Solutions From The Multiverse
Hosts Adam Braus (@ajbraus) and Scot Maupin (@scotmaupin) meet up each week where Adam brings a new idea to help the world and Scot picks and prods at it with jokes and questions. The result is an informative and entertaining podcast that always gets you thinking.
Solutions From The Multiverse
Solving Capitalism and Socialism: Becoming Anti-Feudal | SFM E92
Ever considered how a year-round school calendar might shake up the traditional learning experience? Our latest episode tackles this question head-on, as we share personal stories and compare the potential academic and social benefits for students, teachers, and parents. From reducing learning loss to integrating summer fun through themed activities like robotics and sports camps, we cover the spectrum of possibilities that could keep the spirit of summer alive while enhancing education.
But why stop at education? The debate heats up as we pivot to societal systems, dissecting capitalism versus socialism, and introducing my future book concept, "The F Word." We explore the shared disdain for feudalism—an analogy for power concentration—and discuss how to achieve a balance of freedom and constraints within our economic reality. Expect a few laughs and unexpected detours as we navigate corporate hierarchies, retail mannequins, and the pursuit of a more equitable society.
Capping off our spirited discourse, we challenge the notion that Western philosophy is a gateway to fascism. Instead, we advocate for an anti-feudal society that champions free speech, collaboration, and equality before the law. We break down the open versus closed society debate and urge our listeners to transcend the outdated socialism versus capitalism dichotomy. Join us in pushing for foundational values that promote a fair and open community, all while coining new terms and invoking a touch of humor along the way.
Help these new solutions spread by ...
- Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts
- Leaving a 5-star review
- Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)
Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.
Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com
Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com
Scot: @scotmaupin
adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)
Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
how is it going, adam? It is going, it is going pretty well. You're looking very trim, very fit thank you, I'm trying.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to, yeah, be a trim, fit person. I'm going to more jujitsu classes, which is good, good and so that over in my neighborhood uh-huh that'll. But that also puts me dangerously close to the Mitchell's ice cream store, which is delicious ice cream, kind of a balancing of the force is sort of a dark side of the force.
Speaker 1:Light side of the force, zoroastrian sort of.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'm going to get it mixed up and I'm going to walk into the ice cream store and start like wrestling all the tubs of ice cream. I'll be like what is happening. I'm like my my wires are crossed. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1:I wear what? Why do none of these? Why do none of these ice cream tubs have official geese on? Why? Why aren't they wearing the proper?
Speaker 2:attire. You think that's the problem. Then I roll into jujitsu class and start licking everyone and they really, they, really, they really don't like that one. How are you? I'm doing, okay, what I'm doing great actually. You're doing great actually. Well, I'm working on a bunch of stuff that feels like it needs to be justified.
Speaker 1:Well, we just started summer break. I have basically 12 weeks off.
Speaker 2:Oh right, You're a teaching person.
Speaker 1:I'm a teacher. So it is now vacation time I'm basically just I get paid this whole time okay, okay, I do almost nothing. All right, I have colleagues who are working a little bit. They are teaching like one or two classes.
Speaker 2:I just I'm only teaching one class, so I still am working, but I'm just working very little so you're trying to create a jealous pod where I'm just jealous of you all, and that's the energy I put into the microphone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being a teacher is really cool. I actually don't even believe in summer break Mini solution. We should get rid of summer break, year-round school. It's stupid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, year-round school. I'm on board with that, of course.
Speaker 1:I've been on that page. I would say, maybe even keep the same amount of time off, but spread it all out so that it's you know well, here's the secret, like I found out when I went.
Speaker 2:I went to Japan, obviously. Well, when I was in high school I went to Japan and then again after college, but they have year round school there and I was in the education system both as a student and as a teacher. Uh, it's great. I am a big fan of it. There's less learning loss. Uh, less time spent re-teaching what was taught to catch up and, like you were saying, if you you stack up all the breaks in between, there's actually more time off.
Speaker 1:I think there was more yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a lot because, yeah, it was just more time off, but it was spread out, you know, two weeks here.
Speaker 1:One thing there, here's. Here's a holiday, there's a holiday Month off. You know, give them three weeks off at Christmas. And two weeks off here and three weeks off there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe a month off in the summer.
Speaker 1:Give them June off or July off or whatever. That's fine.
Speaker 2:Summers off are great if you are a parent who's also a teacher. But if kid has the summer off now, you're like oh, whoa, whoa right.
Speaker 1:What is what do people that's a whole another for child care during the summer?
Speaker 2:it's weird I don't even know. I mean I think people are just latchkey kids, right, they're just like left at home so I'm in this right now because I have a 10 year old and so a lot of it is looking for after school camps, uh, activity like day camp, not after school like day camps, or activity things that basically take the place of school during the day for a short whereas the government could just provide school, and then you wouldn't have to do any of that yeah, but people would be like, no, it's so horrible now we have to go to school year-round.
Speaker 2:I'm like you're doing that anyway, you're subsidizing it yourself, right, but they could even.
Speaker 1:They could even make months of school like just summer camp, right, they could just be like oh we're, we're in our june term, where we just play and have fun all day yeah, that's fine, but just make it part of school, like just make it something that july is robotics july and we're all doing yeah, right, or you can choose.
Speaker 1:It's an elective thing and you can either go do football camp for the month or you can do robotics camp for the month. But it's school, it's public school and the government provides it, and then now all all the kids get it for free and you don't have to scramble, the parents don't have to like scramble and assess where are you gonna do, what are you gonna do? It's just all baked in as it is. I can't believe we don't do this.
