Chris Buskirk from 1789 Capital critiques the ESG investment trend, advocating for a shift to Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Growth (EIG) to foster economic prosperity and innovation.
This episode of TFTC with Chris Buskirk from 1789 Capital critically examines the prevailing ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investment trend and introduces a new approach, EIG (Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Growth). Chris argues that ESG has become an "innovation destroying industry" that stifles progress and has led to unprofitable investments and detrimental economic effects through capital misallocation. The discussion extends to socio-political dynamics, highlighting the public's growing recognition of ESG's failures, the impact of virtue signaling on investment returns and productivity, and the strategic moves by BRICS countries in global influence. The conversation also explores the potential of Bitcoin as an apolitical tool for change, the importance of innovation for national prosperity, and Chris's encounter with President Trump.
The podcast episode critiques the ESG framework's negative impact on the economy and innovation, advocating for a shift to Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Growth (EIG). Through Chris's insights, it challenges mainstream investment practices and political complacency, emphasizing the need for productivity and wealth creation over virtue signaling. The discussion highlights Bitcoin as an apolitical catalyst for change and underscores the urgency of a long-term vision beyond political ideologies.
0:00 - Intro
0:14 - ESG destroys innovation
3:17 - Conservative vibe shift
8:02 - River & Unchained
09:18 - Positive vision
15:21 - Positive vision specifics
23:47 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite
25:25 - Broken money
28:02 - Electric cars
30:43 - What DC does to good people
34:55 - Take the white pill and think big
41:04 - What regulation did to capital allocation
45:12 - Generational groups and the remnant
51:00 - Energy
54:48 - Exploring causes
1:01:44 - Stranded gas
1:05:17 - Wrapping up
00;00;00;06 - 00;00;02;17
Marty
Chris, thank you for, for joining us.
00;00;02;17 - 00;00;05;16
Chris
Here. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
00;00;05;19 - 00;00;28;25
Marty
like I was saying, I met, your partner, Owen Mead earlier this year. He gave a great speech on this panel, at the Young Global Leaders event hosted by Scott Atlas in Palm Beach. And I became a big fan of 1789 Capitol. What you guys are doing almost immediately. because I think what you're doing is, is very important.
00;00;28;27 - 00;00;33;21
Marty
fading ESG leading in to the idea e.g..
00;00;33;26 - 00;00;34;19
Chris
AIG.
00;00;34;19 - 00;00;35;04
Marty
AIG.
00;00;35;05 - 00;00;36;24
Chris
Entrepreneurship, Innovation and.
00;00;36;24 - 00;01;14;28
Marty
Growth. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's desperately needed right now. I've been fighting the so in Bitcoin, I'm in the bitcoin mining industry upstart a bitcoin mining company. We're doing off grid oil and gas flare mitigation on upstream well pads in the back end. And so I got introduced to the ESG fight pretty early in like 2018, 2019, where they really came at the bitcoin mining industry for for using too much energy and the wrong energy to using natural gas or reliable energy sources.
00;01;15;00 - 00;01;17;23
Marty
It's something that most people don't like these days.
00;01;17;26 - 00;01;45;25
Chris
Yeah. I mean, look, ESG is like the innovation destroying industry. It's literally just using the of the major financial institutions in this country in order to to kill innovation. It's like it's completely absurd. And, you know, I think like, I'm sort of optimistic might be overstating it, but like, maybe cautiously optimistic that people are starting to figure out nobody has made money on their ESG investments.
00;01;45;27 - 00;02;06;28
Chris
in fact, nobody's not lost money or is losing money on their ESG investments. And yet those mandates are still out there. They're in all kinds of fun documents. They're in the documents that asset managers have to live by. and yet the dirty secret is, they don't work. And by the way, losing money is the best thing that ESG does.
00;02;07;06 - 00;02;32;15
Chris
It's like if you, if you're an asset manager or you invest $1 billion in ESG, you might lose 5% a year. You know, five years are going to lose 25, 30% or something. That's the best thing you just did with that money. Actually, the second order effects are worse than the first order effects, because the misallocation of capital, it it's the the opportunity costs associated with that misallocation is really huge, right?
00;02;32;15 - 00;02;44;26
Chris
It incentivizes all kinds of bad destructive behavior and it stifles actual innovation. The only way that we have, any sort of sustainable prosperity in this country is if we continue to innovate. Yeah.
00;02;44;28 - 00;02;47;15
Marty
Yeah. It can't virtue signal your way to returns.
00;02;47;18 - 00;03;02;12
Chris
Which you can't. You can't virtue signal your way to returns. You can't virtue signal your way to increase productivity. And you can't virtue signal your way to, to to increased, national or individual wealth. Try as people might.
00;03;02;15 - 00;03;22;18
Marty
Yeah. Well, see, have we become a nation of virtue signaling? Obviously, the returns for ESG have been bad, and the concept of the vibes shift has been big, particularly in conservative circles. And I would argue that it seems like people are starting to wake up, especially as the pain of price inflation begins to weigh on everybody, particularly the middle and lower class.
00;03;22;21 - 00;03;48;24
Marty
You know, people are throwing their hands up, but with that in mind, like it feels like in the US over the last two decades, we've been a bit complacent. And you see BRICs countries making a big move, particularly post Russia, U.S. Treasury freeze. it seems like we're at a massive inflection point and particularly at the federal government level, the US seems to be sitting at the wheel.
00;03;48;27 - 00;04;09;00
Chris
again, I feel like it the same thing with ESG. I wish they were asleep at the wheel there to be an improvement. Like it's like it's like it's like, the Hippocratic oath. First, do no harm. Like, we got to get them back. That's neutral. Right? We've got to get them back to where there's. They stop actively doing harm, you know, just a to pick up on something you said a second ago.
00;04;09;00 - 00;04;34;14
Chris
Just like, sort of like conservatives have figured out, that ESG is a scam and a harmful scam, but that that's true. That's true. But I actually, you know, I was at this dinner with President Trump a couple weeks ago and he, he made this kind of side comment of, as he does what, you know, he just he gets up there and he riffs, you know, if you talk about the president, by the way, you have to you have to it's obligatory impersonation.
00;04;34;14 - 00;05;00;27
Chris
It's too far not to do. but he says, you know, like new girls and women's sports, like, secure borders. sound money. More like more jobs. He says conservative just sounds normal to me. Yeah, that's that's it. Like, it's like a there's some part of me that thinks, I mean, I'm a conservative, happy to say it, but there's a bunch of this stuff that doesn't or shouldn't have, like a political ideological valence.
00;05;00;27 - 00;05;29;25
Chris
Like if you want to have like low crime rates and stable money and like lack of inflation, like, is that is that a concern? Is that like an ideological position? No, I don't I don't think most people think about that. So I just always wonder when we're thinking about these things in like these stark right left terms, it's true that it's associated with with people who have a particular political point of view, but there's also a bunch of sort of apolitical people, like, I don't know, I think maybe it would be a good idea if if people could get good, good paying jobs.
00;05;29;25 - 00;05;44;08
Chris
And we had industry in this country like, so, I don't know, I just, I've just been thinking about that. A bunch of the president made that like totally a side comment. I'm like, yeah, that actually makes sense. That just like basic American normal person values.
00;05;44;09 - 00;06;01;05
Marty
Yeah. Well, it's like the meme going around Twitter. I think it resurfaced. I think I went around a couple of years ago too, but that's like the the spectrum on the political spectrum on a line is very short. So somebody left of center and then everybody on the left just ran all the way to the left side of the page.
00;06;01;08 - 00;06;05;27
Marty
Yeah. If you were left of center ten years ago, you're now a neo-Nazi in the U.S.
00;06;06;00 - 00;06;24;00
Chris
There's a, there's a, there's a, there's another sort of form of that. What I just saw, it's like it's kind of has this like it's now it's a distribution graph. It kind of goes like this. so people listening on audio can't see that. But like, but there's like 10%. It's like left and there's like another 5% that's like moderate.
