Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety nine, Episode two of.
Daly's Like Yesday productive of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America share consciousness. And it is Tuesday, August eight, twenty twenty three, which of course means, oh.
Tuesday, your boys slipping because the fever don'et cook his brain a little bit on the weekend.
But he's back.
Actually I'm back, folks until we love it. It's actually National Dollar Day. Don't know what that means, but someone's holding a bunch of singles. National happiness happens today.
What dollars bribery underrated? There you go, the little children. But if that sounds weird when it comes to my own children getting them to do their.
Oh for a dollar for a dollar, yo, you get My five year old woke up.
This is this all has to do with like jetlag. But yeah, he woke up and did his They do like like Kuman, Yeah you know that, like they do that, and he he will fight me to the death to get like just one six traced. Usually this morning when wake up to write, it's just right. The sick he'll do it wrong on purpose. He'll draw, you know, he just he's Yeah, he got up before us and did his kuman today because there was a single dollar at steak. So shout out to natural national dollar death.
Wow, but did you're younger? Did young the youther?
So that was the elder. The elder was pissed that he got up before him. Kids. These children very competitive.
I get it. You see a dollar ship. I was like when when I would be when my grandparents would baby sit me and like my cousins or some ship, and like my younger cousin will get like.
A dogs, like, I'll do that eight times.
Better try and take his dollar. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, it's also National CBD Ray Day, brath, National Mochi Day, National pickleball Day. Oh, I know that's contentious, Global sleep under the Stars night. Oh sure, National Frozen Custard Day. I love a frozen cluster. Yeah.
I had some frozen custer core brothers back in Ocean City. Oh yeah, kind of drips. It's still like so thick, you know.
Yeah, it's just it's delicious.
It's a non Newtonian substance. Yeah, my name's Jack O'Brien aka. I hit him up, said I'm on those guys. It been a while, I think since ninety nine. We started talking work. I asked, what do you do? But then he said private equity and that's when I started talking. You aps. Nobody likes that private equity making cash on company's death throws. Have you heard of cold gas study? I think we should have a living wage. What's a fair wage?
Again? Uh?
That is courtesy of Johnny Davis folks sst Spice the Discord, and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Gray.
Oh it's Miles Gray aka gray Man, a father of the Zeitchild.
Champion for his son.
You're the master of Burbank and Lancasham for everyone. I mean, you know Burbank like the street Yeah, you know, I wouldn't say like as a town like that's really my shit, but it's adjacent, you know, it is bordering. It does touch you touch elbows with North Hollywood. So yes, by just like when you're playing Civilization and you want to get a cultural victory, you know, the influence does spread past my borders into Burbank. So yes, thank you to Taxy cr for that one on the Discord.
My man well, Miles, it is the Expert Guest episode, and we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat.
Yes bye, nobody me. I read a fucking book, but a good book. I am a genius. I read talking about I'm going to tell you about it.
Jack likes to do this and I keep telling him I can't read, but he won't tell me the book, and then he's like, I gotta tell you about it. I'm like, if you just told me about it, I could read it too.
This thing I learned, it's in my brain now, so I got to tell you about it.
Have you ever met people who would not share a book title with you because like they were they wanted to sit on that information. This is sort of pre internety.
No, oh man, they'll be like I forget what it's called, or they're just like.
Yeah, yeah, kind of like like they don't want other people. Like one of my older cousins didn't want to share Confessions of an Economic hit Man with me.
Well, that's top level intel man, you can't tell you about that on that.
I think he just liked it because like at the time when that book came out, like he was trying to be like the fucking Dulseki's most interesting mother in the room kind of thing. Yeah, you actually know about the like how why the Panama Canal is built. It's like, okay, hold on, let's.
Not let's where'd you learn that?
Uh?
Top level clearance?
You should really look at a lot of the engineering firms that do a lot of these like large scale infrastructural programs that are funded by the IMF And you're like, what what is this?
What read competitors of an economic Amman? No you do, but yeah, just like that book felt that was a real phenomenon where you felt like you were getting, oh Cia briefed with some information that like you're like looking around as you're reading it, being like, is someone going to kill me for knowing?
Am I about to get two to the back of the dome right now? Is basking Robbins for having this book out?
I think the version that I had like looked like it was like printed on a dot matrix printer or something.
It wasn't.
It wasn't like a full ass book like from a good publishing house. It was like passed over to me by There's probably just somebody doing the same thing as your cousin like wanting to seem like they were like in on some hot shit, and so yeah, created a version that looked like shits. Anyways, that's a good that's a good book that kind of touches on some of the themes that the book I'm talking to you about today talks about that book I finished, The Ministry for
the Future. Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna talk about some of the themes, some of the reasons that I think it's you know, usually I'll read a book and then I'll just find really sweaty ways to like shoehorn the information I learned in the book into the conversation that we're having, the speaking of Trump elect vehicles, What what the fuck are you talking about? So this is
just you know, we have these Evergreen Tuesday episodes. Is a chance for me and you too kind of have a more extended conversation about the subject.
The reason being like, we have so many depictions of what like end same climate change disaster looks like, and we have really shitty examples. And when you have someone who's a little puts a little bit more thought into their hard science fiction rather than like Roland Emeric, you get things that are tied a little bit more to what's happening around us, and I think it's yeah, it offers. It's good because it gives you a good idea of another way to actually take in what is happening on
the planet. But also, you know, we also there are many ways that we can combat this, because those ideas are also presented in the book. Yeah.
