Tech CEO on Corporate Pride Flags, Nation State Survival, and Institutional Knowledge Loss

Benjamin Anderson [00:00:00] Yeah, I mean, what, what is freedom? But the ability to choose? And it's a scary thing to make a decision because there are repercussions to decisions. So it's, you know, if you don't, if you don't have a framework for what might be a good decision and what might be a bad decision, if you aren't comfortable with ambiguity, someone, you know, stepping in and saying, Hey, I'm presenting any decision, as opposed to ambiguity, it can be very attractive to just choose going forward with that decision as opposed to lurking in your own ambiguity or going through the effort that's required to create your own framework for making a better decision. I'm Miriam Hoffman, a full-time college student living in Carbondale, Illinois, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:39] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we have an in-person interview with my man, executive producer Ben Anderson. Many longtime listeners of the podcast know that Ben actually helped me transition once Coronavirus hit into doing this podcast with people all over the world. Ben is an entrepreneur. He runs a website called Wand, where he connects people that want their houses cleaned with housekeepers, and he also has worked with the Articulate Ventures company to start a boutique PR firm where we work with specialty clients that wanna figure out how can they get their name out into the world without spending money on buying ads, but actually get their message out in creative, unique, authentic ways. I love working with Ben. He's over at the office working several times a week. We work out together. I spend all kinds of time with him. So this is a very fun interview. We are gonna bounce all over the place. This is definitely a podcast where if you've never listened to it, this is gonna give you a chance to see the breadth of topics. We talk about everything from the advent of the pride flag becoming really prominent right now in society onto things like what's going on with our culture, how long will the nation state be the predominant way that people organize their, the, the way they interact with one another. And then we get into talking about various podcast guests that we've had on what, what they've brought up, what they've taught us, and what we've enjoyed about it. This is a fantastic interview and I'm really glad you're here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:10] So I hope you will stick around for this fantastic interview. Before we go there, I, I'm always talking about the Articulate Ventures network. This is a place where people that are listeners of the podcast can gather to be able to talk with other people that like conversations like the ones we have here. Inside of this network, there is a newsfeed where people are able to ask questions, bring up subjects that you're not really able to talk about in regular life because our society just doesn't let you have open conversations anymore. We hold a book club, we have a movie night, and it's really a great place to have a digital neighborhood where you can meet intelligent people that are listening to some of the same things that you are, but also bring a whole host of new ideas. It is a phenomenal place. We love it, I cherish it, and I spend a whole lot of time working with the people in there to continue to make that digital community a place where we can learn, grow, and become something better than we are right now. So if you're interested in joining, know that I am talking directly to you and inviting you to join us at this, at this wonderful place. If you're interested, go to Network dot Articulate Ventures to find out more. Also, before the interview, I have had a big upswing in people reaching out for Legacy Interviews. This is where I am invited to talk with somebody that's a loved one of yours and ask them questions about who they are, what they believe, what their memories are, what their values are, and we put it into a recording that you're able to download and access anytime you want.

Vance Crowe [00:03:46] People have had me interview their children as their young people trying to, to capture that moment of innocence. And I've spoken with people that are nearing the end of their life trying to capture what is going on with the values that they have and what do they hope lives on. It has been across the gamut, and I was just telling my wife last night that this is perhaps the most valuable work I've ever put into the world. You can see how much people love and cherish these recordings. And now having had some of my guests actually pass away, I've had people refer to those interviews as the most precious and valuable things in their lives. So if you are interested, you can definitely, we can do it online, we can do it over a Zoom call if you are a loved one is somewhere far away, or we can do it even in person at the Articulate Ventures Studios. So you can find out more by going to store Articulate Ventures and see if this is the right type of legacy interview for you. A lot of people do 'em as presence and we can always work out the scheduling. So I hope you'll enjoy it. Alright, now without further ado, we're gonna head to an interview with my man, Mr. Benjamin. Ben Anderson. Welcome back to the podcast.

Benjamin Anderson [00:04:57] I'm thrilled to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:04:59] So, you know, everybody that listens to the podcast regularly knows you and I see each other all the time. We work together very closely. So these are always interesting discussions because we talk about so much. But one of the things that you and I talked about recently was this huge proliferation of the pride flags all over everything. We've seen it at bookstores, we've seen it plastered on all the logos of various businesses, everything from bear crop sciences, all the way out to, you know, grocery stores. And even yesterday I saw somebody on social media with the police cars covered in a pride flag. What are your kind of general thoughts on what this is all about? Why is there such an explosion of this going on right now?

Benjamin Anderson [00:05:40] Yeah, we're, we're going right for the jugular. It, my, my, my default is that, you know, what doesn't affect me doesn't bother me until it does. And that, that might sound like a backward statement, but it's one of those things where it's like yesterday, right? Walking, walking down, you know, Euclid and you go by the bookstore and they're kind of promoting its pride month, right? So here's all of our content centered around these sorts of ideas, right? And it's one thing to have kind of, you got your adult books there and then you go and here's the window with the children's section, and you start to see like the, you know, all the thoughts that I, or all the times that I knew that I was gay growing up sort of thing, and the prince and the knight sort of, and I'm not, you know, not to call out any specific deals, but it was just, it's one of those things where you see that and you're like, that's weird. This is the content that we're promoting to people that, you know, maybe they're under, you know, age of 10, 9, 8, whatever, right? And for, not that they're bad ideas, it's just, it seems like a weird thing to me. That's where it starts to cross. That line of doesn't affect me, doesn't bother to me. Okay, this is weird until like what you just said, right? With the police cars, it's like, why would, why would we put something that is very clearly now, right? A political statement on law enforcement vehicles? What's supposed to be kind of an unbiased, like a, you know, law, law keeping entity that seems, that seems like it's edging closer towards that, that edge chaos there.