Speaker 2:No I don't either, but as it is, it seems like summer is created so that we can like um, so that you know it's. It's there as kind of like a way to give back to teachers or some in some random thing, because it's like everyone's like oh, we know, teacher's job is so hard and stuff, so at least you get this break instead of, like, fixing conditions and or raising pay and or doing the things that would make a hard job, them a summer yeah, they're just like well, now you get a summer, you just get a job, you get time off, which isn't helpful, bad and also like it's.
Speaker 2:I mean inside and out. It's just not good. I don't, yeah, like it from any. And people get mad at teachers and they go. You don't even work part of the time. They use that to justify things and then, yeah, it's just. I don't see a lot of benefit in the summer model anymore me neither there you go, solution done. Welcome to solutions, okay, mini solution done, we solved it.
Speaker 1:We should definitely get rid of summer vacation. Even if there is summer school, it should just be conducted as school and students should all be expected to go to it and they can choose whatever activity they want to do.
Speaker 2:We just lost all of our k through 12 listeners, by the way no, I think they'd like it because they can still do all the things they do in summer, because it doesn't have to be like studious academic but if you brought it up, the positioning of it is you lose your summer and you have to go to school year-round. You can't sell that. It's a hard.
Speaker 1:That's a hard sell to kids, I mean well, kids don't be get to be in charge. That's true.
Speaker 2:That's why yeah, unfortunately no, I think that's pretty fortunate. Also, I think you're underestimating, right? I?
Speaker 1:think a lot of kids like again, I think this is like a privilege thing, right, like kids without privilege will probably be like this is great, like low-key, this is awesome. But then kids with with privilege would be like no, when I'm in summer it's just fun all day long because I'm rich. You know like I'm, I have enough money and support by my net.
Speaker 2:You know my family to to kind of have a great summer maybe, but I mean also those richer kids usually get better school experiences uh and the less fortunate kids often are in schools where it's a struggle the whole time to him.
Speaker 1:So right, right right yeah, I, I don't want to go back to school, it's not a good right right right place right okay, I have a more serious solution then okay, we'll do a little more like a structural solution okay, so this is the solution. This is a solution that I think I someday may write a book about this, and I'll tell you the title of the book. The title of the book would be the F word ah the. F word yeah, and it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not like the beautiful what you think the beautiful F words up in Norway the giant F you go on a cruise and look at the F words. The F words are so beautiful. No different F word.
Speaker 1:Different F word actually really so your mind jumped directly to Norway. So not exactly what I would think people would jump to.
Speaker 2:No, oh, so here's this.
Speaker 1:I think of myself as pretty typical, so this is a little bit of a theories from the multiverse, sort of ideas, sort of solutions from the multiverse. But the solution is like fixing a sort of problem in the realm of ideas. Okay, maybe because I'm getting a PhD, my brain is all like filled with ideas. I've always struggled with the conflict, the kind of apparent dichotomy or conflict between capitalism and socialism. Right, that's the kind of two buckets. Everything can kind of be painted with those broad brushes.
Speaker 1:Give everyone the stuff versus transaction Make everybody work for the stuff, versus kind of tax and sort of even out everything for everybody, right, okay. So I've always thought that this was like a stupid distinction, but I never really could put my finger on how to clearly solve this problem of this dichotomy. But I think I figured it out and so I'll propose it as a solution today. Okay, and it has to do with the F word, which the F word is feudalism, that's okay, that's the F word.
Speaker 2:That would have probably been third. My third guess, I will admit yeah. I had a couple others in front of me.
Speaker 1:Okay, but yes, I'll tell you why it's called that. But basically the solution is, instead of being pro-capitalism or pro-socialism, or anti-capitalism or anti-socialism, instead, I think we can all come together, mostly 99% of us at least maybe not the 1%, but 99% of us can come together and agree that we are all anti-feudalism.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. I was running in my brain, just looking at the hallmarks of feudalism and I was wondering if this is where you were going. Yeah, we don't want feudalism, we're anti-feudalism. Yeah, that's the constant fear of random people on horseback coming in with swords to get you, that's right, I don't want that Game of Thrones, you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, we all want to not let Game of Thrones happen. Right, we don't want Draconis or whatever the flames of the dragons to come down on our heads One day.
Speaker 2:just a lady with dragon shows up and then it's for no reason.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye to the old ways. We didn't do anything. Yeah, we exactly. The sept, the sept will be destroyed, right.
Speaker 2:What do we do now? Oh, whatever the lady with the dragon says okay, yeah, that makes sense, right I've been watching this show, by the way, the house of dragon.
Speaker 1:It's real good really good it's.
Speaker 2:Are you watching the first season or the first, the second? Season is coming out, june 16th so I just finished the first season. Yeah, I saw the first season back when it came out.
Speaker 1:It's pretty intense it's good it got slow start, but then, man in the middle, it really takes off and then it just carries through all the way through to the end I feel like that's how game of thrones was, too like it.
Speaker 2:They have to do a lot of set setting like table setting. You know they got to introduce, you, to introduce all the people, who they are, their relationships with each other, and then they can start like knocking over dominoes I mean in game of thrones, I felt like you were, though, intrigued with every new character.