Yeah, but before we get to any of that, miles we do when it's just you and maybe like to give our listeners a chance to get to know us a little bit better. On the Monday trending we do our overrated Underrated. I thought this might be a fun time to do a little bit such history.
What was my over my overrated was? Oh yeah, like dude dude reviews, Dude Barbie takes, dude by word, dude by mouth, Barbie reviews an underrated shout out Pedia like I stay fucking godd baby, and I don't even.
Want some hot Pedia light takes.
As someone who even drank as much as I did when I was younger, and like, yeah, who had just who? In my mind, hitting a volcano vaporizer and eating Jack in the box was how I did it? Like completely putting out the hydration element of it. I really feel like fucking stupid for coming to pedia Light this late in the game and not even a hangover for my fucking illness.
Yeah, the thing I most recently googled, googled, goggled, googled was what we were talking about right before we started recording Toasted Subs. I did not realize this was a thing. And boy are their sandwich names a lot of fun. Yeah. Four people who know a lot about weed. I don't know that Jamaican red or Cali missed or weed strains.
Yeah, so they're like kind of old tiny they're like like gen X strains, you know what I mean.
Okay, I've heard of that.
I like, yeah, exactly, you've heard of that because you've heard it in the eighties film.
Yeah, you know, I think it was the seventies. I think it was like blow when he was like first a weed dealer.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly like that and like and like sensy anything like sense it, like because that's from the word since sama and as in no seeds, which was like one of like the first moves. If you watch like Narcos Mexico's that's sort of like the or like origin crop that like one of the big traffickers sort of started with off with is like we need like some real hot quality shit no seeds and so anyway, Uh, but you are did you go to a chiba hud you are interested now since we.
Were heard from you and super producer Justin and now I believe that it exists. I also don't don't think I knew how to spell chiba. I think it was spelling it with an I in their c h I b A.
So oh, well that is the Japanese Uh, that's the region of course, the culture. So obviously obviously.
Five oh is the name of the sandwich. That's all the pig baby dam genoah salami proshoot up at Ronny Bacon.
Who I'm curious who the owner is, it says it's just some guy named Scott Jennings, which feels like that doesn't feel very chiba hut name.
Yeah, Scott Jennings, Dude, there's a there's a video with this guy and a real flat rim chiba hut hut.
Oh hold on, yeah, let me let's just let's hear this really quick. In case this guy says some really sick stuff about chiba Hut. Oh Jack, Scott Scott Jennings is here to fuck.
Name Scott Jennings. I'm the founder of that chiba hust.
High.
Yeah, I'm a food so I do get high as well. So uh combined the two things. I was best at Arizona State. Arizona State sweatshirt with a surfboard. Uh. Does looks like he couldn't be further away from an ocean and slamming a brew with hand.
Yeah, okay, you know what, Scott? You Okay, it looks you definitely present to someone who's been living that life.
Scott Scott ye dude.
Yeah. But they have fucking like kool Aid there, like out the fountain. Like I remember the first time I went to a cheeba Hut was in Eugene, Oregon. My friend was going to UFO and I was like, what the fuck is this and he's like, it's a wee names dude, and they have kool Aid. And for whatever reason, I love when places served kool Aid.
Yeah, it's just purple kool Aid. I actually had that in Eugene, Oregon as well, but I don't think it was the Chiba Hut, but at a restaurant yeah, at a restaurant.
Yeah, and I know, like you know, like barbecue places will have them like and other like certain restaurants and like regionally they'll have it, but like you never see it in California. I think California is just like what the fuck kool aid? And I'm like, it's the best. You're already drinking a spartam me all days. Might as well just go a whole hog with it.
Yeah, how about you? What's uh, what's something in your search history?
Oh? Okay, So I finished the latest season of Righteous Gemstones. Big recommend you get you get some great uncle baby Billy in there? Oh you you maybe? Yeah? You got to the part where he was he was pushing baby Billy is Babo Bacha's.
Yeah, baby Babo bnka baby Billy Babo Bachas.
The way he says it with his like big fake teeth is just really something else. But as I watched the whole season, there is a there, like without spoiling anything, They're like Sturgel Simpson is is playing a character in it the Country Artists, and I've heard tell of him.
I've not really like listened to his music, but in it he sings like this song, which I think is originally by the Gatlin Brothers called All the Gold in California, and it's just kind of like the way it was sung and like the arrangement was actually really fun, and like one of the first times I was like like this little country diddy here, and so I went on it. Like I was just looking at every conceivable cover of this song, like who else is saying it? Like who
started singing it? I watched like eight versions of the Gatlin Brothers singing in the seventies.
I didn't grab you just it's got a.
Good it's the I think there's like at a certain point it becomes like a choral thing, like there's like multiple voices singing, so the harmonies become really good, and it reminded me of kind of like gospel like singing. So I think that and there's like there was a little bit of tambourine and shit in the background, so it felt it was very accessible from like the gospel perspective in my mind. I think that's what kind of
opened the door. And then I just like the I think I just like the song too because it's kind of about like show business, but in this like very country way where it's like, hey, man, living in the spot that will kill a man out right, and it's just you know, it's you know, you don't want to you don't want to be chasing after all that glitters because it ain't gold.
They got some of the best needle drops. Oh yeah, the stand on the Word at the end of the it's like one of the first episodes after they like hit the guy with their car. I think they killed him. Yeah, drop right into Stand on the Word.
