing that taking the time now, you know, not saying, oh, I don't want to do this.

00:21:28.680 I'm not going to take the time now.

00:21:30.060 But realizing that if you take the time now, something will be better in the future, right?

00:21:34.140 If you delay gratification, if you say, oh, I'm going to put off the things that I want immediately, recognizing that putting in the work now, the duty, the planning, the dedication, that I have a low time preference because ultimately I recognize that this is going to be valuable.

00:21:49.960 A lot of people will tie this to, you know, different regional cultures.

00:21:53.940 You know, for instance, people say, oh, you know, like, for instance, I live in Florida.

00:21:57.300 I have bananas and papayas growing in my backyard.

00:22:01.260 If food trucks didn't arrive at the grocery store tomorrow, if they didn't arrive at a grocery store for a month, I would be fine because there's just so much food that grows here naturally.

00:22:14.240 I don't have to have a high time preference or I don't have to have a low time preference.

00:22:18.440 I can have a high time preference and still feed myself theoretically if I wanted to because of the way the land works here.

00:22:24.820 You know, some people will say, oh, well, you know, in places where land, you know, the food is not abundant, that builds a lower time preference because you have to cultivate, you have to sow, you have to be prepared.

00:22:36.260 You will go through a winter with no food and that kind of trains you to have a low time preference because if you don't have a low time preference, you die, right?

00:22:44.260 Now, I don't think this is a perfect one-to-one, you know, this is a demonstration of how you could get time preference, but there are, you know, cultures where this, you know, doesn't necessarily work.

00:22:53.720 You know, Eskimos have a lot of snow and, you know, they didn't build like low time preference, you know, high civilization.

00:23:02.280 So it's not always a one-to-one, but it is an explanation that people often kind of put out there for where this comes from.

00:23:08.940 Either way, this is a known phenomenon.

00:23:10.760 Like, this is in economics, you can, if you've ever heard of the famous marshmallow experiment, right?

00:23:16.340 They give kids a marshmallow and they say, okay, you can eat the marshmallow now, or if you wait 10 minutes, you can get two marshmallows.

00:23:26.200 And the kid who eats the marshmallow now is considered to have a high time preference, right?

00:23:30.920 They could just easily delay the experience for only 10 minutes and they could have double the thing that they want.

00:23:36.880 But they're unable to control their impulses, they have too high of a time preference, it demonstrates a lack of ability to plan for the future.

00:23:45.880 It's a small thing, obviously, with just the marshmallow, but the idea is that this, you know, works in adults too and it plays out.

00:23:51.740 Same, you know, if you're a kid who was able to delay the 10 minutes, well, then you have a low time preference.

00:23:57.780 You have impulse control, you have agency, you can control your desires.

00:24:02.740 Now, to be clear, again, that's not always like, you know, there is such a thing as analysis paralysis over planning, right?

00:24:11.840 Like, there is a moment, you know, fortune does often favor the bold, those that are able to act in the moment.

00:24:19.020 So, you know, long-term planning isn't always the best thing, but it often is, especially on a social level, right?

00:24:25.980 And the higher the complexity gets in the society, the more we want low time preference.

00:24:31.500 In fact, you know, Nick Land says in the Dark Enlightenment that, you know, complexity in society is basically synonymous with low time preference.

00:24:39.680 That you're accumulating civilizational capital by, you know, kind of building this out on a long term.

00:24:45.860 You know, building that skill to always delay gratification, always put in the groundwork.

00:24:50.600 And we can see this in our politics today, right?

00:24:53.600 Like, the time preference is very high, especially in the Democratic Party, but not just in the Democratic Party.

00:25:00.800 You know, increasingly, the Republican Party, even Donald Trump is recognizing that, you know, giving people stuff is a winning strategy, right?

00:25:08.460 No tax on tips.

00:25:09.620 We're going to get all this stuff for you.

00:25:11.200 Like, that's something that people are understanding increasingly.

00:25:14.040 And so, you know, there is, especially in democracy, when you're trying to buy the votes, which is the best strategy in democracy, you know, high time preference is a winning strategy short term, but it is a losing strategy.

00:25:28.060 You're hollowing out the ability of your civilization to kind of coordinate in the long term.

00:25:32.700 All right.

00:25:32.940 So I think we got high and low time preference here.

00:25:35.840 Next thing we want to talk about is the importance of expectations, right?

