Kind: captions
Language: en
Can you break down the difference
between capitalist, socialist,
communist?
>> There are more systems than just
capitalism, socialism, and communism.
But given that these are the three that
we see most frequently, let's talk about
them. So capitalism is meant to be a
free market system in which capital goes
to the places where people are going to
get the biggest return on their capital,
the workers, and you've got the
capitalists. And the capitalists say,
"I'm going to build this factory not
because I make money today, but because
over time I think I'm going to make
money." And so as you aggregate capital,
you then deploy that into assets that
you think will make a return. That asset
could be a business, it could be a
factory, uh it could be a stock, could
be a bond, could be a treasury, like all
of the things, whatever you think is
going to return that principle plus plus
interest back to you. Socialism is where
you confiscate the means of production
and you say, "Okay, the state now owns
all of the means of production and we're
going to give as many things away as we
can for free to make sure that people
have um the distributed profits of the
the economic engine. So instead of going
to capitalists who are using um
intelligence, market signals, hard work,
discipline in order to figure out where
to put their capital and they sometimes
win, they sometimes lose. uh and they
take a disproportionate amount of the
rewards. We're going to spread that out
across everybody. The vast majority of
people will just never own assets. And
so that's why we're in the situation
that we're in right now in real life in
America. 10% of people own 93% of all
assets.
>> So that's the wealth inequality that
people are talking about. But like the
sort of vague nebulous um capitalists
are evil, socialists are good people.
Leave the socialists and communists
alone and everything is going to be
fine. Money has physics. And the best
explanation of capitalism is capitalism
is a terrible system, but it's the best
of the terrible systems. So,
what I hope I can get people to take
away from this video or even most of the
economic content that I do is things
feel broken now because they are.
They're broken because of inflation.
Inflation is a product of modern
monetary theory, but modern monetary
theory is a trade-off. If you reh harden
the money, base it on gold or whatever,
>> that has its own trade-offs that are
going to create problems. And so, we
just have to be honest about what
happens when you print money so that
hopefully we can interrupt it and focus
on like if we were just going to focus
people on one metric, it would be debt
to GDP ratio. And so, if you can start
driving that, we're now at 122%. 130 is
a historical red line over which only
bad things happen. And then if we can
start pushing that in the right way by
being more fiscally responsible, then we
can make things better. But when we have
this sort of vacuous argument, it's uh
we're just going to death loop. So,
welcome to part one, where we are and
what Argentina tells us about our own
future. In the early 1900s, Argentina
was attracting more immigrants than
America. [music] People were literally
choosing Buenos Ares over New York City
for opportunity. Today, more than half
of Argentina's children live below the
poverty line. How does a country that
once lure dreamers away from the land of
opportunity end up with over 50% of its
kids growing up waiting in bread lines?
That's where socialists like Mum Donnie
come in. Let me walk you through the
tragedy [music]
step by step. Debt and money printing
cause countries to weaken their [music]
own economy, leaving them vulnerable to
crisis. And when that crisis hits, the
country tears itself apart from within.
The Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela,
Rwanda, Bosnia, and Herzgoina, just to
name a recent few, all fell apart due to
economic reasons. But instead, what we
read about in history is the violent
clash between the two sides. There is
just so much hatred in a country by the
time they fall, history often misses
that the hatred was born out of the
economy. The economy is the thing to
watch. By the time polarization is set
in, [music] the system is already in big
trouble. Here's how it plays out. The
cause and effect that leads to the
battle between capitalism and socialism.
The overaccumulation of debt causes
inequality. People think it's
billionaires hoarding money, but that's
not how the economy actually works.
[music] Billionaires are the result of
three factors: debt, money printing, and
owning assets. Roughly 70% of all
millionaires and billionaires in America
are self-made. But in [music] a world
where people, companies, and countries
take on too much debt, the government
eventually has to print money to cover
the inevitable shortfall. And when they
do, asset prices go up and the dollar
goes down. So asset holders, aka the
people that build successful companies
and the people that own equity in a
successful company, get richer. And the
people who don't own assets get poorer.