It's whoever the music director is for Danny McBride and all of his projects there fuck and it could be him too, but my god, from like even Eastbound and Down. Yeah, like songs too where you're like, what the.
Fuck this is fantastic, fantastical. Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back, uh and we'll get into the book that I read about climate change, the novelization of the Day after tomorrow. We'll be right back and we're back, And I gotta say, like, so, you know, I've read read the news for for this, for this job, but to this point, my and not really you know, yeah, you folks can tell I'm just I'm skimming here and there,
But in terms of like my fiction intake. Yeah, the climate change fiction that I've taken in over the course of my life has mainly been Mad the Mad Max is, Yeah, all the Mad Max films, water World the Day after Tomorrow. Yeah, And I think that's like, yeah, I mean twenty twelve. I think, like, seems like it should be a climate change parable, but it's actually because out of its way to say that, it's like something weird happening with a core of the Earth.
Yeah, new neutrinos jack from a solar flare obviously are doing something a core or something. But it's also twenty twelve mins new that show, So it was a spooky year.
Yeah, dude, did you did you buy in?
Did you even party you think about twenty twelve? No?
We I mean at Crrecked we definitely covered the bullshit, but we I did not.
I didn't. I didn't believe it was not hard to me. I remember in two thousand and nine I started thinking about it. Oh yeah, I looks like damn, I'm twenty five, Like what can I get done? Like can I make my mom proud? Three twenty twelve? Sh because right now I'm like living with her and like just eating all her food and shit, like started struggling to get a job in the recession, like please, what do I do?
But yeah, it was scariest of all years. There were those Mitt Romney videos. Yeah yeah, yeah, but uh, I don't know the solutions of those films, and in just like the popular imagination to a large degree seems to be everyone's gonna die and then you're left behind because you're the main character of the story to kill or be killed. I think the Day after Tomorrow I remember ending with people like on the space station looking at
the globe and the US is like mostly frozen ice. Yeah, and then and they're like, yeah, but the air never looked so clean, and it's like that's the earth healing itself, killing us all off.
So just yeah, just put just freezing North America is the solution. I mean, fine, so be it? I guess, yeah, do you have anything else to offer us?
That does seem to be like sort of stylish nehilism seems to be the way that is, at least I think I default approached climate change until like we really started digging into.
It, right, because like books like Man are not books, you know, novels like water World again. The novelization very fu fucking water World fucked me up so bad as a kid, like fucked me up because when didn't they come out like ninety four or some shit. I'm like ten years old. I went to see that the Magic Johnson Theater with my grandfather and he was like, wow, He's like that's I was like, what a movie hunt? And I was like shaken to my war as it can really yeah, And I was like.
Because you were like, this is how we're gonna be living.
And well, the logic made sense because like you knew about like the earth heating up and pollution and things at the time. Right now, we had just celebrated getting rid of styrofoam, I remember, and like CFC's and shit, and but like but the logic path of earth become warm ice cap ice melt, therefore the water everywhere vis a v Yeah. And I was a bad swimmer. I was a weak swimmer. Like I was a terrible swimmer.
So there was nothing more terrifying than a world where everything was someone's pool party where I sucked at swimming.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Yeah, And so like there were multiple layers to it. And again that shit didn't really offer you any solution aside from like maybe you could find this map to find a fucking hidden island you could fucking live on or some shit.
Yeah, but it was like you're gonna have to wear a T shirt to cover your weird chest hair because it's a pool party.
Exactly, and I think the kids aren't ready to really accept that yet, or your three hairs you have on your armpit.
My chest hair grew in. I still have a weird patch of chest hair, but it grew in asymmetrically.
What do you mean, Like it favored one side of your.
Chest favored one side and was very like it wasn't like a small amount came at a time. It was like, bam, there's a weird culture of hair. Like I was just like one tenth of my chest was were wolf right away, no way, yeah yeah, and just like down like the left chest guy the way you had to wait.
So so also you were you were rocking, you were rocking the shirt in the pool kind of thing.
Sweatshirt in the pool. No sweatshirt, no, but but yeah, that that was a thought that crossed my mind.
Yeah, if that's if that's water World, then that's your your cross the bear too. But but yeah, no, I think all that to say is like so from time immemorial, my concept of climate change is literally skip any anything in the middle. It's just jumped to the like earth death, where like I'm holding the dust that was once my family.
Yeah, and it ignores like what the reality of the next you know, forty years is probably going to look like. So the goal of the Ministry for the Future is to imagine like the time between now and you know, when it's been. It's like people describe it as like utopian, but millions of people like die from climate change, which it seems like might be inevitable. But it's describes a possibility of like humanity changing the way that we live
on the earth to actually like have a chance. And it's very I don't know, I kept waiting for it to like have like a plot twist or something where it's like and actually I was the one blowing up those planes because and instead it's just very it's kind of hyper like it feels like his goal the whole
time is just like keep it realistic. And this is like the main character is a bureaucrat and you are just like kind of working through it, and it's I read a review that said it's interesting in the way that like the map of your hotel room floor becomes interesting when someone pulls the fire alarm, Like you are just like, okay, well this this is certainly relevant to me. Now.
It's not like I'm not saying it's bad. It's definitely worth reading, but it's like it really delves into like there's long passages, there's just meetings with like finance people and stuff and like talking about how you would make this shit possible, but gives you a.