00;06;24;00 - 00;06;28;20
Chris
And then it just shows like this huge distribution that's as far right. Yeah.
00;06;28;22 - 00;07;03;24
Marty
Yeah. With I mean, that is the most disconcerting thing for me is that everything has become hyper partizan, hyper polarized, or at least the media and conversation on social media a lot of times has become vitriolic and hyper. Partizan. I think it's because we've been boxing to this frame, particularly with four year election cycles and the drama around the last two elections, specifically three elections, really, if we go back to 2016, maybe you can argue even earlier.
00;07;03;26 - 00;07;27;22
Marty
but this focus on this four year election cycle, which is called people sort of in this whipsaw of going from one extreme to the other over the last eight years and looks like we're going to do that again potentially this year. it just seems really discombobulated. We're, we're we're over indexing on the government to solve our problems, where I think a lot of effort.
00;07;27;22 - 00;07;44;19
Marty
That's why we focus on bitcoin here. My view Bitcoin as this external apolitical network that we can use to build our way out of the problems that the political class doesn't seem either capable or, willing to solve themselves.
00;07;44;21 - 00;07;45;09
Chris
Yeah. Both.
00;07;45;16 - 00;07;45;25
Marty
Yeah.
00;07;46;02 - 00;08;08;25
Chris
Not capable. Not willing. tell tell a story on that, point, which just goes to, to your point, like I remember when I the first, the so I bought a tiny amount of bitcoin back in the day, like, like other people. It's like, why didn't I, like, sell everything I had. Right. You know, but so I wouldn't even count.
00;08;08;25 - 00;08;39;07
Chris
It was such a small amount. It was like it doesn't even count. Okay. So the first actual meaningful transaction in crypto that I made was in 2017. Eath. and my bet at that time was a very simple bat, which was there's actually a lot of really smart people working in crypto broadly Bitcoin. And then, you know, it was relatively new at the time and it was just a bet on the people and the talent and the people who actually had a really big vision for what was possible.
00;08;39;10 - 00;08;54;17
Chris
And I thought, I don't know, like if you put like it wasn't like betting, like my entire financial future, but it was a meaningful bet on it and it was bet on basically vision plus talent plus energy equals something good. I didn't know what the something good was going to be, but that seemed like a decent bet for it.
00;08;54;18 - 00;09;13;21
Chris
And it was a bet at the time. But it which which worked out well, and I still think that same thing, which is that you have to if we have a big vision for the future that we want, like the phrase I use a lot is we have to and this is like a phrase we use and a I use it in a political context, I use in a business sort of tech context to which is we have to build the country.
00;09;13;21 - 00;09;42;25
Chris
Will we want to live in. And Bitcoin is is undoubtedly a big part of that because it's trying to, it is trying to actually have a positive vision of the future and what it is you want to achieve. And it's building a tool to train achieve that. Like it's and this is one of the frustrating things for people who aren't, you know, sort of brain damaged to spend much time on politics, by the way, which is a tiny, tiny amount of those people.
00;09;42;27 - 00;10;06;18
Chris
which is it's frustrating because nobody actually knows what they want, like the history and slogans like, it's like kind of at a first approximation, people on the left talk about justice and people on the right talk about freedom. but generally don't have a lot below that. Now, I would say, actually, the left has a much more substantial, constructive vision or destructive vision or in other words, they have concrete things they want to achieve.
00;10;06;18 - 00;10;25;00
Chris
But people on the right sort of want to be left alone. right. Like, why can't we just like, I can't it's kind of like I feel like there's like, deer in the headlights a moment that's been going on for like 120 years on the right. It's like, what do you mean they want to do, fill in the blank, whatever this, like, crazy thing is.
00;10;25;00 - 00;10;51;01
Chris
What do you mean they want to do X? You know, I can't believe that. Like, why are we have to fight this fight? But you do. And that's actually my one, sort of constructive critique of, sort of the like the, the I don't know if you're it's probably not like a Bitcoin maxi position, but like the, the position that like it's can be unpolitical because, oh, there's a way to understand politics and human life which is everything has some element of politics and just choices, good and bad.
00;10;51;01 - 00;11;12;17
Chris
How do you want to live. and there and I would, I would say Bitcoin is an instantiation of a positive vision of life. but it is but it is a it does have it's not purely neutral. And I think we should understand it as not being purely neutral as being something that is, gives people the power hopefully to be left alone.
00;11;12;20 - 00;11;27;19
Chris
So I don't want I think it's not a silver bullet. It's, it's not an orange bullet either, but it's, but it's it's a bullet and a powerful one. If it, if we're able to continue, building on the achievements that have occurred so far.
00;11;27;22 - 00;11;36;21
Marty
Yeah, yeah. When I say Bitcoin is a political like the network itself, the protocols, a political word has no idea. Right. But the implement, the.
00;11;36;21 - 00;11;39;26
Chris
Vision behind it. Yeah. And the implementation I think is where the.
00;11;39;26 - 00;12;07;18
Marty
Implementation of the scarce monetary, system seeped in Austrian theory. That's definitely a political divergence from the Keynesian neoliberal model that. Yeah, I'm living under for for decades. But to your point, actually, I'm happy they brought up vision because I released an episode last week with the gentleman named Matthew Pines, who works in DC and is, basically a political strategist.
00;12;07;18 - 00;12;45;01
Marty
And that was the one thing I asked him towards the end of the episode is, what do we need to do to get out of this morass in the United States? Because it seems like like I mentioned earlier, BRICs countries are beginning to form their own coalition and really paint a good vision of the future, whether, we agree with the different leaders and countries and their governance structures, it is undeniable that UAE, Emirates, well, Emirates, Saudi, Iran, even to an extent, they're really seeing that the US is becoming complacent.
00;12;45;01 - 00;13;10;26
Marty
They're making a land grab for talent and capital and resources, particularly as it pertains to energy and AI. and that's the one thing I said, like, I can see because we've seen it, just in the fund space within Bitcoin with 2022 to 2023, pretty terrible years for venture. a lot of the institutional capital, was over indexed to private equity.
00;13;10;26 - 00;13;40;14
Marty
So they weren't they weren't giving off, a bunch of capital to funds that were raising new funds. And so everybody went over to the Middle East and, it's a lot of money there. They're willing to give it out. And, yeah, massive funds raised. and that's it's the prognosis of what's going on is like, yes, they're giving all this money to American venture capitalists because they want inside information on what's going on in terms like innovative technologies that are being built here.
00;13;40;17 - 00;13;57;06
Marty
and I that's what the solution to that was, is that we need long term vision. We can't go back and forth ping ponging from election to election without any decade multi-decade long vision. So in your mind, what would the vision that you would put forth?
00;13;57;08 - 00;14;15;09
Chris
fortunately, I came prepared for that answer because I wrote a book on the subject. So it's, like, I think that if you want to, if you want to, so, actually, let me let me just start with like, an anecdote of how I arrived at this answer first, because I, so I wrote this book that came out last year.
00;14;15;12 - 00;14;45;25
Chris
it's called America and the Art of the possible. and I've told the story a couple of times, but I wrote the first draft of the book with, like 400 pages, and it was one really long complaint of everything that was wrong. And it was like sort of cathartic to get it out. I was writing, I started writing it during Covid, and when I got to the end of it, I just felt like such a loser for right for writing and I'm like, wow, you just spent like a self-indulgent, like 400 pages doing nothing but complaining.
00;14;45;28 - 00;15;17;10
Chris
and it was like I bits. I feel like that's like, just not helpful. it may actually literally be helpful in selling books because people love, like, books that, Yeah. Well, totally. Yeah. It's like just. Yeah, doom porn. I'm like, for now, that's like, that's not satisfying at all. And so I basically scrapped about probably 80% of it and thought, well, okay, like, like what I said, I like in that first draft, I like I think it's true, like those like these criticisms of things that are, are going and have gone wrong, I think are is right.