00:25:40.420 A lot of people will call this social cohesion or social fabric.

00:25:45.240 You've probably heard these terms around.

00:25:47.220 But what they're really talking about is the ability for, in any given interaction, for you and I to be able to predict each other's behavior.

00:25:56.540 We call this a high-trust society.

00:25:59.120 A high-trust society is one in which I can walk into a situation and know that I can trust you to do the thing that we as a society agree upon as the right thing to do.

00:26:12.260 And so, you know, the cart is just the most basic manifestation of that, right?

00:26:15.860 Again, there is no cop over your shoulder.

00:26:21.160 There is no fine for not returning the cart.

00:26:23.900 No one is going to come and put you in jail.

00:26:25.900 You're not even technically breaking the law.

00:26:28.080 But there's a social code.

00:26:30.020 You and I both know what should be done in this scenario.

00:26:33.960 We know what the low time preference behavior is.

00:26:38.160 We know what will ultimately benefit society.

00:26:40.340 And if I'm in a high-trust society, I can look at you and expect that you are just going to return the cart.

00:26:46.860 I'm not going to have to hassle you about it.

00:26:49.860 There's not going to be a lot of coercion necessary.

00:26:54.200 We just can trust this.

00:26:55.540 And this has much wider implications, right?

00:26:58.300 So, for instance, right now we're in a scenario where a lot of the technology that our society is built on, our society is built on, is high trust, assumes a level of high trust, right?

00:27:10.720 So, for instance, people are noticing that all of these store shelves are currently getting locked up.

00:27:17.000 Targets and drug stores in particular areas where there's a lot of crime are suddenly locking up everything, right?

00:27:24.980 You used to just have these little tags on certain items, but now everything is behind glass.

00:27:31.180 Well, why is that?

00:27:32.100 Well, we took it for granted because it's our culture, our expectation of a high trust society that you could just leave items on shelves, generally out of view of most people.

00:27:44.760 And most people would just leave them there unless they plan to buy them.

00:27:50.920 And then when they pick them up, they would go and pay for them.

00:27:54.340 And, yeah, we have got security cameras and little tags hidden and stuff now as the trust level has gone down.

00:28:00.740 But even that requires a certain level of trust because now we're seeing that people are taking the extra step of locking them behind glass, right?

00:28:09.720 This is not the way that you would live in a high trust society.

00:28:14.320 We both know, hey, there's there's an expectation.

00:28:17.920 We're in a store.

00:28:19.120 This belongs to somebody who is part of my society, who's part of my civilization.

00:28:24.260 I recognize our shared expectation of a functioning society.

00:28:29.000 And so because we have this high level of trust, I know that I can put things that are valuable on a shelf and they will stay there unless you plan to give me money for them.

00:28:39.300 And, you know, ideally, I don't need security cameras and I don't need security personnel in a truly high trust society.

00:28:47.260 I can just leave a very valuable thing around and it's not a problem.

00:28:51.040 You guys have probably seen the honesty box and, you know, like, you know, these rural areas where people just leave eggs or, you know, something and you can just leave money for them.

00:28:59.360 Yeah. And that's fine.

00:29:00.500 I do this when I go to, you know, an event where it's a high trust that we have the old glory club event that I spoke at.

00:29:08.720 And I sold a lot of books there and, you know, the people would just come up and drop money in there.

00:29:13.700 And I didn't I didn't have to man the table.

00:29:15.500 You know, some people ask me to come up and sign it or whatever, but I didn't have to watch the cash box.

00:29:20.480 I didn't have to watch the product.

00:29:22.460 I could trust people to go in there and make change out of each one of those things.

00:29:26.860 And it wasn't a problem.

00:29:28.000 I didn't lose a dollar because it's a high trust scenario.

00:29:31.940 Right.

00:29:32.380 It's a scenario in which you don't have to worry about this.

00:29:35.340 We can think of this behavior when it comes to, you know, a neighborhood where everyone feels like they have to lock their doors and have bars on the windows and shutters.

00:29:44.260 Right.

00:29:44.700 We can think about this in all kinds of different areas where we have these expectations of trust.

00:29:52.000 And these are important for the functioning of our society.

00:29:54.600 The more we can't trust each other, the more we don't have these social expectations, the more we have to invest in enforcement mechanisms for them.

00:30:04.120 Right.