Much more vivid, you know, idea of of like what potentially is was the work or the processes that we're going to undertake, rather than like, because I feel so much of what we're experiencing right now is just to be like, so are we ever going to get off fossil fuels? Yeah, and then we kind of feel really fucking just destitute and downtrodden and like, you know, hopeless because of just like focusing on one part when this is like a multifaceted issue with many ways to approach
it to solve it. And I think that's what that's why I appreciate works like that that can kind of break our minds out a little bit of that like pattern of thought.
Yeah, I truly just have a very difficult time imagining an end of capitalism because I like, it's a quote, like it's been associated with the author of this book. He's not the one who said it, and like when I've heard him interviewed about it, he's like, I don't I don't like that quote anymore. But like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end
of capitalism. For me, that rings true, Like I just couldn't and and therefore every solution that like comes up, I'm like, but corporations are just gonna like fuck that out of existence, Like if you like any anything like
that is just going to get ruined by us. And I think one of the things that I learned in reading this book is that it's hard to imagine the next forty years from inside the United States, and like especially from inside, like if you pay a lot of attention to the United States zeitgeist, like it is, it has not been leading us in a direction that would suggest like that these things are possible, right that we're going to be talking about. So I don't know, let's
let's dive in. I mean, the first big question the book suggests that like the radicalizing event that that will bring about this sort of globe zeits change is that India sees a heat wave that kills like five million people. Like it's the there's a certain point at which if the humidity is high enough and the heat is high enough, your body just can't cope, like the human body can't cope. And so like it seems like if things don't change,
this is something that's somewhat inevitable. And this radicalizes India as a country, and they start doing some of the things that have been like sort of controversial ideas that people have put out there, like you know, putting reflective material in the upper atmosphere to reflect to like basically dim the sun that we did miss snow piercer as anough, Yes, there is another cheerful look get on how we might
address climate change. But they call it in the book like a double Pinatubo because Penttubo was the volcanic eruption and that most recently like significantly altered the temperature globally for a period of time like I think a year or two and so like the people of India drop like a double pentitubo on the rest of our asses over the objection from the un It's temporary, but it like, you know, it's the first thing that changes people and starts getting people motivated to all right, how are we
going to deal with this?
We need like because that can never happen again.
Yeah, that can never happen again. It's the largest mass death like in the history of them.
And again, if you're just tuning and we're talking about a science fiction book period.
Talking about if you're just joining us, this is Terry gros Stanley Roberts, but like it's science fiction. But a recent article in The New Yorker pointed out that we're actually like not far from the thing from that inciting incident happening Like this spring, or I guess it was. Last spring saw the most dire primonsoon heat wave in Indian history, and it was only a slightly lower humidity that prevented a real life, you know, event on par
with what happens in the book. And still like lots of people die, lots of people are dying from heat already, you know, and it's just our I don't know, like it. We've talked, we've suggested that it's just you know, because it's hard to imagine and there aren't that many movies that depict people dying from heat, so you like, you don't really have it in your head, like what that
looks like. And the pictures that come with it in newspapers are people having fun while opening up a fire hydrunt right, And so this is an event that like kind of makes it real for everybody in India at least, and that that that seems to be something that they also wrestle with that I'm glad they did. It's not like all of a sudden, everybody in Texas is like, man, what happened to the people in India is really bad
and we need to act on it. In the book, they're like, it needs to happen to you or to like your community for it to be real too.
Yeah, and clearly we're I mean, that's usually how the US works, is like it has to literally be on your fucking doorstep, walk through the door, and fuck your shit up, and then you're like, oh, okay, yeah, so that's a thing.
But yeah, he talks about an example of like a neighborhood that got destroyed by a tornado, and like the people the neighborhood over were like, yeah, well that was on them. They were they were in the path of that tornado. And it's like, well, that could have been anything.
Well, it's like even like those like like small group of Republicans in North Carolina, they're like really worried about sea level rise. And yeah, like there other people like just shut up.
They're like I live here and I'm watching it.
The are you talking about?
Right? Yeah, But anyways, so he wrote this book in twenty nineteen. He gave a speech this past April that he actually said the book is too bleak, Like he says, calling like the book talks about how the thirties is what he calls a zombie decade because of all the like institutions that are still coasting on the inertia of you know, the past order of things, right, which you know, banks running everything in the United States and stuff like that, even though they no longer serve us or you know,
make sense in the world. And he thinks that's actually already too pessimistic, and like, to me, that sounds like, oh, that's a great description of the world as it feels inside America right now. In between yeah, just things that are coasting off of inertia. But he sees a lot of like really cool programs around the world that he finds encouraging. I do think this book kind of turned him into a public eco intotellectual, and so he is getting a lot of the information about like all the
stuff people are trying, which is cool. It's it's stuff that doesn't get covered in the mainstream media. And that's probably why, you know, I want to talk about it so much, because it does feel like it's being kept like a secret right from us, and it's kind of important information.
So what are the kind of departures from our you know, are our current norm that you know, that society moves into in terms of like addressing this.
Yeah, everyone just needs to get a tesla and you're good. Yeah, just get a Tesla and give you money and we're good here.
Oh then all right, well, dude, it's been a great episode, right gang, you heard it.
Get it Tesla, baby, get that tesla. No, actually, there's it's conspicuous in the omission that like he doesn't even bring up electric vehicles, or if he does, it's just like a like there's more adoption of this happening like
in the early stages. Sure, sure, we actually like there's another thing for my search history is like car bloat, which is something I found about found out about over the weekend, which is that like, as people are making this transition to electric vehicles, they're also making the cars way way bigger on the roads. Yeah, and even in Europe, like Europe, I'm sorry, I picture Europe as like a bunch of people hunched inside, like those little tikes sides
and you know those like plastic red and yellow. Yeah, yeah, like that That's what I picture the shape of European cars. But like the third most popular highest sales car model in Europe in twenty twenty two is an sub like they're they're turning into I means. Yeah.