Speaker 1:With this one, you were like you kind of were thrown into the middle, like the first scene is like a you know a hall full of, like the main characters, and you're like, oh, my god, at least in the game of thrones, it's like here's sansa, you know, like it just follows her for a little bit, and then it's like here and you kind of get sort of brought and then they're in a room together and you're like, oh, I kind of know who these people are. So, yeah, it definitely got a little bit like throw you in the deep end.
Speaker 2:But well, the first one. They're like hey, here's a brother and sister. You know how brothers and sisters act, not so fast no bet you didn't know how these brothers and sisters act and then in this one they're like. How do you feel about like uncles and nieces, right?
Speaker 1:becomes an uncle niece. Incest gross, um, but dramatic, I mean, but gross, yeah, but also realistic to things that would have happened.
Speaker 2:That's true potentially completely fake fantasy times, but mimicking castle times right castle time.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing we don't want to return to castle times as much as this is what 99 of us can agree to right yes, 99 of us can agree. We don't want to turn to castle times creepily. I think one percent do want to return to castle time. These are futile feudalists. I mean we should call them. Yeah, bro, I need to. Yeah, yeah exactly that's what tech people say does your product have a moat?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's what tech people say Does your?
Speaker 1:product, have a moat. That's what they say. They literally want to go back to feudalism. It's terrible, but this is the thing. There's so much claims in the media and everywhere and people even just think oh, there's so many differences among people, oh, we're all divided among each other, the right wing, the left wing, the blah, blah, blah, the blah, blah, blah, and it's like really we're not. We're all the former peasants of feudalism. We don't want to return to feudalism, but there seems to be this sort of historical gravitational pull towards feudalism, right, Tell me more.
Speaker 1:Like if you dumped 100 people or or say, a thousand people on a desert island, just naked, you just dumped them on an island or just whatever they were wearing sounds hot, just whatever they were wearing, just dump them on an island we're going away from the, you know.
Speaker 1:Imagine like some guy would have like a pocket knife in his pocket and then he would instantly become like way, way more resourced than everyone else because he could like cut down things and like make stuff and cut up fire and do right.
Speaker 1:Or one guy had a lighter and instantly he's infinitely more resourced than everybody else, or he's sorry, he's, he's very moderate, minorly resourced, but two weeks later he's like way more resourced because he's had fire for two weeks. He's had, you know, the ability to trade his fire for other things for two weeks, and now that gave him other advantages and more and more so. So the guy with like you know who's fit and who has like a lighter is like after two weeks is like thousands of times more resourced than the person who's like has a bad hip, who's like 70 years old and like doesn't have any fire or knife or anything. They're completely strung out after two weeks. They're probably dead after two weeks, right? So so like well, inequality just seems to happen extremely naturally so we're kind of pulled towards feudalism I mean, in that scenario, how much of natural human does like?
Speaker 2:how much are we discounting that like the compassion of people who are like not going to let a 70-year-old guy just die?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they may care for him.
Speaker 2:Or the jealousy if they're like oh, one guy has a knife, cool, I'm going to organize three guys over here and we're going to go take that one knife for that one guy To hit him in the head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:If the fit guy with the knife, how? What happens when he runs up against the giant dude with a sure, the club sure there's all kinds of things, but that's that is realism, right? Well, yeah, that's true, the biggest person with the biggest sword takes what they want. You hope that, that's the person that you want, leading right, the queen of dragons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, conan the barbarian, but I. But I think my point is just what's called the Matthew effect, which actually comes from the Bible. It's come from the Bible, but it's a psychological.
Speaker 2:I bet I know which book sociological term, which one?
Speaker 1:Leviticus it comes. It's a sociological phenomenon or whatever economic theory, but it's called the Matthew effect because in Matthew Jesus says to those who have little will be taken away, to those who have much will be given more. And so there's this principle that if you have a teeny, teeny, teeny, weensy advantage, over time that will exponentially become stronger. So teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny advantages actually become massively huge advantages in the future. And if you have teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny advantages actually become massively huge advantages in the future. And if you have teeny, teeny disadvantages, they become like deep, horrible disadvantages over time.
Speaker 1:So say, you have like a speech impediment, but then throughout your whole life, or when a speech impediment doesn't matter too much but say, yeah, you can't speak very well, over time you'll be put in the slower classes and people will kind of maybe they'll shy away from you in social settings and you can't build the relationships you need. And then you can't in the job interview, you're stuttering and people don't want to hire. You can't do all this work and then you're way. You make money way less. Maybe you know other things happen. So it has all these negative effects, that kind of cascade.
Speaker 2:Sure, I've seen, if you've ever seen those graphs, that sometimes they put a graph out of like linear versus exponential growth and they're like here's what it looks like if you just get 1% better every day, you know, and it's like a. It's a little thing that goes up a little at the beginning, but then it just shoots up near the end and you're like, oh right, yeah, that's. And then you know, likewise the beginning. You're not going to notice that big a deal, but over time the compounds.
Speaker 1:It's huge and so, yeah, so what's interesting? So here's an interesting fact. Here's an interesting fact the extremists of both left-wing and right-wing claim that we are headed towards neo-feudalism. So this is what's called the horseshoe effect, but in a way it's a kind of positive horseshoe effect. So usually the horseshoe effect is considered negative. The extreme right wing and the extreme left wing are both totalitarians.
Speaker 1:Right In this case it's actually kind of a positive horseshoe effect. The extreme left wing is like hey, we're headed towards like a corporate technological surveillance, neo feudalism, and the extreme right wing is like we're headed towards also a surveillance, corporal government, kind of corporal government big brother type totalitarianism and they both are like that's bad.
