What are some strengths and weaknesses of INTJs in relationships?

I’ll start with the weaknesses because those can be staggering. Inability to trust without knowing a person really, really well is a big one. I might trust a person with my life and my wallet and bank account before I trust that person with my heart. This can be a serious problem in therapy but if you want to get close to an INTJ you need to understand this very important difference.

Part of the reason for this distrust is that:

  1. INTJ’s feelings are so sensitive and they don’t like getting hurt any more than anyone else. Yet they do get hurt really deeply so easily.
  2. navigating relationships is like walking into a forest blind. INTJ’s know that one wrong step is going to get them hurt badly but they haven’t a clue how to prevent it.

As for strength, their biggest strength in relationships is loyalty to those who do finally prove themselves trustworthy and earn their trust. I read that all the time. Not that the INTJ is likely to make a verbal statement that “You have earned my trust.” However, if they express disappointment in you, you can be pretty sure you made it into the inner circle or very close to it. Otherwise, they would not bother; they’d just decide, “This person isn’t worth my time and effort,” and move on, ignoring you.

The expression of disappointment is an effort to solve a problem, and most of all, to save the relationship. If you want better methods of solving relationship problems you may have to coach us in the exact method you prefer. But don’t do the coaching on the spot before you’re back in this person’s good graces. Remember those sensitive feelings that are shown only to you and a select few other trusted individuals.

If Private Platforms Use Government Guidelines to Police Content, is that State Censorship?

YouTube’s decision to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein raises serious questions, both about the First Amendment and regulatory capture

 

Just under three years ago, Infowars anchor Alex Jones was tossed off Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, marking the unofficial launch of the “content moderation” era. The censorship envelope has since widened dramatically via a series of high-profile incidents: Facebook and Twitter

This week’s decision by YouTube to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein belongs on that list, and has a case to be put at or near the top, representing a different and perhaps more unnerving speech conundrum than those other episodes.

Profiled in this space two weeks ago, Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying — both biologists — host the podcast DarkHorse, which by any measure is among the more successful independent media operations in the country. They have two YouTube channels, a main channel featuring whole episodes and livestreams, and a “clips” channel featuring excerpts from those shows.

Between the two channels, they’ve been flagged 11 times in the last month or so. Specifically, YouTube has honed in on two areas of discussion it believes promote “medical misinformation.” The first is the potential efficacy of the repurposed drug ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. The second is the third rail of third rails, i.e. the possible shortcomings of the mRNA vaccines produced by companies like Moderna and Pfizer.

Weinstein, who was also criticized for arguing the lab-leak theory before conventional wisdom shifted on that topic, says YouTube’s decision will result in the loss of “half” of his and Heying’s income. However, he says, YouTube told him he can reapply after a month.

YouTube’s notice put it as follows: “Edit your channel and reapply for monetization… Make changes to your channel based on our feedback. Changes can include editing or deleting videos and updating video details.”

They want me to self-censor,” he says. “Unless I stop broadcasting information that runs afoul of their CDC-approved talking points, I’ll remain demonetized.”

Weinstein’s travails with YouTube sound like something out of a Star Trek episode, in which the Enterprise crew tries and fails to communicate with a malevolent AI attacking the ship. In the last two weeks, he emailed back and forth with the firm, at one point receiving an email from someone who identified himself only as “Christopher,” indicating a desire to set up a discussion between Weinstein and various parties at YouTube.

Over the course of these communications, Weinstein asked if he could nail down the name and contact number of the person with whom he was interacting. “I said, ‘Look, I need to know who you are first, whether you’re real, what your real first and last names are, what your phone number is, and so on,” Weinstein recounts. “But on asking what ‘Christopher’s’ real name and email was, they wouldn’t even go that far.” After this demand of his, instead of giving him an actual contact, YouTube sent him a pair of less personalized demonetization notices.

As has been noted in this space multiple times, this is a common theme in nearly all of these stories, but Weinstein’s tale is at once weirder and more involved, as most people in these dilemmas never get past the form-letter response stage. YouTube has responded throughout to media queries about Weinstein’s case, suggesting they take it seriously.

YouTube’s decision with regard to Weinstein and Heying seems part of an overall butterfly effect, as numerous other figures either connected to the topic or to DarkHorse have been censured by various platforms. Weinstein guest Dr. Robert Malone, a former Salk Institute researcher often credited with helping develop mRNA vaccine technology, has been suspended from LinkedIn, and Weinstein guest Dr. Pierre Kory of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) has had his appearances removed by YouTube. Even Satoshi Ōmura, who won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for his work on ivermectin, reportedly had a video removed by YouTube this week.