We touched on just on the Normal Show about how like people who are like city planning and like do that kind of stuff, or just like cars are too fucking big for streets for fucking parking lots, Like you're not like what the it's eventually like the cars are literally gonna be too fucking big and people are gonna like fucking bump into each other not to mention that these cars are just like way fucking heavier and more tankish than ever too.
Yeah, there's so much heavier like evs like it compared to the like similar size gas burning vehicle. It's not like, well, so you should keep burning gas, but it's just it's a good example of like how in the current system, right, like why I'm so cynical is like the current system will find a way to take it and turn it into like in this case, an arms race.
Yeah, because it's like kind of yeah, consumer consumerist commodification fuck fest where it's like, oh, yeah, the way we get out of it is you buy this thing.
Yeah.
It's like but that's more consumption when we're talking about what the so what the fuck?
Yeah, and so yeah, it's it's like breaking roads. And it's also it's like really scary because those car carriers, so the way the way that's being dealt with right now, by the way, just real quick, and then we'll get
into the things that actually work. But just as an example of why this like hasn't naturally occurred to us, like this, this is what gets done with good ideas, is like so they get these giant like f one fifty pickup trucks that are twice the size of like an F one fifty and nineteen ninety three, but they're electronic and then they are like one of the complaints that people have is that when you have to like transport them, they put them on the back of those
car carriers. Yeah, but they're so big that like they don't you can only fit like a handful of them.
On the back of car wise like because yes, you can see them loaded up with like the normal combustion cars, but the uvs are so much heavier.
Oh, those things are already the scariest things to be driving next to it all high walk like those car carriers where you like just see the weight, like you can just see it looks like it's like a drunk like three hundred pounds person just like teetering next to you. And I have seen bad boys too, So I'm already
like terrified of what's going to happen with us. So the way that the shipping and you know, trucking industry is trying to deal with the fact that it's like you can't fit as many on is just asking for them to change the weight limit on car carriers so that they can carry see, right, more of them.
We're at We're not salt, We're not a rise. We're not rising to the occasion with like actual solutions stupidity. So to make things more convenient for the sales objects.
Yeah, and so this novel asks you would imagine that, like they're like, as the consequences of climate change continue to become like realer and realer to people, you get a world where people are like, wait, what if instead of just doing that, what if we build more reasonably sized cars? Or what since cars don't actually work and electric vehicles are still polluting through the like manufacturing process, Like what if we found other solutions for getting around?
Like what? Yes? So one of the things that he talks about is just the need to transition to a post capitalist system for world governance. Just generally, all right, just like that right? Easy? Easy does it? The point is that like the climate and inequality are part of the same problem, Like, the extremely wealthy will continue to make decisions as if the rest of us don't exist, because under the current system, like practically speaking, as far
as they're concerned, we don't exist. They never have to see us, they never have to deal with the consequences of their actions to Also, capitalism is currently constituted, will continue to extract them, like burn fossil fuels if not otherwise encumbered, right, and so like the current system is set up to reward people for doing things that are bad for us, right.
Yeah, right, right, right, The incentives are things that are not moving towards solutions or anything. Yeah, or or they may be perceived as that in the beginning, but ultimately no, yeah, And.
The most powerful country in the world is still the US, and it's run by capitalism without restraint, like proudly like right. So one of the things he uses the model of Mondragon, which is a worker owned collective in the Bosque region of Spain Espanna.
By Basco Bosco.
So this is a co op that it's a voluntary association ninety five autonomous cooperatives that you know, each co op's highest paid executive makes a most six times the salary of its lowest paid employee. There no outside shareholders. Instead, you have a tryout period and then if they like you enough, you get a chance to buy in to be a part owner of the company that you work for. Right there is like a CEO type person that's called
a managing director. And you know, but the members themselves vote on many of.
Everything, I mean everything.
Of strategy, salaries, policy, The votes of all members, whether they're senior management or blue collar, all count equally.
So like in it, he's saying that like like moving first of all, like we're going to be probably up moving towards worker owned collectives in order to survive. Yes, and and that is a really like that example. If you really like read up on there's like documentaries or you can find shit about the under gun like they it, it will blow your mind as an American labor to see that, you're like. And then so the person right there in the fact they own they also own the company,
yes exactly. And then but what happens, like if they make less money, what about layoffs? Well, see they own
the company. So then rather than answering to shareholders who are saying, why I need my fucking shareholder value to hold up, so you need to lop some heads off and do layoffs, they decide internally what has to be sacrificed, what can be dialed up, what can be dialed down in order for the company to keep going long term, And like that is such a completely different way to engage with what you do for work when you actually have ownership for it, which I'm glad to see something
like that would seem normal, like would seem like naturally like a fair thing to somebody if you like presented the idea to them.
Yeah, especially if the alternative of like just full blown unfettered capitalism or neoliberalism. The current form of capitalism we live under is just like we start to se see the evidence more clearly that it just doesn't like it's not possible. Going.
They got fucking little kids working at the bars now, right, Like that's where we're at.
And they can get their little hands inside the pint glasses, miles.