00;15;17;10 - 00;15;37;05
Chris
But that's only can be the predicate. Right. You have to do have a diagnosis and then you have to have some type of a therapeutic. And so that became effectively in a slightly different form the first half of of the book. And I thought, well, if you think all these things are going wrong, what would it look like if it was going right?
00;15;37;05 - 00;15;55;07
Chris
And so and just my business background, you know, it's always I always you tend to insult one way or another. You tend to think of these things almost like an engineering problem, like what is it? What is it we want? Or how do we where do we want to go? What is it we want to have? And then you can build the tools or the infrastructure to get there.
00;15;55;09 - 00;16;10;00
Chris
And so that and so that's when I said, okay, well we got to make like our goals really concrete, which is what kind of that's where this phrase came from that I said a minute ago, which is build the country you want to live in the world. It's like make super simple things like what would be the what's the good life?
00;16;10;00 - 00;16;32;12
Chris
So, you know, number one, you should be able, in this country to live, a basically a family life, an ordinary family life, husband, wife, two kids, own a house, own a car, have health care, have education. Just basic like what you to kind of think that was like classic Middle American, American dream type of life.
00;16;32;12 - 00;16;54;00
Chris
Not extravagant, but like a totally decent life. where you also own some assets, you know, car, whatever. and house and, you should be able to do that on a single median wage. the last time that was possible in this country was 1989. It had been possible basically throughout the post-World War two, era until 1989.
00;16;54;00 - 00;17;18;17
Chris
And then it slowly got worse and worse and worse. And now, it's been this way for, like, the past maybe 5 or 6 years. There's not a single MSA in the top 25 MSA in this country could afford to buy the median priced home in that MSA on a single median wage, so. Well, that's a problem. so that's one thing we should, have as a nation.
00;17;18;17 - 00;17;25;00
Chris
We should have a fertility rate that's at least at break even. So, about 2.1 worried about 1.65, 1.7.
00;17;25;06 - 00;17;26;19
Marty
Not good.
00;17;26;21 - 00;17;53;23
Chris
there's something strange about that. Just as a side note here, and by the way, this is happening all over the world. Like, fertility rates are falling every place and have been for for decades. There are countries that are still not many, but there are countries that are still above replacement. But you look at places like in even in sub-Saharan Africa or in places in the Middle East where like 15, 20 years ago, fertility was like eight, children per woman, which is a lot, you know, and they're now like maybe three and a half.
00;17;53;26 - 00;18;17;27
Chris
And then you've got places, like South Korea, which South Korea is like. But, you know, the last person out, turn off the lights. Like, I mean, their fertility rate is less than half of the replacement rate. So they're like or demographic collapse. So you should be able to at least replace your population. several like lifespan that's growing.
00;18;18;00 - 00;18;37;25
Chris
lifespan. The United States has been declining for like ten years. so it was, by the way, here's a weird stat. but true, over pure countries in the OECD. So take France as an example. Their longevity is increasing in the same time period where the United States longevity, like lifespan has been decreasing.
00;18;37;28 - 00;18;49;12
Marty
Materially too, I believe, because I tweeted about this had to be like six months ago. At this point, I didn't believe it when I saw the stat and I had to go fact check it. I was like, Holy shit, I think it fell from like 76 to 72.
00;18;49;14 - 00;19;14;00
Chris
It so we work. We did. I think we peaked around 80 or 81 and now we're now we're down in the mid 70s. Yeah. and declining by the way. It's like it's been just consistently down down down down down. meanwhile increasing in like Western Europe. fun fact fun fact is, lifespan in France continues to rise while our lifespan continues to decrease.
00;19;14;00 - 00;19;20;29
Chris
About 35% of all French, of all Frenchmen are daily smokers. I don't know, you do the math.
00;19;20;29 - 00;19;22;17
Marty
Life was better before the smoking ban.
00;19;22;21 - 00;19;43;12
Chris
This is exactly, exactly. but also. But here's the here's the other thing, because I thrown that out there, like, I don't know, I'm pro nicotine, but, like, I'm sort of neutral on smoking. as well. Yeah. Adds ten points of IQ, maybe for temporarily. I know lots of people who might want to double up on the nicotine triple up.
00;19;43;14 - 00;20;06;10
Chris
but the, the other part of it is not just it's not just longevity. It's well, it's what, some people start calling healthspan, which is a term I really like. this book outlive other Austinite Peter T, wrote I think he may have actually coined the term. It's a great term. Basically, it just it's meant to encapsulate not just how long you look at how healthy you are during your life.
00;20;06;13 - 00;20;32;23
Chris
And so, yeah, it's great to live to 100, but like, not if like theoretically you could be on life support from 60 to 100 and that would still wouldn't be great. But like the incidence of all of this or for horseman diseases, you know, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabete es and, arthritis. you know, they continue to increase in this country.
00;20;32;25 - 00;20;49;28
Chris
and so what is again, going back to what is, what does it look like? Well, should be living longer and you should be living healthier, like, and then, you know, you should be secure in your salt way. There should be low crime, your borders should be secure of the country and people, you know, all in all, when you think about like, what does the country look like?
00;20;49;28 - 00;21;07;23
Chris
Do we want to live in? It's one that is cohesive. So we have the capacity for collective action. Like if we want to put a man on the moon again, like we could come together and say like, this is an important national priority and we could do it. And that, you know, the the baseline for that is or the foundation for all that is, I think all these other things.
00;21;07;25 - 00;21;30;15
Chris
Right? You have to have a society that's stable, that is sustainable, that is prosperous, and then you have the predicate to do great things. And so we have to have that, that sort of, that that's, you know, sort of well, I guess I consider baseline stability. It's somewhat unusual in human history. That's like one of the things that made America so great and so unique.
00;21;30;18 - 00;21;55;07
Chris
It's not the only time it's happened. It's happened in other times of places. But like, you know, a lot of the a lot of human history is just history of like, savagery, death and misery. Right? And we need to really fight to encourage, you know, and make sure that we have a sustainable country that's able to produce that type of, you know, peace of prosperity for additional generations.
00;21;55;07 - 00;22;16;14
Chris
And then, as I say, then you can do the big things. Right. And those are I don't you know, it's I said this at the end of the book, unclear what those are, right. because we but we can't do them now. Like, I don't think it's I don't think we have the capacity to do them. and we need to at least get back to having the capacity to do them.
00;22;16;18 - 00;22;40;25
Marty
Yeah. And it's I think it all stems from the last what we have out here. Fix the money next. Well, because going back to, like, single income households, like if you look at the trend like this, like WTF happened in 1971. Yeah. Dot com it's when it when you lay it out like that, it's like, yeah, it makes sense because you have both parents and the workforce.
00;22;40;25 - 00;23;04;22
Marty
They're not able to focus on their kids. Maybe they'd be able to give them a better education or be more nurturing to create better psycho analytic state for these, for these children. they're all chipped up on Adderall. since we've gone off the gold, standard quality of food has gone down because you have the CPI substitution where it's like they want to.
00;23;04;25 - 00;23;29;03
Marty
Then when people notice that the price of a ribeye or ground beef is going up. So I'm going to switch out the soy slop into the CPI. And kids are eating all this hyper processed food which is leading to diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, all of that. And we're just like a nation that is on the hamster wheel. And so you have both parents in the workforce barely making enough money to survive for the people in the middle.
00;23;29;03 - 00;23;54;05
Marty
In the lower classes, their kids are being indoctrinated in public schools. they're eating shit. They're not getting outside. And you look up a generation, two generations later, it's like, Holy shit, we've got massive health problems, obesity problems, wealth inequality problems, quality of life problems all around. At the same time, go back to misallocation of capital.
00;23;54;08 - 00;24;18;03
Marty
Right. The fact that we can print all this money and then it bleeds in other areas like energy is something I'm very focused on. Like we should, we should be spinning up all the nuclear power plants that we can. We should be spinning up natural gas and coal plants as well. But the misallocation of capital, particularly from renewable energy credits, is really perturbing the pricing signal and energy markets, which is leading to less reliable grids.