[music] It's that simple. And this
happens in runaway fashion, pushing
ordinary middle-class people either up
into being wealthy if they own assets or
down into being poor if they don't. That
is how inequality sets in. But what
happens [music] next is the real kicker.
Inequality leads to populism. And
populism, which is just a fancy way of
saying inequality makes people really
mad. It leads to people voting
emotionally instead of rationally. And
once people start voting emotionally,
things spiral fast. [music] Debt goes up
because politicians get elected by
promising free stuff. And sadly, there
is no such thing as free stuff.
Government deficits come out [music] of
your pocket via inflation. I know if you
don't know how this all works, that
sounds crazy, but it is actually true.
Populist politicians also promise to
punch the enemy right in the kisser. And
the enemy is always the other guy. So
the left promises to punch the right and
the right promises to punch [music] the
left. This drives everyone into tribes
because you need a team to protect you
when it's all going down. If you're in
the middle, you're going to get
clobbered from both sides. So very few
people stay in the middle. And when they
do, they are the first killed in the
revolution. And I don't mean that
figuratively. That is a [music] true
story. So people pick teams and they
fight. ethics go out the window because
everyone believes in a populist moment
that they are fighting for survival. And
the political candidates that get
elected in a populist moment are the
strong men who don't mind [music]
fighting. That's because everyone wants
to elect a tough guy who will fight for
them and get them a bigger piece of the
money printing pie. So money printer go
burr. And rage skyrockets. So what does
this have to do with mom Donnie? I'm
glad you asked. [music] The right
already has a tough guy, Trump. But the
left is still trying to find their new
identity post the 2024 [music]
defeat. The question everyone has been
asking is, will the left go towards the
middle or towards the extreme? Mandani's
rapid rise of popularity indicates we're
going to be following in history's
footsteps here and choose [music] the
extremes. With that thought bubble
hovering over my head, enter Zoron
Mandani, the self-proclaimed socialist
who wants to [music] make New York City
more affordable. He was just elected as
the democratic mayoral candidate for the
global financial center New York City.
The problem is like Argentina before
him, he has not learned the lessons that
even the Chinese Communist Party has
learned, namely [music] that if you want
to pull people out of poverty and make
things affordable, the only proven tool
is capitalism. You have to orient
towards private citizens [music] getting
rich off their innovations. Remember,
the problem is debt, not capitalism.
More on that coming up. But for now,
I'll just say this. Manny and reality
agree on one thing. The inequality in
America has [music] become intolerable.
And if it is not addressed, America will
tear itself apart. Where mom Donnie and
reality diverge, however, is on the
causes of the intolerable inequality.
The danger of short-term top-down
solutions. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall
came down, the world got to witness a
shocking natural experiment. What
happens when you divide one of the
world's most productive cities and run
one side with a top- down command
economy and the other side with a bottom
up capitalist economy? The answer, the
economies were starkly different across
multiple dimensions. Remember, this is a
city divided in half. In East Germany,
the communist side, GDP per capita was
only about 30% of West Germany's, not
30% lower, 30% of the total. The
capitalist West Germans produced roughly
three times more economic output per
person than their East German neighbors.
Average wages in East Germany were
approximately 1/3 of what workers earned
in West Germany. This means that for the
same work, East Germans only earned 30%
of what the capitalists across the
street literally earned, equating to
significantly lower standard of living.
East Germans had a life expectancy
approximately 2 to 3 years shorter than
their West German counterparts.
Communism literally shortened their
lives. West Berliners enjoyed modern
infrastructure, reliable public
transportation, and highquality housing.
In contrast, East Berlin struggled with
outdated infrastructure, crumbling
buildings, and chronic housing
shortages. Over 25% of buildings in East
Germany were considered [music] severely
deteriorated by the late 1980s. East
Germany filed fewer than 1,000 patents
annually, compared to over 70,000
patents per year filed by West Germany.