Benjamin Anderson [00:07:13] It seems like a weird deal.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] Yeah. To me, that was the one that really made me like, stop and say, wait a second, like this actually people saying, oh, it's no big deal that these corporations do it, they're just doing it because their customers want it. Or, you know, this is a good way to be supportive of their employees. That may all be true, but when you start adding it on to police cars, you know, being wrapped in this, and I just saw it on a random TikTok who, who knows what, what that really was. But it does seem like what is the meaning of this symbol? Because it means something, right? It doesn't mean nothing. And if it means something, what does it mean and what are people agreeing to or espousing or putting forward? And that's the thing that makes me a little bit tense about this, because I personally, several years ago was working for Monsanto, and when I brought Jordan Peterson to the American Farm Bureau, the people that were the most angry were from the LGBTQ plus group within the company saying, Hey, Monsanto, you agreed that you wouldn't do things like this. And they were like, no, we didn't. And they're like, yes, you did. Look, you're, you know, saying we believe in pride, these are the things that we mean. And so the company itself is saying, this is not necessarily, we didn't say we wouldn't, would or wouldn't talk to anybody, but then on the flip side of it, the the people that are saying, Hey, we're a part of this group, this is what this means to us. So it's not a cost free thing, which is, which is what I see a lot of people saying, like, Hey, it doesn't get in my way.

Vance Crowe [00:08:45] I don't wanna tell people what to say. But then you get into a position where people start saying, well, you did use that, and it does mean something. And we mean, we think it means this. And I think it's a far more, it's far more playing with fire than people realize, because symbols mean things. That's why people put those symbols out there. And I, I think it's a, it's a weird quirk in our society that's going on right now for people to either be, like, my default position is just to wave the flag along with everybody else, or just to let other people, you know, do what they wanna do. And I'm not gonna interfere because I think you wake up one day and you realize like, whoa, we didn't agree to those things that you are saying that we did agree to. Yeah,

Benjamin Anderson [00:09:24] I mean that's, that's where my head goes I guess as you're starting to say that, right? There's like the, the overlap of what these symbols represent and yeah, if you're gonna, if you're gonna subscribe to putting, putting something, and if as the culture of a symbol evolves, that's another thing where you can go back in hindsight and say, oh, well you flew this once and now we represent X. Now you have to represent X or you are not with us anymore, and what does it mean for you to not be with us anymore? And you know, who is us? Like you, you made a great point of sometimes these don't even lap in with the, the actual customer bases of the companies in terms of like the values that might be more broadly held by the actual buying groups. So then it really comes down to who, who are you trying to benefit? Because like, like my mind goes to, this is a marketing tactic. At the end of the day, if you're a company, your number one priority is to net revenue back for shareholders, right? So if your goal is to net revenue back for shareholders, whatever the scenario is, it's like you're, you're making decisions that influence this one value proposition. So that's the, the broad conception is, and this maybe this goes to your PR idea as well, right? Of what is the fashion layer of culture right now? What is the broader buying group buying into it's these ideas and yeah, it's, I don't know, it's a strange deal.

Vance Crowe [00:10:49] Yeah, it was in a discussion where, where like the large, the vast majority of the people in the discussion basically said, Hey, I think David Brooks wrote an article from the New York Times. He said, look, when corporations do this, they water down the idea. And everybody was kinda like, yeah, I think the more that corporations do this, the less the symbol means. So it's really not even fair to the group that's putting it forward. And I actually think the exact opposite. I think that the more that this gets put forward as something that corporations must do, otherwise they're exposing themselves to some sort of reputational risk because they didn't only reinforces the fact that this is a political symbol and it is not just a symbol, but a funnel, right? It's a funnel that says not only should you put this flag up, because if you don't, you're somehow, you know, mistreating people or you're not giving them the respect that they're owed. But then also once you've started down that path, like you had said, the symbol evolves and like you don't really know where this is going. And oftentimes the people in front of political movements have intentions that are far more aggressive or far more just deeper believers about what this thing could mean. And I just think like, if you're going to put forward that corporations are actually people and you're gonna say, we're gonna allow corporations to spend money as though they're individuals. And we're going to say that like the way that this corporation works is that it's a conglomeration of people and we're representing them. I'm certain that there are a lot of people in these corporations that they, they maybe aren't against anything to do with homosexuality or anything to do with whatever pride has going on, but yet they don't wanna be a part of that symbol.

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] And if they voice that opinion, what would happen to them inside of that corporation?

