Brandon King

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings and welcome to the United States Transhumanist Party Virtual
Enlightenment Salon. My name is Jannati stolier Off the Second
and I am the Chairman of the US Transhumanist Party.
Here we hold conversations with some of the world's leading
thinkers in longevity, science, technology, philosophy, and politics. Like the

(00:21):
philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, we aim to connect
every field of human endeavor and arrive at new insights
to achieve longer lives, greater rationality, and the progress of
our civilization. Greetings and welcome to our US Transhumanist Party
Virtual Enlightenment Salon. Today, we have a fascinating conversation in

(00:43):
store for you that is both political and philosophical in nature.
Joining us today is our distinguished panel of US Transhumanist
Party officers and members, including our Director of Visual Art
Art Tremone Garcia, our member from Texas who heads the
Text Transhumanist Party, Alan Crowley, our director of Community and

(01:04):
Citizen Science who also ran as our vice presidential candidate
in twenty twenty four, Daniel Tweed, and our special guest
today is Brandon King, who is currently running as a
candidate for the Minnesota House District twenty A, and he
is seeking the US Transhumanist Party's endorsement of his candidacy.

(01:27):
We have set up this Virtual Enlightenment Salon so that you,
our audience, could get to know Brandon a bit better,
some of his backgrounds, some of his journey, and some
of his policy proposals and ideas, because he definitely touches
on a lot of themes that are important to us transhumanists. Today,

(01:51):
we will be discussing subjects such as sovereign holmes, liberation, infrastructure,
and his non mystical view of the technological singularity, which
I think will be a fascinating topic to delve into.
So Brandon, welcome, thank you for being here, and please
tell us a bit more about yourself, your background, how

(02:14):
you came to be involved in transhumanism, how you came
to be involved in politics, and some of your key
campaign proposals.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
So I first got involved with politics in middle school
at the end of the w era beginning.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Of the Obama era.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Back then I was a conservative, then self radicalized online
into the end timer conspiracy theory side, and then after
deradicalizing and then losing my faith around twenty ten, that
was when I became a transhumanist. I've been a transhumanist
about half my life now. I turn in thirty two.
Next month, I was sixteen and twenty ten, and literally

(02:55):
it was the the Harvard my study with Pelomyrs that
was in twenty ten. That was what got me. That
was what made me realize this is more than just
like hi. There's actual science.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Behind radical life extension.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
And while we've never actually talked like this, I've been
casually acquainted with you for many years. And in a
way this is kind of a homecoming for me because
Peyton pelas here casked me with creating the original USTv
Facebook group that in like twenty thirteen, I was barely
a kid, so I was a parable adin in.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
The Yes, this was quite fascinating. And indeed, we have
in our US Transhumanist Party constitution some statements of historical
fact that are quite interesting because we did merge with

(03:55):
the US Longevity Party in twenty twenty, and part of
the statements of historical fact were in relation to the
founding of the United States Longevity Party, so historical Fauvity Party.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, So historical fact number five is that the United
States Longevity Party was founded on January first, twenty twelve
by Hank Policier. And then historical fact number six is
that the second person to have held the title of

(04:35):
chairman in the history of the Longevity Party is Brandon King.
So you are in our constitution in recognition of that history.
Tell us a bit more about that. How did that
arise that you then became the chairman of the US
Longevity Party. I know Hank Policier.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Hank just wanted to He wanted to get less involved
in if I would step up, But again, I had
no idea what I was doing. I did the best
that I could for a couple of years, but yeah,
then it just kind of started getting way out of
my hands. That I'm glad that you guys took over, honestly.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yes, And that is interesting because I knew Hank during
that time period, and I know that Hank Policier has
a tendency to start various initiatives. He started various publications too,
and then hand them over to other people. So that
is what happened to you. Now, how did your views

(05:38):
evolve during that time period and what were your impressions
of the longevity field in the early to mid twenty
tens as compared to what it has become today.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
So my politics after I de radicalized in the far right,
I kind of drifted towards libertarianism effors. But it was
transhumanism that made me a socialist, Like I didn't start
at class consciousness. That game after for me, because it
was internalizing the zero marginal costs and exponential growth like

(06:19):
once they converge. At that point, profit just becomes parisism,
like once zero marginal cost is across the board, even
a scent of profit is one hundred percent profit understanding.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
That is what generally like shifted me towards the left.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
So it's interesting because in various fields of emerging technologies,
it is possible to produce certain kinds of goods and
services essentially free of cost. One example is provision of
email services or data storage, for instance, which used to

(06:58):
be fairly scared, like in the nineteen nineties, one would
pay thirty nine forty dollars per month for a typical
email account, and sometime around the early two thousands, free
email accounts became widely available, and right now it seems

(07:19):
to me a lot of the services that require one
to pay for premium tiers of data storage. Aren't doing
it because they couldn't readily provide that storage free of costs.
They're doing it because that is their particular model of
revenue generation. But there are increasing numbers of areas where

(07:42):
people can in principle access services free of charge. And
of course, one aspect of the transhumanist vision is the
possibility of what is called sustainable superabundance, where more aspects
of the material world could be reproduced so cheaply as

(08:04):
to be virtually free. So I wonder, though, what that
would imply for let's say, standard classifications of economic systems.
In the twentieth century and in the nineteenth century, there
were well defined ways to characterize capitalism and socialism, Whereas

(08:29):
it seems to me in the early twenty first century
we're already getting to a situation where it's not clear
that a particular arrangement neatly fits within one or the other.
So is a private entity giving you free data capitalism
or socialism It doesn't seem to be either. Likewise, a

(08:51):
universal basic income isn't necessarily socialism in my view. It
would depend on how it's funded. If it's a redistributive UBI.
It might be socialism if it's a UBI that is
arrived at from say a federal land dividend, as zoltan
Ishfun proposes, by renting out unused federal land to private

(09:16):
entities and using the proceeds to pay for universal basic income.
That's not exactly capitalism because the government is still doing this.
But it's not socialism in the traditional way, where there
is some sort of centralized control over the economy. Rather

(09:37):
the government is simply administering proceeds that wouldn't have been
generated otherwise. So I am not sure if the old
isms really describe that kind of world. But I am
curious about your view of what you call enlightenment socialism

(09:57):
and how that would differ from other forms of socialism,
historical forms of socialism or Marxist socialism, or socialism as
it has been implemented in practiced in the twentieth century,
be it in the communist countries at least countries that
call themselves communists, or in the democratic socialist countries, say

(10:19):
in Scandinavia.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
So enlightenment socialism is a transitional phase in my mind,
and for me UBI, I believe the proper thing to
do is to nationalized asterig mining and then funded that way.
But so Enlightenment socialism originated as the Cunan social anarchism updated.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
For the twenty first century.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
It is almost entirely derived originally from a single quote
in the Union Stateless Socialism or he explains that, you know,
we're not defining socialism as anything but returning to the
great principle of the French Revolution, that we should basically
define life and try and create a society where the

(11:04):
primary goal is human flourishing, where you are born with
the material means you need to live.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Your best life. And that's the largely where it originated.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
And generally I tend to discard much of the twentieth century,
which is where the Enlightenment.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Prefix comes from, and focus mainly on like.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
The seventeen and eighteen hundreds, because socialism originated as part
of the Enlightenment project before it got bastardized by the
authoritarians in the twentieth century.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yes, you mentioned earlier, well, you.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Wanted to hear my thoughts on the state of longevity research.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yes, not just your views on longevity research, at least
in terms of how you perceive it, how you respond
to it, but also the longevity community, the movements that
are advocating for longevity to be reached in time for us.
What have you observed in terms of the evolution of

(12:13):
those movements. What are your impressions.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
So I am very unhappy with the direction of the research, pills,
gene therapy, treatments, shots, things that could be easily gate
kept or used as a.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Means of societal control. Personally, I'm more fond of, say, a.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Three D printed gland that produces stem celves than naturally
heals your body after it's implanted. You know, some that
you don't need to go to the doctor every month
for a new injection.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
You know, I like I don't.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I generally trust the people doing the research. It's the
people funding.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
The research that I do not trust.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
It's interesting because some of that is just a function
of the technical feasibility of certain treatments. And I have
asked before, what would the experience of going to a
rejuvenation clinic look like in say, ten to fifteen years,
if the first generation of therapies to reach longevity escape

(13:26):
velocity becomes available, what would that experience be like? And
the response that I've received has typically been that it
would resemble a typical medical clinic visit as patients experience
of today. So yes, you would perhaps get some injections,
you would get some pills, The methods of administration would

(13:50):
be familiar enough that most patients wouldn't perceive this to
be anything to invasive or anything novel. And there is
a benefit to that in the sense that this would
provide a certain continuity of experience. As you pointed out,
one would essentially need to have these treatments administered in

(14:14):
a controlled medical setting. Now, three D printed organs are
a field that is advancing. Indeed, for now a decade
and a half, scientists have known how to three D
print simpler hollow organs tracheas, for example. It's harder to
do with organs that have a very complex morphology or

(14:41):
a lot of functional parts, like it's harder to three
D print a heart, though there have been models of
hearts that have been created and have been functional through
that process. Now, of course, the challenge the is if
you get some sort of three D printed part, Yes,

(15:05):
hypothetically that part could be printed, but then the procedure
of implanting it is a very invasive medical procedure.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, of course, but for the life of the organ
it would be only a one.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Time thing until you need to get a replaced.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, so Alan, go ahead.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
Oh I well, just I really appreciate the clarity on
your website. I want to say that right up front.
I went through there and read a lot of great ideas.
I have some concerns for you. One is a very
simple fix. You got the two proposals, which sound fantastic.
I read over the Sovereignty Home Sovereignty twenty twenty seven.

(15:51):
That one got looks like it's pretty solid. The place
on your website where it says click on my other
one about the work week also provides the Uh.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's because both are unfortunately it's one, they're both in
the same uh, the same article on subspect Aha.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
Well that I might that might be something Okay.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Well.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
The other thing is I really love the idea of
time and space, uh, and how you like work that
together as a starting point for both of these things,
time and space. But also even in the development.