00;24;18;03 - 00;24;36;27
Marty
I mean, we have experiences here in Texas in the last couple of years, like we have massive expansion of capacity, but that capacities unreliable wind and solar at times when you need it most desperately. particularly in the middle of winter, in the middle of summer, apparently it gets a lot, a lot hotter in the summer because the wind doesn't blow.
00;24;36;27 - 00;24;41;06
Marty
And so you don't have that wind generation. The sun goes down every day. and.
00;24;41;08 - 00;24;42;27
Chris
What we can do.
00;24;42;27 - 00;24;56;14
Marty
Is, and, it's just blows my mind that we've gotten to this point where even in Texas, we've allowed this misallocation of capital to seep in and really corrupt the market.
00;24;56;16 - 00;25;17;28
Chris
Like the like the electric car thing is a complete reversal of what you think about it. I mean, like, it doesn't work in trucking, for instance. Like, sorry, everybody, but it's like physics is still real. and so you had words that you had Atlas shrugged off up here someplace a equals a right. and still does, you know, electric cars.
00;25;17;28 - 00;25;34;23
Chris
I know they've got a probably have a, an appropriate place in the in the mix of the national fleet. It is a complete an utter pipedream with the amount of, with the amount of electrical generation capacity that we have in the country right now. Like, this isn't this isn't like higher mathematics. This is arithmetic. Like how?
00;25;34;25 - 00;25;59;09
Chris
Like how much power generation do we need, versus, how much do we produce? And we don't produce near enough for the goals that, that the folks in Washington seem to have stated for, like, like just electric cars alone. So there's like, those ends don't meet, and, you know, they're not going to start meeting because you throw a bunch of, wind farms out on the Texas prairie either.
00;25;59;14 - 00;26;25;09
Marty
Yeah. it's funny, I saw again referencing Twitter's. I'm doing that a lot, but somebody tweeted out they did a road trip from Florida up through New York, over to Chicago, down back to Florida, and they were presenting the stats. And, I think it was it they would have had if they were filling up a car with gas, that car would have to, get 30 miles per gallon to be commensurate.
00;26;25;09 - 00;26;46;14
Marty
So he's like, presenting it as cheaper than a gas car. But then one of the stat lines is like time. Way to charge a car was like 11 hours. I think the trip is like, if you're just filling up gas, it would have been 20 minutes collectively, right? And like you're not factoring the the value lost in the time you waited for your car to, to charge.
00;26;46;16 - 00;26;58;18
Marty
and then on top of that, you think of if we went to a full EV fleet before we even get to like, the electrical infrastructure, it's like, just think of the logistics of people having to wait 15, 30 minutes to charge your car.
00;26;58;20 - 00;27;08;09
Chris
And God help us, if Apple ever made an electric car, they changed the fucking charger every on every model. And you have to buy a new charger every five minutes.
00;27;08;11 - 00;27;31;19
Marty
it's but it's a Cummins. It's like we've reached a point in this country where politicians are able to say, yes, we're going net zero by 2030, and they present it as something, incredible, virtuous and something that we should strive for. And then, like, you spend five minutes thinking about second and third order effects and, like, this doesn't make any sense at all.
00;27;31;21 - 00;27;36;06
Marty
and that's this, that that's what worries me about where we are today.
00;27;36;08 - 00;27;57;00
Chris
well, I'll give a, I'll give a full of these anecdotes, but, you know, on the political class, I've got a very good friend who's, been in a, a super successful investor, like, really smart guy, like good guy, like these, like, you think about the person you're always thinking, why don't people like this? Why don't they run for office?
00;27;57;00 - 00;28;19;09
Chris
God, we need people like this. He's that guy, okay? Family guy, like, you know, just everything good about this guy. So he, he a couple of years ago was thinking about running for Congress, and, what he would have won in the district he could self-fund was a Republican district, etc., etc.. And, ultimately comes to the conclusion is not going to do in.
00;28;19;09 - 00;28;39;16
Chris
The single biggest reason was that he couldn't stand to be around the people he would have to work with, which I don't blame him. Right? It's that and this is like part of the problem is that, you know, the, the, the system we have does not optimize for excellence. and that's it turns out that's a problem.
00;28;39;18 - 00;29;06;26
Marty
Yeah. Well, I went to an event, last fall, and it was basically like people getting together trying to say like, all right, how do we affect change at the federal level? There was a whole panel about, a think tank out of DC that's like, we can get the problem that we've had and affecting change is, people like your friend, to your point that you're like, you'd be great.
00;29;06;28 - 00;29;27;24
Marty
as a congressman, Senator, like somewhere in the federal government to affect change. And they, they said the biggest problem is these people get into office, they have rosy eyes and they have really good intentions. And then they get there and they don't know how to operate within the bureaucracy. So like this whole this whole think tank is like, we're going to train these people how to operate throughout the bureaucracy.
00;29;27;24 - 00;29;50;15
Marty
And I'm sitting there thinking like what? Like you're like, that's the problem is that this system at the federal level isn't what most Americans think it is, where it's you vote for your congressmen, your senator, president, like vice president, whatever it may be. And like you think that's who's actually representing it. But this whole administrative bureaucracy layer has been embedded.
00;29;50;15 - 00;29;53;17
Marty
That makes it right somewhat impossible to actually affect change.
00;29;53;23 - 00;30;16;01
Chris
For the, you know, people who got, 4 or 5 on the AP U.S history exam, they know that, structurally, we spoke supposedly of three branches of government, but there's really four, right? The administrative state is, is nominally a part of the executive branch, but it, operates almost autonomously. And that's where that is, where, you know, if you think about, like, it's like the iceberg theory, right?
00;30;16;01 - 00;30;38;28
Chris
You know, the the three stated branches are just the tip and then the bureaucracy that actually runs everything is that is the massive iceberg that's below the waterline. You know, Balaji had a post it's a few years ago now, but he and he went through and he counted. I think at the time he said it was probably he was probably way understating it.
00;30;38;28 - 00;30;59;07
Chris
But the number of people who had these unaccountable positions with budgets that they exercised discretion over that were $1 billion or more. so basically, you know, these little fiefdoms and it was like it was hundreds of people. Right? And you think about where like, why is government so frustrating? Why is it so inefficient? Why is it not responsive?
00;30;59;10 - 00;31;20;02
Chris
well, that that's part of that's part of your answer. Because there's no way to no easy way. Let me say it that way. There's no easy way to effect change upon these mandarins who control these enormous budgets almost without over. So you can't fire them. you know, at least not easily.
00;31;20;05 - 00;31;34;15
Marty
You need, like, a Malay like character to come and say, left where? just. Yeah, I start ripping it out forcefully. Yeah, yeah. Which is like, you think are like, it's. Do you think it's possible to do. Yes, of.
00;31;34;15 - 00;31;57;18
Chris
Course it's possible. I actually think, you know, I actually think that it's really a paper tiger. It's got there's needs to be somebody who's just willing, who's just willing to push through and do it. you know, all of this, this is like the again, you know, the phrase learned helplessness, like, we've got, you know, like everybody's been lulled to sleep thinking like, you know, gosh, it's so hard.
00;31;57;18 - 00;31;58;21
Chris
The problem, so big.
00;31;58;25 - 00;32;00;25
Marty
People taking too many black pills. Yeah.
00;32;00;25 - 00;32;19;08
Chris
It's like. And it's just not true. Like, these things can be done because that, among other things, not only is human agency real like we have agency, we have the ability to do the things that we want to do. but also that, remember, the people on the other side also have learned helplessness. So they're just sitting there.
00;32;19;11 - 00;32;39;07
Chris
And if you just force your way through, through the, through the problem, you can fix them. But, you know, people are always sitting back. And this is where, I think this is like my biggest critique of, of it's like a and I don't mean this like in a negative way. It's constructive, but people think way too small.
00;32;39;10 - 00;32;58;20
Chris
Like there's a lot of things that are that are possible. If people understood that they actually really do have agency, and if they if they just think, about again, I always come back to this like, what's the world you want to live in? What's the country you want to live in? What does that look like? Just go build it.