Benjamin Anderson [00:12:38] Yeah, I guess that's a scenario where it might be actively more polarizing, right? And, you know, then you can steal man the other side of the argument, right? Which is like, whoa, well, you know, you should be able to accept these sorts of ideas. But then that's where it's, I I think it's strange how there's a need to put these things forward, whether it's, and you know, that goes for either, you know, pride like environmentalism, sort of Black Lives Matter sort of stuff. And I'm theoretically for the root goal of all of these movements at like the highest level, right? All of these things are things that we should be aware of and working on socially to improve the net scenarios of the people involved in these groups. But at the same time, I guess what, what's the goal of what to accomplish with putting, putting these things forward in a way where, yeah, I, I don't know. It's,

Vance Crowe [00:13:32] To me, I would even question the thing that you, you default to, which is the one that like feels natural. Like, look, I don't have a problem with any of these groups, but I kind of don't like what's going on, right? The default position should be, hey, I'm allowed to believe whatever I wanna believe. Just like you're allowed to believe whatever you wanna be believe. And when you start asserting it by, like, when people drive into their office and they see that here, well here's the American flag, and then right underneath it is a flag of a political persuasion, whether it's pride or any other one, right? An environmental flag. Now all of a sudden people are having to say, the place that I work holds a political position that I myself do not, so am I doing the right thing by just being quiet and saying, well, that's their belief and not mine. And there are other things they believe in that I also don't believe in. So that's okay. Or are you then morally obligated to saying like, wait a second, I'm a part of this. Everyone knows that my family derives our income from it, the, the way that my life is structured and I don't want that political thing being ascribed to me and what I believe and who I am. So either I need to stand up and push back, which might have ramifications inside of the company, or I need to leave and go find another job. It is inherently polarizing. The, to me choosing those symbols is something that's saying like, alright, the corporation, whether that's the PR people inside of the corporation or actually the leadership are making decisions and we kind of have this default position that everyone will just kind of go along with it. And I don't, I don't think that's healthy.

Benjamin Anderson [00:15:03] Well, and this is the weird thing, right? Is the, the people that you're like hypothesizing here of being against something when these sorts of symbols come up in their place of work or whether it's in their community, whatever, right? What do you think they're against? Because I can't answer that question, but I'm thinking to myself how it seems like we're on a rift here where we're theoretically, you know, against these symbols. But like I just said, I'm not against what they represent. I'm very for the, you know, the integration of everybody believing whatever the hell it is you wanna believe doing whatever the hell it is you wanna do, right? But not having to put that forth in a way in society and in culture where it's like, this is what I do, this is what I do, this is what I do, this is what I do. Where it's like, I don't know, there's, there's that weird balance there of I want everybody to be able to do what they wanna do. I want everybody to be accepted no matter what they do within reason, as long as it falls within certain moral guidelines. But it's like, well what do you think? What do you think those people are pushing back against if it's not the ideas represented by these symbols?

Vance Crowe [00:16:06] Well, and like to your point, the, you know, where the line gets drawn, right? Like when you start, so for me, the, the pride thing, let's imagine a scenario in which there was some sort of like heterosexual pride, right? Or some, something like that. I don't want anything about sexuality talked about at work. 'cause I don't care at all what other people are doing at home and with whom and what it is. Like their activities, I don't care. Straight gay anywhere in between. I don't want to know. And in fact, the, the idea, like we have this like weird, almost ironic part of culture that says we should have work life balance. You shouldn't have to work all the time. You shouldn't have to, you know, have, have your work flood into every aspect of your personal life. You should have time with your family, time away from your boss controlling what you're doing. Why in the world would we have this concept of bring your whole self to work? And, and also that we should talk about things like sexuality in the workplace. Now I have a good friend that said, like, look, I worked for several years where every time I was in communications with my friends over in the Balkans or in in the Middle East, I had to pretend as though my partner was my friend or my roommate. And I didn't like that I, that that sucks. I don't want that. Like, you know, but at the same time is the correct answer then to assert that sexuality is, is overtly something that we should talk about at work or something that your employer should care it at, at all about?

Benjamin Anderson [00:17:43] Well, and then maybe this is the thing is that the goal of putting these sorts of symbols forward, so, so prevalently, right? Is to push the Overton window open so that you can edge. 'cause that's where it's like, there's the cost benefit analysis, right? It's like these scenarios happen where you have to go and you have to lie about who you are in certain settings. And that's exactly what I'm saying. Like I don't want anybody to have to do that under any circumstances, you know, within reason, if you're a psychopath, like lie about yourself in public, right? But yeah, like so may, if the goal is to push open that window to ease a broader group of people in this general direction of being more accepting of these ideas, but then it's, you can, I don't know, it's, it's, it's weird because I can see where there's the opportunity for benefit there if you're looking at it from that perspective. But then on the flip side, it's like, I don't know. Yeah. Then you're bringing this, what you're talking about ideas of sexuality and stuff into the workplace and creating the potential for further division just by the, you know, I, I don't know, people taking it the wrong way.

Vance Crowe [00:18:48] It's, it's a funny thing the way that corporations now are kind of being pushed into the, like silence is violence or you're not allowed to not take a position. So was it base camp came out and said like, look, we want you to not bring your whole self to work. We want you to just bring your work self to work and we're not gonna talk about political things. And then there were groups of people that, you know, popped up to be like, oh, look how awful this is. They're saying you shouldn't be allowed to be political. I, well what if I, what if I want to express that? Like, why are you blocking that for me? And I mean, I think that that is the example of the Overton window being kicked wide open. And maybe there was a time when only conservative views were allowed to be accepted in, in a company. And this is just the, the pushback that that goes the other direction where, where now hey, we want not just conservative, we want liberal. And now everybody's feeling like, well, my views should be heard, my views should be heard. And now it's just a cacophony of political views of which, unless your job has directly related to the politics of, of every day, I don't see the benefit to anyone, employees, customers, shareholders, board, why you would bring these issues in as a, as a fundamental part of who you are and, and what you're spending your limited bandwidth talking about with your employees.