And they can put help. Yeah, they keep the fruit flies out of the mixer bottles like no, this is but again yeah, like it we can see it play out because it is almost going like we actually already have a script. It's called idiocracy, right, yeah, yeah, it's that version frequently.
But my brain, you know, is so like capitalism poisoned, like it immediately when you talk about like a co op, Like there's this quote in this profile of Mondar going in the New Yorker where Larry Summers, our favorite guy, Harvard president, so he must be liberal and smart, characterized co ops as intrinsically sleepy and short sighted. When you put workers in charge of firms and you give them substantial control over the firms, the one thing you do
not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there. Wow, one is greedy and will try and fuck you, so you just have to fuck them back. Like it's just that very basic, like intrinsic kind of cellular greed capitalism model of humanity that I like grew up. It like that's how I thought for a long time the world worked. But yeah, so there's probably a good reason that like we don't know about it. Is it like has succeeded. Sorry did I cut you off?
No, No, I'm just kind of just rambling on the side agreeing because yeah, I mean, like the it's just wild. When he's basically saying, it's like, yeah, the problem is no, just destructive growth, right, That's the thing that's the only thing about it. And when you hear people who work in work our own co ops or like even people in like in Mandre going there, like it's clear profit is important because you need that to help sustain a hisiness. But that is not the fucking be all, end all.
It's to ensure the longevity of the of this project and just be able to have it be something because like these some of these people are like second generation in the co op where they're like, yeah, my fucking parents started this shit.
Yeah, and yeah, I know this is like to shepherd it as far as the like no growth thing is concerned. This started in I think the forties as like a four people, four students from like this priest who is the founder, like created a community college and then like worked with for the people who graduated from there, who were like really promising students. Like I don't think I have all of this correct, but like it started with like four people that he was like, I bet you
guys would make a good company. And now they employ around eighty thousand people. Seventy six percent of those work and manufacturing co ops and our owners. And it's not like I think the only thing that I had really heard of as a co op in the US's like grocery stores or like little like boutique stores just like mondra go on, Like what one of the manufacturing companies
makes bicycles at an industrial scale. Others make elevators, produce huge industrial machines using the production of jet engines, rockets, wind turbines. They have schools, large grocery chain, a catering company, fourteen technology R and D centers. They even have a McKinsey like consulting firm.
Hey see, right, yeah, exactly.
In twenty twenty one, the network brought in more than
eleven billion euros in revenue. So I don't know, like, I don't want this to be like and they've never had a problem, but it's it's so directly flies in the face of everything I've ever heard about socialism or like well the possibilities of like how an incentive structure can work because of being you know, raised in this country, right, And so the book just like generally creates a model of the present and near future where like things just aren't.
I think I assumed, like the internet had this like pro promise when it first became a thing, and like websites and you know, the freedom of information, and I just assumed that like the fact that it inevitably got fucked up by the forces of capital, like it that it is inevitable and but like when you take a step back and like think about how things could work under a system where like the economy works to serve people rather than like people working to serve the economy.
Like that's the line from the book that is like so basic. I'm embarrassed that I stopped and like wrote it down. But it seems profound that that was.
Your real eyes, real eye.
Oh what the fuck?
Man?
Hold on man, Yeah, totally, I know it's so simple. But again to when you've been propagandized and evangelized about capitalism from fucking the gam meat phase of your life, like yeah, it does. It does seem like it's just like you can't even imagine the inversion of something. It's like, no, what, Yeah, we got to help the economy, Like motherfucker.
That there's nothing about social media that inevitably says that the the companies who provide that service would sell your information for marketing purposes. And it's kind of weird that like it turned into like a brainwashing like addictive, competitive, like fucked up thing like it Like, but that's what
hyper capitalism does. Everything, like the blockchain is a cool technology and theory and hyper capitalism turned it into a fucking scheme, and like that's what people think of when they think of the blockchain, whereas like it could be a very valuable tool and probably will be into the future. They actually do talk about the blackchain event in the
in Ministry for the future. They use it to just make it so that the hyper wealthy can't hide their money in tax savans, like all all money is, yeah,
all money's online, so it can't be hidden anywhere. Like, and the way that that that's brought about is that there's like an attack on the Swiss banks where a lot of the hyper wealthy hide their money and it, you know, they lose they lose track of all the different accounts that they have, and basically they're like, all right, well, you need to make it so that this information is just publicly available, yeah, because the old system kind of
no longer works. And I guess the importance of the internet like point that is that like now everyone one knows so much more than they did before. Like the Internet gives us access to all this information, all of these tools for accessing the information, and it's still just like a tiny drop, but it right, it's harder to fool people, and it's easier to kind of it's going to be harder to hide the realities of the ship from people, or at least it should be in theory, right.
Right, right, It's I mean, it's interesting because so many of these things, right because I know another element because I've I've seen Kim Stanley Roberts speak before too, and he also talks out about like regenerative agriculture, and you know that for something, you know in my mind it's.
Kim Stanley Robinson. I've said that before. I think, yeah, what did I just say Stanley Roberts. Oh I did just yeah, sorry, And I said Kim Stanley Roberts before.