There are several factors that make the DarkHorse incident different from other major Silicon Valley moderation decisions, including the fact that the content in question doesn’t involve electoral politics, foreign intervention, or incitement. The main issue is the possible blurring of lines between public and private censorship.

When I contacted YouTube about Weinstein two weeks ago, I was told, “In general, we rely on guidance from local and global health authorities (FDA, CDC, WHO, NHS, etc) in developing our COVID-19 misinformation policies.”

The question is, how active is that “guidance”? Is YouTube acting in consultation with those bodies in developing those moderation policies? As Weinstein notes, an answer in the affirmative would likely make theirs a true First Amendment problem, with an agency like the CDC not only setting public health policy but also effectively setting guidelines for private discussion about those policies. “If it is in consultation with the government,” he says, “it’s an entirely different issue.”

Asked specifically after Weinstein’s demonetization if the “guidance” included consultation with authorities, YouTube essentially said yes, pointing to previous announcements that they consult other authorities, and adding, “When we develop our policies we consult outside experts and YouTube creators. In the case of our COVID-19 misinformation policies, it would be guidance from local and global health authorities.”

Weinstein and Heying might be the most prominent non-conservative media operation to fall this far afoul of a platform like YouTube. Unlike the case of, say, Alex Jones, the moves against the show’s content have not been roundly cheered. In fact, they’ve inspired blowback from across the media spectrum, with everyone from Bill Maher to Joe Rogan to Tucker Carlson taking notice.

“They threw Bret Weinstein off YouTube, or almost,” Maher said on Real Time last week. “YouTube should not be telling me what I can see about ivermectin. Ivermectin isn’t a registered Republican. It’s a drug!”

From YouTube’s perspective, the argument for “medical misinformation” in the DarkHorse videos probably comes down to a few themes in Weinstein’s shows. Take, for example, an exchange between Weinstein and Malone in a video about the mRNA vaccines produced by companies like Moderna and Pfizer:

Weinstein: The other problem is that what these vaccines do is they encode spike protein… but the spike protein itself we now know is very dangerous, it’s cytotoxic, is that a fair description?

Malone: More than fair, and I alerted the FDA about this risk months and months and months ago.

In another moment, entrepreneur and funder of fluvoxamine studies Steve Kirsch mentioned that his carpet cleaner had a heart attack minutes after taking the Pfizer vaccine, and cited Canadian viral immunologist Byram Bridle in saying that that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t stay localized at point of injection, but “goes throughout your entire body, it goes to your brain to your heart.” 

Politifact rated the claim that spike protein is cytotoxic “false,” citing the CDC to describe the spike protein as “harmless.” As to the idea that the protein does damage to other parts of the body, including the heart, they quoted an FDA spokesperson who said there’s no evidence the spike protein “lingers at any toxic level in the body.”

Would many doctors argue that the 226 identified cases of myocarditis so far is tiny in the context of 130 million vaccine doses administered, and overall the danger of myocarditis associated with vaccine is far lower than the dangers of myocarditis in Covid-19 patients?

Absolutely. It’s also true that the CDC itself had a meeting on June 18th to discuss cases of heart inflammation reported among people who’d received the vaccine. The CDC, in other words, is simultaneously telling news outlets like Politifact that spike protein is “harmless,” and also having ad-hoc meetings to discuss the possibility, however remote from their point of view, that it is not harmless. Are only CDC officials allowed to discuss these matters?

The larger problem with YouTube’s action is that it relies upon those government guidelines, which in turn are significantly dependent upon information provided to them by pharmaceutical companies, which have long track records of being less than forthright with the public.

In the last decade, for instance, the U.S. government spent over $1.5 billion to stockpile Tamiflu, a drug produced by the Swiss pharma firm Roche. It later came out — thanks to the efforts of a Japanese pediatrician who left a comment on an online forum — that Roche had withheld crucial testing information from British and American buyers, leading to a massive fraud suit. Similar controversies involving the arthritis drug Vioxx and the diabetes drug Avandia were prompted by investigations by independent doctors and academics.

As with financial services, military contracting, environmental protection, and other fields, the phenomenon of regulatory capture is demonstrably real in the pharmaceutical world. This makes basing any moderation policy on official guidelines problematic. If the proper vaccine policy is X, but the actual policy ends up being plus unknown commercial consideration Ya policy like YouTube’s more or less automatically preempts discussion of Y.