Benjamin Anderson [00:20:09] Right? And I guess that's what I was getting at, right? Unless the goal is to push that Overton window open, then maybe for people like describing the Overton window, it's this concept, right, of going swinging the pendulum so far in one direction so that the, like, the mean of, you know, what the society behavior might be moves closer in one direction. So if, if the goal here is to swing so far in this direction that we pull a broader acceptance of these ideas in that direction, that's where I see like a net potential for good, right? So if, if, if that's the goal there, then you know, that's, that's great, right? If, if it brings us closer to that direction, but then it's, there's, there's that deal, right? Where you're bringing, I don't know, yeah, you're bringing sexuality and stuff into the workplace and then you have to contend with, you know, having these sorts of conversations in work. And it's like, it's the conflict of interest of I'm here to work and now we have these sorts of things here, and how can you not have discussions come up around X or Y or Z when you're here to get a job done? I don't know. It's, it's, it's a marketing tactic. That's

Vance Crowe [00:21:12] What I see. I mean, I'm super open to the idea that I, I live in the world where, you know, I fit straight within the median, right? Like I am, you know, heterosexual, right? In my like late thirties. I have a child, I'm married. And so for me, anything outside of that, it's like, why don't we just stick with what I know and what I like? I'm totally comfortable with somebody coming around and being like, Hey, this is something you didn't consider. I remember probably over a year ago, I had Peggy guest on and she talked about the movements, feminism and like things that needed to change about society that really, because I had been living in a world that had been changed by those very feminists, I kind of wrote it off or didn't think it was that big of a deal. And now that I'm like a parent, for example, and I see how hard it is for me to both do work and be a good parent. And if that was always solely on the woman and that was just the way that it was and the men were allowed to be at work like that, it is good that somebody kicked open that door. And I am certain that it was uncomfortable when they were doing it, that people were like, Hey, why don't we just keep the order the same way that it was? Why don't we, why are, why are you messing around with it? So I'm open to the idea that my perspective on this is lacking in some serious way, but I think that the slower, it's, it's far better to move slow in adopting new things or new new positions and make sure you don't break the stability of things than it is to let's just accept it. Let's bring it in and then we'll decide what does this mean to all of us afterwards.

Benjamin Anderson [00:22:44] Yeah. I mean, things are generally slow and then they're all at once, and we've been living in the age of acceleration here now for nearly two or three decades since the inception of the internet. And like we've had this conversation offline, right, of like this idea of like, I've got an uncle who's gay, right? And I didn't grow, I didn't live in the nineties. I was born in 98, right? But, you know, I hear, I associate with a lot of adults, like there's an age gap between us, other people kind of in our social circle. Like I hear my dad, other relatives talk of like, there's this conception, oh man, the nineties, it was like everybody was so united. Like, there were no conversations circulating around these sorts of things. It was just like, you know, you know, you like to do X or you know, you like same sex, whatever it might be, or color your skin, who cares? Who gives a shit? We all work together, we all interact together in society. And it was, I don't know, I don't know, I would really not blame it on, but it's an after effect of the inception of the internet where it's like, okay, we're all able to talk about things and have really, really unfortunate, but really, really unfortunate. But rare negative scenarios kind of rise up because like what, what polarizes people to react to something either extreme excitement that might be positive and joy, or it's like extreme aversion to something or, you know, sadness or disgust, whatever it might be. So more often than not, there's these ideas of like, oh man, the puppies on the internet, whatever will follow and like these sorts of things. That's great. But then, you know, flip, flipping the side of the coin to like the police violence issue and kind of the like flying the, the flags of like, you know, BLM is like an alternative.

Benjamin Anderson [00:24:26] It's like the, the abstraction of the conversation we're having right now is this same concept of putting forth symbols hyper prominently to represent like an idea. I think a lot of the things, it's like, okay, these are good ideas at their core, but why are they so prevalent now based off of issues that do happen, shitty issues that do happen. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:24:49] You know, you've, you've brought up this like nineties concept that, like, that was when things were good and I flatly reject this idea. Fair enough. I think that it is like the 20 year nostalgia that happens that, that, like 20 years ago I would've been, you know, in my like early twenties, maybe like 18, 17, maybe if you even go a little bit further back than that. And I think that the reason that it feels like things were better than is one, you cut out all of the tension. Like it's really difficult for you to remember day in and day out what you were anxious about. That was, that was in the news. And then the things that do come to mind, like, you know, a lot of them are, are not like, you don't feel that same sense of like, oh shit, things are changing faster than my brain can accept them because they've already accepted. So you look back and you're like, oh, that's just the way that it was. But I look back into the nineties and I think, you know, Billy Joel wrote that song, we didn't Start the Fire, and like You, you listened to the words of that song. And to me that was like, that is an artifact that we should always hold because he was saying, look at all these things that look like they're crazy on fire and it wasn't our fault and these things just happened to us. And I think you could take that song, that same beat, the same excitement, the same passion that he had, and put it into a song today and and say like, look, the fire was started way before us, right? And I think that this, it's like, I think that nostalgia is a dangerous idea. I mean, Rodney King was in the nineties, right? So like, there was definitely police brutality, then there were riots and like people were standing on top of, of shops shooting at other people.