Speaker 5 (16:33):
Of the of the.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
Administrative timeline and the functioning of it, you've allowed for
you know, at least with the sovereign homes the using
those parcels of land that are not tax worthy, I guess,
of the city to really manage. That's what this is.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
More of a state level pilot than like a town
level you know.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
Yeah, yeah, and it seems like you might need to
go state wide to get those building assets together. We'll
call it the agency, because you do. The agency would
have the three hubs. I think you mentioned three hubs
to do building, and you probably need state resources. City
is not going to fall off building a hub by itself.
Looked like that was the right place to plan and

(17:17):
the right level. You gave it a nice timeline. You know,
it's not like two thousand and seven, We're going to
sign the build and houses start rolling off. You simply line,
you know, there's let's get the funding and the legalities
together and bring it, you know together by two thousand
and eight and then start the building out the infrastructure
of the hubs and all that in nine or twenty

(17:39):
twenty nine. I think you said to start actually producing houses.
So I think that's a great kind of smart timeline.
I've seen I've seen worse, I guess in my time.
So yeah, it looks like you've got a really good
plan there. My concern is the whole time it's are

(18:00):
you saying resonate so well with me and my neurodivergent
self that yeah, you're hitting your target audience, but you
might not be including enough to get elected with that time.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Oh see, that's the beauty of it. Space in time.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Everybody needs a place to be and time to become
somewhat and especially today with the fifty year mortgages and
and Eon Musk's trillion dollars pay package based on optimists
being able to take over most, if not all jobs
like twenty forty, they're right in my talking points for

(18:38):
me at this point.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yes, it's interesting because the fifty year mortgage proposal does
seem to me to be a form of indentured servitude.
And if one does the mathematics, relative to a thirty
year mortgage for most people, the monthly payment will be

(19:02):
reduced by maybe a couple hundred dollars, which is.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
It's like two or three hundred and ads and you're
paying a million dollars just in the interest alone.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yes, so, but it only lowers it by.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
A couple hundred I would like to address that point though.
A friend of mine, his family has lived in France
and in Paris for a long time. He's a retired
admiral in the French Navy. But his family home, I
think it had a fifty year mortgage. However, they've been
in it well over one hundred and fifty years. It's
a and it's not a standalone home, that's an in

(19:37):
town apartment, so they've got I mean, it's a square
building with a square courtyard in the middle that was
originally designed for horses and carriage carriage, you know, carriage
garages underneath adopt adapted to cars. You know, they all

(19:57):
park inside. Now there's three levels of how and I
think four units per level, So it's a big four
story city block in Paris, and they're on the you know,
one corner one quarter of one floor there. Again, he
and his family have not paid anything on the house

(20:18):
except the maintenance taxes and you know maintenance. But the
house was on a fifty year mortgage. I think part
of that. You know, it's built of solid stone, and
that thing will be there in another one hundred years.
I mean, I'm sitting in a house that's over eighty
five years old now, built in thirty eight, So.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
My house is built in nineteen Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
Hey, there you go. I mean that. So, I mean
we built, we have built great homes in the in
the past, and I think you know now what we
do is we tend to, you know, use a lot
of gypsum, a lot of pine growing in the northeast
the northwest. Rather we ship it to wherever it needs
to go using fossil fuel and truck and then and
then we slap it together as fast as possible at

(21:04):
the least the least skills, you know, that we can
design it to be built by I it's hard to find,
you know, replacement parts so to speak, for this home.
Like I say've built my thirties, not built nineteenth thirty,
not nineteen o five. But because everything now is pre fab,

(21:27):
people like, oh, I've got my prefab windows. I don't know.
I mean, I'm sure there's carpenters or whatever they know
how to install a window of any size. But yeah,
then you got to find a glazier little cut your
window like that shape. So it's interesting to me that
these it's not just that, it's not just the time,
it's the space, right If the space is going to

(21:48):
last one hundred years, right, build a fifty year mortgage
in that bad I mean, I say that, but depending
on the place, But yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
I think the issue is also in terms of expected lifespans.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Ideally, in a transhumanist future, people's life expectancies will skyrocket.
But right now, if a twenty year old, say, is
fortunate enough to receive a fifty year mortgage, he will
be seventy when that mortgage is paid off, assuming he

(22:26):
doesn't make pre payments. Making prepayments is always a wise idea,
by the way, because it directly reduces the principal balance,
whereas early on in the life of a mortgage the
overwhelming majority of the payment is comprised of interest. So
if you have a mortgage and you can afford to
make prepayments, I would highly recommend it. But I also

(22:49):
think there's a cultural aspect to this, to homes being
built to last. Homes intended to be passed through multiple
generations of a family, and we don't see that as
much in contemporary societies anymore, for a variety of reasons.
Some of them may just be due to greater geographical

(23:12):
mobility among people, but others may be due to an
erosion of a kind of sense of continuity or a
sense of belonging that used to exist, and that may
be a more deleterious trend. But Daniel, do you have
any thoughts comments?

Speaker 6 (23:31):
Yeah, Brandon, hurrah for you standing for office. I've done
this a few times in my own time. But you know,
I see the governance of spaceship or starship Earth actually
as a Bucky Fuller kind of thing, where we have
the capability to take care of everyone, with no one

(23:51):
living at the advantage of anyone else. And I love
the term enlightenment socialism. I think the problem with socialism
is it gets bundled with authority, and I think that's
completely unnecessary when you consider the work of Henry George,
and I wondering how you feel about expanding beyond the
cradle planet and taking us out to the resources of

(24:13):
the Solar System and eventually the galaxy.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
So I would absolutely love to discuss that because my
dream career is to be a cosmic engineer, and that
is something that I cannot do if the access of
Indarkenment wins, because humanity will not make it to the
next century if we.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Go down this route of ready player wan Elisia whatey.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Now because I so, I'd assume that everybody here identifies
as an extrophy and correct.

Speaker 6 (24:47):
Yes, I would say.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
So okay, So in my opinion, entropy is the erg
here any like a perfect universe is a cold dead,
still life less universe. That is a perfect universe. I
don't see us as the universe experiencing itself. I believe
in the Gaia hypothesis we are Gaya experiencing herself. And

(25:14):
has anybody here played Full Fantasy seven?

Speaker 3 (25:20):
So there's a concept in that.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Game called the life stream, where it's a stream of
energy in the planet, and I believe that our planet
has an analogous life stream. That's the sum total energy
of the biosphere, you know, like the soul. It's the
bioelectricity that powers our body and brain. And when we die,

(25:41):
energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. It
returns to the planet, rejoins the life stream. And that's
what makes our planet different from say Mars or Nettune.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
We have a living biosphere.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And I have this that perhaps across trillions of years
and trillions of perform planets that you might not to forge,
say a hypothetical cosmic life stream that shifts the extra
py entropy balance just enough to prevent the universe from

(26:20):
spreading apart. With the heat death, we can say keep
everything together because, I mean, the heat death presumes that
nothing in your fears life is that extrophic counterforce, not
necessarily humanity, because if.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
We fail, then guy is just going to try the
next runner up. It's life itself.

Speaker 6 (26:41):
I totally agree that the cosmic mission of life is
to prevent the heat depth of the universe. Is that
what I'm hearing? Yes, Oh, very cool.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
I'm totally on board with that. Yeah, I'm just thinking
I wouldn't I couldn't get that to fly in Texas.
But I love the message.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm glad that I'm doing this because, like, this is
the first place where I can naturally talk about these
things and I don't have to educate you guys on
all the invential topics.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
You guys just get it. Yeah, this is a very
unique hot moment for me.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
We're waiting for the heat death of the universe because
the price of oil is going to boom.

Speaker 6 (27:20):
Mean, I think the two political parties should be the
extra pe Party and the Enterview Party, Right, It's like.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Like the the the Endarkenment, as I call them, they
are servants of entropy.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
They absolutely are what.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Is tyranny and control and hierarchy if not entry.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
Yes, yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Mean interestingly, interestingly, I have a video called Transhumanism and
the Second Law of Thermodynamics where I discuss the positive
heat death of the universe, and I make the point
that this hypothesis relies on the universe being a closed system,

(28:10):
and I make an argument for why that's not the
case vis a vis the universe as a whole, and indeed,
humankind or sentient life can be an extropic force that
counters the entropy that would occur in closed systems without

(28:34):
any sort of external intervention. And I think that's an
important point for transhumanists to consider. That we are not
faded to be destroyed really on any time scale. The
question is can we figure out ways to prevent our
own individual destruction, our society's destruction, our species destruction in

(28:59):
time for us to be these extropic agents. And I
do think the century that we live in the twenty
first century is a pivotal time in the sense that
the trajectory of our species could be glorious, or it
could be devastating, or it could end very quickly if

(29:19):
there's a nuclear war, for instance. But I was curious, Brandon,
since you mentioned this term the Endarkenment, how do you
perceive it? Because there is the term the dark Enlightenment
from the so called neo reactionaries, people like Curtis Jarvin

(29:43):
are opposed to the Enlightenment as it was conceived of
during the eighteenth century, and they propose a kind of
return to, for lack of a better word, neo medieval
institutions where there is more hierarchy, more control. And of
course transhumanism is not neo reactionary. We are opposed to

(30:06):
neo reactionary thinking, But how do you see the Endarkenment
in relation to those ideas?

Speaker 2 (30:13):
So Curtis Jarvin's dark Enlightenment is actually where I coined
the term in Darkument, because just calling a spade a spade,
like how it's an oxymoron. How do you darken the
light without in darkening it the end of the day.
But then when you really think about it.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
It maps onto American history perfectly, calling it the loyalists versus.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
The revolutionaries in Darkument versus Enlightenment. You know then the
Confederate versus the Union in Darkument versus Enlightenment, the segregationists
versus the integrationists in darkument versus Enlightenment.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Megavert us in Darkument vers Enlightenment. It maps on cleanly
across all of American history.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Because it is at its core it's the uh, the
underlying in anti Enlightenment countercurrents that always existed. Where we
have liberty, equality, and dignity, they have tyranny, hierarchy, and control.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Where do then be act? Oh?