Some of Weinstein’s broadcasts involve exactly such questions about whether or not it’s necessary to give Covid-19 vaccines to children, to pregnant women, and to people who’ve already had Covid-19, and whether or not the official stance on those matters is colored by profit considerations. Other issues, like whether or not boosters are going to be necessary, need a hard look in light of the commercial incentives.

These are legitimate discussions, as the WHOs own behavior shows. On April 8th, the WHO website said flatly: “Children should not be vaccinated for the moment.” A month and a half later, the WHO issued a new guidance, saying the Pfizer vaccine was “suitable for use by people aged 12 years and above.”

The WHO was clear that its early recommendation was based on a lack of data, and on uncertainty about whether or not children with a low likelihood of infection should be a “priority,” and not on any definite conviction that the vaccine was unsafe. And, again, a Politifact check on the notion that the WHO “reversed its stance” on children rated the claim false, saying that the WHO merely “updated” its guidance on children. Still, the whole drama over the WHO recommendation suggested it should at least be an allowable topic of discussion.

Certainly there are critics of Weinstein’s who blanch at the use of sci-fi terms like “red pill” (derived from worldview-altering truth pill in The Matrix), employing language like “very dangerous” to describe the mRNA vaccines, and descriptions of ivermectin as a drug that would “almost certainly make you better.”

Even to those critics, however, the larger issue Weinstein’s case highlights should be clear. If platforms like YouTube are basing speech regulation policies on government guidelines, and government agencies demonstrably can be captured by industry, the potential exists for a new brand of capture — intellectual capture, where corporate money can theoretically buy not just regulatory relief but the broader preemption of public criticism. It’s vaccines today, and that issue is important enough, but what if in the future the questions involve the performance of an expensive weapons program, or a finance company contracted to administer bailout funds, or health risks posed by a private polluter?

Weinstein believes capture plays a role in his case at some level. “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he says. He hopes the pressure from the public and from the media will push platforms like YouTube to reveal exactly how, and with whom, they settle upon their speech guidelines. “There’s something industrial strength about the censorship,” he says, adding. “There needs to be a public campaign to reject it.”

I watched Weinstein’s Youtube discussion of the mRNA vaccine with Robert Malone. As a physician, I didn’t find his discussion particularly convincing, nor that of Dr. Malone. Three or four hundred million people have now been vaccinated and we are not seeing a lot of serious side effects, which we would almost have certainly seen by now if there really was a problem. The issue, as I see it, is that Weinstein is making a living with his Youtube channel and obviously, he is motivated to increase his income by generating controversy. There’s a heck of a lot of content on Youtube and careful, well-reasoned discussion probably would generate less income than outlandish claims. As a physician, I’m used to reading medical journals and I have enough statistical training to evaluate the evidence. That’s not true for the majority of people exposed to this kind of programming. I’d have found Weinstein’s program a lot more interesting if he had brought on an active mRNA researcher to debate Dr. Malone. (I don’t think Dr. Malone is “in his dotage” at age 60, but he’s clearly not involved with this kind of work anymore.) Weinstein is a smart guy, but he’s not a physician, and not a virologist. His show needs to be a little more balanced if he wants to be taken seriously.

Check out Dr John Campbell , https://youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching he has over 1 million subs, talks about ivermectin all the time and is not demonetized. Why? Because of how he frames it, he is also a believer in vaccines.

Bret on the other hand has gone full Alex Jones with a messiah complex to boot! He has lost the fucking plot completely. Nothing he says makes sense anymore, it’s full on global conspiracy shit. He takes ivermectin live on air.. says he is not getting vaccinated but using ivermectin prophylacticly?.. it’s just totally over the top for a public channel and asking to be demonetized.

I think the reason there’s very little effort going into figuring out if ivermectin works is because we have vaccines that work so well and the fact that so many people got burned promoting early alternative treatments that turned out to be bullshit like hydroxychloroquine…. But I’m sure I’m wrong and Bret is the savior of humanity battling against big tech and the globalists behind the great reset! Maybe he should try and build back betterer his channel.