The difference in innovation was
staggering. Nearly 70 times more
innovation in [music] the capitalist
side of the city. Remember, these are
people that are sharing streets. In East
Germany, basic consumer goods typically
cost a far greater share of workers
monthly salary than in West Germany. For
example, a color TV might cost roughly
five times an average East German's
monthly salary compared to less than one
month's salary in West Germany. Plus,
everyday things like cars were extreme
luxuries in East Germany. East Germans
had to wait an average of 12 to 15 years
to get even a small car. same city, same
culture, same language, same genetics.
In many cases, we're talking about
families that were divided. We'll get
back to the show in just a second, but
first, let me tell you about my
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my standards. Not in business, not in my
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they're naturally fermented with organic
spices. There's no gluten, no soy or
corn, and they're paleo and keto
friendly. Your body [music] does not
care if you're busy. The difference
between successful people and everyone
else [music] often comes down to the
standards they refuse to negotiate on.
Make your nutrition one of those. Right
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That's maintaining your standards for
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Click the link below to get your 30 beef
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let's get back to the show. Half on one
side, half on the other. And despite all
of that similarity, just by changing the
economic setup from top down to
capitalism, radically different
economics and lifestyle outcomes were
achieved. When inequality spikes, it is
understandable why people start asking
things like, "Should billionaires
exist?" But top down economic control
doesn't just fail to rectify it and
deliver prosperity. It systematically
destroys the economy. And even more
importantly, it doesn't just destroy the
economy, it destroys innovation and the
human spirit itself. People living in
the East didn't just lack money, they
lacked optimism, hope, and confidence in
their future. And that's not peculiar to
the East German variety of top- down
control. That's the nature of top- down
control itself. And yet today, when
faced with extreme wealth inequality,
they still gravitate towards trying to
fix the problems of runaway wealth
inequality by going after the symptom,
in this case, billionaires, rather than
the actual cause, ever escalating debt
and money printing. It's understandable
to pursue dramatic change when social
mobility is declining and debt and
insanely high prices make the American
dream effectively impossible. But the
fundamental problem is that top- down
populist solutions might feel good in
the short term because they punish the
wealthy, but they make our problems
worse, not better. Economies, like
ecosystems, are complex, adaptive
systems that respond to incentives. When
you disincentivize innovation by
confiscating the rewards of your most
successful citizens, economic growth
slows, wages go down, prices go up on a
purchasing power basis, innovation
declines, and everyone suffers.
Redistribution, forced wealth seizure,
and aggressive top-down [music]
control might temporarily reduce
symptoms, but the core economic and
cultural illness remains untouched, and
all you have effectively done is
equalize everyone at zero. Given the
importance of a thriving middle class,
if taxing billionaires out of existence
worked, I'd be all for it. But
historically, we've seen this scenario
play out again and again. When
governments attempt aggressive top-down
interventions like the Soviet Union,
North Korea or East Germany, economic
prosperity disappears, replaced by
widespread poverty, cultural stagnation,
and a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
And the Nordic countries, Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden,
which are often praised for their social
democracies, have their own set of
trade-offs. They trade low income
disparity for high taxes, lower GDP,
curtailed growth, and extensive welfare
systems that create immigration
problems. In 2023, US GDP per capita was
$81,000, [music]
significantly higher than Denmark,
Sweden, and Finland. Only Norway beat
the US, and that's because of massive
oil reserves, not because their economic
policy delivers strong growth. Further,
Sweden's GDP per capita growth slowed
noticeably post 1970 when they
implemented high tax policies, unlike
the US, which has lower taxes and has
consistently outperformed them. In 2024,
the US alone accounted for 49% of all
global venture capital funding, while
the entire EU, including the Nordic
countries, only accounted for 13%. The
scope and scale of America's innovation
dwarfs the entire world, and the Nordic
countries in isolation are a rounding
error. Their markets are small and their
high tax environments deter the kind of
risk-taking needed to compete on the
world stage, especially when your
competition is China. Oil and gas make
up a full 20% of Norway's GDP. Without
oil, Norway's GDP per capita drops below
the US. Additionally, the Nordic models
high taxes and generous welfare only
work in homogeneous small populations
with high trust and face massive
challenges when scaling to a large
diverse country like the US. In 2023,
Nordic countries had among the highest
tax to GDP ratios. Denmark at 46.7%,
Sweden at 42.6%,
Finland at 41.9%
versus the US at 27.7%.