Vance Crowe [00:26:27] So for me, the, we tend to have this sensation that things were better or easier, but I think there was a lot of cultural change going on. Like this would've been the time, I don't even know if you remember the show, the Real World, like the, so there was a show on MTV called The Real World that where they would bring all these people together and have 'em live in a house. And it was the first, now you see these shows all the time, like reality tv, but these were the first ones. So there was one where there was a, a gay man named Pedro that had aids and it was the first time any, I mean like I was a kid from Eureka, Illinois, I was probably like, I don't know, 10 or 11 years old. I didn't know any gay men that had aids. And yet now we're watching a television show where you're seeing him not be a threat to anybody in the house. They can live next to him, they can eat off the same silverware. They, they can, you know, share bathrooms and they're not afraid. And what that did for society, moving the Overton window further open, and I remember there was always this like country guy who wore a cowboy hat and he was from like, you know, somewhere in Nashville or something. He was trying to be a music singer and, and you know, the, like, the dynamics between those two was watched by everybody in the world. And then when Pedro died, I remember Bill Clinton coming on and saying, none of us can ever say anymore that we didn't have a gay friend. We did, he's right here, Pedro. And so now like, look what this has done for society. And so I I definitely understand that culture has to change and, and maybe the, the pride flags are a movement of that.

Vance Crowe [00:28:02] But I think there's something else going on here. When Pedro and the real world were happening, nobody was being, nobody was being asked to sit underneath the banner of an ideology. They just were able to observe it and say, well, what does this mean for me? What does this, what does this change for what I think as opposed to am I being forced to represent an idea that I don't, I don't necessarily have any connection with?

Benjamin Anderson [00:28:25] Right? Yeah. That's the thing is like the not having a connection, it's not like you oppose it's, it's weird because it's not like you have a direct opposition to the idea. Because I don't think either of us have a direct opposition to the, 'cause what's the root idea there? It's to be more accepting of people with a certain sexual preference in society. That's great. We've got mutual friends who have these sorts of like preferences that's, this should be the case. But when it becomes so prevalent that you are forced to either be really for it or like, you know, like, okay, that's okay. Like I got my friends over here who have these preferences and like, we'll hang out whatever, but I don't want to go take part in the parade or, you know, have to wear the t-shirts to company on whatever. I, I don't know, it's just a strange thing. And to the nineties thing also, I mean, I don't, like, I I, I didn't grow up there, so I have no, like I have, I have no tether to this idea as a concept that's like an observation of like, oh man, like things were just better. Right? It's like this perception though. Like my cousin got me a really good book for Christmas last year. Fact, I think you know, the author

Vance Crowe [00:29:36] Hans Rollings?

Benjamin Anderson [00:29:36] Yeah, yeah. I don't didn't remember his name, thank you. But this book was phenomenal in that it outlines all of the ways over decades and centuries that we've made, you know, in many ways exponential progress in terms of, you know, poverty and the ability to feed the world and quality of life. And it included issues like race and these sorts of things and broader acceptance of different social norms and from, from a fact-based like database perspective, which is like always where like a mind, like mind goes, I'm like always like, okay, what does the data say? Whether it's issues like this or, you know, like virus, whatever, right? Like, that's what I'm gonna be looking at. We're getting better across the board generally speaking. So it's this weird dichotomy of like the perception changing and to your point of like slow progress, slow progress being better. I don't know if that's always the case, that slow progress is better, especially when we live in this like, again, like the age of acceleration where it's like we've grown accustomed to having our needs met instantaneously. So maybe this is a contributing factor to oh my gosh, I want to see social change and I want to see it right now, like yesterday sort of thing. As opposed to like, okay, we're making progress, we're making progress, you know? Yeah. It's a strange deal. I'm not wrapping back around to a point, but some, well,

Vance Crowe [00:30:52] So it's, it's a funny thing to think about what, what is it that we're observing right now? And I always talk about, you know, the media doesn't tell us what to think. They tell us what to think about. And if I didn't see these things on social media, I wouldn't actually see them because in my, you know, what Lyle Benjamin refers to as his porch view, if I walk out on my porch, I don't see any of these issues. So I also have to accept the fact that any sort of frustration or like tension that I feel about look at all this change and they're forcing it on this and you know, like, maybe I don't want to be under this banner or that banner. At the end of the day, you do have to say like, well, maybe the reason that I'm stressed about that is I'm exposing myself to things that are purposefully trying to grab my attention with the most ratcheted up thing that they can. As opposed to saying, why don't I go to an art museum and try and observe where the light is coming in from the side of the frame. Like, you know, if, if that's all you did was go to an art museum and say, where is the light coming from in this artist's perspective? You couldn't then also be consumed by these ideas that the, that the news or the media is trying to grab your attention with.

Benjamin Anderson [00:32:05] Yeah. And I guess that's the thing, right? In terms of like why it may be default to this camp of like, it doesn't bother me a whole lot until it does, like, it crosses a point where it's like, oh, I'm walking down the street and that's kind of weird. And I begin to create like a theory of mind for how this is, like what the effects of these sorts of things are in terms of like, you know, pushing an idea forward, especially further down the age bracket where it's like, you know, you're fricking 10 years old. It's like if you're a boy, maybe you think you're a girl when you're playing at recess and when you're a girl, maybe you think you're a boy when you're playing at recess and it's like, then 10 years go by and like, I don't know, different things settle in. But

Vance Crowe [00:32:41] Yeah, I mean, and I like with children, so now that I have a small child, for me, any of the ideas about the news, you know, let's move beyond the, just what we were talking about with the banners and flags. Like I want my child's childhood to be that Garden of Eden. I want her to learn all the names of the animals and be able to name all of the plants and be able to understand smells and colors and all of the things that are required. Well, not required that, that allow you to embrace the fullness of whatever your humanity is prior to accepting in any of the chaos that's going on with the news. So this, the Yosha Bach idea that the Garden of Eden is actually childhood and your the parent's responsibility is to try and keep those walls up, not for as long as you can, but for long enough for the child to develop into whoever it is that they're going to be before society starts to tell them this is what you should pay attention to.