00;32;58;22 - 00;33;15;19
Chris
You mean you may not get it exactly right, but you're going to get a whole lot further, by thinking about the thing you want to, like. Don't negotiate yourself down. Like I want it like this, but I'll take 20% of that. Like, just figure out what it is you want and go try and get try and get that.
00;33;15;21 - 00;33;53;25
Chris
and that's really been like, I know that sounds like almost like too cute, a little bit like, I feel like it's a little too sweet to say there, but like, I don't mean it that way because that's actually been the history of this country. you know, you've got this book, Lone Star, which, you know, I'm obsessed with, but the like, this is like this country was a frontier country really imbues the ethos and the personality and the psychology of Americans like you've got, you know, this tight, these tiny settlements, like clinging to the Atlantic coast 400 years ago, and the like, I don't know, just take like the Mayflower, settlement, the
00;33;53;25 - 00;34;18;27
Chris
Mayflower, Mayflower pilgrims. They knew exactly how they wanted to live. Like they started off as a congregation in the in the Midlands of England. Like sort of that didn't work. They emigrated to the Netherlands, got kicked out of the Netherlands, moved back to England, and then finally, like, well, there's some really crappy land or we're not so over on the other side of this water, but we know what the we know the way we to we're just going to go build but build that.
00;34;18;27 - 00;34;46;29
Chris
And turns out they attracted a ton of other people who were thinking sort of different versions of that, you know, Jamestown settlements in Florida at roughly the same time, and then just push forward, push, push west. And this is like one of the one of the things that I think, has implicitly confused the American psyche for the past, like 40 or 50 years is like the frontier closed, basically, like we're a frontier country.
00;34;46;29 - 00;35;05;23
Chris
It's like conquer the continent, build a new, new country, a new society. And then like, you get to the you go from east to west, get to the Pacific. and then and then it's like fill in time that you get to like, even in my lifetime, like places like Denver were like very small cities, like what I was when I was born.
00;35;05;23 - 00;35;09;19
Chris
I mean, even, like into the 80s or 90s, like, Denver wasn't that big a deal, right?
00;35;09;21 - 00;35;12;04
Marty
And you hear people talk about this city only a decade ago.
00;35;12;04 - 00;35;27;22
Chris
Only a decade ago. Right. So there's still that still is still sort of going on. But when the frontier really close, a lot of the fill in got done. And then that sort of coincides with the end of World War two. And now it's like, oh, damn. Like, what do we do now? Like, what's our huge national project?
00;35;27;24 - 00;35;44;10
Chris
because like, we did it. and that's where like that has to sort of that has to sort of morph, I think like it, like I think the Cold War filled that role for a while. And then it was like after that, and this is where I think we've really gone off the rails. It's like, well, okay.
00;35;44;12 - 00;36;05;15
Chris
It's like, okay, country founded. Check. Continent conquered. Check. World War two, one check. Cold War one check. It's like, now the best thing we could do is, like, fight stupid, pointless, winless wars. Like, in the world. Shitholes. Yeah. Like that's like. That's like, we're better than that. We should be figuring out a lot better things to be doing than that.
00;36;05;17 - 00;36;07;26
Marty
Yeah, like take back our privacy. I mean.
00;36;07;26 - 00;36;11;06
Chris
Like, that would be nice. Yeah, right. For starters, let's.
00;36;11;09 - 00;36;47;11
Marty
let's abolish the bank Secrecy Act, the Patriot Act. And, let's get back to a point where, like, that would be a great American story is like, we've gotten to this point where the pendulum swung and civil liberties have been eroded to such a point where the nature of the relationship between the government and the government has completely flipped from, or maybe not completely flipped, but it's certainly shifted a large degree in favor of the government, where it's not supposed to be that way, and there would be nothing more American than people to wake up and say, you know what?
00;36;47;11 - 00;37;10;29
Marty
No, this is wrong. We're taking it back. and to your point, that's that's actually one thing we've been talking about on this show, and I've been talking about on other shows, in recent months is. Yeah, many people are black pilled. Need to take the white pill and recognize that even though everything that stands before us is daunting, it may seem like an impossible task.
00;37;10;29 - 00;37;12;13
Marty
We can do it like we can win.
00;37;12;14 - 00;37;13;11
Chris
100%.
00;37;13;11 - 00;37;46;28
Marty
And I think people would be surprised at when we see this within Bitcoin. It's like Bitcoin's like, yeah, we're going to replace a dollar as world reserve currency. And like we truly believe that. And once you get immersed in an industry or a group of people like that or working towards a big goal, it's infectious. And I think if that were to extend beyond just the little bubble that I operate within and into other people's minds, and I think people would be surprised with just a few small examples of people doing big things can lead to engendering a sense of confidence in others.
00;37;46;28 - 00;37;57;23
Marty
And I think we're beginning to see this with space, obviously. Anduril, many other companies that are out there really pushing the limits, in aerospace and defense technology.
00;37;57;26 - 00;38;16;27
Chris
We are so going back to the 1789 capital investment firm. But like this is part of our is part of our thesis that ESG has really caused a massive misallocation of capital, which is, you know, there's a couple things that spin out of that. One is it's actually quite bad for the country in our in our, like, narrow little slice of the world.
00;38;16;29 - 00;38;43;12
Chris
It's actually great for us because it leads to really good opportunities. And so while we're sitting here talking like, oh, it's like as people up to do, complaining a little bit about like all these things are wrong when we're out there investing in these companies, I am it's actually super encouraging because there are just like some of the greatest founders out there, like smart, driven, just like good people.
00;38;43;12 - 00;38;58;26
Chris
And they just like they have a vision for what the whole country should be like. Nor should they, by the way. Like, that's like too much for almost anybody. but they have a vision for the thing that they're doing. and they're single minded in it, they're really good at it. I mean the best ones are anyway.
00;38;58;26 - 00;39;15;26
Chris
But the point is there's a lot of really good ones out there. there's you know people talk a lot about defense tech. We do a bunch of defense tech. We've made some investments in companies that I really like. And I look at these founders, I'm like, look, these guys are amazing. Like, we should not like people should meet them.
00;39;15;26 - 00;39;39;26
Chris
Like we should do like some type of, I don't know, like a symposium with these guys because it's like it is actually inspirational to see what they're doing and they're not sitting back like people are too obsessed with politics. I think they black themselves like they just get past on their own, like complaining. and then you go out and see people who are just like, I need to build a better rocket motor, like we're invested in a company that does.
00;39;39;26 - 00;39;58;04
Chris
Let's up and up and up in Dallas. and guess what they did, you know, and. Oh, well, we need a better fuel to go with the motor. Did that too. We need a better way to, manufacture that fuel. Yep. Jack did that, too. Now let's scale it. And there's a there's all kinds of instances of that going on in this country eventually.
00;39;58;04 - 00;40;12;11
Chris
So when when you say like there's all these problems, can we fix them? Yeah. Because like there's like I don't know what percentage of the country who are just like amazing builders and those people like need to band together and build.
00;40;12;14 - 00;40;30;06
Marty
And not only that, but it's never been easier to build when you think about, I mean, outside of the red tape that can be put in front of you by the government. Like if you ignore that, which is sometimes hard to ignore for a lot of people, particularly, if you're doing something like nuclear reactors or something like that, but tougher.
00;40;30;06 - 00;40;45;23
Chris
Biotech, right? I mean, this is why a lot of people and a lot of money flowed out of, to my point earlier about like, we want people to live longer, healthier lives, like there is a health care component of that really hard to get deal with the FDA.
00;40;45;25 - 00;40;46;02
Marty
00;40;46;03 - 00;41;09;18
Chris
Time consuming expensive. they're super risk averse. And so what happened. Money and talent flowed into things like SAS. right. So you got more software because like a single guy could just sit there in his room and like, you know, pound Red Bulls and like listen to, you know, listen to EDM for 35 hours. and the next thing you know, he built, like Instagram or something.