Also in the Nordic countries, aging
populations are also beginning to strain
the welfare systems. Finland's pension
costs have risen at an exponential 3.2%
annual compounding growth for nearly a
decade. To get specific about
immigration, Sweden's immigrant
unemployment rate is 15.4%
versus just 3.6% for natives. Tensions
are [music] mounting. Like everything,
it's a trade-off. If you don't regulate
capitalism at all, you get the madness
of the guilded age in America. If you
regulate it too much, you get socialism.
If you aim for the middle, you stagnate.
So, how do you do this? Well, welcome to
part five, the real solution. If you
want to delete billionaires, you've got
to focus on the structural problems that
give rise to them in the first place.
Just as you don't cure brain cancer by
taking Advil, you don't cure inequality
by taxing billionaires back to [music]
millionaire status. Advil just masks the
root cause of the headache and taxing
just stagnates our economy. Set another
way, focusing on billionaires is like
blaming a fever instead of the infection
causing it. And the infection we face
right now goes to [music] the very heart
of America's monetary structure,
economic incentives, and cultural
values. Billionaires emerge naturally,
inevitably from a system that rewards
debt-driven speculation, asset price
inflation, and entitlement instead of
real productivity, genuine innovation,
and disciplined ambition. Debt and money
printing. Debt and money printing. That
should be the area of focus. The
inequality that makes people so angry
arises out of debt and money printing.
And the gimmies that angry people vote
for only makes things worse. And [music]
so we begin to spiral. The more we
deficit spend, the more inequality there
is, the more inequality there is, the
more we vote for a bigger piece of the
pie. And the more we do that, the more
we hollow out the middle class and
create the phenomenon of the rich
getting richer and the poor getting
poor. It is mechanistic. To pull out of
this nose dive, we've got to get out
from under the $ 36 trillion dollar in
government debt that is costing us a
fortune in interest payments alone. And
to do that, we have to execute on what
Ray Dio calls a beautiful deleveraging.
If you want to learn all about that,
just watch this [music] video right
here. We've also got to get rid of the
Fed, and we've got to hold politicians
accountable to a balanced budget. And
perhaps most importantly, we need to
reclaim the top spot globally for social
mobility. We've got to get housing
prices down. We've got to stop handing
[music] out absurd governmentbacked
loans for college that can't be
discharged in bankruptcy court. And
we've got to get back to the promise on
the Statue of Liberty. We have to allow
people to breathe free in a well-
reggulated democracy built on
capitalism, the dark reality of rent
control. In New York City, 60% of rent
controlled apartments are in buildings
over 75 years old. Many of them are
falling apart because rent controls make
it impossible for landlords to maintain
the building. At the peak of New York
City's rent control crisis in the 1970s,
the South Bronx was losing nearly 30,000
housing units per year to abandonment
and arson. That's equal to losing an
entire apartment building every single
day. and politicians are once again
running on platforms of rent control.
History really does repeat. The South
Bronx and part of Harlem have already
experienced severe disinvestment and
abandonment due to rent controls. In the
70s and 80s, rent controls and related
regulations made property maintenance
financially impossible for landlords.