00:30:04.720 So, for instance, you know, one way that grocery stores are trying to phase out a lot of employees, which I think is a bad thing, is through the automation of the of the of the of the self-checkout.

00:30:18.140 Right.

00:30:18.980 Way back.

00:30:19.840 You know, this might sound wild to some of you at this point, but back when I was a kid, you always had a cashier check you out.

00:30:26.380 There was no self-checkout.

00:30:27.600 Right.

00:30:28.620 Now you have the ability to just walk up to a computer and swipe things.

00:30:32.840 Now, there's a certain level of security on them.

00:30:35.500 They'll they'll have like a weight mechanism, you know, like you put your thing on there and it'll it'll check the weight.

00:30:40.980 Or if you, you know, or there's a camera on you when you're doing it.

00:30:45.560 So there's accountability mechanisms.

00:30:47.740 But ultimately, if you want to, let's be honest, you can easily leave a large number of items out of your checkout and probably not get caught.

00:30:56.940 Right.

00:30:57.520 That's just the very likely scenario in many interactions with a self-checkout.

00:31:02.680 The self-checkout is predicated upon the idea that you're not going to steal,

00:31:08.040 that you would be willing to walk up and say, oh, these are the items I picked up and these are the items I'm going to purchase.

00:31:14.980 And I'm not going to hide some under my card or I'm not going to just swipe the one that's, you know, inexpensive while holding the expensive one to treat.

00:31:22.820 You know, like there's a lot of things you could do to manipulate the system.

00:31:25.980 It's not it's not a very robust security system, even if you've got the cameras, even if you've got the, you know, the the the weight measurement on the on the pedestal and everything.

00:31:38.080 Ultimately, it really is mostly relying on you doing the right thing.

00:31:42.000 And this is true across so many of our interactions.

00:31:45.340 We're just basically assuming people will do the right thing.

00:31:49.180 We assume people are going to do it.

00:31:52.080 You know, maybe because it's illegal in the case of the self-checkout, it is illegal to steal.

00:31:56.280 But in many cases, you know, it's really important to, you know, just because it allows our society to function.

00:32:01.880 The fact that people, you know, pull their car off the road when it's possible, if they break down, which allows everybody else to pass, like they go through the effort.

00:32:09.580 They don't just stop in the middle of the road and, you know, pull pull everything out and try to figure out what's going on in the middle of the road.

00:32:15.200 They say, oh, my first duty is to not block other people.

00:32:19.180 Right. Or if you're sitting in line and you're waiting to purchase something or you're at a you're at a restaurant counter and there's a bunch of other people who have already gone before you.

00:32:29.020 And, you know, it's the guy who doesn't take his time and look at what he's going to order.

00:32:33.360 He's been sitting on his phone the whole time.

00:32:34.760 He gets there. He forgets what he was going to order.

00:32:37.060 He forgets what's on the menu.

00:32:38.420 He's got a thousand questions.

00:32:39.920 He's holding up the entire line.

00:32:41.260 He could have been spending the last five minutes figuring out what he wanted and been ready to order the minute he got there, but he was too self-absorbed.

00:32:47.880 Like, those are all things that aren't illegal.

00:32:50.740 No one's going to arrest you for not being prepared once you get to the front of the line.

00:32:55.440 However, the fact that you didn't do it is going to hold up everybody else.

00:32:59.860 And if everyone does this, then it delays the process of everything.

00:33:03.960 So there's just so many things in our society that assume that we are going to have a certain level of social coordination.

00:33:11.080 I don't know how true the story is, but I heard it.

00:33:13.640 So I'll just tell it because it's a good illustration.

00:33:15.680 Maybe maybe it's over.

00:33:17.080 And, you know, we hear all these things about the Soviet Union, but maybe this one's overblown, but it sounds realistic.

00:33:23.800 You know, in certain countries where, you know, this kind of expectation is broken down, black markets arise and things like windshield wipers, which you would assume are not very valuable, but are very easy to steal because they're not really locked down, become a problem, right?

00:33:41.260 Like the windshield wiper blades, you could grab them and sell them for like 20 bucks.

00:33:46.060 And so, you know, people in any reasonably trusting society just leave their windshield wiper blades on their car, even though technically someone could steal them because ultimately it's not that high dollar value of an item.