00;41;09;20 - 00;41;46;03
Marty
No. Yeah. And I mean, we see it in Bitcoin as well, particularly on the financial regulation, whether it's Nydfs or FinCEN or is supranational, unelected bureaucrats at the Financial Action Task Force putting out all these guidelines that really constrict. But again, stripping all that away, like particularly as it pertains to Bitcoin, like an open source protocol with all these other open source tools and developer kits that are being brought to market, like we can talk about building sci fi, freedom, preserving, money and banking technology.
00;41;46;03 - 00;42;01;06
Marty
Like it's never been easier and it's just waking people up to that. Like, yes, this is daunting. And yes, parts of the government may not like it, but like if we if we're looking about what's possible, like it has never been easier and more possible than it is today.
00;42;01;10 - 00;42;05;07
Chris
Yeah. Oh for sure. Or people need to be doing that.
00;42;05;07 - 00;42;34;10
Marty
Really. Do. How much of this comes. So do you, like thinking generationally here? Like I'm a millennial, 33, ten when 911 happened senior in high school in 2008 happened young father when Covid happens, I've had back to back to back and throughout my life like, what the hell is going on? 2008 jaded me. That's probably what led me to Bitcoin in 2020.
00;42;34;10 - 00;42;55;22
Marty
Completely. radicalized me. And like, oh, the government is completely off the rocker here. and so what are your thoughts on like, younger generations? Are you seeing younger builders come to RDNA trying to get a perspective on Gen Z and whether or not they understand the problems that exist, and are they going to be the ones to solve it?
00;42;55;24 - 00;42;57;26
Chris
I sure hope so.
00;42;57;28 - 00;42;58;07
Marty
Yeah.
00;42;58;12 - 00;43;10;02
Chris
It's like I just like the general like the generational explanations are like good at like a first approximation. I think,
00;43;10;04 - 00;43;31;15
Chris
But it always comes back to like, it's, it's always like dedicated minorities that change history or the or the build the things that, change history. And I think that's true regardless of these generations. Like, you look at the boomers, the first generation, right. Literally the generation that destroyed this country, and continues to do it.
00;43;31;18 - 00;43;55;09
Chris
but that's a first approximation, right? That's not like every voter because there's like, there's, you know, there's this way where there's like there's like two really distinct subsets of boomers, and, and, like the narcissism is pretty broad in the Boomer world, which in a way is like just arithmetic, like there's so many of them, right, that the world actually always did just conform to them.
00;43;55;09 - 00;44;03;10
Chris
So they just have like that sense of entitlement. But there's like,
00;44;03;13 - 00;44;26;15
Chris
Somebody explain this to me. I wish I had come up with this on my own like ten years ago before people started with the okay boomer thing. But they explain, like they worked basically in the 60s, there were two types of boomers, like, they're like they're in their teens and 20s right at the time. They're the ones who, like, were listening to the Beatles, and they're the ones who are listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and the latter were the traditionalists.
00;44;26;15 - 00;44;45;25
Chris
Right? There was normal people. They wanted to go get a job, have a family. They were like, but nobody talks about them as boomers. They're just like kind of forgotten. And the point is, is that like the radicals were a minority and they everybody thinks about them as the boomers. but in actuality, they were a small subset of the boomers.
00;44;45;28 - 00;45;02;24
Chris
they had a vision for how they would, destroy the country. And they have executed on that vision pretty well, because they work together. they knew what they wanted to do was like, if there's any if there's any standard of decency, let's tear it down. That was sort of their reason for being.
00;45;02;26 - 00;45;05;02
Marty
And they had a long term vision that they implement. And they.
00;45;05;02 - 00;45;24;01
Chris
Did. And they were working all the time. But my point is, is that it's like you think about the what are the Zoomers going to do? It doesn't take all of them. Like with the boomers, it was a small group of them, with like, Gen X, really like The Forgotten Generation. It's like a relatively small generation.
00;45;24;01 - 00;45;47;06
Chris
It compared to the, the millennials or or boomers, like, a friend of mine told me like five, six, seven years ago, like super well known. Like you would know his name if I said it, but like, VC been very successful also Gen X. So Gen X is like the late boomer generation, which I actually think it's true because the boomers won't move on.
00;45;47;08 - 00;46;25;27
Chris
Right? It's like they're going to die in their CEO seats or whatever, right? Like, I mean, he's not a technically boomer, but like look at Biden. But like so Gen X sort of comes into its own like later in life, probably like late 40s and 50s. and then there's like Millennials and Gen Z. But I guess just to come back to the direct point, it's going to be like a faithful remnant in each one of these generations that is gonna figure out how to work with the faithful remnant in every other generation and like, you know, and just basically build a better country.
00;46;25;27 - 00;46;32;08
Chris
And to hell with their everybody else, like, don't even worry about what they're doing. Just overcome build.
00;46;32;10 - 00;46;52;02
Marty
Yeah. And that's it's funny, you mentioned the remnant that's, I mean, Misa says Isaiah, you know, he read the story of the remnant, in that float around Bitcoin while ago. That's what a lot of, a lot of bitcoiners gravitated towards that piece and that, that view of what it's going to take to to win.
00;46;52;02 - 00;47;13;13
Marty
Just don't worry about the, the brainwashed masses, just find the remnant. And that's one thing I think as it sits today, particularly in 2024, again, post-Covid, I think I was talking about this with somebody else a few weeks ago, but I feel like a bunch of people in many different verticals basically went into the foxhole and like, how did they get this bad?
00;47;13;15 - 00;47;37;07
Marty
And they've all since popped their head up and like, all right, I know my vertical. I know how, I know how fortune for like, covered it up. Others. you had the GameStop crew and Wall Street bets. Bitcoiners obviously doing their thing. Defense tech guys being like, all right, like, there needs to be disruption here. And now.
00;47;37;07 - 00;47;53;28
Marty
I think we're at the point now, and I think independent media is really helping to, make this happen, which is all these different groups that are looking for the remnant in their own vertical need, like pop their head up and, like, look at each other like, hey, we may be able to help each other out.
00;47;54;02 - 00;47;54;24
Chris
Totally.
00;47;54;26 - 00;48;02;01
Marty
I've seen this most particularly, between Bitcoin and energy. it's interesting because of the Bitcoin mining.
00;48;02;03 - 00;48;03;21
Chris
Right? It's a natural alliance.
00;48;03;21 - 00;48;30;12
Marty
But yeah. And so there was a time in like 2021, 2022, particular oil and gas firms who I dealt with a lot, because of the nature of the company that we were running. But, it seemed like the ESG completely, I don't wanna say escalated, but there was there's a lot of people like in oil and gas, particularly the bigger companies, to sort of bend the knee to ESG and like, oh, we're going to help you transition.
00;48;30;12 - 00;48;33;16
Marty
And I went and I was like, no, like energy's good.
00;48;33;18 - 00;48;40;17
Chris
Like I would say a good rule of thumb in life in the 2020s, if somebody says, I'm going to help you transition, just say no.
00;48;40;19 - 00;48;48;06
Marty
It's. Okay, let me take off without a daycare time. Yeah. You gotta be careful there.
00;48;48;09 - 00;48;51;09
Chris
It's like it's just Edward Scissorhands stuff right where you are.
00;48;51;12 - 00;49;06;17
Marty
But it's. And I think I don't want to I don't want to say it was all bitcoin. But I do think like some of the conversations we have where like confidence and distinctly the like a to shake some oil gas people up like slap them like stop putting up with this bullshit. Like totally give us like we're going to work together.
00;49;06;21 - 00;49;29;29
Marty
Bitcoin mining will help make you as efficient as possible. You monetize all your wasted and stranded resources. Not all of them, but we'll start monetizing these ways. The resources will make you more efficient and don't bend the knee you're providing probably arguably the most needed service to the economy, which is reliable, cheap energy. Yeah. and we would not be where we are without hydrocarbons.
00;49;29;29 - 00;49;33;10
Marty
So stop saying sorry for producing oil and gas.