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Sorry, yes, so along these lines, where do you think
the motives for an Endarkenment type of mentality stem Because
throughout history these weren't necessarily the same people. So, for instance,
the Confederates and Curtis Jarvin are not from the same

(31:40):
let's say, direct sequence. Yes they are. They arrived at
their conceptions, which may be similar in practice in terms
of how they're implemented in terms of policies, But the
Confederates arose in a kind of different society, in a

(32:02):
different intellectual ecosystem from Curtis Jarvin, who, as far as
I'm aware, doesn't have any direct links to the South.
During the early to mid nineteenth century, and yet he
does want to see the return of these hierarchical structures.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
So have you ever heard of the illuminati?

Speaker 2 (32:27):
I have. It's what I call it the the access
of indocument because it's not reptilians.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
It's just the rich, all right.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
So, like George Carlin said, I believe in two thousand
and one that you don't need a formal conspiracy when
interests converge.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
And that's what's going on here.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
It's a convergence and enlightenment of interests and incentives among
the global oligarchs, the technocrats, the feudalists, sorry, the theocrats, the.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Autocrats, and the techno feudalists.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
They are all united in cot roll and authoritarianism, regardless
of what flag they fly or what side of the
aisle they're on.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Oh, I think they're absolutely right, and I think that's
why they are sort of this current.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
I see the headlines like strife within Magna Mega, you know,
the regime is breaking apart and all these but basically
they are having their own little learn I see in
warfare Candice Owen's talking bad about, you know, Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
That's because there's many sub factions here.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Like you got the techno futialists, you got the business
plotters from the from the business plot two point. Oh.
You know they just said from the al memo, you
got the Christian dominionists, and then even among those.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
You got smaller sites like with pandas Owen's she's one
of those who when.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
It comes to like Israel and Palestine, and it's like
she's right, but she's wrong about why she's right.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
So it's interesting though that you mentioned the Illuminati, and
here's the Wikipedia entry on them. The actual historical Illuminati
in the eighteenth century where a Bavarian secret society.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah, they were just a budget of three thinkers.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yes, to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment. And this
is what the Wikipedia page reads. The society stated goals
were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life,
and abuses of state power by monarchs. The order of
the day, they wrote in their general Statutes, is to
put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice,

(34:37):
to control them without dominating them. So interestingly enough, the
vision of the original Illuminati more resembles your vision than
the Endarkenment, because I.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said that the Illuminati
would not need to be a secret society in America.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
They were in theocratic bavari at the time.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
But that buy gives the term access of Indarkenment.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Because that's really what it is.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
It's an axis among the Darkenment who are there trying
where there it's the Duganus in Russia, the Yarbonites here,
they're trying to roll back the Enlightenment.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yes, there does seem to be a push in the
direction of authoritarianism, in the direction of command and control,
erosion of civil liberties today, and I am concerned that
a lot of wealthy people who in prior eras seem

(35:40):
to be a bit more libertarian, like Elon Musk, for instance,
have instead decided to throw their lot in at least temporarily,
or so I hope, with these more authoritarian forces what
Elon Musk tried to do with DOGE, the so called

(36:01):
department of Government efficiency. On the one hand, efficiency in
government is a reasonable goal, noble ideal. On the other hand,
indiscriminately cutting air traffic controllers or ebola responders or other
workers that are critical to maintaining the infrastructure that people

(36:24):
depend on. Doesn't seem to be a viable plan to
actually achieve efficiency. It's more like slash and burn, cut first,
ask questions later. And I didn't really see any sort
of principled motivation behind it.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Now.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
On the other hand, Elon has had a falling out
with Trump in several ways, and I'm not sure they've
exactly reconciled, though certainly they're not hurling allegations at one
another nearly as much. But I wonder in your view,
how heterogeneous or homogeneous is this group. Is it possible

(37:12):
to have allies within some of these circles, like some
people who might have been closer to these illiberal regimes
or liberal tendencies at one point that maybe they've changed
their mind, maybe they've seen the error of these arrangements,
maybe they've been burned, and maybe they will realize that

(37:36):
it's not a good idea to make common cause with
authoritarians or would be authoritarians.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Okay, so first off, these the Tecoleague, if you remember
I mentioned earlier, it leaves them.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
And ready player one. I have firmly.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Believed for the last decade that's their end goal, all right.

Speaker 7 (38:02):
That is they the techno futalists, the Yarbns, the Advances,
the Fields, the Musks. They have decided to embrace humanity
going extinct with a small pocket of elites surviving in
their gilded ivory space habitat.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Corbetting a climate change ravage. Sure, and then that's what
I believe.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Their long game is, which is why around twenty eighteen
they started really allying themselves with the Right.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
And then and I was just about to going to
one of the other points on this, but it just slip.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
Dang it.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Oh yeah, they're an ur They are an urra boros.
They are the dark side of the forest. At the
end of the.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Day, they and as we all know, the dark side
eats itself. You know, it's based on betrayal.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
But I just want to, you know, I kind of
to point out that I think it's a long term
games not the right word, but this conflict is not new.
I kind of think back to the Israelites and the
Canaan Knits living side by side, and the worship of
Ball versus the worship of Yahweh, and how the Israelites
were like, hey, we're all going to get wrapped up

(39:23):
in trying to outdo each other. If we keep working
like twenty four to seven all the you know, all
the way through, right, why twenty four to seven, just
making twenty four every day you work. We need a
day off, right, Like, let's have a day to reflect
on that what we've done. Whereas the Canaanite philosophy was like,

(39:43):
sacrifice your children for greater rewards now, right, So which
to your point, I mean, whether that's using up resources
now or you know, using up what our children would
inherit from us, whether that's a clean planet or pile
of money. If you use that up, you're you're basically

(40:04):
sacrificing the future for the present, as opposed to sacrificing,
not sacrificing.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
I guess they knew this.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
They were warned that they were selling their children and
grandchildren and great grandchildren's future. Back in the eighties, they
were more oh.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Yeah, yeah, even uh yeah, even planet all the planetary
health you know, back in from the sixties with Rachel
Carson and others. I mean, those are all legitimate concerns
that have probably been wrapped into a political movement that
has nothing to do with actually, you know, taking care
of the planet we live on. Right. It is not
a spaceship earth movement. It's more about stopping energy used,

(40:49):
which that's not good either.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah, so nimbiism. So speaking of that and tying this
to the issue of housing, I would venture to say
housing affordability is the major political issue in the United
States today. It is the issue that effects and concerns
the vast majority of Americans, even to the point where

(41:13):
upper middle class people have difficulty affording homes. And you
have the Minnesota Housing Sovereignty Act, and this is a
response to decades of housing scarcity. Now, I would say
one principle cause of housing scarcity is nimbiism. It is

(41:34):
the result of local activists, whether from the left or
from the right.

Speaker 5 (41:38):
By the way, so.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
In northern Nevada, there's a significant constituency of elderly Republicans
who want to keep their areas quote rural in their view,
so they oppose any new residential construction. And in states
like California, usually the opposition comes from left wing so

(42:00):
called community groups that just want to freeze the character
of a neighborhood in its present state. But in either case,
these groups make it very difficult to build new homes.
You have an innovative proposal, the Minnesota Housing Sovereignty Act,
which would actually lead to the creation of three D

(42:20):
printed homes that would be provided to individuals as homesteads
under a stewardship contract. So could you please describe the
details of this proposal so that our viewers understand what
it entails and how it would be unique.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
So I have been keeping an eye on three D
printed housing since twenty fourteen.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
When I was truck driving.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
It was a dream of mine to buy some land
and then get a house three D printed on there.
Getting a mortgage for my nineteen o five home ended
up being a bit more realistic in the short term.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
But okay.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So the reason Nindiism is a big reason why it's
a I'm going for a state level program set of
local and then that's also.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
One of the reasons why we I want us to
rely mostly on.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
The state's existing inventory of land. And then so the
way that it would work is you would you would
open up the three D design studio, you would build
your dream.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
House, and then it would be constructed and then uh,
you know, you would then live in that.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
House for the fifteen years you're you know, you're paying,
you know, under six hundred a month for for the
for to be a homeowner, And yeah, I could. When
you compare that to the existing market and the thirty
to fifty year mortgages.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yes, that would definitely be favorable from the standpoint of
the homeowners. So in terms of the logistics of that,
would the six hundred dollars per month be paid to
the government or the governmental entity that constructed these homes
or if you have.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Something, Yes, it would essentially be a revolving trust. It
would essentially be a revolving trust with the payments. The
monthly payment you make then goes to fund future developments.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yes, so that makes sense to use the proceeds to
fund the construction of additional homes. And what happens after
the fifteen year term elapses. So let's say this person
has reliably made the six hundred dollars payments and has
taken care of the house. Does that title to the

(44:43):
home then become free and clear?