Speaker 1:So in a way this is almost like a positive horseshoe, where both the extremes are actually pointed in the right direction, away from feudalism, like we have two sets of people, we have two sets of police watching for certain aspects of it, but they're watching for opposite aspects.
Speaker 2:But with both of those things guarded we have like a better.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just. It just points out that it'll, is it? No, I just mean, isn't it weird that the extremes agree on that? Feudalism is bad and in a way, I think we should all agree with that. Feudalism is bad. We shouldn't move back to a world where 1% of people own everything. The government is really just private property owned by the wealthy. The law just works to preserve property owned by the wealthy. The law just works to preserve this, this, the class of the wait.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, wealthy, you're trying to describe a situation that we are not currently I know exactly right, we're moving very rapidly, that sounds very much like I know, I know but if we could, so if we could set aside, I think, these, what are called manichean, these sort of false do?
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, between the state called capitalism and socialism. Oh, I thought you meant the fake people that wear the clothes in the stores, the manichaeans yeah, yeah, yeah, what? Oh you sorry, you mean mannequins those ones who are like look at my cotton pants those ones who are like look at my cotton pants.
Speaker 1:Wait, you go to stores where the mannequins talk to you and their heads are like tubes, like they're just like tubes. They're always like weird looking well we have to go shopping.
Speaker 2:Where are you?
Speaker 1:going? Have you noticed that mannequins are like waif, like thin.
Speaker 2:They're so thin they're basically stick figures. I'm not checking out mannequins, no, actually I have noticed the opposite. I've noticed that they have more like. I've been seeing mannequins that seem like they have realistic body types that I'm like okay, some.
Speaker 1:Have you seen some badonkadonk mannequins? I mean, I don't, I don't know badonkadonk, but I've definitely seen people who are like thick.
Speaker 2:It gives you a better idea of like what's this what's this shirt gonna look like on a real of like? Oh well, the shirt looks great on an amazing looking figure. Of course, everything looks great on hot people.
Speaker 1:That's how that works. I'm just pulling up the company Muffin Top Mannequins here. Yeah, they do have some pretty realistic looking oh man.
Speaker 2:Look, that's an idea. If that doesn't exist you're telling me there aren't stores that would be interested in muffin top mannequins. It is helpful.
Speaker 1:It is helpful well, now they're going to do all the stuff where they just scan your body and then you just ai just shows what the clothes look like I put like a little.
Speaker 1:You put a pair of sunglasses on in the store and you can see in the mirror, like yourself wearing whatever, or just look at the mirror, and then the mirror has a camera, and then oh, perfect, and then what I can do is I can turn the dial on the glasses and be like now I'm definitely going to lose 50 pounds, like next month. So let's see what that would look like and then you go.
Speaker 2:You're like oh, look at that. Who is this little McSteamy boy in the in the mirror now? Hello sir.
Speaker 1:Oh, McSteamy boy.
Speaker 2:That's my Grayson.
Speaker 1:That's my old Grayson out ofomy popping back in from my brain.
Speaker 2:I like it, so wait, all right, so you drug me way off feudalism, manichean, manichean, the Manichean.
Speaker 1:So Manichean dualities, false dualities, and they're used to pit people against each other who don't realize that they're actually kind of being deceived, that actually they share much more in common with their opponents than they think, and that's what's happening right now in our society. So the wealthy and the media are not intentionally, I think they do it kind of accidentally, because it sort of sells newspapers right, it kind of drives clicks and attention to create sort of outrage and wedge issues. You're constantly looking for wedge issues like abortion or like whatever, to drive people apart. But really like the biggest, like what's the opposite of a wedge issue, a hug issue, a hug issue, oh, the hug issue. What we need is like big hug issues and I think the ultimate hug issue is like feudalism is bad. We should not return to feudalism, and that's I thought I just find that. So capitalism and that's, I just find that. So I find that it just warms the cockles of my heart, preston.
Speaker 2:Pyshko, Just not going to feudalism.
Speaker 1:Jay Gouldenberg. Well, just to realize that, like we don't need to fight about capitalism and social. Actually, this is the interesting thing there are elements of capitalism that lead to feudal relations, hierarchical, you know, dominance and submission type relationship. If you work at a corporation and your boss can just tell you any day to do like any task and you have no say in that, that's feudal, that's a feudal, that's enfaufment, enfaufment, right. Where it means a thief to gain a thief, right, you're sort of you're like a little serf and you have your little patch of dirt, that in Foffment right when it means a thief to gain a thief right.
Speaker 1:You're sort of you're like a little serf and you have your little patch of dirt that you can kind of do things in, but you can be told to do different things at any moment.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's thief and serf Many words. I use on a regular 2024 basis. Exactly right. Well, maybe we need to start doing that.
Speaker 1:Talk about my fiefdom yes. Yeah, start doing. Talk about my fiefdom, yes, yeah, and like and like, so futile. So capitalism has these fief, like you know, futile relationships built into it, but it also has very liberal you know anti-feudal relationships, right, like you know, I can buy whatever I want at the store, you know, and I can earn money and you know I can use it however I want, basically right, and so, in many ways, no one's supposed to be above the law, so yeah and there's free speech and there's things like that, which you can have in socialism too.
Speaker 1:But just economically speaking, there's like thing I can start a business, free entry into the marketplace, I can charge whatever price I want for the good that I want to sell, or whatever.