740 more comments…

Creating Communities of Distributed Trust

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up the down escalator no III think I
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think there are real possibilities of
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creating communities of distributed
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trust right which is which is at the
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core of the to in my mind the whole
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effort right have now how do you create
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a community of distributed trust and and
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and what I’d like to see is that that
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distributed trust is applied to areas
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that are not so fiercely guarded by the
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you know the the powerful you know
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states governments and and and
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businesses right because again it when I
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think about how to play the long game
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here I think that is possible to carve
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out
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areas of got resistance but what I
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really mean is areas of sovereignty self
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sovereignty over issues again they’re
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not so fiercely guarded as money yes
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about the state and and so again this is
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an issue of tactics or other than
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strategy right and and and so that I
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would pursue a different tactical
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approach to the I think the goal we all
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or most of your listeners share with you
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and I for sure it it does seem to me and
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I want to bring this back to the run of
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iris now right which is that everything
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you’re describing whether it’s whether
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it’s your tactical approach my tactical
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approach I
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I think it’s tempting to think oh the
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instability that the virus brings is
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going to be an advantage in fighting
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this long game right I actually think
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it’s it’s it’s it’s a very much
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disadvantageous to both of us right the
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both of our tactical approaches here and
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and I don’t think you have to look much
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farther than what happened in Hungary
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right over the last two days where the
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the Hungarian Parliament and this has
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been building for a while right and
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event but Hungarian Parliament in
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response to the throne of iris emergency
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and it is an emergency gave really
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dictatorial powers to to Viktor Orban
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the the Prime Minister where he now has
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the ability ability to rule by decree
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right don’t have to pass the law doesn’t
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have to go to Parliament whatever the
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executive says is law there’s no time
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limit on this now in hunger there’s a
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new law that if you spread false
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information I think and use as the
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executive describes this what at stake
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or not you’re in prison for five years
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and if you try to leave the areas of
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confinement quarantine that they’ve set
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up that’s in the this this is what
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happens I think in weaker states
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go back to some you know idyllic state
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of nature where you know you can set up
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your you know Kingdom of Wakanda you
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know alright what happens is they’re
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taken over by thugs they’re taking them
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by warlords and by thugs and and you
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know in Hungary is uh it’s a member of
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the yeah I mean I mean it’s a core
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member of Europe so when I when I think
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about what’s going to happen in the next
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year and a half in Indonesia what’s
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gonna happen the next year and a half in
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Egypt it’s going to happen in today
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what’s happening right now in Iran for
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God’s sakes I I don’t think it works to
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our advantage
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III think that the impetus in every
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country and particularly in the weaker
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States is going to be for reclaiming of
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the physical of the violence of the gun
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and so this is why I think it’s more
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important than ever that we identify
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each other in our communities of empathy
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in our communities of our pack right so
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that we can fight this long game this
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long war and so we can support each
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other so anyway that’s not I’m just
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trying to bring it back to what’s
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happening today and and how we should
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think about this unfortunately I don’t
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think it’s a great opportunity but I
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think it’s something that we all need to
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come together even more around so that
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we can can stray stay strong or the the
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dark times that are ahead and I do think
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they’re dark times well never one to
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mince words and and and I certainly
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appreciate the perspective on I’m
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slightly more optimistic for the reasons
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that I outlined you know in the physical
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realm but in the digital realm right is
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the internet still a bastion of freedom
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and can you ultimately get people to act
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freely outside of you know some of the
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more restrictive social media platforms
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for instance but just any type of
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peer-to-peer communication system
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peer-to-peer digital realms would seem
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if you’re more conducive for the silent
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distance the quiet resistance yes and
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that individual thesis but how exactly
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we get there not not debating that it
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could get ugly I want to change gears
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for the the last a little bit that we
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have and just talk about your
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understanding of the investment you know
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as I guess for this generation of
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investors because one of your more
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popular posts this is water and yeah
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it’s still water it kind of talked about
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this shifting mindset where deflation
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expectations that were driven by
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technology are now inflation
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expectations there’s and this isn’t
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necessarily new but I like the way they
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laid it out the the globalism that had
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permeated the the macroeconomy for so
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long is now becoming more nationalistic
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now in some respects that’s not a bad
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thing because now you might have
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countries that are more resilient in the
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face of issues like pandemics when when
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today you know we’re seeing just how
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levered we are via global supply chains
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you talked about the kind of shifting
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from you know capital markets into you
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know true market mechanisms just
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political utilities and um and then just