00:33:59.700 And you just trust people ultimately, like maybe they'd be tempted if you had gold bars sitting on the front of your car, but in a relatively high trust society, you don't have to worry about this, right?

00:34:11.200 However, in societies where that trust is broken down and you can you can sell these things on the black market and people are desperate, then leaving your your windshield wiper blades is a liability because every time you come out on a regular basis, you know, they've been stolen.

00:34:27.260 And anyone who's lived in one of these high crime areas with a lot of drug addicts who are looking for things to hawk for, you know, know this, right?

00:34:34.620 Like people will run around stripping the copper out of out of houses and things to try to sell them, that kind of stuff.

00:34:40.980 So if you're in this scenario, you know, windshield wipers seem pretty obvious.

00:34:45.100 You just turn them on when it starts raining and it's very simple.

00:34:49.220 However, if you have to worry about people constantly stealing your windshield wipers, well, then you might take them off, right?

00:34:56.900 And that's what happened in this in the story about kind of a Soviet Union satellite that was falling apart, that they had to remove the windshield wipers to make sure that they get stolen.

00:35:07.200 Well, what happens in that scenario is, yeah, you're normally just driving on a rainy day and you have to turn on the windshield wipers as soon as it starts raining.

00:35:15.320 But if you live in a society that is low trust, where everyone is worried about constantly having their windshield wipers stolen, then what happens is everyone keeps them in the car and they have to stop.

00:35:26.900 Get out of the car, install the windshield wipers and then get back in the car and turn them on once it starts raining.

00:35:34.200 And so now traffic, anytime it starts raining, immediately comes to a complete stop.

00:35:39.360 And the system that otherwise would have worked very easily, very, you know, very, very well breaks down because you have to like stop all of traffic the minute it starts raining for every person who was scared of their windshield wipers getting stolen to take them out of the car, install them, get back in the car, turn them on.

00:35:57.740 Just a small example, again, if something you take for granted, of course, I'm driving in traffic, it starts raining, I hit a button on my car, I flip the lever on my car, and then the windshield wipers go on.

00:36:09.380 Something you just assume to be naturally true, of course I can do this, right?

00:36:13.540 However, in a society where this isn't the case, you end up in a very bad scenario, it delays the functioning of everything in your society.

00:36:22.940 Well, we are now seeing this at scale, right?

00:36:25.200 This is really where the shopping cart meme gets serious.

00:36:28.620 So now we've reached the part where we're kind of moved beyond the joke, but it really becomes serious.

00:36:34.140 You should be returning the shopping cart, by the way, guys, don't be an animal.

00:36:36.900 But the reason that so much of our society has broken down, the reason that it's becoming more and more difficult for us to operate at a large scale, our complex society, is that we've lost so many of these behaviors.

00:36:52.040 So much of our complex society was built around the idea of a high-trust society, one in which the cart would be returned, right?

00:36:59.520 And we just didn't have to tell everyone constantly to do the right thing.

00:37:03.220 We didn't have to force them to do the right thing.

00:37:04.860 We didn't have to compel social cooperation on a regular basis.

00:37:09.000 It occurred because we shared the same culture.

00:37:11.560 We shared the same understanding of a way of being.

00:37:15.100 We knew what should be done, and we did it.

00:37:17.380 And when you have a society like that, then you can reach for the stars.

00:37:21.740 You can literally go to the moon.

00:37:23.380 You can literally go to Mars because you have a society in which a lot of the friction of society is gone because you're all working on the same page.

00:37:32.040 You understand something important about society.

00:37:35.180 You make sure that everyone is meeting that expectation.

00:37:38.140 And then we don't have to constantly guess.

00:37:40.080 Like, is that person going to conform?

00:37:41.900 Am I safe to do this thing?

00:37:44.140 Am I going to lose out on my business?

00:37:45.940 Am I going to lose out on my car?

00:37:47.760 Am I going to – is my wife safe?

00:37:49.820 Are my kids safe to go play?

00:37:51.160 Like, I don't have to worry about these things because the assumption is there, right?

00:37:56.240 And people will look at a place like Singapore and say, well, you know, you can do a lot of that stuff now, but it comes with a high degree of authoritarianism, right?

00:38:04.760 Like, the penalty – Singapore is a place that has a lot of different people.

00:38:10.200 They have different ethnicities, different religions, all living in the same place.