Speaker 1:So there's this kind of there's an anti-feudalism built into it too, and the same thing with socialism. There's kind of a feudalistic side of socialism. You know the if you have some central planning, the politique bureau tells you you can or can't do X, y and Z with your property or whatever you know. But there's also things that are anti-feudalism, like if you provide an efficient form of social welfare that you know protects the most vulnerable people from, from problems and and that liberates them and lets them, you know, live, have housing, of health care, have education. Education is extremely, uh, liberating to the mind and to the.
Speaker 1:You know your political society yeah, that didn't seem like a big feudalism tenant was education yeah so like both of them have like a dark side and a light side, like a feudal side and a non-feudal side. So what we want to do is actually kind of horseshoe the debate around and leave all the feudal stuff on one side and all the anti-feudal stuff on the other and embrace both. So embrace both the anti-feudal sides of capitalism and socialism together and reject all the feudal sides of capitalism and socialism. And if you try to engage with people in this way, they don't get it. They don't get it because they keep every. If you bring up one issue or another, it's either kind of a more socialist idea or a more capitalist idea, and they brand you as being that and it's like no man. I'm pulling from both sides. Acdc here.
Speaker 2:Well, what will happen is both sides will grab onto the piece of the other side that you're including, that they hate and they'll hate you and they'll point, yeah, you'll be taking arrows from both sides.
Speaker 1:Justin Donald Right, and this is why we need to establish this hug issue which is to say I just want to tell the world now, so that people stop bothering me, calling me a socialist or a capitalist, which both I'll be in a room and people will think I'm a total raging capitalist jerk because I embrace, you know, free markets and private property and you know choice about things. You show up in your suit and your monocle and your top hat. Yeah, and wealth. There's nothing wrong with wealth as long as it doesn't disrupt society too badly.
Speaker 2:Carry around your bags with money signs on them. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's what I always do Monocle, you know but then in other rooms or in even the same room, if I say something else like yeah, we should absolutely have universal health care or health insurance and we should absolutely provide like affordable housing to everyone. Even if it means the government just centrally planning and building huge like tracks of housing, we should totally do that and people just they just think I'm some kind of raging dyed-in-the-cloth red communist, psycho-socialist, and I'm like you.
Speaker 1:people are so caught up in this Manichean duality between capitalism and socialism. You're missing the bigger picture, which is the hug issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way to keep it together.
Speaker 1:We need to prevent feudalism from reemerging in history, which it is like on a just hell bent on doing that.
Speaker 2:You know who feels like the new, like hoper, like the people crossing their fingers hoping for feudalism to come back. It's not the sword people, now. I feel like sword people are like a niche. Just you know people who watch the Highlander are like a niche. Just you know people who watch the highland or tv show or whatever you know like. But I think the new guys are like those super militia dudes, the militia people who, like, are like I need to carry my machine gun into subway because I have the law that I can. And you're like, yeah, you can, but I mean, what are you, what are you doing? You know, like those guys. I feel like those guys are the people who are more likely to be like yeah, feudalism sounds good, we have like how many bullets? Okay, good, let's go, let's go. Like they're itching for some sort of a, uh, a weird, a weird tussle.
Speaker 1:I feel they are, well they're. I mean they, they're using the boil the frog method, right that? They're just you know chiseling away little by little every day.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:What? The feudalists? Yeah, the kind of the 1% and stuff they would never be like. Okay, everybody, you know, overnight boom Line up, we're taking everything Right, you know. But they're like oh, we, you know, BlackRock went around and bought 500,000 private single family homes over the last six years. Do you think, Like, what are you guys doing? That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Do you think that it's like an intentional thing that's being that's happening where people are like this is what we're trying to do thing that's happening where people are like this is what we're trying to do? Or do you think it's like this creep toward feudalism that you're seeing is more of a natural out?
Speaker 1:I think it just happens like a gravitational pull in history Because, just like the dumping, a thousand people on an island and there's some people have advantages and they just naturally use those advantages and in a way, it's not even their fault. They should use their advantages. The problem is when, at a systemic level, you can look at it and say this is causing unnecessary suffering, this is going to lead to a bad. It's what in software engineering. We call it an anti-pattern, and that's where you follow what seems to be the right thing to do, but you know that at the end of the day it's actually going to cause negative outcomes. And so in software engineering, you identify anti-patterns early on and then you avoid them.
Speaker 1:And that's what we need to do in society. We need to identify anti-patterns early on. Say, this leads to really bad outcomes, so we're just going to you know what's the German word is? We're going to have an Abbrucht. But in English the word is like we're going to interrupt. We're going to interrupt that anti-pattern early on and prevent it, even though it seems to be like a good thing. It's an anti-pattern, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm for it.
Speaker 1:So like people will always criticize me because I have, because I'm living in this anti-feudal, anti-feudal, I have a pure, undiluted anti-feudal ideology and people think that I'm somehow straddling.
Speaker 2:You walk in saying that those are your first words. You go hello.
Speaker 1:I'm.
Speaker 2:Adam. I have a pure, unadulterated anti-feudal philosophy.
Speaker 1:And so people think I'm like Everyone listen, listen what.
Speaker 2:No, adulterated anti-feudal philosophy. So people, everyone, listen, listen what? No, they think I'm a jerk. Now let's see what happened. How did this guy? What's going?
Speaker 1:on. But people think I'm what? People think I'm a jerk because they think I'm one or the other, and then, and if somebody figures it out, they think I'm straddling, they think I'm somehow like I have one, I have one leg like way over on one side and I have one foot way over on the other side and it's like you can't do that and I'm like no man.