Speaker 4 (44:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Free and clear? Okay.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
The only the only caveat would be you would not
be able to resell it unless you resell it at
the same market rate as the other sovereign homes. The
whole point is to make sure that we lock speculation
entirely out.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Of it, because this is it's.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
It's an entire it would be functionally an entirely separate,
parallel housing market.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
So the resale would only be allowed to another natural
person or family, not to say a corporation.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Not to incorporate I personally, I believe that any corporation.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Should be banned for buying residentials.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Let them keep their their speculative games with with uh,
with with you know, the business real estate.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yes, and there have been various proposals in state legislatures,
for instance, to cap the number of homes in the
state that are allowed to be purchased by private entities.
I do tend to think that this could be an
undue restraint on the supply of single family homes if

(45:59):
too many of them are converted to rentals by corporations
whose business model is of that nature. Now, it does
seem to me that there needs to be a supply
side solution. So whatever the case is with restrictions on

(46:21):
let's say, corporate home buying, there will need to be
a dramatic increase in just the number of homes available
because the population has grown to a significant extent since
the nineteen nineties, for instance, when home prices were more reasonable,
and there simply needs to be more developed real estate

(46:44):
to house all of the additional people who exist. Now,
what do you see in terms of the prospects for savings,
in terms of the cost of materials, in terms of
the costs of construction that would be made possible by
emerging technologies. I think this is where really a lot
of the scarcity problems can be solved. But please go ahead.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
So the savings is really where all the numbers make
the most sense. I mean, like, right now, Minnesota spends
about one point two billion a year just on rental
vouchers and and developer incentives for luxury units that nobody
can afford. But black Rock and Vanguard, you know, and

(47:28):
I mean three D printed homes as is massively cheaper
right off the gate.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Like we're talking under one hundred thousand dollars per home,
and we need then we need.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
And the thing is, when Icon first came on the
scene and they were talking about their home prizes, I
didn't realize that they.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Were not talking to me random.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Worker clipping for close homes in Central Valley, California.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
They were talking to their shareholders.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
And that's the thing, like where the the savings benefits
we don't see that the shareholders do. And that's what
I'm trying to change here where the average person sees
the benefits of the savings as well. Because if it
doesn't change, if my price doesn't change.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Then it doesn't really matter either way what we do.

Speaker 6 (48:23):
Could I jump in here with a thought. It seems
to me that you know, the whole idea of Georgism
is disconnecting the land value from the improvement on the
land value. And if we had an easy way to build, say,
you know, houseboats. You know, a houseboat can sit on
the land and be a house, or it can sit

(48:44):
on the ocean and be a beautiful piece of habitat.
So you know, I'm a proponent of the idea that
we should build a life ring at the equator of
habitats called Sequatoria, and this would create a you know,
the voluntary kind of socialist paradise for refugees of all

(49:04):
the world, you know, to to live freely, you know,
on on the equator of Earth, where it's there's very
low wave energy and there's very maximum solar input energy.
So couldn't. Couldn't we use the Henry George style of thought.
I mean, we are we already pay property tax, you know,
we rent the land from the government. Basically, you know,
if you don't pay your property tax, the government's going

(49:25):
to seize your land back. But they want I mean,
one of.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
The main sources of land that I propose it is
the tax forfeited.

Speaker 6 (49:32):
Lt I didn't. I didn't copy you.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Oh sorry.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
One of the main sources of land that I proposedly
take from is tax forfeited land.

Speaker 6 (49:44):
Oh yeah, which is a huge market. But uh, why
do we have tax forfeited land because we have we
don't have land capitalism. We don't have a proper you know, valuing.
We don't have a rental market that adjusts the property
taxes with the value of land. And they've done this,
you know, in places like Singapore, which has the highest
land value in the world, and they they basically have

(50:07):
ninety nine year leases where the government allocates the land
and it basically works out, you know, pretty well. But
I'm thinking we could go one step beyond that and
just make the whole earth kind of you know, a houseboat,
you know, parking spot, you know, and then you could bring.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Would you know, that would absolutely be ideal, Like I
am all for like every human being just being given
a sea stead, you know, like we could fit all
of the human population on like one percent of the ocean.

Speaker 6 (50:41):
Yeah, yeah, you know they I mean, you could fit
to all the people on Earth in Texas at the
density of Tokyo, you know. So that's kind of an interesting,
you know, good experiment. But yeah, we really shouldn't be
charging people for what they need to live, because that's slavery.
If you say you can't get where you need to
live without giving up your life, I mean, that's the

(51:03):
definition of slavery pretty much.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
So I often joke that the only hierarchy I accept
is Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Speaker 6 (51:12):
Yeah, that would be a good starting point. But anyway,
thanks for indulging my thoughts there. Back to you.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
So, the space and time concept is that essentially you
are trying to make sure that the lower rungs on
the hierarchy of needs are fulfilled, and thereby people would
have more room more space for self actualization. Now, interestingly enough,

(51:43):
this is the page for Icon's Mueller Homes project in Austin, Texas,
where they have several hundred three D printed homes already
that one can see they've been built, and one can
view them online as well. So this is starting to happen.

(52:04):
But you've characterized the prices of those homes as still
being quite high relative to the cost of production because
they're in the same market where housing is scarce. So
essentially the builder has an incentive to charge what the
market will bear, and your plan creates this distinctive parallel

(52:25):
market where you have fixed terms, essentially the six hundred
dollars a month for fifteen years. Now, are you going
to have any sort of criteria for eligibility And I'm
just asking because I am curious about this, or would

(52:45):
anybody be eligible if enough homes are built to become
a homeowner pursuing to this arrangement as long as they
adhere to the terms.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
I'd imagined that the best situation would be a witless
lottery sort of deal. But personally, especially during the pilot,
I would love to see a ceiling for the final
like where like if you make a certain a month,
then you don't necessarily qualify to participate in the pilot,
Because I would like for the average Minnesota to be

(53:21):
able to take part in this, and then like after
the pilot, the legislation would have one in every ten.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Homes go towards the homeless. Minnesota, we only have like
eleven thousand homeless.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
I figure at that rate, we could end homelessness as
a category.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Of human within this state by the mid twenty thirties.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
One of the platform proposals of the US Transhumanist Party,
which originated in response to the COVID pandemic, is to
create three D printed tiny home communities for the homeless,
where the homes would not be as large necessarily as
you conceive of, because they're not intended as let's say,

(54:05):
the final homes for many of these people. But these
people would be able to get free conditional title to
those homes as long as they agree, for instance, to
do some useful work clean up litter, that kind of activity,
and also as long as they agree not to bring

(54:27):
drugs or alcohol onto the premises of that tiny home community,
because we want it to be respectable and we want
it to be free of the kinds of let's say,
behaviors or proclivities that might have contributed to these individuals'
homelessness in the first place. But the idea is if

(54:50):
they adhere to those conditions, then they would be able
to live in those houses free and clear for as
long as they need for a as long as they
haven't found another job or found a better, more spacious
place to live. And then once they do find a
more spacious place to live, they might even be able

(55:12):
to resell that tiny home to another individual. So would
this also be a plan that you would consider maybe
for the lower end. So if there is a homeless
population and there's a need to get them housed very quickly, building.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Them, I certainly for for housing you know, larger numbers
of people quickly and cheaply. Yeah, like three D printed
tiny homes would.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Be the way to go.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
The one in ten That would be a much slower
process of housing the homeless anyway, you know.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
So that's why it would be more for the.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Uh, the more regular sized homes that I'm imagining. But
the Southern Design Studio like the way that it would
work is it would be like a it seems like
gamified environment where you'd literally just build your home, and
I would like it to be open source. Like in
the draft legislation is states that it should be open source,

(56:11):
so that any other state would be able to just
copy it as needed and then just adapt to their
own states if the federal government is dragging its feed.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Very interesting, and one of the advantages of three D
printing is indeed that one can provide one's own design.
This happens all the time with small three D printed objects,
where one could send over a file and then a
service might three D print the object and ship it

(56:43):
to one's home. So, in principle, this could be done
with homes as well, as long as the designs are
architecturally sound. But the studio could have built in constraints
within the software to for instance, prevent one from building
a design that will cave in or have other details.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
The primary constraint for the design studio would be that
it's structurally sound.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yes, that makes sense. Now in terms of the implementation timeline.
Alan had alluded to that in some of his remarks.
How do you propose to go from the status quo
to a situation where there is a thriving parallel market
for these sovereign homes. Let's say the proposal gets enacted,

(57:36):
so there's no longer political opposition, there's just the practical
implementation of it.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Well, so that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
At first, it'll be in the first fifteen hundred to
five thousand homes for the pilot.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
And then after that, I am hoping that that would
generate a measure of.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Poe among everybody else, you know, like why why don't
I deserve that?

Speaker 3 (58:05):
And then that I'm hoping that it would then snowball
from there. That's right. I'm hoping that it would spread
to other states after.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
We've after we've gotten our pilot underway, you know, because
then once people see it happening, then they can start
looking around their.

Speaker 6 (58:23):
Own situation being like, well, you know, playing back something else.
I don't know if you heard of the Dunbar number.
There's an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar from Oxford who said
about about one hundred and fifty to two hundred and
fifty people is the sweet spot for people to know
and trust each other. So I think that actually happens

(58:44):
to be about the number of people that live on
the average neighborhood block. So I think we could redesign
our cities with this in mind, and people could actually
build these kind of translinkable communities that I think have
Femois Fandiary talked about, you know, people would translink every
couple of weeks to a new community, But I think
it's quite possible to keep that Dunbar community number as

(59:07):
a proto type aspect of building these new three D
printed communities.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
So I presume everybody here would be familiar with the
Venus Project.

Speaker 6 (59:19):
Oh yeah, big fin.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
So personally, I've always viewed the Venus Project as our
reward for surviving the Great Filter. Like, we don't just
get to create those cities like in ten years. We
got to earn the right after we've proven that we
can steward the planet.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
And at that point, that's when you would look at like.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Fully redesigning cities for sure, because right now the main
thing would be making sure that people would have access
to the same resources that everybody else, you know, where
the location for where they're built.

Speaker 6 (01:00:00):
Yeah, but that's really what gives you know, cities value
is is what human resources you're close to. I mean,
people love to go to theaters and shop and interact,
you know, so that's that's I would.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Love to see the completely redesigned cities one of these days,
though they.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Are The linear city is very inefficient.