00:38:13.680 But what allows this multicultural society to flourish is basically very harsh authoritarianism and the removal of, you know, basically democracy in that scenario. 0.94

00:38:23.800 Everyone has to conform because they're – you know, the law is very strict.

00:38:28.760 They compel that, right?

00:38:30.620 However, that's what it takes in a society where everyone doesn't – isn't on the same page.

00:38:35.780 Like, it can be done.

00:38:37.100 We know how it gets done.

00:38:38.320 It gets done through harsh government interference.

00:38:41.060 Well, the United States is increasingly a place – and many Western countries are increasingly a place – where we've encouraged diversity, right?

00:38:46.800 Diversity is our strength.

00:38:48.520 Multiculturalism.

00:38:49.100 It's all about the melting pot.

00:38:50.320 The problem is that when people come in, they often don't have the same expectations, right?

00:38:56.500 Now, some people do.

00:38:57.520 They can assimilate to become valuable parts of society.

00:39:00.140 We've assimilated plenty of people into becoming good Americans.

00:39:02.480 However, the more people you bring in, from the farther away you bring them in, the more – you know, the different – the more diverse the cultures get, the harder it gets to do this, right?

00:39:11.920 When it's like one degree of separation away, it's easier to assimilate people into this understanding.

00:39:17.500 The further away it gets, the harder it gets.

00:39:20.280 And the more people who come in, the harder it gets.

00:39:22.880 And the more that people, you know, kind of live together, they kind of live in ghettos or enclaves, they don't become part of the society, the harder it gets.

00:39:31.360 So we've been doing all of the wrong things.

00:39:33.400 We're bringing in a lot of people from as diverse nations as possible and bring them in in large chunks so that they can kind of live together in a specific area so they don't have to, you know, go ahead and integrate.

00:39:45.820 And you end up in this scenario, right?

00:39:47.680 You end up in this situation where no one is actually assimilating because they don't have to.

00:39:52.880 You've eliminated all the things that would actually compel anyone to assimilate to this way of being, right, to this understanding.

00:40:00.440 However, this – you know, all of society degrades this way.

00:40:03.180 There are plenty of people who are – you know, were born and raised in America at this point that will not return the cart. 0.79

00:40:08.720 Simply don't do it, right?

00:40:09.980 And so it's not just like, oh, well, people come from another place and they don't do it.

00:40:13.980 Like there are plenty of people who live in the United States who have also lost this ability, you know, this level of self-control.

00:40:20.280 They have too much – their time preference is too high.

00:40:24.100 They've been told that they don't need to care about others, right, ultimately.

00:40:27.360 And so we end up in this scenario where our social cohesion breaks down.

00:40:31.100 Now, I wanted to talk on the – kind of before we wrap this up and look at a few more memes, I wanted to talk on the kind of the way that the left and the right destroy this social coordination, the way that both sides end up destroying the shopping cart rule.

00:40:46.420 Now, from the left, the shopping cart nationalism is destroyed generally by this idea that there's something wrong with having this unified understanding.

00:40:58.020 And you have seen this all over the place, I'm sure, before with all this DEI stuff, right?

00:41:03.220 Math is white supremacy. 0.58

00:41:05.060 Caring about the spoken word or the written word is white supremacy.

00:41:08.880 Caring about punctuality and perfection.

00:41:11.220 Like these are all colonial, you know, oppressor, you know, ideologies.

00:41:15.300 Like that's what the left pushes around.

00:41:17.240 And so one way that we kind of break down this social cohesion is to say, oh, well, we can't – we shouldn't be made to conform to this.

00:41:25.140 Everyone should be allowed to do what they want.

00:41:27.220 That's not ever a good recipe, right?

00:41:29.720 It's e pluribus unum.

00:41:32.060 It's from many.

00:41:33.240 One.

00:41:34.500 You have to have a standard you conform to.

00:41:36.920 Excuse me one second.

00:41:42.960 You have to have a standard you conform to.

00:41:45.040 That's what assimilation means. 0.92

00:41:46.640 If you don't have a predominant culture, then there's nothing for people to join, right?

00:41:52.780 That's why diversity is never your strength.

00:41:55.120 That's why multiculturalism never works. 0.98

00:41:57.360 Because if you don't have one ideal that people are kind of moving towards as part of the society, if you don't have a shared moral vision, if you don't have a shared social understanding, then there's nothing for people to assimilate to.

00:42:09.940 And the process breaks down.