Speaker 2:That's a perfect position to get kicked in the nuts.
Speaker 1:I know I'm going to get Rochambeau, but what I'm trying to say is actually I'm, my feet are right next to each other, I'm on the side of the line. That is like you can divide it one way or the other way. Right, and you can either divide it socialism, capitalism, or you can divide it feudalism, non-feudalism, anti-feudalism. The problem is there's no great word for anti-feudalism, except maybe like, like liberal, but liberals been loaded up with all these different meanings.
Speaker 2:it's already so you can't use it opted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just say anti-feudal, because that's like you can't fuck that up. I mean you can't. How do you, how do you somehow pollute what I mean? It's so obvious anti-feudal. You're trying to fight, you know, uh, hierarchies and stuff, destruction of people's freedom, you know, destruct. Basically, you're trying to prevent serfdom for the lowest rung of the ladder. The thing that people don't understand, though, is in faughment. I think in faughment deserves a a broader description and discussion. What's in, what's in thought, what do you think in fafment?
Speaker 2:what do I think in fafment, or what do I definitely know in faf?
Speaker 1:what do you?
Speaker 2:definitely know it is. I mean, it sounds honestly. It sounds like this that you know how, if you like, squish a marshmallow down and it pops back up, but if you do it too much it just stays squished down. That feels like the marshmallow has entered its state of involvement Influence.
Speaker 1:Totally smushed down? Yeah, totally, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:We've wrecked the marshmallow elasticity. How close did I get? That's close.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel like involvement has to do with like a hair move.
Speaker 2:Oh, I could sign on that.
Speaker 1:And the head stylist comes over and is like I will now demonstrate enfauffment, and they like poof, and then everyone's like whoa. And it's like whoa. Oh yes, the 1967 enfauffment technique of hair Enfoffment is an awesome word, I think, because maybe I'm just weird, but it's a great word. But it comes from the word fief, a fief like a fiefdom.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So a king who awards a fief to a lord is called enfoffment. So the king enfoffed the lord.
Speaker 2:So the awarding of the thing to the person is the enfauffment.
Speaker 1:Yes, so you could say like he was enfauffed in 1496, meaning the king or some lord greater, greater lord than him gave him. It happens all the time and like I noticed it a lot in samurai books and movies they're like. And then he was awarded, uh, a, you know a 200 rio. Yes, uh, you know land that's called in fafment. So he was in faft. And then it happened in europe all the time too, during european feudalism people would give in.
Speaker 2:You know, roman or greek soldiers would come back and then be so that that wasn't exactly in fafment because it wasn't feudalism but it was feudal. It was kind of feudal it was kind of feudal.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, so that was in some way that was sort of I would call that like colonialism or like conquer Roman, conquering Right A little different, but the same it is a feudal. You're right. See, that's the thing we need to start seeing things as feudal, not feudal rather than capitalist or socialist. And you're exactly right the Romans coming back from war and giving the land to the citizens and the citizens taking that land and giving it away to various people.
Speaker 2:Not feudal Is feudal.
Speaker 1:Is feudal Right because it's conquer and then power and no choice, and it's hierarchical choice and it's hierarchical and domination and submission rather than trade and equal kind of collaboration, cooperation.
Speaker 2:I have a name for anti-feudalism.
Speaker 1:Let's hear it LaDoof, ladoof, ladoof, ladoof yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you feel about?
Speaker 1:LaDoof Dude.
Speaker 2:I think it's. It's just feudal backwards. It's the word feudal backwards, ladoof.
Speaker 1:L-A-D-U-E-F. Ladoof let's bring it on, because we can have Shia LaDoof be the Perfect Sh.
Speaker 2:Let's bring it on because we can have shia la duf be the perfect shia, shia la duf can be the the spokesperson oh, now that does sound like a saturday night live character where it's like, he's just like a doofy version of even more doofy version of shia la bo. Like shia la bo because I was like hi, the guy shia la duf comes over hi hi, I, hi Hi, I'm Shiloh Doof. That could sustain moderate laughter for two and a half minutes.
Speaker 1:That's a perfect SNL. That's all SNL needs. There you go. There's so much funnier stuff on TikTok and Instagram now, oh my God and YouTube I just die laughing. And then I watch SNL and I'm like, ugh, kind of broad, they're kind of broad, they're doing it live. Adam, they have to do it live.
Speaker 2:so are the tiktok people. Yes, it is well. They can practice 42 takes of it until they get the right one.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's true, snl can practice, but yeah, then they do it.
Speaker 2:Live the people are undefeated, right? I mean, just if you're going against the mass of the audience.
Speaker 1:There are so many funny people in the world that can nail a perfect, a perfect joke right out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:It's hard to beat the mass.
Speaker 1:Preston Pyshko. Yeah, so wait in Foffment. I have to go back to in Foffment, or no? Go ahead there you go Question or something.
Speaker 1:Trey Lockerbie no, in Foffment. Preston Pyshko yeah, so in Foffment. So I think one thing that people don't realize is they think they're in a anti-feudal environment but they actually are just in FOFT, and that, I think, confuses people a lot and they think well, I'm a liberal, I believe in freedom, because here's my shape of my life. But actually the shape of their life is just a kind of neo-feudal enforcement. So, for example, you know you work for a major corporation and you're like a VP of something.
Speaker 2:Whoa nice. Yeah, I just got a promotion. This is great Big promotion. All right, let's talk about my compensation package.