[music] And as a result, entire
neighborhoods were left desolate and
crimeridden. By 1980, the Bronx had lost
over 300,000
residents, [music] leaving behind empty
buildings, burned out properties, and
economic stagnation. 300,000 people
left. The story is both insane and
highly instructive in terms of how to
deal with the current economic and
populist crisis. Starting in 1943, New
York City had implemented emergency rent
controls. This is during World War II
and was intended to be a temporary
measure to prevent wartime profiteering.
[music]
The regulations capped rents at
artificially low levels, significantly
below market value, and this absolutely
battered the financial viability of
owning and maintaining a building. Now,
maybe it wouldn't have been a big deal
had the regulations been dropped, but
there's nothing quite as permanent as a
temporary measure. And so, despite the
post-war economic boom of the 50s and
60s creating a massive increase in
demand for housing, the regulations held
with rents artificially capped.
Landlords had little to no financial
incentive to invest in building new
rental housing, so they didn't. And
consequently, supply remained stagnant
despite massively rising demand. Now,
even if you grant [music] that the
politicians had good intentions, which
may not be wise, but even if you do,
these controls didn't keep rents low.
Instead, they created a housing shortage
and a dual housing market. It went
something like this. Pre-war, rent
controlled units became increasingly
rare and severely underpriced relative
to market conditions. [music] So, a
parallel housing market emerged. Since
the small number of new units that
actually managed to get built and enter
[music] the market weren't subject to
the rent control regulations, they
reflected the actual free market value
and commanded extremely high rents.
Government interventions were
artificially keeping supply low,
creating a massive imbalance in supply
and demand. The severe supply shortage
caused rents to skyrocket in these new
units. Did people realize [music] at
this point what was going on? Namely,
that housing was so limited and
undermaintained due to rent control that
people were willing to pay an
everinccreasing fortune for a
well-maintained building. Nope. The
skyrocketing prices just made the public
even more angry. And once again, not
recognizing the actual cause of the
price increases, people voted for more
governmental intervention. the very
thing that was causing the problem. And
thus, it made the problem even worse.
And so, the spiral continued. [music]
And under massive public pressure, in
1969, the city introduced the [music]
rent stabilization law. This policy
sought to also control the newer
apartments that were previously avoiding
the rent limitations. It was designed to
be a separate, less severe form of rent
control [music] known as rent
stabilization. It allowed for minor
increases, but still held rents well
below market rates and forced landlords
to seek approval for any major rent
increases, which once again stifled the
income streams that are necessary for
property maintenance and upgrades
[music]
and is so often the case with
emotionally driven government
intervention. The new rent stabilization
law failed to actually address the root
cause, namely the lack of financial
incentive needed to propel investors to
take a risk on building new housing
and/or invest in maintenance. The
additional layer of complexity brought
on by two types now of rent control also
serve to confuse the market even
further, discouraging new development
and perpetuating the chronic housing
shortages [music] and deterioration. So
say it with me now. The death spiral
continued at an accelerating pace. In
1971, under Mayor John Lindseay's
administration, New York City extended
stringent rent control rules,
significantly limiting landlords ability
to increase rents, even when properties
required major repairs or capital
investments. And guess what happens when
you do that? Landlords who found their
maintenance costs regularly exceeding
the allowable rent income decided not to
make even basic repairs because if they
did, they were going to go bankrupt.
This only worsened the housing crisis.
[music] In response, in 1974, New York
established the Division of Housing and
Community Renewal, introducing even
tougher enforcement mechanisms for
regulated rents because, well, the
beatings will continue until morale
improves. Unfortunately, that kind of
strict enforcement and those penalties
only further discouraged landlords from
investing in regulated properties as
profitability was now extremely limited.