Anyway, like in other talks I've seen him give, just like about the book and just like other sort of like climate change, like like what's like what the fuck
are we go by folks kind of talks. Is to also see like regenerative agriculture be brought up so much, which again feels like when the ultimate sort of theme like if there is any sort of quote unquote solution, it's like to completely like unfuck our heads with the idea that growth is good and we need to be seeking profits at all costs, and especially with regenerative agriculture, it's like a really good way to wrap your head around just how we do things in like the most
backwards way because current like just gigantic mega agribusinesses we're all about, especially in America, just monocrops. It's like this piece of ground will only grow fucking soybeans or corn or whatever. When that's done, we're gonna fucking We're gonna boost the fucking because it's all about yields, what we can get from this. It's all about putting as many fertilizers in and all kinds of chemicals and shit to
bring about higher yields. And then once we pull that shit out, we just let that patch of dirt stay fucking dirt and do let like don't let like nature do its thing like allowing like, for example, just like the soil erosion is a huge thing that I was not really like really understanding its connection to our ecosystem and the destructive way that we farm doesn't allow for our soils to actually regenerate the microorganisms that it needs
and also allows for things like you know, better water absorption. So they're like versions of it, like no tail farming, Like we're not just fucking ripping shit up and allowing plants to put roots deeper into the ground, which means if they have they can go deeper into the ground photosynthesis. They can take that fucking CO two and put carbon
directly into the soil. And another huge part of it I did not realize was that as a reservoir to capture carbon, the ground is like something like many times larger than the atmosphere in terms of its capacity to
absorb carbon. And like when you look at something like that and you're like, holy shit, a lot of And again I'm doing a very like very simplified distillation of regenerative agriculture, but the idea that we need to be actually working in harmony with the earth actually also helps for things like the desertification of our land for drought and you know, carbon capture, and now.
That miles, how do we ten x that? How do we scale that?
And just okay, this is how we cannet that real quick forma yeah, yeah, bank play bank run on that. Yeah ude, what do you think VC play on that?
There?
Should Regenerate agriculture should be people's new social media. It should be people's new bank.
Well, this is the thing. Then this is where this is where our old ways kind of slip in, right, because now many people are using the term but with interchangeable definitions. Whether that means it's regenerative in the sense in the process that we're doing, or that the outcomes are regenerative, and they mean very different things in terms
of how we're interacting with the earth. So again, like when I read stories about that, and some people like the most optimistic forecast and the white paper that the study that this like forecast was based off of has been debated by other scientists, was saying that, like, you know, if you actually were able to properly do certain regenerative practices on like all of our grasslands and farmlands, and that just sort of became the norm, we would capture
all of the carbon that's emitted right now already and have the capacity for more giga tons of carbon. Now, I think a more not getting completely carried away with that version of that. At least for me, that is heartening is the idea that we have all of these tools that we know work right, and whether that means it's gonna one hundred percent or even fucking thirty percent. Any reduction is a good thing along with all the other things we're trying to do as a as a
as a species. But being able to see that those things are available, these are things that we are trying to implement. People are definitely trying to implement it. They are definitely like large interest groups that are trying to do it for many different reasons. But that helps me as a human being move away a little bit from the water world idea of where this thing goes and to know that like like they're there, we have the ways to do this, we just have to fucking put
it together. Yeah, and that's the fucking hard part, right, But I think for me, it's better to have an idea of how to like to actually address the situation rather than to be completely resigned to the fact that
it's going to overtake it. Like of the way I thought about police violence in twenty fourteen is very different than how I think about police violence and how to actually address it now now that I've I've done like more research, more work, more interacting, more conversations with people to know that it's not just like man, it's always going to be like this it's like, well, no, there's
things like qualified immunity that are holding us back. And in the same way, it's really good to be able to also arm yourself with these kinds of points of knowledge because it goes a little bit less from like Okay, well I guess I'm gonna wear my football pads with spikes in it and face pain I burnt out in the desert to being like no, man, like, these are a lot of things like we need to be thinking
about more and are there. But again, that's that's our main battle is to not is to be able to coalesce around these things.
Yeah, Kim Stanley Robinson, like in a in a speech from Kim Stanley Rock, I think I've been saying Roberts and that might have fucked everyone else up. But it was funny. When I googled his name a few weeks ago, I found a found I found a like what one of the Google hits was a transcript of one of our podcasts where I called him Kim Stanley Roberts.
I know, every time I actually talk about it, in my mind, I say Swiss Family Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson to.
But that's a little empirical rap miracle.
Yeah yeah, yo, sorry, fever cooked my brain.
But he he talks about how like in the years since the book, because the book does talk about regenerate agriculture, but he's like, I was a little bit skeptical that it was as big a deal as people were making it seem. He was like, I thought it might be kind of like AI, like this buzz where the people are throwing out and him like, this is just the solution and we can like knock it out and ten exit and scale it. And he's like, no, it's you know,
it's actually a real thing. But again it's it really is like a thing that I've heard him say multiple times. Is that like and he says it a couple of times in the book. Also, is that like profit is inherently predatory and is inherently going to like that that can't be the motive of a world that gets out of this problem.
So there's if that if that in any way is intersecting with what's presented to you as a solution, it is not. It's actually the problem and even as much and we see this so much like in how we re presented products as consumers as a way to do your part, et cetera. When you do you do a lot better. Is like if you fucking can find ways
just to do things immediately around you. But yeah, it is That's kind of what's interesting or that's that's why it makes it so daunting, is that it's like, Okay, so the way out of this is the opposite of this eventually. Yeah, but I think at a certain point there there are too many people who are not benefiting from the current order of things that I guess our hope is that we can we just hit that critical mass or we're all realized, like it's I think something has to be drastically different.