00:42:11.300 You can't bring anyone new in because anyone new you bring in is allowed to do whatever they want, and they have no need to understand what you are trying to move towards.

00:42:21.040 And so for the left, they say, oh, well, there can't be one way that everybody has to do things, right?

00:42:25.380 We can't have this Christian understanding of morals. 1.00

00:42:29.600 We can't have this European understanding of social structures.

00:42:32.800 We can't have this colonialist understanding or whatever.

00:42:35.980 They come out with all of these ways to attack the idea that, no, we should have a predominant understanding of what our culture is.

00:42:44.640 And if people are allowed to join, that's great.

00:42:47.400 If they're given the privilege of joining, that's fantastic.

00:42:49.500 But they need to join.

00:42:50.700 They need to conform to that thing.

00:42:52.240 That's what makes us who we are.

00:42:53.920 You don't want to go to Paris and find out that they don't do anything the way that French people do. 1.00

00:42:58.900 You don't want to go to London and find out they don't do anything the way the English do, which, by the way, is exactly how those cities basically run at this point, having visited both of them.

00:43:07.880 You don't want to go to the United States and find out that they don't do anything the way that the United States used to do it, because that was the whole reason you were supposed to come.

00:43:15.540 We're now in the scenario where immigrants are showing up and saying, I'm not going to stay here because it's not anything like I expected it to be. 1.00

00:43:22.680 It just runs like my country used to.

00:43:25.360 All right.

00:43:25.680 It doesn't run like it's supposed to.

00:43:28.140 It doesn't run the way I'd always heard it would.

00:43:30.560 It doesn't have the high trust society.

00:43:32.420 It doesn't have all the features I'd want.

00:43:34.840 And so they kind of turn around.

00:43:37.660 And that's the scenario you're in when you kind of reject this idea that there's one unified way of being that comes to dominate a specific culture.

00:43:47.020 That doesn't mean everything's exactly the same.

00:43:48.580 It doesn't mean you have to run around smacking everyone with a ruler every time they get something wrong.

00:43:53.280 But there's a general understanding that, yeah, no, we will have this way that we do things and we will culturally enforce it.

00:44:00.840 You don't have to have a police officer sitting there writing you a ticket every time that you have a shopping cart out of place, because ultimately we understand that everyone's going to kind of look at you weird and you're going to know you did the wrong thing.

00:44:12.580 And, uh, all right, I should probably go ahead and do that.

00:44:15.700 Like just that basic social, uh, you know, guardrail does a lot.

00:44:19.840 And that that's the nice stuff.

00:44:21.000 That's when you don't need totalitarianism.

00:44:22.740 Like you don't need to have a highly authoritarian government when you have that expectation, because like the virtue of your society, the social fabric of your society already exists.

00:44:33.240 And you don't have to compel it with law constantly.

00:44:35.720 Now that's how the left does this.

00:44:37.800 They break down the shared understanding, the shared goal of what you should be doing.

00:44:42.200 On the other side of this, you have the, uh, you have the, uh, Republican or the, the right wing, uh, you know, kind of libertarian answer, which is, oh, well, uh, economically, uh, this creates jobs, right?

00:44:56.020 Like the, the fact that we leave these carts around, uh, creates jobs.

00:45:00.320 Someone gets paid to go out and pick those carts up. 0.97

00:45:02.940 And so you're creating economic activity by not returning the shopping cart.

00:45:07.340 And even people who work at, you know, grocery stores will say this, you know, the people will say, Hey, you know, the best part of my day when I was working in a grocery store was going out and get the, getting the carts.

00:45:17.120 You know, I, I want to leave.

00:45:18.780 I don't want to have to stand inside all day.

00:45:20.880 I want to walk around.

00:45:21.900 I want to be able to, you know, I guess, you know, catch a cigarette was what they used to do on those breaks or whatever, but you know what I'm saying?

00:45:27.720 They want to break up their day.

00:45:29.020 They don't want to be inside the whole time and, you know, bagging groceries or whatever.

00:45:32.360 So they want to be able to get out there and do that.

00:45:34.640 Now I understand that perspective.

00:45:36.100 I too have worked menial jobs, retail jobs, and never, never grocery store, but I've worked retail jobs.

00:45:42.080 You know, I've worked, you know, food service, that kind of thing, uh, waiting tables, whatnot.