Benjamin Anderson [00:33:38] Yeah. That, I mean, that makes sense 'cause it's like the, you know, you're, it's it's stealing your attention away in a way, like the news and a number of different things, especially right now, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:52] What is capturing your, your attention in the news right now? What have you been paying attention to?

Benjamin Anderson [00:33:59] I'm keeping my eyes on like how the economy is behaving over the last couple days especially, right?

Vance Crowe [00:34:04] Yeah, man, Lacey Hunt seems like he's just killing it right now. So, you know, we had the economist Lacey Hunt on, and he talked about how, you know, we're in short term inflation, but eventually supply the, the cure for high prices is high prices because then people will flood in to fill the market. And just the other day I saw that timber lumber has come down 30% from its highest high. And I don't know that that symbolizes the end of the supply problem with wood, but it definitely is the exact type of indicator that he was talking about.

Benjamin Anderson [00:34:38] Yeah, I mean, I think it's like anything like there will be, there will be long lasting inflation from a preexisting base level, right? So the fact that we're like to what you just said, we're 30% down from, you know, lumber prices that were upward upwards of hundreds of percent, right? Higher than they were when we were buying 'em just 12 months ago and 30% down from a hundred, like, this is great, it's a great start. But yeah, what we're gonna come back down to, it'll be interesting to see.

Vance Crowe [00:35:07] I mean, I think, like to me, I was really concerned about runaway inflation and if we keep pumping money into the sit into the economy, I think it is inevitable that we will have it. However, I can now see a different perspective where those high prices, all of a sudden people start looking at alternatives, innovators get to enter the market. People that are saying, well, maybe we don't build houses with sticks of Canadian lumber. Maybe we build them with this composite material that comes from Southern Utah or something like that. So to me, the having Lacey hunt on and now watching whether his predictions come, come to fruition have been really interesting.

Benjamin Anderson [00:35:46] Yeah. My mind veered off when you said, looking for alternatives to looking to alternatives, not just like in our market, but looking for alternatives in other markets that maybe aren't making decisions that make their market behave that way.

Vance Crowe [00:35:59] Like what?

Benjamin Anderson [00:36:00] I don't know, like, I mean, my mi my mind is resting heavy on this idea of like, you know, the failures of the nation state because of like reading it's one book right now, I would highly recommend it, the sovereign individual, but it talks about these things almost very highly prophetically nearly 20 years ago in terms of, you know, what, what are the decision matrixes of a nation state in its current form? And if we carry these, if we carry these patterns forward, say, you know, any amount of time, eventually we'll reach a state that looks like X, Y, and Z and look at the world around us Right now it looks very, very similar to the way that this tech spells out X, Y, and Z. So what do people start doing when X, y, and Z is manifesting in the market and in the place that they live? Well, they're gonna look for alternatives. And then it goes to this, you know, like El Salvador adopting Bitcoin. I'm not saying that that makes this the new perfect nation state to move to, but I'm saying that people are going to, it'll be like a market when there's a, there's a bad, there's a bad product that has a monopoly. Alternatives are going to find a way to sprout up. And the more that we make decisions that take us off of a market leading perspective in terms of being the highest quality place to live, it's like, you know, the, everything is great until it's bad all at once idea. It's like maybe people are gonna be like, oh, well, you know, where, where could I go that might be better than this sort of thing.

Vance Crowe [00:37:28] You know, I, when I was in grad school and we started studying international relations and diplomacy, you first start saying, well, what is diplomacy? Well, it's sending an embassy, a group of people that represent the leader of a country to another country. Well, like then you have to start saying, well, what is a country? And it's, it turns out countries are relatively new invention. It was really only after World War I, when you have the Treaty of West failure where you start saying like, all right, all right, all right, we're going to agree. How do we know where the borders of a country are? How do we know who's in charge and who do you negotiate with? How do you decide what is a treaty and what makes a treaty like actionable? Right? So it's, it's a really funny thing because we have this conception, because of the way we learn about history. We hear about things like Rome or we hear about, you know, the, the Germanic people, right? But what we don't understand is that for the most part, countries as they are right now are a one completely human invention. And two, a really recent invention that does not have necessarily the stability that they will last forever, right? Because we have this conception of the way that a country will work is like, oh, okay, Germany's a country. Germany will always be a country. And you can watch, you could either look at it from the perspective of like Russia invading into the Ukraine and saying, well, what was the Ukraine is now ours? Or it could be something as like way bigger where you're saying the, the structure that people use to govern themselves will in break up entirely, and you will have this movement towards a different way to decide who's in charge, where are the borders, when are, who's jurisdiction are you under for law?

Vance Crowe [00:39:13] So, you know, if you murder somebody, is it a territorial murder? Is it that you've subscribed to some sort of citizenship? And that's an interesting concept because until somebody points out to you that countries are a new invention, you don't know it, you just don't realize it.