This caused property values to decline
yet again and the abandonment rate on
buildings began to rise even [music]
faster. So by the mid1 1970s, despite
capped rents, property taxes and utility
costs soared. This placed enormous
additional financial pressure on the
landlords who were already in dire
straits. And to make the situation even
more impossible, high taxation rates
were combined with high inflation at the
time, dramatically increasing
maintenance and operating costs, driving
even more landlords to abandon their
buildings. That's the unfortunate cause
and effect of policies like rent
control. When landlords become unable to
cover the escalating costs of their
buildings due to frozen or minimally
increasable rents, more and more of them
will be forced to abandon their
properties or reduce maintenance
significantly until everyone is living
in slumlike conditions. By the late '7s,
many landlords faced with ridiculous
regulations and financial hardship
resorted to not just intentionally
neglecting the properties or outright
abandoning them. In [music] some cases,
properties were deliberately burned for
insurance compensation since insurance
payouts became more financially viable
than trying to work with regulated
rental [music] income. Arson rates
surged dramatically with up to 40% of
the fires in the Bronx being attributed
to arson. 40%. Entire neighborhoods
became characterized by burned out
buildings, abandonment, and severe urban
decay. But if you've been iced out of
the housing market and can tell the game
is rigged against you, you're
understandably going to sour on
capitalism. Because people don't map the
physics of money, the nature of supply
and demand, [music] and the complexity
of the economy at large, they are
inevitably going to fall back on what
they do understand, politicians. So in
1977, yet another attempt at federal
intervention was made called the
Community Reinvestment Act. This is
getting crazy. The CRA was designed to
encourage banks to provide loans to
maintain properties despite the rent
controls. Unfortunately, due to local
regulatory hurdles, limited market
incentives, and financial constraints
that come with rent stabilization, the
CRA's impact was initially limited and
of course failed to reverse the decay.
With decades of failed interventionist
policies, New York fell into a financial
crisis and the city was forced to make
substantial cuts in municipal services
like the fire department, the police
department, and sanitation. The South
Bronx and Harlem were particularly
hardit with a massive acceleration of
property abandonment. The effects of
these policies were devastating.
Neighborhoods were left economically
desolate and crimeridden, creating
conditions often described as economic
ghost towns. By 1980, nearly half of the
housing units in the South Bronx had
been abandoned or destroyed, largely as
a direct consequence of regulatory
decisions. Economic stagnation became
[music] entrenched with unemployment in
the Bronx exceeding 25%.
And this kind of self-inflicted wound
isn't unique to New York. It's seen all
over the world. Stockholm had a housing
crisis. Their rent control policies
created an 11-year waiting list for a
[music] basic apartment by 2022. Severe
shortages led many young people and
families to live in overcrowded housing
or remain with parents into their
[music] late 20s and 30s. Additionally,
property owners stop investing in the
housing stock, leading to visible
deterioration. San Francisco also had
their own major problems. Their
long-term rent control policies led
directly to a 15% spike in housing
shortages between 2015 and 2023,
dramatically reducing availability and
driving up market rents for newer
tenants. Stanford researchers found that
San Francisco's rent control caused
landlords to withdraw from the market or
convert units into condos or short-term
rentals. In 2020, Berlin ran into
similar problems when they imposed
stringent rent controls, freezing rents
at June 2019 levels. And within a year,
new rental housing permits declined by
nearly 40%, exacerbating shortages and
making housing even [music] less
accessible for new renters. The exact
opposite of the desired outcome. Santa
Monica also implemented strict [music]
rent controls in the late 1970s. And
guess what? By the early 90s, research
showed that these controls significantly
reduced the housing supply and increased
rental costs for non-controlled units,
pricing out young professionals, and
contributing to the economic stagnation
in the area. Post World War II rent
control policies also battered the UK,
resulting in severe underinvestment in
housing maintenance. By [music] the late
1970s, significant portions of the UK's
rental stock were classified as unfit
for human habitation. If this pattern of
governmental intervention creating the
very problem it's trying to solve is
happening all over the world, what is
going on? That which is predictable
should be avoidable.
We are living in arguably the most
transformational time in human history.