Yeah, all right, let's take one more quick break. We'll be right back, and we're back and just real quickly. I mean, some of the other ideas that they mention that I think are worth mentioning here. So I've heard a lot about like carbon credits and some financialization of like giving people a reason to do. Like he talks about how our current system incentivizes people to do things that are bad for the planet and bad for other
human beings. So in the book, they like create a currency that is basically in the same way that the dollar was originally backed by gold, like the gold standard. This is backed by a carbon standard where but like a reverse gold standard where it's backed by the absence
of carbon. So it's like, you know, all the oil or natural gas that is currently in the earth that hasn't been extracted, like money is created that represents that value and like gives it to the people who like have access, who have ownership over that energy, and then like they basically get paige over a period of time
as long as they're like good actors. But it's it's an interesting idea that I think is only interesting to me because it it's about something that is the extinction of the entire species and many other speeds.
That's our new gold standard is preventing that.
Yeah, but it's like it's kind of the idea which I don't know.
Yeah, well, but to your point, it's like when you look at where like you know, fucking funds go from like national banks or like the IMF and stuff like that, it's not we're not incentivizing people to to undertake these kinds of projects that are going to be a net benefit. It's like oh yeah, like some more drilling, okay, Yeah,
like we'll finance that rather than realizing. But again, that's another subtlety that we have to be able to approach and is happening on a smaller scale, you know, like they do have funds set aside to be able to like help stable other nations that are going through like economic uncertainty. You know, obviously in the past that's been done with in a very coercive manner. But it's like
it's like the conversations are changing there. I think it just feels very weird right now because we're like at the doorstep of hopefully a lot of things changing, so they just feel so fucking in between. Yeah, but my hope is that is moving that directly.
So I don't know. I mean, he's also like he's pretty impressed by the IRA under Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act. You know, it's wild that they had to call it the Inflation Reduction Act to get it past, but it
is a huge spend. It's a bit it's the biggest climate bill of all time, and you know, he says that like groups have estimated that one trillion dollars a year would be enough to get people to do the work to get us to a non apocalyptic future, which sounds like a lot, but the world domestic like the WDP, the gross domestic product for the world is seventy five trillion dollars a year, and we don't don't have a world if we don't spend that one trillion.
So can we connect those dots? Yeah, and I think I think we are. There's an I think we were watching some Probably the same talk too, is that for where we're at, it is important to understand, Yes, we are watching the world literally burn at times flood in biblical ways we had never seen before, but that like I think he was li likening it to the San Francisco Bay and like a choppy, like the top of the fucking there's a cross chop. It looks really fucked up.
There's disasters or setbacks and things like that, but ultimately the current is moving in the right direction. And that is again, it's not a cure all to like or to think that the work is done, but I think it definitely helps to at least understand a little bit and makes sense of that despite we are in this very chaotic transition, but there is in factor transition happening.
It's not that it's just staying at one place. So in that sense, I'm like it helps me feel a little bit better while also helping to like know like, oh, these are the kinds of things like we're going to have to do.
Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well that's kind of what I wanted to do with that episode, is just like kind of talk about some of these ideas that are giving me maybe not like outright hope, but like just I feel like I a lot of my pessimism was misplaced or at least like not not based on how things could actually go. I wasn't fully aware, and this book
helped me to kind of deal with that. So but I'm like, as is very evident from you know, everything I've said here, I'm very early in my education process on this. So you know, zi gang hit us up. Let us know, like what we could be reading, what's interesting to you, If there's anything giving you home on this front, and yeah, I think that's going to do it. Anything else you wanted to.
Cover, Yeah, there's there's no no I thought I did. No, I was gonna say something frivolous about Baskin Robbins again.
But no, no, no, I'm a don't talk about it.
Okay, but yeah, I think again, I just say, like to your point, it's always important when we're faced with the existential dilemmas like this, that we don't just take the water World route in our mind and just go and then it's water World yeacause that is truly like that is how you get that's the quickest road to
apathy for any topic. Yeah, we're facing right now, and I think it's it's so much more you You feel a little bit more connected when you understand that, like this is something that many people are putting their expertise into, but there's also just that critical mass that we have to hit where we all can collectively say that, like this is how we have to do it, and you know,
unshackling ourselves from the like the financial overlords. Well that's that's another conversation, probably for a different kind of episode, will probably Robert.
Evans on Yeah, Yeah, I think there's like I noticed myself having this moment where I was like, there's like a narcissism about be wanting to be part of like the end times, and like there is as you imagine like that, oh no, this is going to keep going on, and there's going to keep being struggle and like the future and like this conflict never stops coming and you're just trying to do your part to like get people to a better place in this conflict, like the people
who come after you. Like there's a I get why people want it to be Nah fuck that it's mad maths because there's like something that it appeals to the inherent like American narcissism, but it's actually like super unhealthy and bleak.
Well, right, because you look at preppers and they're like, yeah, don't worry, dude, I'll eat I'll eat ten cans of food and that's all I get out of it. Yeah, it's like that's can I get you know what? It probably feels like that's how you're gonna do it, but the solutions actually seem a lot easier.
Yeah, And you get talking about people, we miss each other, I believe, like I believe it or not. That's a probably a lot of problems are caused by the fact that we we miss hanging out people. Well, we miss you, all right, that's it. Where can people find your mouth?
At Miles of Gray wherever? And you know all the podcasts, Yeah.
You can find me at check underscore Brian, that's gonna do it for this episode. Back tomorrow, talk to you later. Back this happening.
Yeah, the fever everyone's brain.
Yeah, fever fever, Your fever fried my brain exactly. All right, we'll talk to you'all later. Bye, bye,