Benjamin Anderson [00:39:28] Yeah. And we're gonna, we're going to very much go back to the old ways of, you know, carrying forward a hypothetical scenario where a nation state countries do break down. Like, to your point, like in Eastern Europe, not to mention like the breakup of the Soviet Empire. We're going to go back to the old ways of deciding how we create bonds with a culture and with the people and for drawing those borders. Like what happened when the Austria-Hungarian empire broke up, the countries kind of separated very much based off of like what languages people spoke and what cultures were prevalent. Same thing goes for the Soviet empire of, all right, this massive communal entity breaks down. What are the countries that, like, how, how are those borders drawn? Right? Well, it's like, well, we've got this group of people over here, and we all speak the same language. We eat the same food, we have the same values, we follow the same religions, so let's draw our borders around like roughly these lines. And maybe there's some contention there. And then that's where the, you know, and the dynamics of the diplomacy come into play or whatever. But yeah, it goes, goes back to the old kind of ingrained like cultures that help divide those lines.

Vance Crowe [00:40:33] Well, in those lines themselves, it's, it's a funny thing when you go under understand how the British were so powerful while being just this like tiny little empire. One of the things that they did was they stopped doing the old way of deciding borders, which was natural, a river, a mountain range, something that you could look at and say that's the clear line. But the British used to come in and say, we're gonna draw a line using these parallels and the, you know, these longitude and latitude lines and we're gonna draw it. And so you could be walking on a flat plane and at one point be in Kenya, and then in another moment be in Tanzania. And the, the division is not, do the people speak the same language or not, or are they, you know, from different tribes? They would just split 'em in half. And one of the reasons that they did this was because they knew that people would fight over those things. And when they're fighting each other, they're not fighting the British. So the British were able to be like, here, we've given you your country. Oh, by the way, India and Pakistan, it turns out you guys are gonna fight over where we put this Hindu Kush line. And, and now what you're gonna have to do is fight with each other, and then we'll just come in here and be the ruling elite that, that do business and aren't caught up in all of these problems. And so the very thing that was used to create the current system that we're in is in fact something inherently unstable on purpose. And a lot of people don't really understand, you know, when you think about what, what the borders are of a whole bunch of different places, like when you start saying like, oh yeah, the thing that we've overlaid with the map isn't real, or you can't see it unless somebody tells you it's there, then all of a sudden you start saying like, this really is a lot more human constructed than I kind of always felt.

Benjamin Anderson [00:42:19] Yeah, that's really interesting. I had totally never heard that perspective before. And like, it, it, it, it points out this idea of like, borders being kind of equally like enough time has went by where with the, with the exception of, you know, skirmishes in different parts. Like, like you mentioned Russia, Ukraine, like there's the Israel-Palestine conflict. Like when was the last time that there was a real conflict on the global scale over over borders, you know what I mean? Where it's kind of like this, this root, the this, this concept that doesn't hold a whole lot of stock anymore, I guess. And the there's

Vance Crowe [00:42:57] What do you mean it doesn't hold a lot of stock? I mean, like, people all believe in borders right now. That's, that's not gone. Yeah,

Benjamin Anderson [00:43:03] People definitely bel believe in borders, but when I say doesn't hold a lot of stock, I mean, if you were to, we're so globally connected now, and there's, it's almost like the, you know, you don't, you fight with your family sometimes, but you don't like kill a family member the same way that you would like, you know, maybe in tribal times say like kill a stranger sort of thing, or like go to war with a country that you don't know. We're also interconnected. You know, people are traveling all the time, like diplomats going back and forth, whatever's going on there that if you were to, you know, lift off this border layer at any given point, it would, it would just be interesting, right? Like what with the cultural differences and stuff blending together, what would be the repercussions of something like that? I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:43:49] It's an interesting thing. Like you think about a place like Canada, right? So the US and Canada, those two cultures are, they're not the same, right? But they're not that different. And I remember just the other day I was calling this guy Jay Curtis up, up in Ontario, and he sent me his phone number and I was like, wait, can I just dial, am I able to just call Canada? I don't, is that possible? And then you're like, oh, I'll just give it a shot. And sure enough, right? So now ideas can go across that border way, way faster than you could physically. And so the only difference, I mean, and now it's funny because we, we lived in a world where the US Canada border was completely porous before, I mean, as long as you had the right, you know, birth certificate or passport or whatever, even before for a long time you didn't even need that. And right now you can't go over into Canada, right? Like they might as well be Russia or, or Yugoslavia or something like that, because you can't, you literally can't go there right now.

Benjamin Anderson [00:44:43] Yeah, fair enough. Right? I mean, like less than two years ago I was driving across the, you know, what would've been Northwestern Canadian border with like, we pulled out one passport, like three people in the car, there's a fricking cat in the back sort of thing, you know what I mean? It's like, here we are, we're in Canada and I'm gonna fly back and it's gonna be no problem here in a couple days. And yeah, now we are so locked down that it's like, in a lot of ways, I think the last year has thrown us forward, right? From a like competency using technology perspective and these sorts of things. But then, you know, maybe at a, maybe at a higher level and these sorts of ways, it's, it's put us back. And I think these sorts of things will come out of pretty quick. Like how long do you think these sorts of borders will realistically stay down? I don't know. I, my hope would be that by, by the end of the year, like this time next year, we're able to equally, freely transcend that border.