00:45:46.560 So I hear you sometimes just breaking up the monotony of your day is better, right?

00:45:52.280 Like that, but ultimately this is a bad way to view things because yes, for you personally, it's better.

00:45:57.380 And yes, technically somewhere, the fact that they have to employ someone to do this makes, makes money in some sense.

00:46:07.920 Sorry.

00:46:08.400 Throat's a little scratchy today.

00:46:09.260 But this is ultimately bad, right?

00:46:14.060 Because like I was saying, the fact that people have to run around and enforce this stuff, the fact that you have to employ people to do these things, reduce it, you know, reduces your, uh, uh, the kind of the fluid nature of your society.

00:46:28.860 The fact that you, you know, people don't do the right thing means you have to employ people to take care and do the things that they were supposed to do.

00:46:35.660 Now, yes, technically that is economic activity, but that is a very short sighted way to view this.

00:46:40.840 That's a very economics, you know, spreadsheet way to view this because longterm, this is going to cost your society things.

00:46:47.280 Yes.

00:46:47.760 You, you only have to pay someone a little more to have them go get the cart.

00:46:51.100 It doesn't seem like a big deal, but that means that the people who are getting the cart don't have, you know, there's a certain level of impulse control that they lose.

00:46:58.360 And they, they take that lack of impulse control and they move it into things like dealing with their family or dealing with their job.

00:47:04.880 Let's say they do a really, uh, complex job, like, uh, working at, uh, SpaceX, right?

00:47:10.740 You, you want them to have that low time preference.

00:47:13.600 You want them to have that impulse control.

00:47:15.260 You want them to have trained that across many different parts of, of their life.

00:47:19.860 Again, I used to be a high school teacher.

00:47:22.200 I've seen this so many times.

00:47:23.960 We'll remove one facet or another of the things the kids used to have to do.

00:47:28.360 Right.

00:47:28.760 Even something simple, you know, that that's technological.

00:47:31.280 It's not even necessarily moral, like moving from paper to, uh, laptops, right?

00:47:37.100 The fact that kids had, uh, had to keep a binder in order and had to organize it and store their work and keep an eye on things.

00:47:45.460 That built a certain level of responsibility, uh, you know, change the way that they approach things.

00:47:51.540 And that transfers over to many other things that they do in life, even though it seems like a small thing by managing that small responsibility.

00:47:59.000 And this is just a basic biblical truth, right?

00:48:01.360 He who has been, you know, faithful with, with little can then, you know, be trusted with more.

00:48:06.780 If you're unfaithful with a little, you're not going to be given more.

00:48:09.000 And this is a very similar, you know, just scenario that you see play out over and over again, is that people who squander the small things who don't build that discipline in the small things ultimately can't build the great things.

00:48:21.020 And so a society where you have to pay people to go get the cart, yeah, technically you're generating economic activity.

00:48:27.660 Yeah.

00:48:27.780 Maybe even the people getting paid to do, to do the, the task are happy that they get that break from whatever else they were doing, but ultimately it's not good for society.

00:48:36.940 Also, you see this with people who make the same argument with say like the, the Aldi quarter return, right?

00:48:42.540 Well, we can train people of into this behavior by, by compelling it with a quarter.

00:48:47.420 Now, don't get me wrong.

00:48:49.060 If society has broken down, if you have to do this, right, then it's better than nothing.

00:48:53.760 Ultimately the, all the, the Aldi quarter return cart is a compromise, right?

00:48:59.620 It's saying, well, the people are no longer virtuous enough to perform this task on their own, but we can compel their behavior with the quarter.

00:49:09.420 We're not, we're not going to pay someone else to do it.

00:49:11.080 We're going to make them do it, right?

00:49:12.560 We're going to train them to do it for us.

00:49:15.240 And we actually see this all over the place.

00:49:17.840 Additionally, you know, or especially as our social fabric breaks down, more and more corporations are having to train people to do behaviors that they used to do naturally through this kind of manipulation.

00:49:31.460 Again, it's better than a parking lot full of carts sitting in the parking spaces, but it is ultimately a degradation of what the shopping cart represents.

00:49:42.600 The thing that the shopping cart really represents is not whether or not the cart is back in the corral.

00:49:48.140 Well, the thing it represents is you have a society where people care enough about social expectations and each other kind of make this a normal thing that they do.