00;49;33;12 - 00;50;05;22
Chris
yeah. Like sorry for producing all this wealth, safety, prosperity and security for everybody. Like, no. Yeah. Like the, you know, there's, my wife's from Michigan and, like the, the, the conceit in, in Detroit, which is partially true, is that like, Detroit was like, there is no democracy. That one World War two, there's a there's enough truth that it to we'll give it to the Detroiters like, you know, like Chrysler was just like rolling tanks of white Sherman tanks off the line of, like, every five seconds or whatever and that like that.
00;50;05;23 - 00;50;25;18
Chris
There's truth to that. But, you know, I think the actually the thing that in a way, is it's equally true, if not more true, is that like Texas oil is what, not only won World War two, but actually produced all of the prosperity afterwards because it was abundant and it was cheap and or cheap, abundant energy is a key to prosperity.
00;50;25;23 - 00;50;39;21
Chris
Yeah, which is good. Going back to what you were saying earlier about, like, nuclear, like whoever has the most the abundant source of low cost energy among the major powers on the planet will win. Well, period.
00;50;39;24 - 00;51;01;07
Marty
No, it's, triggered in this life in on an ESG vendetta for years because you get the Larp, like we're gonna get to net zero 2030. It's like number one. That's impossible. Number two, I don't think carbon dioxide is polluting. I don't think I don't think there's a climate crisis. Like, I don't think we need to pause the global economy to save ourselves from the weather.
00;51;01;09 - 00;51;29;02
Marty
and despite everybody's, well intent to go to net zero, you know, I think it's psychotic. It doesn't matter. India, China, the Middle East. Now they're all going to spin up. I mean, China's spun up more coal plants in the last five years and I think exist in the in the U.S alone, they're spinning up nuclear. And yet we're it's completely constricting ourselves here.
00;51;29;05 - 00;51;41;29
Marty
Not even just in the United States, in the West more broadly, it's a it's not even a Pyrrhic victory. It's a total loss. We're going to get completely leapfrogged if we keep on this, this energy policy trajectory.
00;51;42;06 - 00;52;08;29
Chris
There's, you know, I've just been thinking about, like, a on a related topic. I've been thinking about this. I'm not sure what the answer is, but, like some of these, like, sort of idiotic decisions that, that our country makes around energy, for example, or like in Covid, just like the extreme, like sociopathic risk aversion, like one, like one possible explanation is it's a consequence of an aging society.
00;52;09;02 - 00;52;32;20
Chris
Like median age from like median age in 1970 was like 27 years old or something like that. And right now it's like 37 or 38 in this country, like, so, okay. Like older people just buy it, you know, naturally become more risk averse over time. but China has a higher median age than we do by like two, two and a half years, but they seem less risk averse.
00;52;32;20 - 00;52;46;28
Chris
So maybe that's the meat like that. Like that. That answer seems appealing, but maybe it's wrong. or maybe it's a combination of the risk aversion that comes with with age, with, I don't know, like if there's like, a disease of affluence or something.
00;52;47;01 - 00;52;49;05
Marty
I think it's seen. Yeah, I think it's again.
00;52;49;05 - 00;52;50;16
Chris
It's a complex answer.
00;52;50;19 - 00;53;14;21
Marty
Yeah. I lean more towards, like, virtue signaling, like we rest of our laurels. And if you look at, I mean, where we stand today, like, juxtapose the two empires that have risen and fallen in the past. It's like the analogs are all there. You go back to ancient Rome, spread the empire globally. completely, debase their currency, the denarius.
00;53;14;21 - 00;53;46;28
Marty
And it got to the point where they had expanded their military and to base their currency so much that, people in the military like, this isn't money like we're done. We're not working for you. Barbarians come and sack Rome. Fast forward. Why? My republic, has to pay back their debts for World War One. They start printing marks at the same time they have this crazy, socially liberal, demographic that is trying to erode the social fabric within.
00;53;46;28 - 00;54;07;07
Marty
And they debase the currency, debase their society, and boom! Paper inflation, collapse of Weimer. Jeremy. and then it just seems we're getting there, too. And yeah, obviously with the amount of debt, the amount of money we've printed, and then you just look at the, the health statistics alone are just like literally fat and getting dumber by the day.
00;54;07;07 - 00;54;08;07
Marty
It just seems like a.
00;54;08;07 - 00;54;28;12
Chris
Reversal of the Flynn effect. Yeah. It's like it's like yeah. No, it's crazy. And it's like a cross. It's the like the, you know, the Flynn effect was like the like basically broad based rise in IQ. And then a reverse sometime maybe 15 or 20 years ago, but not just here. Right. It's also happened. It's also happened in Western Europe too.
00;54;28;15 - 00;54;38;00
Chris
yeah. There's something like there's like a I don't know if there's something about post-modern life that seems like anti-life, that's sort of like this genic.
00;54;38;03 - 00;54;39;07
Marty
That's Malthusian.
00;54;39;10 - 00;55;11;23
Chris
Yeah. Like people are getting like, fatter. Dumber living longer, you know, or living shorter lives more lethargic, or depressed. there's this, there's a scientist in the 50s and 60s named John Calhoun. not the South Carolina senator. You know, not that there's, I guess, rap. but he did this series of studies on Warsaw Rats where he wanted to see the, effects of basically overcrowding.
00;55;11;26 - 00;55;37;23
Chris
He was trying to, like, simulate, high density urban, like modern urban life. and so when you put these Warsaw rats into these high density, environments, you get all of these, pathologies that so they become, they overeat, they become really lethargic. They stop reproducing, they become like occasionally, like weirdly violent. The ether young like.
00;55;37;23 - 00;56;02;10
Chris
And it's like spent. By the way, this study has been reproduced like there's not a replication crisis with this study. It's like, well, that sounds a lot like San Francisco here, you know, or New York, right? Yeah. and this was 1960 ish. so there's like, I don't know, there's a it's a there's something going on that like, I feel like we just have, like a glimpse into what the problem is.
00;56;02;13 - 00;56;09;29
Chris
but if you do like the, like, you do the overlay, like the county overlay of, fertility rates. They're not really great any place in this country.
00;56;10;01 - 00;56;11;08
Marty
00;56;11;11 - 00;56;36;22
Chris
Utah. They're decent. sure. I know, like, there's some places in rural Texas where they're decent. but they're always, they're basically the worst, always in high density urban environments. And it's like you can drill down not just at county level. You can drill it down to like zip code levels too. So it's like it's sort of it doesn't entirely cut across, income, but, you know, it it does.
00;56;36;25 - 00;56;38;26
Chris
It affects all incomes.
00;56;38;29 - 00;56;39;20
Marty
Yeah.
00;56;39;22 - 00;56;53;22
Chris
Except the very highest, by the way. Like if it's super high income tend to this is like the other thing super incomes tend to still have like intact families or relative to the, to the median and be having, a decent number of kids.
00;56;53;25 - 00;57;07;16
Marty
No, that's what I mean. Talk to millennials like my I'm lucky I have two boys and I plan to have more children. But, a lot of people my age, they don't think they have the economic opportunity to.
00;57;07;18 - 00;57;13;08
Chris
Is that why is that the answer? Like a lot of the time, I can't afford a house or can't afford the expenses that go along.
00;57;13;08 - 00;57;28;16
Marty
With it, which I think is actually dumb, because what I found when I had my first son was like, I was more motivated than ever to go make some money. so it's a bit counterintuitive. It's like, oh, they're going to be expensive. It's like, I think you'll be surprised at how motivated you become once you have a child.
00;57;28;19 - 00;57;28;23
Marty
but.
00;57;28;23 - 00;57;30;22
Chris
Yeah, many men have found this over time.
00;57;30;22 - 00;57;31;25
Marty
Yeah.
00;57;31;28 - 00;57;55;29
Chris
We've got a, like a friend we do some business with. He's, like, roughly your age. Just found out he was expecting, like, maybe. Well, he's probably actually the baby's two pretty soon. like, always good. Like this. You want to talk about somebody who is, like, on the job now, like, super laser focused. It's amazing what a focusing effect it has on you.