Speaker 1:So you're like the VP of something and there's like dozens of other VPs. You're like in the management hierarchy Right and like you have virtually no accountability. You're never going to be like fired. But you're also like not really producing anything. You just like make plans and sort of manage a few other people and that's like most of corporations. Sign me up, that sounds all right.
Speaker 2:Most of corporations sign me up. That sounds all right. Most of corporations.
Speaker 1:Most of corporations are just these sort of people who are just like yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1:Most of corporations are people, uh-huh, yeah, oh, oh, I see yeah, and so they think I'm operating inside of a free market sort of free society, yeah, but the reality is they're just in foffed. They just have this little, this little plot of like corporate, neo-feudal sort of money that comes to them every month, just like a japanese, or you know japanese rios. They'd get a hundred rios would come every year to them, which is like a rios as much rice as an acre of land can produce I mean everybody.
Speaker 2:You know how much rice that is.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so 200 Rio was pretty good. A 200 Rio in Faufman was, like you know. That was, like you know, like 500,000 bucks a year.
Speaker 2:That was great, Unless you don't like rice. And then you're stuck with all this.
Speaker 1:Well you could sell the rice for whatever you want. The point was rice was like their sort of you know commodity for everything.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh.
Speaker 2:I thought just the richer people had to eat more rice.
Speaker 1:No, they just used Rio as a sort of Rio was like a big denomination of money, almost you could say like how many Rio is this?
Speaker 2:And then Next thing you're going to tell me they used something like cigarettes as money inside of prisons. That's crazy. They did.
Speaker 1:I think they probably still do. They use cigarettes and whiskey and bottles of whiskey as money in East Berlin during the communist times, because they didn't have enough money, so they used other things.
Speaker 1:But anyways so what I'm saying is people think, well, I own a home and I have a stock, I have my stock stuff and I have my little corporate job that I have almost no accountability for and I produce almost nothing Like altogether. Sure, the economy is productive, but most of that production is being done by like frontline workers. You know who are like on the factory floor, on the farm driving the tractor, like picking the berries. You know Like those are the people actually like producing most of the actual work that actually gets done. But the whole like superstructure of a lot of people in america are like these sort of you know middle class kind of corporate workers that like, what are they really doing?
Speaker 1:they really just have like an involvement and and some people have a teeny involvement, like they just get their 401k and they can't own their home but they have a 401k. They have like a teeny involvement but then if you have like a big involvement, you have like your home and your 401k and you have stock in your company and you know you're sort of rich. That's like a bigger involvement. I think people should be like. I think that's the reason why I think a lot of people look around and like we have a free society. And I'm like and it's like no, not really.
Speaker 1:Like a free society would not just be, there aren't any bullshit jobs. There's nothing wrong really with bullshit jobs like that. But the point is just we've built a society that is like careening towards greater and greater feudalism. That is like careening towards greater and greater feudalism. You know, concentration of land ownership, concentration of wealth, concentration of stock ownership, concentration of everything is going into fewer and fewer people's hands. And everybody know, everybody knows that this is not something new to say, but I think what's new is to fight back against the discourse whenever people want to devolve the discourse into socialism or or capitalism yeah instead we can fight them and say look, those are just like two, two, two shades of.
Speaker 1:Like you know, this is just two shades of colors, but actually what we really care about, the actual thing that matters is are we moving towards greater feudalism or greater anti-feudalism? Right, it's kind of what this podcast's ideas actually are all about, I think. Okay, pretty much every single idea has to do with either improving health or reducing feudalism like going against feudal moving against the grain toward uh, toward a hopefully better future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more free, yeah, more free less hierarchical. Not that all hierarchies are bad. I think hierarchies are effective, you know, in certain ways. But you have to enter into them very knowingly and just be aware that that's a way for feudalistic tendencies to start to really adhere and start to really grow in like highly hierarchical stuff. You have to be like is this for the good or is this just kind of like enforcing the power of the most powerful people?
Speaker 2:See, this is weird because I was going to suggest we start moving to a system every episode where we draw from a hat and see which one is the podcast lord and which one is the podcast surf, and then we follow that role for the, you know, for the recording of the show we'll. We have a chance to go the next time but, let's do it we need a totalitarian sort of grip on the, on the conversation, I feel right, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:You know what this is called. Until we have way too much equality in this podcast. Um, you know what else this is called? I think this is kind of what car Popper called the open society. So he tried to say there's open societies and closed societies. Okay, because he was trying to also transcend this idea of socialism and capitalism.
Speaker 2:The blues traveler. He played that song, right, which one? The harmonica song? Give you the run around, I don't know. Never mind, I'm doing a bad, I'm doing a bad bit on the idea that it's john popper instead of carl.
Speaker 1:Oh, john, I see, I didn't even know, john do you know blues traveler? I know the song, you know you know, run around, but I don't know that's a deep guy, no worse no, carl popper, the uh the, the lutheran, the lutheranized jew from austria who john popper could be a lutheranized jew.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't know his background. It's definitely not the same guy plays, I mean harmonica.
Speaker 1:What are you gonna do? I don't think carl popper played harmonica you don't know this, you're just true. I don't like guessing but he just he strikes me as a non-harmonica player. What years was this guy active? He, uh well, he fled the nazis in the 30s and fled to new zealand, okay, and so then he lived there for some long trips from germany to new zealand.
Speaker 2:That's a long trip. You gotta probably need a harmonica.
Speaker 1:But he wrote he wrote a book called the open society and its enemies okay not a good book I read it multiple times it's not good?