00:49:57.740 And so if you have to compel it with the quarter, that's a breakdown.

00:50:00.520 And also I've been in these scenarios where you have the Aldi, you're right, you're right next to another store and people often people who aren't from here, you know, will come in and they will take carts from the other store and they will take them in.

00:50:15.700 So they will just steal carts from the store next door in that cart corral and they will take that one in instead of using a quarter to get the one from Aldi because then they'd have to return it and they can't be bothered to either prepare and bring a quarter or return the cart when they're done.

00:50:31.400 And so they just take a cart from another store like an absolute animal and then bring it in and they go shopping with that.

00:50:38.300 And so that's the way that a lot of people approach that.

00:50:40.460 So that's just what I wanted to lay out, guys.

00:50:42.600 Again, maybe not our most esoteric theory episode of the show, but I do think the shopping cart nationalism matters.

00:50:52.040 I think that a world in which people return the shopping cart, not just at the grocery store, but in every aspect of life, is a better world.

00:51:00.080 I think it takes a certain level of kind of duty that you have to the people around you, which requires you to have a certain level of social cohesion.

00:51:07.600 You need to share certain beliefs about the way that things should be.

00:51:11.700 These are often religious beliefs, but they don't always necessarily have to be, but they usually are tied to some kind of religious paradigm, understanding of the way things should be.

00:51:21.040 And so I think, you know, as we see these different aspects of our society break down, thinking about how we can return a certain level of order, restoring our order, some would say, is important.

00:51:35.540 And we can do this with just thinking about things like shopping carts.

00:51:39.240 Some of the memes that people sent in, I asked people to send some of their best memes.

00:51:43.260 We'll hit those real quick before we go.

00:51:45.140 We got the White Boy Summer Apparel guys.

00:51:48.360 Apparently, they have a put-it-back shirt, which is excellent.

00:51:50.860 You can have high style while reminding people to lower their time preference and be pro-social.

00:51:56.580 People sent me the, you know, kind of reject, regeneracy, return, return your carts, which is a good one here.

00:52:05.180 Let's see.

00:52:06.440 Yeah, we have the synth wave return meme here.

00:52:11.660 So, yeah, you get the idea.

00:52:13.440 We need the carts back.

00:52:14.800 We need to return to a society that will return the carts.

00:52:18.600 All right, guys, let's go to the questions of the people real quick before we wrap up.

00:52:26.580 So, Creeper Weirdo says, too big to rig.

00:52:29.660 That is all.

00:52:30.540 Yes.

00:52:31.040 Yeah, a lot of people are already pointing to Trump's leads that seem to be forming and early voting in places people didn't expect.

00:52:38.680 But remember, Democrats, they love to change the votes.

00:52:43.140 They love to, you know, the votes, they go places.

00:52:45.760 They do things.

00:52:47.220 Maybe they don't show up where they're supposed to.

00:52:49.080 They get reported oddly.

00:52:50.020 So, we're, you know, we're thinking about the implications here. 0.90

00:52:54.200 And then Tiny Stupid Demon says, so if someone has to break out their toolbox in the parking lot and start fixing their wobbly wheels, would you make the, would that make them a shopping cart fascist?

00:53:12.140 Yeah, if you're there making sure that all the shopping carts are in working order, you cannot survive in a world where shopping carts are not properly put in their place. 0.90

00:53:22.900 And you demand that even the wheels be, you know, properly aligned.

00:53:27.120 Then, yeah, you may be showing some of those tendencies, the authoritarian personality that they warned about.

00:53:32.660 I think it was Adorno there.

00:53:33.580 And, oh, speaking of White Boy Summer, they said, what's that shirt to wear, Oren?

00:53:38.660 We'd love to send you a put-it-back shopping cart shirt on us.

00:53:43.380 Everyone needs to do their part, return the cart.

00:53:45.340 Well, thank you very much, guys.

00:53:47.460 I'll shoot you a DM.

00:53:48.660 Maybe we can get that set up.

00:53:49.860 I appreciate that.

00:53:50.640 Yeah, very cool shirt.

00:53:51.940 It's a good idea.

00:53:52.720 I'm glad you guys have it out there.

00:53:55.280 All right, guys.

00:53:55.820 We're going to go ahead and wrap this one up.

00:53:58.160 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

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The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 28, 2024

Shopping-Cart Nationalism ｜ 10⧸28⧸24

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