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overall how financialization is kind of
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exacerbated you know all of those trends
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what what’s what’s the what’s the next
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step in in financial markets right yeah
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if if you run out of the capacity to
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print if you run out of the capacity to
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spend let’s not even talk about the u.s.
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let’s talk about some some country like
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like Hungary they don’t necessarily
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control their own currency it’s a small
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but usually functioning democracy what
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does a market system look like in a
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situation like hungry and then how do
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you ever get back to normalcy or how do
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you set the reset button so that the
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short answer is that for in a I’ll go
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back to
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I’m gonna go back 2,500 years yeah this
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is the academic in me right I can’t I
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can’t I can’t give you a straight answer
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right what you’re asking has all
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happened before like it’s all happened
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before right so Peloponnesian War you’ve
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got a thens and Sparta the big countries
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you know fighting each other and then
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the question is well what happens to the
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little countries what happens to ya
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you know magar you know all these these
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these little city-states and the the
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Athenians they’re trying to get their
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their allies together in one of the the
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little allies is saying well you know
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but you know you’re asking us to
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sacrifice everything is all for you I
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mean this this sounds this justice out a
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great deal and the Athenian ambassador
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says you know it was ever thus the
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strong do as they will the weak do as
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they must strong do as they will the
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weak do this they must
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and nothing has changed in 2500 freaking
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years when it comes to the ability of
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countries to chart their own course to
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deal with the exigencies of power hungry
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will do as they must even weaker
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countries than hungry will definitely do
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is they must and the strong do as they
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will so what they will when it comes to
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Europe when it comes to the United
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States when it comes to Japan which
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comes to to China is that there are no
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limits on you know printer Gober right
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there are no limits on you know we we
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haven’t even really touched yet modern
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monetary theory in the notion that well
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there’s not even a relationship between
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spending and taxing right
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you can run deficits as much as you want
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go on go for it we’re just getting
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started man
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getting started hey we’re not at the end
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game of this where yeah it’s like it’s
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like this is halftime hey this this
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isn’t the last few minutes of the fourth
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quarter
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with how governments are going to
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transform capital markets and the fourth
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key utilities with how they’re going to
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you know transform the meaning of money
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into what supports political power yeah
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this is just half time so I I think we
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really do have to take that long-term
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perspective that the printer can go burr
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for a lot longer and it doesn’t matter
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who gets elected you know you know it’s
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it’s it it’s all the same that the last
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10 years have been the greatest transfer
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of wealth – I call it the managerial
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class then I really think anything in
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history it has come through stock
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buybacks through stock sales through
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stock based compensation it’s all
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happened in the last 10 years and it’s a
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transfer of hundreds of billions of
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dollars of wealth to managers not
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entrepreneurs not founders not Shinya to
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managers managers and when that much
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wealth is transferred to that number of
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people in such a short period of time
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it doesn’t reverse itself yeah you know
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you know people don’t the the cheese may
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move but people still want their cheese
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yeah and and and I just I just think
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it’s so important to remember that we
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really are playing that long game to
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remember that the strong do is they will
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and the weak – as they must and to have
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in mind a set that that we’re just half
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time right now and that we need to play
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the game accordingly because what you
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don’t want to do is you don’t want to
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yeah you don’t want to storm an
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entrenched machine-gun nest you know
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with you know huzzah now is our time you
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know then you you really do I think want
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to play the long game
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I think there
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a real power of conviction and belief
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that allows us to play a long game
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mm-hmm and to keep it all together
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of course people like you doing your
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podcast it requires people like me doing
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our writing and most of it all it it
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requires a critical mass of people who
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whose greatest regret would be to give
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up and to be co-opted by the powers that
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be rather than play the long game and
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fight the long fight I can’t think of a
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better way to wrap up this conversation
51:39
than calling for conviction and long
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term ISM and a market remedies panicked
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and and you know short termism generally
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drills the day then where can people
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find you on twitter I’m easy it’s it’s
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it’s all epsilon Theory all the time so
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at epsilon theory and epsilon Theory
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comm it’s for you to read and love to
52:03
love to have you on board it’s a it’s an
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excellent read always I’ve been
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following you for years now and and
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definitely appreciate your commentary
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and watching it at all even as we get
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into a slightly darker period and you
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can tell for those that are tuning in if
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you can hear the background noise that
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naptime just ended so we we just wrapped
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up with the most perfect time because I
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just I just heard my kids wake up and
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surprise that they haven’t run in here
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already thank you for having me Ryan’s
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really a pleasure anytime Thank You Ben
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and stay safe
52:36
YouTube take care