Speaker 6 (01:00:22):
Yeah, they lay abandoned that line city I think the
desert recently, probably for some of those reasons. But yeah,
I Lovedicity. If I don't know, if you looked at
Edenicity is making Eden like cities. It's keV Polk's Concepticity
dot Com. I'm a big fan of his work, and
he's the first urban permaculturalist. Basically, I think he kind

(01:00:46):
of invented the practice. But it's basically leaving this maximum
wild nature around cities that are very efficiently clustered and
kind of you know, solar walkways about four story high,
you know, multi tenant buildings with carfree and you know
you have you know, eve empowered solar powered scooters to

(01:01:07):
get to get around. I guess it's the fifteen minute city,
which you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Know that all sounds amazing. I love perma culture.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
Yeah, generally it's you know, it doesn't quite translate into
a cardish of you know, dycen sphere. But I think
there's a there's a point where we can adapt permaculture
to you know, enlivening the cosmos. But that's something I'm
working on. But yeah, it sounds like you're gonna do

(01:01:35):
a great work. Brand and I really hope that Minnesota
is such a forward looking state. I mean, what what
part of Minnesota are you in?

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
By the way, So I live in red Wing District
twenty A runs from a town called Cannon Falls up
towards Waber Shop. We're out on the Mississippi River, like
forty miles from Saint Paul to like in the southeast.

Speaker 6 (01:01:59):
Yeah. Well, my district is District five here in Ventura County,
thousand Oaks, and you know, we're surrounded by rings of
open space. So I'm planning to run again when my
district comes up for election in twenty twenty eight. But yeah,
I'll be I'll be totally on board with promoting the
same kind of urban permaculture concepts the year you're talking about.
So great to have this dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Yes, and for our viewers, here is the site of
the Venus Project. So the Venus Project was originated by
Jacques Fresco, a long lived futurist by the way, who
lived to the age of one hundred and one, and
he conceived of this idea of a resource based economy

(01:02:45):
where through advanced technologies, sufficient resources could be produced and
allocated to all of the residents without even the need
for money. So it's an interesting concept, but it involve
a lot of futuristic architecture of Jacques Fresco's design as
well as advanced logistics. And I do know of several

(01:03:10):
transhumanists who have been participants in the Venus project as well.
Now I am curious also about one of your other
flagship proposals, which has to do with reducing the work week,
the Minnesota Workweek Liberation Act. You made the point that

(01:03:32):
automation is poised to take over various roles that human
labor has historically performed, and those aren't always going to
be manual jobs or menial jobs. Some of them might
be more advanced kinds of work, including intellectual cognitive work.

(01:03:54):
It may be that the workplace will be transformed that
some new types of jobs will be created, but there
will be people who will be displaced in the transition,
people who would not have those new skills right away necessarily.
But you've also made the point that the forty hour

(01:04:15):
work week is obsolete. So what are your thoughts on
the forty hour work week, How could it be sustainably
scaled back, and what measures would there be to make
sure that people maintain a similar standard of living in
the course of that transition.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
So, first of all, Games himself said that by the
year twenty thirty we would have a fifteen hour work weet.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
I'm pushing for sixteen by twenty forty.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
I know I'm not going to get there by twenty thirty,
but I know it's normally not good practice to answer
a question with a question. But when people ask me
why sixteen hours by twenty forty, I always respond to
them and what do you imagine Elon Musk has planned
for his Optimus robots. Because it's not me saying that

(01:05:06):
the jobs are going to be automated. I'm just saying,
either they're committing securities fraud on a trillion dollar global
scale and if they're lying, or we need to be
talking about restructuring the social contract today.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
If they're telling the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
It's either on. There is no middle ground there. Either
they're lying and their committed security fraud, or they're telling
the truth and we need to be prepared today.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
It's interesting too, because the forty hour workweek does seem
like a social construct, and in the nineteenth century it
was an advancement, largely at the behest of various labor
groups because in factories and minds and very dangerous conditions

(01:05:54):
they're often weren't any real upper limits on how long
people would work there, and sometimes people would work to exhaustion,
and the forty hour work week was intended to place
a limit on that. At least if you work past
that in certain occupations you get paid over time. Now

(01:06:18):
these days, the varieties of work that people perform are
quite a bit more diverse, so not every job really
truly requires forty hours per week. Some jobs could reasonably
entail more work that is still productive, others much less.

(01:06:41):
And I would say the more important question is is
that individual producing the output that is deserving of that compensation,
not how many hours that person essentially shows up in
the office for. Especially for a lot of office jobs,

(01:07:01):
there is this concept of FaceTime culture, which is really
just people showing up to show that they have shown up,
rather than necessarily spending that time in the most effective
possible way. So what kinds of steps do you envision

(01:07:22):
to change that culture, because it seems to be ingrained
as a societal norm, essentially that you show up for
forty hours even if you don't have forty hours of work.
How do you change that to saying you take the
time you need to do the work, and the amount

(01:07:44):
of work that's expected if you want to reduce the
work week to sixteen hours by twenty forty, will be
reasonably proportional to the hours available to do the work.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
See, that's one of the That is one of the
reasons why it's a It would be a phase transition.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
In addition to easing the load on the market itself.
With the transition, it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Would give people time to culturally.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Adjust to the downward motion of hours. Because you think about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
It, before the eight hour they said that the eight
hour workday, five days a week, and the weekend. They
said that all of that was impossible until it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Indeed, indeed, and it does seem to me that the
predictions of individuals like Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes
whom you mentioned that their descendants would have fifteen hour
work weeks, appeared reasonable at the time because they thought

(01:08:50):
of how much labor would it take to satisfy the
typical needs of a human in that way, like you
pointed out, that that's not how the office thinks.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
You know, they're not sitting there thinking in terms of productivity.
It's more in perceived productivity, right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
A lot of that has become more of a cultural
expectation that has perpetuated for its own sake, rather than
something that is strictly necessary. Now the culture, of course,
would have to adjust. And these days, a lot of people, mistakenly,
I think, associate their identities the sense of meaning that

(01:09:36):
they get in their lives, with their jobs, their careers,
the titles of what they do for a living, rather
than a more multifaceted kind of perception. And for me,
I find that personally rather odd, because I see myself
as an individual first, not a particular job title. And

(01:10:00):
I like to see myself as a renaissance man or
a man of the enlightenment who can do any number
of a wide range of activities as long as I
can understand the key premises behind those activities needed to
carry them out well. So I find it strange that

(01:10:21):
a lot of people tie the core essence of their
being to some particular profession or occupation. How do you
propose to transcend that mentality?

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
So one of my favorite words has always been youdemumonia.
It's the Greek word the closest translation is generally human flourishing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Aristotle caught is the greatest good. And then but mister
Fuller said, the goal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Should be getting back to thinking about what it is
you are thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
About before someone told you to go earn a living.
And that's the thing. Like what I.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Believe that the ultimate purpose of civilization should be is
to create the conditions where every individual has the material
means to self actualize.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
To create their own meaning to flourish.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
And that's how we shift it culturally by making meaning
making actually possible, because right now, you can't really self
actualize unless you're rich or superhumanly to term, and.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
I think for a lot of people, the superhuman determination
has to be a factor, even if they have money
and other resources, because there are so many factors in
our culture that try to channel people away from self actualization.
In particular, we live in a culture of distraction, and

(01:12:00):
I fear social media have amplified that tendency toward distraction
because the technologies of social media and the Internet have
a tremendous potential for human liberation. They place all of
the information in the world potentially at our fingertips, but
the algorithms that feed us this information in spite of

(01:12:26):
ourselves in places and times when we would rather not
receive it, can lead us astray and can hijack our
psyches toward less than fully productive or optimal ends. And
this seems to be a wider problem in the society

(01:12:49):
in terms of how do we get people to find
meaning in a way that they are in control of
that they have purpose, they have values, they have goals,
and they're not dependent on a job or an algorithm
or conformity to societal expectations. They are dependent on how

(01:13:14):
that person uses reason and tries to fathom the world
as it is and create something better for themselves, for
other people, whatever aids in human flourishing. So that, I
think is the key challenge of the era we live in.
And I'm curious as to your thoughts regarding what individuals

(01:13:37):
could do. You've mentioned what policies might help in that regard,
but individuals are participants in that process of finding meaning,
and ultimately, any policy is there to enable the individual
to become the best they can be to achieve that

(01:13:57):
unimonia achieve that flourishing. So what would you say individuals
can start doing today to get closer to that goal.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
I mean, I don't really know how to answer that
one because I'm not exactly self actualized myself yet. But
like you were saying, it's not the technology when it
comes to social media, it's the algorithm.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
And that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Like, I'm sure you're familiar with the ludite argument about
mass automation how.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
Everybody will just get lazy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
I believe there is some minor truth to that, but
it's a temporary situation.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
I believe that for depending averaging between six months to
two years, for most people, there will be a time
where they.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Will get lazy and they will like kind of shut
down a bit and not know what to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Do because they don't know what to do Without.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Work, what do they do?

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
And that's the thing they It really is very much
an individual like my meaning of life is not necessarily
the same as your meaning.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Of life, and.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
You need the time to figure yourself out to even
know what your meeting is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Yes, you need that intellectual room for exploration or breathing
room free from the imminent constraints of the survival pressures
that people face on a day to day basis. We
have some interesting comments in our internal chat. Daniel Tweed rights,

(01:15:36):
ekey guy is a Japanese concept meaning a reason for being,
a sense of purpose that makes life worthwhile. Often found
at the intersection of what you love, what you're good at,
what the world needs, and what you can be paid for,
though it's also a more personal, humble pursuit of daily
joys and contributions, not just a grand career goal. It

(01:15:58):
combines ekey life and guy worth or value, leading to fulfillment,
well being in longevity. So very interesting concept. I would say,
a transhumanistic concept of ekey guy. I would say actually
in some aspects, not necessarily in all aspects of the
work culture, but in some aspects of the broader culture.

(01:16:21):
A lot of Japanese culture is implicitly transhumanists, though they
wouldn't necessarily use that term for it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Alan is ratually very futuristic and facing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
Yes, yes, I've observed that, and of course Japan has
one of the longest life expectancies in the world today,
so they are doing something right. Alan writes, I think
of myself as unlimited by title, but as you can see,
I use them as a test of the people I encountered.
Do they see more than a title, so in effect,
do they see the whole individual beyond the titles. Very

(01:16:56):
interesting way of approaching people, Allan, would you like to
say more?