Speaker 2:why are you reading bad books multiple times?
Speaker 1:my phd is based on one footnote in the book, one footnote in the big big book so I've, like in the bad book that you've read, I didn't read multiple times, but I've looked at it so much I've they've looked at it so much, I've read it once through, and then I've looked at it so much. I've looked at it so much, I've read it once through, and then I've looked at it so many times.
Speaker 1:So I feel like I read it more than one time, but anyways, he wrote this book, the Open Society of its Enemies. It's not a book worth reading because I think his fundamental theory is wrong or his thesis is wrong, which is that all of Western civilization, all of Western philosophy, leads up to fascism. I, western philosophy leads up to fascism. I don't think that's true. And like he says, like Plato is a fascist and I'm like I don't think Plato was a fascist. I don't know what you're talking about, but he does create this idea of the open society versus a closed society, which does exactly this. It's kind of what I'm saying in terms of feudal societies like a closed society and anti-feudal society is like an open society. Feudal society is like a closed society and anti-feudal society is like an open society. So we could use that terminology. We could say like we need to continue to make society as open as possible, meaning as anti-feudal as possible.
Speaker 1:Free speech collaboration, cooperation, competition. You know equal people before the law. You know interacting with each other with respect and civility. But I don't know, it seems like that word open. It's almost like too new age or too dissociated from history to talk about it that way. I like anti-feudal better because it says what it is. Everyone knows feudalism is like the Lord on top, the serf down below shit rolls downhill. You know, totally unequal. All the wealth flows up to the lords, all the crap flows down to the. You know it's almost like the lord of the money, python. Uh. Sketch where it's like well, I didn't vote, I'm your king. Well, I didn't vote for you. You don't vote for a king. Well then, how did you know I'm king? Then you know. Fantastic, that sketch is like the perfect illustration of like feudal versus anti-feudal mentality would you?
Speaker 2:would you go with the name antifu? Antifu, because we've got, and well, that sounds like antifa.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, but what does that mean? Well, that's a very negative branding these anti-fascism.
Speaker 2:I know, so it should be anti anti-fu fu feudalism anti-fu, anti-feud sounds like you're, yeah, anti-feud anti-fu sounds like you're going through china with some sort of like.
Speaker 1:You're just against martial arts, that yeah, can can trounce kung fu, guys right, or when it? When it contacts kung fu, it explodes like antimatter and matter.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yes, that's how martial arts work, yeah. If you can get the reverse martial art move. You both explode.
Speaker 1:I guess the solution for this podcast is just Don't be futile, everybody. You don't Well, just that you don't have to. When you're facing this Manichaean distinction and somebody's trying to force the debate to be capitalism versus feudalism, you can pull back from that and say these are not the droids you're looking for.
Speaker 1:I refuse to engage in that division between ideas. That division is an anti-pattern, it's a distinctive division, but it's an unhelpful division to achieve the actual beneficent societal goals that we want to achieve. If we want to achieve those goals, the dividing line that we need to always draw is is this idea, policy, ideology, historical event, present day, current event? Is it? Either pro-feudalistic or is it anti-feudalistic? And if it's anti-feudalistic it's good, and if it's pro-feudalistic?
Speaker 2:it's bad.
Speaker 1:Or you have to be very careful with it, like if you're going to kind of with it, like if you're going to kind of, you know you're going to be like yeah, we're going to make this more hierarchical make sure you are going to end up on the winning side just make sure it's going to have beneficial outcomes and not be an anti-pattern that leads to this kind of slippery slope okay you know, into inequality and not just inequality.
Speaker 1:I don't really care about inequality. I care more about the loss of democracy, the loss of freedom, the law. You know which too much inequality will do. You know. So inequality in the extreme is bad for sure. But you know a little bit. Somebody can be rich, somebody could be poor. Some people just want to like lay around and just be fine and eat pizza. Other people want to like bust their asses all the time and like achieve a whole lot of things. There's no, there's no real difference there to me. Some people can be from wealthy families, some people can be from poor families. It's fine. The danger is just if wealthy families start buying all the politicians and changing the vote, you know, changing the way everything works so that there's not a kind of a fair play. So that's the solution for today. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Anti-feudalism everybody. Anti-feudal everybody.
Speaker 1:Forget about for today. Let's do it. Let's take feudalism, anti-feudal, everybody. Forget about socialism and capitalism. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Forget about them, just forget they're gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even it's like do you want?
Speaker 1:to wear red overalls or blue overalls doesn't matter, the point is overalls don't.
Speaker 2:I don't want to wear overalls. Wait, I'll be naked, don't?
Speaker 1:be naked or whatever, whichever one you think is anti-feudalism.
Speaker 2:Right on. Well, thank you guys, I like it.
Speaker 1:And I'm probably going to put this one out with very minimal editing because I was a late boy this week, so we're going to get one out Very nice, all right, well, thank you guys for tuning in. Thanks everybody, send us in your messages if you like this episode, as long as they're not feudal your messages, if you like this episode, as long as they're not feudal.
Speaker 2:We don't want any feudal messages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not, unless you're pro-feudal and you want to argue that then that's interesting. But I'm kind of thinking very few people are pro-feudal. It's a hug issue. You're saying there's few of those dolls. Okay, now I've run out of jokes, clearly.
Speaker 2:I've run out of jokes. We should end those dolls all right, guys, all right. Thank you everyone have a good climatey all right bye, thank you.