00;57;56;01 - 00;57;59;04
Marty
Yeah. And then once they're here, it's oh, it's like, holy crap. Like.
00;57;59;07 - 00;57;59;25
Chris
Yeah, you need.
00;57;59;25 - 00;58;16;28
Marty
To live a good life. So dad's got to go to work harder and. Yeah, no it is. Yeah. There's there's a lot of distractions too. and then the job's the job market's absolute shit as well. despite what the Biden administration would have you believe.
00;58;17;00 - 00;58;19;07
Chris
There's a lot I've been led to believe. It's never been better.
00;58;19;12 - 00;58;21;29
Marty
Yeah, it's never been better. And the I.
00;58;22;01 - 00;58;23;03
Chris
There's no inflation either.
00;58;23;03 - 00;58;25;21
Marty
Yeah, yeah. And we solved inflation.
00;58;25;24 - 00;58;29;11
Chris
That's because they passed the Inflation Reduction Act largest. No everything's fine.
00;58;29;11 - 00;58;33;27
Marty
Yeah. You just solve inflation by giving out a bunch of subsidies and.
00;58;34;03 - 00;58;34;12
Chris
Yeah.
00;58;34;14 - 00;58;38;29
Marty
Yeah crippling our reliable energy infrastructure. That's the way to go.
00;58;39;02 - 00;58;42;23
Chris
By the way, on the flare gas. The amendment to make this point, if you've been to Midland.
00;58;42;25 - 00;58;45;01
Marty
I have not. Yeah.
00;58;45;03 - 00;59;03;01
Chris
But flew into Midland for the first time about like, maybe eight months ago. And, the flight came in at night. And it is. You'll appreciate this just because you use flare glass, but when you're flying in at night for the last, like maybe ten minutes, you're flying over West Texas and coming into the airport just as far as the eye can see.
00;59;03;01 - 00;59;05;09
Chris
You just see flare. Yes. It's everyplace.
00;59;05;09 - 00;59;05;24
Marty
In orange.
00;59;05;24 - 00;59;15;13
Chris
You it's. I found it totally inspiring. It's like, see what you can do. See where you can build it, where you can find in the earth that can make life better.
00;59;15;14 - 00;59;22;07
Marty
Yeah, I see that. And I see bitcoin. All right. How many gensets can we get and how many data centers can we get and plug in.
00;59;22;07 - 00;59;26;16
Chris
And you see just see like orange BTC is out there on the Permian.
00;59;26;17 - 00;59;57;14
Marty
No. Because we operated predominately in the park in, in North Dakota and we had some really cool videos of when we would set a site up and then initially turn it on and it literally divert the gas from the flare to the genset, it would power the Bitcoin mine, and you could visibly see the flare go off in the mine, turn on, just like you were literally just cool burning a resource and now you're still burning it, but monetizing it, and not having to pay EPA fines.
00;59;57;14 - 01;00;21;23
Marty
There's and flare gas is very, very small amount of overall network hash rate. But I think again, if people are motivated enough and, are allowed to like, we could be as energy efficient as we want to. Upstream. Downstream on grid. Off grid. my personal miners, one thing I want to do is solve the stranded gas.
01;00;21;23 - 01;00;44;05
Marty
Well, problem that exists, particularly in Appalachia where you have the shallow oil base and they, trucked the oil out over the course of a couple of years for years. Never built pipelines for the natural gas to get to midstream. And you have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of wells spread all throughout Appalachia, producing on the back end of their decline curves producing like 21 mcf d.
01;00;44;11 - 01;00;49;03
Marty
That small amount of gas is enough to power probably like 40 Bitcoin miners right now.
01;00;49;05 - 01;00;49;21
Chris
Look at the.
01;00;49;28 - 01;01;09;01
Marty
And the stranded well problem's a big one. Many of it is unmaintained Wells is leaking methane getting in the water sources. there's no economic incentive outside of subsidies to try to maintain those wells. And now with Bitcoin we have pure economic incentive to solve it. because you monetize it on site.
01;01;09;03 - 01;01;13;09
Chris
What what's the sort of what's the inhibitor from, from doing that.
01;01;13;11 - 01;01;37;20
Marty
And that's a logistics problem if you have multiple of them scattered. But I think if you solve that logistics problem, which I think is very solvable, there's no reason that we shouldn't be tapping these, these stranded wells and money Bitcoin with them. And you have supply chain not necessarily supply chain issues, but if oil and gas is going up, demand for generators in the field goes up, prices for generators goes up.
01;01;37;20 - 01;01;56;07
Marty
So you have to sort of time we probably need to expand the generation production, to make it make sense at scale. But it's there, there is a solution to it. Just trying to figure it out. yeah. We can solve all these problems.
01;01;56;07 - 01;02;02;24
Chris
We can do it. Yeah. They just everybody's going to pick their lane and just fix what they can fix. Build what they can build.
01;02;03;01 - 01;02;12;09
Marty
You know, to show you a video of, the operation we have going up in Tennessee. It's, it's really cool. It's been fascinating.
01;02;12;10 - 01;02;13;06
Chris
Thank you. It's been great.
01;02;13;06 - 01;02;23;09
Marty
Thank you for doing this. last minute. any words of advice, final thoughts for anybody listening to this?
01;02;23;11 - 01;02;46;11
Chris
yeah, I will. so there's this conference, and I don't know when this, episode will drop, but there's a conference going on in Detroit called re industrialize. And they've got a, sort of still drafting my talk for the group up there, but, you know, the yak thing online. and by, the title of my talk is going to be Acceleration is Not Enough.
01;02;46;13 - 01;02;47;07
Chris
01;02;47;10 - 01;02;48;23
Marty
Hyper acceleration.
01;02;48;26 - 01;03;12;28
Chris
Yeah. Like this. This is like a constant theme. I just keep thinking. People just are thinking too small. Like, whatever. you know, we think about, like, I see your bookshelf. You're like, obviously a student of history, like, you. We have to, like, regain our sense of agency and of purpose and then just raise our sights by, like, at least an order of magnitude.
01;03;13;00 - 01;03;31;17
Chris
Because the things that we're the people are doing, for the people who are doing really good stuff often are just not big enough. They're capable of a lot more that have been sold to sleep, by, you know, whether they black pill themselves or it's kind of like the Warsaw red thing, they're like in these dense environments. And so they're like, they're vitality is somehow being drained out of them.
01;03;31;22 - 01;03;42;24
Chris
Just get it back and do it, because there's just so much that can be done. And when people realize what they're capable of, then they realize that it's actually way more than they thought.
01;03;42;27 - 01;03;43;12
Marty
Yeah.
01;03;43;14 - 01;03;46;03
Chris
And so, yeah, that, that that's my word advice just build.
01;03;46;06 - 01;03;55;08
Marty
Yeah. Build and on re industrialization that's did you see Thomas Massie coming out out to that GOP meeting thinking that.
01;03;55;11 - 01;03;56;07
Chris
what did he say.
01;03;56;10 - 01;04;01;28
Marty
He said the Trump in the meeting floated like eliminating income tax and increasing tariffs, which.
01;04;01;28 - 01;04;03;12
Chris
I thought, oh yeah. Yeah I did see this.
01;04;03;17 - 01;04;08;03
Marty
I think it's a very smart way. If you want to read industrialize,
01;04;08;06 - 01;04;17;02
Chris
Here's a of maybe this is my final thought. if in the Bible God only wants to tithe 1 in 10, why has the government get to have more?
01;04;17;05 - 01;04;19;23
Marty
Yeah, well, I think it's a 5040, whatever it is.
01;04;19;23 - 01;04;20;09
Chris
Yeah, right.
01;04;20;09 - 01;04;21;29
Marty
Yeah, yeah.
01;04;22;01 - 01;04;24;04
Chris
It seems like a heresy.
01;04;24;06 - 01;04;27;22
Marty
We'll end on heresy, Chris. Thank you. Peace. Love for the. Okay.