Speaker 4 (01:17:02):
Yeah, I mean also, I mean my title is literally
a retired I'm a retired to that colonel, Nobody asked me, well,
what do you do? They keep paying me?

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
So I but.

Speaker 4 (01:17:20):
I think just like you say, I mean, it took
me some time to say what what do I do? Now?
You know, I'm not I'm not used to the structure.
I'm unfamiliar with the structure. I'm unfamiliar with the civilian life.
I spent part of my time in the nerves and
worked outside of the military. But yeah, I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:17:39):
It's also.

Speaker 4 (01:17:43):
It's hard for me to hit people with like five
thousand things that I'm interested, like longevity, sea steading. I
want to find out about interesting proposals in Minnesota, Brandon,
so that we can copy them here in Texas. It'll
take us a decade, and it'll have to be one
city to get tone, because it's not going to come
out of Austin. But yeah, at least maybe by the

(01:18:04):
time have changed around here, there'll be a track record
in Minnesota. But yeah, this is this idea. It's hard
for me to throw a whole lot of who I
am out there right without saying, hey, just look at
this narrow slices for a moment, right, get focused on you.
I did that for thirty two years, so that's something
I did, you know whatever, But that's not what I
do now. You know, I do all kinds of things now.

(01:18:25):
It's pretty rewarding. Yeah, the otherwise, but new rewards.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
You found that thing you needed time to find that,
you know, Like they fear longer about the laziness because
they don't want people to stop working.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
But it's going to be a temporary thing, you know.
They just need to decompress from the.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Life of work and then figure out what it is
that they actually want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Very interesting now, I'll note this as an aside. This
will be cut out of the recording randon. It seems
that when your microphone is on, there is some sort
of kind of low level feedback, kind of white noise
that I'm hearing, but it disappears when you're muted. So

(01:19:15):
let's just make sure that if somebody else is speaking,
you're muted so that that feedback doesn't interfere with their audio.
But again, I'm going to cut this portion out and
resume with our conversation. So now I think it's a
good opportunity for art Roman to ask any questions about

(01:19:37):
what we have discussed thus far.

Speaker 4 (01:19:43):
Too correct.

Speaker 8 (01:19:45):
Okay, Yeah, as far as work, you know, I'm sort
of an artist part time when I'm not working my
day job, and I've written a book where I.

Speaker 5 (01:19:55):
Advocate using the arts to help.

Speaker 8 (01:19:57):
People sort of cope with that job as this, you know,
during economic secularity, and you know, I promoted that it's
one day it's going to.

Speaker 5 (01:20:07):
Have to be used.

Speaker 8 (01:20:08):
It's probably going to take the government to implement such
a program because you know, the private sector isn't going
to do it. They're going to have the most resources
to do that. But even with myself as an individual,
I work a lot. I work with the government. We've
lost a lot of people because of the dirt, and

(01:20:28):
I work even more now, lots of overtime. When I
go to sleep, sometimes I don't dream about art. I
dream about working and working on technology. I can't escape
my work even in my dreams. So yeah, it's very
mind consuming. You know, if I didn't have to work,
i'd be doing art full time, but I have to

(01:20:52):
use a small amount of spare time I have when
I'm not working and do another chores to to to
use that to try and do uh you know that
self actualization, uh working on art. So I would see
art as a way of helping people, uh you know,

(01:21:13):
uh you know, adapt to that joblessness, to not knowing
what to do.

Speaker 5 (01:21:18):
On top of other things.

Speaker 8 (01:21:19):
Let's say like people would be into weightlifting and weightlifting competitions, marathons.
There are people who would sort of take the the
athletic route, you know, and do competitive performance uh you know,
in those types of uh sports. So sports arts basically

(01:21:41):
going back to the old early civilization where you have
the artists class, you had the worker class replaced, but
you still had kind of the military class and the
noble class.

Speaker 5 (01:21:55):
So sort of along that route.

Speaker 8 (01:21:58):
Of course, we're not going to have certain parts of that,
but we're still going to have an artist in class
and people who compete.

Speaker 5 (01:22:06):
In physical type sports. So that I see happening the sports,
you know, the arena sports that will continue. So that's
one way of calling another thing here I live hear Tucson,
and there's been a problem with homelessness and they've had
like entire areas that they call it one hundred acres

(01:22:30):
woods that people would just.

Speaker 8 (01:22:31):
Camp out at and they cleared it out. And they've
tried to control the homelessness at least where they camp
out by creating sort of a tense city area on
city owned land and it's basically just small little tents,
And that's one way they've tried to help out with
the homeless situation. But I go to a gym and

(01:22:53):
there's a lot of homelesses around the area. That was
a guy who lived out of this truck for three
whole years, parked in the same lot, and he would
sit out in side of his truck and basically spend
the entire day sitting on a on a you know,
a litwer chair outside of his truck while his truck
is just packed of every single one of his belongings.

(01:23:14):
So three years, I saw this guy every every Thursday,
you know, sitting there and eleven out of his truck.
And he finally lets after three whole years of seeing
this guy, he's gone. Now it's been replaced by a
bigger camper, but a lot of homeless in that area. Uh,

(01:23:35):
those people have not taken advantage of this city sponsored encampment.
But what are what are your ideas for the people
who can't afford it six hundred bucks? How is the
city going to help people who are homeless, who have
drug addiction issues and have health issues.

Speaker 5 (01:23:56):
I mean, that's that's gonna take.

Speaker 8 (01:23:58):
A lot of money to take care of people who
have these problems.

Speaker 5 (01:24:03):
What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
So, first of all, homelessness itself. Mars Carl Marx called.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
The the uh, the fact that the homeless exists. He
caught it the reserve army of labor. That's basically their
function to society. They are a threat, like a premonition
of what awaits us if we don't do what the
bosses say, and they are an easy source of labor
if the bosses.

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Suddenly need a new influx of labor.

Speaker 2 (01:24:34):
But so the idea would be that I don't yet.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
Know exactly what length of time it would.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Be, but that I would there should be a period
where they aren't paying.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
On the home and they are there, in fact, just
getting their life together.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
Because six hundred a month, like you could you could
do some door dash and and make six hundred a month,
you know, like you just got to get.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
Your life together. At a basic level, we.

Speaker 9 (01:25:00):
Have recovenant for obs, yes, and perhaps there could be
a period of forbearance, and that could be combined with
perhaps an expectation to repay that amount later.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
So if there's a fifteen year timeframe, there might be
the option to shift that out by a few months
if one has certain time periods when one is ill,
for instance, or otherwise and disposed and incapable of making
those payments. So I am sure that there could be

(01:25:39):
some flexible options in that regard now. I also liked
Artremont's comments on artistic creativity and how that will be
a way for humans to apply their energies even if
they don't have to work for a living, and indeed,

(01:26:00):
even if robots and ais can also create art, because
individual humans can still create different art or with different
media or with just different premises. For instance, I can
assign a particular prompt to a generative AI, and that
AI might do a good job with that prompt, but

(01:26:23):
I myself directly could create something different, or art ramone
could create something different from what I would create. And
still the way in which we do it, our process,
the materials we use, all of these aspects will differ
from how the AI would approach that task. So I
think AIS don't compete with human artists, AIS complement human artists.

(01:26:49):
Daniel Tweed has an interesting comment. Art is the humane
response to the dehumanizing, so art can provide social commentary.
To be sure. Art can, though, also be used for
the purpose of pure enjoyment, or experiencing the world in
a different way, or seeing aspects of the world that

(01:27:12):
one wouldn't see otherwise. So there are many distinct purposes
for art. But I agree that this is an area
where more humans could spend their time if they lived
in a society of automated abundance. Daniel, please go ahead.

Speaker 6 (01:27:27):
Oh yeah, there's lots of things in the urban landscape
that could provide job opportunities. You know, I was watching
the COSCA meeting, which is the Canajo Open Space Conservation Agency,
and they were lamenting the fact that there were these
thousands of Mexican fan poms that are invasive, and you know,

(01:27:48):
they need to get rid of them, you know, because
I mean, there is a such thing as exotic invasive
species in ecosystems. But that's another argument about you know
what constitutes invasive and what doesn't. But another thing is,
you know, silence in the urban landscape is so valued,
and there's actually a very simple technique where you can

(01:28:11):
build stack uple Helmholtz resonators that actually absorb traffic noise,
and you could build you could build these sound walls
all over cities and they could be three D printed
and basically it's a port with a cavity and you
tune it and it actually eliminates noise. I mean, you know,
think of how great it would be to have urban

(01:28:34):
landscapes that are quieter soundscapes. So yeah, just getting rid
of invasive plants and building these sound wall you know,
absorbing landscape walls. I mean, there's just a couple ideas,
you know, of how to give people creative, humane work
which gets some you know, activity and fresh air in

(01:28:55):
the process, and you know you don't have to do it,
yeah ten hours a week, right, So you know, uh,
building these sound walls or making invasive plants go away.
So yeah, I think the cities are really the wealth
of civilization and that's where we need to start these changes.
So so Brandon, are you you running for a state
assembly or what what's your actual office. I wasn't clear.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
The state House.

Speaker 6 (01:29:21):
Okay, yeah, that's a great, great house. Uh me. I've
run for city council you know so far four times
and vice president wants but uh yeah, bully for those
who stand stand for office, it's uh it's a really
a civic responsibility and it's a lot of fun. I
recommend it. If you haven't tried it, please please feel

(01:29:44):
free to uh to stand for civic engagement in any form.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
So back to you, yes, thank you very much. And
it is indeed an interesting idea, Daniel. Perhaps some artists could.