We're nuclear armed, politically
divided, able to bring entire species
back from the dead, and AI is racing
towards becoming a god. Things are
changing so fast it's dizzying. And
whether we're talking about politics,
economics, global conflict, or
artificial intelligence, we are
constantly being spun, lied to, and
manipulated. And if you don't have a
model for truth seeeking and error
correction, you will get wrecked. Most
of the time, you won't even realize it's
happening. So, I began to evolve my
thinking and my channel along with me
using a simple algorithm for approaching
the complexities of life at this moment.
The algorithm has five parts. One,
recognize you're trapped in a distorted
frame of reference, and the only way out
is to run experiments and think from
first principles. Two, map out cause and
effect. [music]
Three, seek disisconfirming evidence and
take in information from a wide variety
of sources. Four, judge the correctness
of something by the results it delivers.
Five, remember you're having a
biological experience. We all might be
divine [music] creatures, but we are
still an easy to manipulate chemical
processing plant. Once you accept that
biology shapes how we think, you start
to see the world differently. You stop
asking why is that person doing
something so stupid? And you start
asking what incentives are driving that
behavior. One of the most important
things I've ever learned is this. People
don't do what's right. Not even what
they think is right. They do what
they're incentivized to do. That
includes you. It certainly includes me.
You want to understand business, follow
the incentives. You want to understand
politics, follow the incentives. You
want to understand yourself. Of each
thing you do, ask a simple question.
What am I really trying to get from
this? Let's zoom out for a second. Why
is inflation my obsession? And why is it
so hard to solve? It's an incentive
problem. People want things for free,
but until humans will work for free,
nothing nothing will come for free.
Inflation, aka the act of the government
printing money out of thin air, creates
the illusion of getting something for
free. Inflation allows the voter to
demand the government to give them
things for free, like healthcare, and
for the government to reach into your
wallet and take money out without you
noticing. If you don't believe me, watch
my video on money printing and
inflation. Or if you really want to go
deep, read the creature from Jackal
Island. It is about the creation of the
Federal Reserve Bank and it will melt
your entire brain. Humans want today to
be easy, even if it makes tomorrow hard.
Homer Simpson has a great line as he's
being bered about how he's going to
regret his bad choices. And he says,
>> "That's a problem for future Homer. Man,
I don't envy that guy."
>> And that is the architecture of the
human mind. We will gladly pay Tuesday
for a burger today. Sorry, it's a Popeye
reference. I couldn't help it. But
hopefully you guys get the point. Humans
respond to incentives. And if we're not
aware of how we're motivated, we are
very easy to lead around by the nose.
This is why we have three branches of
government. They are meant to be in
healthy tension, protecting us from the
worst of our impulses. Tyranny arises
specifically when one person is able to
do whatever they think is best. The
human mind is so intrinsically flawed
that we need corrective mechanisms baked
in to the very structure of our
thinking. Don't get me wrong, the human
mind is an absolute marvel. But we are
best understood as emotional creatures
and rarely does what feels good end up
being the most effective path to
fulfillment or even accuracy. Hence the
need for religion, Bibles, self-help
books, technology, a government, and
even AI itself. In 2018 and 2019, two
Boeing Max 737 Max airplanes crashed,
killing 346 people. Why? Because of a
faulty flight control system. But here's
the deeper truth. The system was faulty
because of faulty incentives. Boeing had
a northstar, beat Airbus to market. That
single incentive created a cascade of
shortcuts, secrecy, and failure. Nobody
wanted to build a plane that crashed,
but the incentive structure made it
almost inevitable. And that's what
happens when people optimize for the
wrong thing and call it strategy. You
have to judge a tree by the fruit that
it bears and iterate quickly when things
are going wrong. It is the only way to
find out if you're thinking in an
effective way. I don't know that we can
save everyone, but I know we can save
each other. Focus on yourself, your
friends, your family. Let change ripple
out from there. Till then, my friends,
be legendary. Take care. Please.