Speaker 10 (01:29:59):
Be retained to paint the sound proof walls or the
sound reducing walls, and that could be another outlet for
artistic expression.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
In my view, there is just so much work that
is currently undone that could be done and potentially could
be done by people if their efforts are recognized as
being worthwhile. For example, so many communities have extreme amounts

(01:30:34):
of litter in my view, but there's not really a
clear market mechanism to facilitate litter cleanup right now. Perhaps
one could be arrived at or in US forest land.
There's a lot of dried vegetation on the ground that

(01:30:56):
is prime fuel for wildfires to spread. If crews of people,
maybe people aided by robots, could be dispatched to clear
the dead vegetation or trim back some of the brush,
that would greatly reduce the wildfire risk. And there are
so many of these kinds of activities that perhaps a

(01:31:19):
lot of people today would consider incidental, but if they're
performed consistently and reliably, could greatly increase our standards of living.
That in a society that finds the way to fund
these kinds of activities, there will be plenty of work
to do. I think a lot of people right now

(01:31:40):
are channeled into a relatively small number of occupations just
because those are the occupations for which a business model
has been figured out and ways to internalize the positive
externalities have been figured out. But there are are a

(01:32:00):
lot of positive externalities, for instance, for cleaning up litter,
or say painting murals in public spaces, which is increasingly
being done that perhaps need some special policies or programs
to be able to implement.

Speaker 6 (01:32:16):
So I would just I would just add that that
all that picked up cellulosic biomass can be put in
a piralizer and made into biochar which can then be
cycled back into the soil as it becomes a life
raft for microbes in the soil. And and really all
landscaping in the urban environment should be permacultural. It should
be you know, uh, perennial fruit trees and things like that. So, uh,

(01:32:42):
just simple changes that we can do, you know, as
as policy changes at the municipal level, which don't take
a lot of uh you know, uh money or time
or or protesting. But I just wanted to get for
taking that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Absolutely agree with the permaculture definitely. Like I've always believed
that both cities and homes ideally should function as a cell.

Speaker 1 (01:33:14):
Very interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:33:16):
So, and permaculture, I might say, is a portmanteau permanent agriculture.
And it works on zones, you know, the areas closest
to you or zone zero, so you want to put
the most accessible things in that zone, and the little
farther away is zone one, two, three, And then you
have guilds of plants that are you know, roote to canopy.

(01:33:38):
So it's it's a whole ecosystem. And really the indigenous
people discovered this ecosystem long before you know, Western people
academized it in textbooks. I think we've been doing it
for ten thousand years without realizing it. But you know,
like the corn beans squash, the three sisters, you know

(01:33:58):
of the that the Indian indigenous people use to make
complete protein diets. But yeah, hurry for pacole prima culture
back to you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
All right, Thank you, Daniel. And now I think is
a good opportunity to discuss ideas about the technological singularity
or singularities. It looks like we have lost Brandon, but.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
When he gets back, before we move on to singularity,
I just want to ask about his graywater systems because
that's another one of those low tech things that you know,
like like permaculture. It's not a high tech business, but
it sure does extend.

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
Welcome back, apologies have some technical difficulties.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Ah, yes, well welcome back. And now Alan Crowley has
a question for or Brandon Allen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:35:02):
Yeah, kind of along the lines of the permaculture. Is
these very low tech smart technologies and you mentioned gray
water in your housing sovereignty, uh, you know, water reuse,
and I just wanted to find out, I mean, is
is that already in use in Minnesota? Or I mean,
because that that does tend to increase the cost of

(01:35:25):
production for any housing unit, but but it's still the
operational cost recoups it sure.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
As far as I'm aware, No, I was told that
it would be best for me to make sure that
I included cart out in there, which I did, because
so all these parts are optional for these homes. But philosophically,
the idea behind the sovereign home is the very earth

(01:35:53):
ship inspired. You like the earth ships down in New Mexico,
the dirt dirt pack, tire burn walls, those it's very
earthship inspired. And the rainwater catchment and the greywater reuse
those are all drawn from earthship and ideas.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Cool, very interesting, And now I think we have an
opportunity to delve a bit into the concept of a
technological singularity. Brandon, you mentioned that you have a non
mystical view of this idea of a singularity, So could

(01:36:34):
you please describe what your view is and your outlook
on the possibilities for humankind's future.

Speaker 2 (01:36:44):
Okay, So, the popular narrative is that the exponential curves
guarantee redemption, that when twenty forty five arrives, history will be.

Speaker 3 (01:36:55):
Rescued by default. I don't believe that I believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
The Singularity is an amplifier and it will amplify whatever
feedstock we give it. If we give it tyranny, hierarchy control,
well that's what it will accelerate. So the idea is
that sovereign homes are the proof of concept for what
I call liberation infrastructure, which.

Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
Is basically the.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Technology of Venus project cities in Embryo.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Very interesting and in terms of how a positive, beneficial
singularity would manifest itself, what are some of your ideas
as to what that would provide in terms of possibilities
for a better future.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
So the way that I believe that if we want
to pass our great filter, we need to start getting
this infrastructure at least asked on the federal level by
twenty thirty three. That would give us enough runway to
get it going throughout the country.

Speaker 3 (01:38:14):
And the way that I see it is that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:19):
The emerging technologies should be used to decentralize both power
and the means of production as close to the individual.

Speaker 3 (01:38:27):
Level as possible. And what the.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
Singularity will do is it will take the liberty that
we've already encoded into the infrastructure.

Speaker 3 (01:38:37):
In the twenty thirties and then supercharge it. Like I
don't believe that we'll have like.

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
Homes that have atomic scale recyclers in them in the
twenty thirties.

Speaker 3 (01:38:48):
That would be stuff that we get in the twenty
fifth after the singularity. Very interesting when your home can.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
Three D print a brand new car and your and
a steak for dinner, you know, that's when you have
achieved you pneumonia.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
So those would be in essence the Star Trek replicators.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
I mean, we've had three D, we've had a rudimentary
atomic scale manufacturing since twenty eighteen.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Yes, this is a fascinating prospect. And of course this
dovetails with the idea of sustainable superabundance that has been
articulated by David Wood and also the ideas of abundance
as expressed by figures as diverse as Peter Diamandis and

(01:39:41):
Ezra Cline. So it seems that there are voices of
various persuasions who are recognizing these possibilities and in general
are aligned with us in seeing them as desirable. Now,
I also agree with you that a singularity doesn't guarantee

(01:40:05):
utopio or perfect society or a society that's free of conflicts.
In my view, humankind has already experienced three technological singularities,
the agricultural Revolution, the industrial Revolution, and the information revolution,
and each of these transformations led to societies and ways

(01:40:31):
of doing things interacting with the world that would have
been unimaginable to most people prior to those developments, those
transformative erars, and I think the next singularity is likely
to be of that sort, where a convergence of emerging technologies,
including automation, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, this kind of abundance

(01:41:01):
driven manufacturing with three D printing, with the ability to
replicate most objects, at least on a human scale. The
convergence of these technologies will lead to a world that
radically differs from the world in which we find ourselves.

(01:41:23):
But you mentioned there are pitfalls, and I'm wondering also
what you think some of the less desirable turns might be.
You mentioned the Elysium ready player one combination. I would
suggest there is a risk of escalating geopolitical tensions, leading

(01:41:46):
to nuclear war and potentially the extinction of our species.
That would be the worst outcome. How would you evaluate
the possible trajectories and essentially any benchmarks that would tell
us which trajectory we're on. You mentioned you would want
to have the liberation infrastructure supported by federal law in

(01:42:08):
some manner by twenty thirty three. Are there any other
goal posts that we could aim at to be on
the positive trajectory?

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
I back in twenty fourteen, I expected that we would
begin nationalized thatheridemning this year.

Speaker 3 (01:42:31):
Instead, the very next year came on the scene and
here we are.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
So we talked about the access of endarkenment and how
that's functionally the real life Illuminati. That's the primary goalposts
as far as I can see, showing us that we
are currently on the path to extention.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Now. It's interesting, though, because I like the idea of
asteroid mining and the idea of using the proceeds of
that for universal basic income or creation of infrastructure, some
sort of way to distribute the abundance from that to
the people, because it doesn't require taking anything from anyone.

(01:43:21):
These are additional resources that could be brought to bear,
and furthermore, they wouldn't result in inflation because there would
be some useful materials extracted from the asteroids, so it's
not like printing money and dropping it out of a helicopter. Now,

(01:43:42):
I also am inclined to think that someone like Donald
Trump wouldn't be averse to that option or that approach.
Even though Donald Trump is definitely out for his own enrichment,
he might be persuaded to see it as a combin
nation of a vanity project and a way to fulfill

(01:44:02):
his promises. Like he could say, I, Donald Trump, will
bring you this tremendous wealth from this asteroid, and I
will spread it throughout the population because it will all
be coming from me. And I am so great and
I am so generous, and you should love me and
respect me, Donald Trump for bringing you this wealth from

(01:44:24):
the asteroid. And I wonder could there be opportunities to,
let's say, utilize the venal or opportunistic or self aggrandizing
tendencies of some of these powerful people to actually lead
to some public good, Because again, it seems Trump's personality

(01:44:46):
might be open to such a project.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
So after seeing Mom Dannie, America's mayor handling Trump, it
made me think, maybe we've been going out this wrong way,
and we should have been doing that from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:45:01):
But uh, personally, I believe that the route to go is.

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
Framing that is faming nationalized asher inviting as the next
great American endeavor.

Speaker 4 (01:45:14):
Yes, I think the national endeavor. It needs to be
the Trump legacy. I mean, he did get the FEEFA
Peace Prize, and he didn't you know, get those Those
quite literally would pail in comparison to a singular piece
of legislation, which would be the you know, two random

(01:45:34):
asteroid sid I can't get an acronym out of Trump,
but the Trump you know, the Trump legacy. Oh, he
might just fall on that with who knows. Maybe you're right,
you shouldn't. He's a crook and he wants money and fame.
Give him money and fame.

Speaker 2 (01:45:55):
Yes, the biggers probably, wide opinion would be the billionaires
like him, like the Musks and the Fields, because.

Speaker 3 (01:46:04):
That's the thing Trump, He's always just been a figurehead.

Speaker 6 (01:46:09):
Well, I think when you have when you have global crooks,
maybe you need you know, it takes a thief sometimes,
maybe you need cryktal freedom, you know, to counteract all
these authoritarian crooks. I don't know. I'm willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt to an extent, but
but yeah, the art of the asteroid deal. Let's let's
pitch it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Yes, Musk might want a piece of the action because
mind Musk ownes SpaceX, and Musk, for all of his faults,
has contributed something to building up the infrastructure of humanity,
with companies like Tesla SpaceX to a lesser extent solar
city because it got absorbed by Tesla and the boring

(01:46:54):
company which has built a few tunnels but not as
many as were promised, or concepts like the hyper loop,
which unfortunately haven't had nearly as much investment as they
should have. I think the issue with Musk is he
lets himself be distracted by extraneous goals at least they

(01:47:16):
should be extraneous for a more reasonable person, like fighting
the culture wars or the whole Doge fiasco. If Elon
Musk had stayed in his many legitimate lanes, I think
he would have been able to do a lot more good.
But in this case, Musk might be tempted to go

(01:47:37):
along with the asteroid mining. He might be tempted to
supply spacecraft through SpaceX to the missions to actually harness
these asteroids and extract useful materials. And again, he seems
to be the kind of person who, with the sufficient
incentives might be persuaded to play along. So I am

(01:48:00):
actually less worried, even though I see the problems with
what they're doing, about the non ideological, more opportunistic types,
because I think they could be brought around, at least
in practice, to support some of these initiatives. I am
worried about the people on both the extreme right and

(01:48:24):
the extreme left who have hardline ideological opposition to the
goals of transhumanism. On the extreme right, these will likely
be either religious fundamentalists or alt right conspiracy theorists, bioconservatives,
people who say we must not tamper with God's will,

(01:48:47):
we must not try to play God. On the left,
these would be the neo Multhusians, the neo Luddites, who
think that man is a cancer upon this earth and
we need to return to unsullied nature. They have this
ideal of nature prior to man as somehow being noble
and good, and humans as having corrupted it. And it

(01:49:10):
seems that those extremists on both sides of the conventional
political spectrum are more difficult, less tractable, because they have
set ideologies that oppose ours. What do you think about this,
and in particular, what do you think about a figure

(01:49:32):
whom I thought to be a bit more reasonable, Pope
Leo the fourteenth, coming out against transhumanism just in the
past few days, essentially saying that death should be accepted
as a part of life, it shouldn't be rejected as
being antagonistic to life.

Speaker 3 (01:49:52):
Okay, So, first of all, on the poet, I uh
just wrote a comment the other day on.

Speaker 11 (01:50:05):
If I could find it anyway, on voltan Esdon's post
about that on Instagram, and I explain that from my perspective,
Pope Leo.

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
Isn't against us, he's against the axis of Darkenment, because
transhumanism itself, as a broad movement is descended from the Enlightenment,
and he has made it very clear that he is
the first Enlightenment pope.

Speaker 3 (01:50:35):
And then as far as.

Speaker 2 (01:50:36):
The far left, so the anarcho primitivists. Personally, I've always
seen that as one of the most genocidal ideologies out there,
like if you actually take it to its logical conclusion,
there will be billions of unnecessary depths as a direct result.

Speaker 3 (01:50:57):
And then personally, I heavily.

Speaker 2 (01:51:00):
Disagree with allowing any of the oligarch class to be
involved in naturalized after fighting, because we were talking about
trillions of dollars worth of resources privatization.

Speaker 3 (01:51:13):
That just feels like a bad direction right out the gate.

Speaker 1 (01:51:20):
Interesting, So how do you propose countering the ideological opponents
of transhumanism? And if you believe, for instance, that Pope
Leo isn't really an ideological opponent of transhumanism, how would
you go about trying to persuade him to not oppose

(01:51:42):
our goals?

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
I mean, for Pope Leo, you know, hitting them in
the enlightenment. That's the thing we are at the end
of the day.

Speaker 3 (01:51:51):
We are all allies with liberty and freedom and justice.
Indignant and my perspective with radical life.

Speaker 2 (01:51:59):
Extension is whether you want to live forty years or
four thousand, that should be a personal choice that you
make and nobody. They shouldn't be forced on you. If
you don't want to live.

Speaker 3 (01:52:10):
That long, nobody should tell you that you have to.

Speaker 4 (01:52:17):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:52:17):
And of course transhumanists will agree that it should be
a personal choice. And there shouldn't be a mandate to
accept any sort of therapy or treatment. There shouldn't be
a mandate today to accept medical treatment if one doesn't
wish to. Now, the issue of course right now is

(01:52:37):
that involuntary death will befall all too many people, even
if they don't seek it, don't choose it, even if
they wish to avoid it because of aging, Because we
have not been able to escape the scourge of aging
as of yet with our technologies. I would say the

(01:53:01):
key goal of transhumanists is to give people that choice,
to give them that option by advancing technologies sufficiently far.
But when bioconservatives of various persuasions say, well, this shouldn't
be done, in part because they don't have any experience
of a world in which this has been done, that

(01:53:22):
is where the potential limitations on the choice could occur
if those people achieve positions of power are able to
control policy. This has already happened in certain eras, say
in the early two thousands with the George W. Bush
administration and the President's Council on Bioethics, where there was

(01:53:45):
a very influential advisor named Leon Cass who essentially believes
that death is an integral part of life. It gives
humans purpose, and humans shouldn't live much longer than current
and lifespans with decent medical care, so he wouldn't be

(01:54:05):
opposed to people routinely living into their mid eighties, or
even some people living into their nineties. But he would
say it's bad for whatever reason, for people to be
able to live beyond one hundred and twenty. And what
I'm concerned about, and what many transhumanists are concerned about,
would be some group of people of that persuasion, whether

(01:54:27):
that stems from right wing or left wing thinking, gaining
control of the levers of power and telling others you
may not make that choice to extend your life. You
have to accept the conventional lifespans, maybe with a few
medical quality of life improvements here or there.

Speaker 5 (01:54:50):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:54:50):
Could I add to that and say, what if we
get future generations to be immortal? Shouldn't that be a
consolation prize even if we can't personally be immortal ourselves.
I wish more transhumanists would would put their shoulder to
that wheel to make future generations have the possibility of
indefinite longevity. I know that's not a big selling point, right.

Speaker 2 (01:55:13):
I call that conditional ancestralism.

Speaker 6 (01:55:16):
Okay, Is that about thing or a good thing?

Speaker 4 (01:55:24):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:55:24):
Absolutely, conditional ancestralism is absolutely a good thing.

Speaker 3 (01:55:28):
I'd say too many.

Speaker 2 (01:55:30):
People these days are more worried about being good descendants
than they are about being good ancestors.

Speaker 6 (01:55:37):
Yeah, okay, I see what you mean. Thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (01:55:41):
Well, I would say indefinite lifespans or even dramatically longer
life spans will give people longer time horizons. So if
you can expect to live long enough to see your
great great great grandchildren personally, then you might care about
them more as well. You might plan for their well being.

(01:56:02):
You might plan for a world in which they don't
have to face certain difficulties.

Speaker 2 (01:56:10):
So Jannati, going back to your question there, when you're
what you're talking about with like, say, I if the
the Ludites sees the leavers of power, for example, that's
exactly why the primary goal of liberation infrastructure is decentralizing
power and the means of production as close to the

(01:56:31):
individual as technologically possible. When it comes to my life
and my body, like, people shouldn't be able to just
force me to not do something as if I'm not
cause and harmed of it. I'm very big on the
harm principle.

Speaker 1 (01:56:50):
Yes, So, the idea of people having their sovereign homes,
their time and space, access to infrastructure for living and
produce would be that it would be more difficult to
control them or restrict them from some centralized node, be
that a government or a private corporation. No entity would

(01:57:13):
be able to intrude upon that private sphere and say no,
you are prohibited from, say, experimenting with these technologies as
long as that experimentation applies to yourself. Instead, people will
have the means to do that on hand, and it
would be very difficult to stop. Am I understanding that

(01:57:35):
vision correctly?

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
Yes, And that's actually part of the reason why philosophically
it's very earthship inspired. The if your home produces a
measurable amount of your water, your food, and your energy,
then suddenly, if so want to be desktop seizes the
nation's fresh waterways, seizes the nation's farm land. Well, now

(01:58:00):
that's suddenly not sickling, that's suddenly no longer a centralized
point of failure.

Speaker 1 (01:58:07):
All right, very good, Thank you Brandon, And we have
one question from Alan Crowley, which I think is also
an invitation to a closing statement from you. So Alan
asks how many votes do you need from Texas? Of
course you're running for office in Minnesota, but what can
people from Texas or elsewhere, what can members of the

(01:58:32):
US Transhumanist Party do to help your campaign if they
are aligned with it? And also what message would you
have for our members in connection with a forthcoming vote
where they will be able to choose whether to endorse

(01:58:53):
you as a candidate.

Speaker 2 (01:58:57):
So to get to your second part first, well, I
would say that my platform is fundamentally as transhumanists as
it gets. It's directly in line with every single one
of the goals that the Transhumanist Party is out to get.
And then what was the first part?

Speaker 3 (01:59:16):
Again?

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
So the first part was in regard to Allen's question,
essentially what could people do in other states or outside
of your district to help your campaign?

Speaker 2 (01:59:30):
So genuinely right now fundraising, like, I've only raised one
hundred dollars total so far, but granted that it was
a month after my seventeen thousand follower TikTok account was banned,
so I'm recovering from that.

Speaker 3 (01:59:46):
Otherwise, you just.

Speaker 2 (01:59:48):
Helping to spread the ideas around which well I'm sure
in your circles would be very highly favored.

Speaker 3 (01:59:55):
Upon, you know, versus what a lot of other people
might be bringing to them.

Speaker 1 (02:00:01):
All right, thank you very much, Brandon, and it was
fascinating conversing with you for this virtual Enlightenment Salon. As
I had hoped, we touched on both policy questions and
broader philosophical questions as to the potential trajectories for humanity,

(02:00:22):
how we can achieve the brightest future possible. So thank
you for joining us today. Brandon and I hope that
we can all live long and prosper

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