Vance Crowe [00:45:36] I think the Canadians have every incentive right now to keep that border shut because just like in the United States, how domestic producers were able to do much better, when you have all the ports clogged up and you can't send goods there, the Canadians for a small period of time get to allow their domestic producers to be able to produce where without foreign competition, without us competition. And I think that that is probably more beneficial to the Canadians than it is to the us. Although, you know, Canada is the largest trading partner with the United States. So I'm, I'm sure it's harming both of us in our own way. But I I I think that this has gone way beyond the protection of COVID and is much more about, I mean like, because, because really if it was about COVID, right? Biden was just said that he was gonna buy like what, 500 million doses of, of the vaccine donate

Benjamin Anderson [00:46:27] The

Vance Crowe [00:46:27] Door, then just donate 'em right. To Canada, right? If like really what we wanted to do was to solve the trade problem between us. We could do it, you know, really, really fast. There's, you know, barely any people over in Canada, we could solve that, but that's not actually what's happening. I think, I think there is, people are taking advantage of that border being closed in the same way that you would love to if you were in charge of the government to do with tariffs, but that you, but that are not politically feasible. But in this particular case, you get to exert extreme tariffs on Canada. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [00:46:56] Because you don't have the same sort of leverage with tariffs, tariffs as you do right now because of circumstances, because of circumstances we're able to keep that border closed, impose higher tariffs like taxes on, you know, screening things before they come in. I have no idea of the dynamics of what's going on there, frankly, but to this concept of, oh, it's better for like, quote unquote the Canadians to have this border closed so that there can be more internal integration of infrastructure on their side. Like who's really benefiting from that? Is the average Canadian citizen or the average Canadian like firm or something like this who is promoting this innovation benefiting any more than they would, than they would as if these borders were open? Or is the state which is able to tax hire these sorts of internal things going on the be the, the greater beneficiary there? That would be, that would be what I think is going on.

Vance Crowe [00:47:50] So you brought up the fact that El Salvador has just now officially designated Bitcoin as a currency in their country, which is really interesting. And I was kind of joking in one of our private groups that when, when, when the EU first started talking about the Euro, the IMF came around and was like, Hey, any of you guys that are saying you won't take the euro, no way. The only way you can participate in the IMF and be a part of the World Bank is if a country dis designates their own currency. Everybody has to accept that currency as the, the, like, really that is their currency. And, and I believe that this, that ruling is going to come back and bite the western world or the kind of the western elite world in the ass because El Salvador choosing to u to nominate their currency in Bitcoin as itself, which I think, I believe right now El Salvador uses US dollars as

Benjamin Anderson [00:48:43] Its current currency. Yeah, they they did before.

Vance Crowe [00:48:44] Yeah. And so the, which is not uncommon, Panama does it too. The it, the US doesn't encourage it, but it also doesn't discourage it. But the, the, the, the hilarious part about this is now that's going to force basically the entire world into accepting Bitcoin as a global currency. And I think that this will have different things, different impacts on right now Bitcoin, when you go to sell them or even use them as a form of currency, they end up being charged at the highest capital gains rate. Well, currency trading is not at the highest capital gains rate. So this is going to change the taxation in the United States by default because of what El Salvador has done.

Benjamin Anderson [00:49:26] Oh, really? I,

Vance Crowe [00:49:28] In my opinion, I mean, like I am, I'm not a financial expert, I just play one on the podcast, but

Benjamin Anderson [00:49:33] Fair enough, right? Like, but carrying forward the repercussions of like actually recognizing this for the first time as a currency for a nation being able to carry to, into these sorts of gray, it'll make its way, like these sorts of cases will arise over time. Like undoubtedly, right? Like it'll make its way into that muddled area of like, well, well I'm, you know, I bought this currency in El Salvador and it was a currency here and I'm exchanging it for this currency here. So what's the gains rate here when you know, I'm trading US dollar for a euro, which it's like, what's one buck? It's like one 40 in Euro, US Euro. Like I I I, I could see how if, if I was, if I was the investor looking for a loophole, that would be one of the places that you would look. So those cases will come forward.

Vance Crowe [00:50:17] And El Salvador, so far I think they are planning to ramp this up in very interesting ways, which will probably draw some of the top intellectual talent in, in this, in this space towards them. So New Zealand, for example, recognized that they were way far away from the rest of the world, and that people would get stressed out about what's going on in the United States or what's going on in Europe, and they would say, I want to get away from this. I'm gonna go move somewhere to get outta there. Well, New Zealand said, that's fine, you have to have $10 million in the bank and you have to pay us $1 million and then we'll let you basically buy citizenship, and then you also have to have some skills that we want here. Well, El Salvador has essentially proposed the same thing. Only I believe that what they're, and I don't think this is official yet, but this is where they, that president said that they were headed. It's gonna cost you three Bitcoin to get in. And then, and then you can be an entrepreneur there. You can get the full rights of being a citizen, which means like things are gonna change, right? People will move there. Three Bitcoin $90,000 in, in, if you're looking at, you know, today's strike price at Bitcoin, not that much. And if you're also coming, you, you know how to trade in Bitcoin. Maybe you can innovate in Bitcoin. Maybe they become the Switzerland of the digital economy. And it seems preposterous right now, but they're the first mover and first mover gets huge advantages.

Benjamin Anderson [00:51:36] Yeah, I mean, this is, this might be another example of the costs of, you know, leaving your home nation going down at scale, right? Because this isn't an uncommon concept. It's like this has been the case in a country like Sese for a long time, where you can kind of buy your common commonplace to, you know, put your, put your capital gains in a untaxed like nation. I don't, I'm not hyper familiar with the structure, but I know that it was similarly like, you know, say God forbid you're ever being pursued for whatever, like something you might have committed there, I can't remember the terminology, but there was a joke around how it's called like the get outta jail free buy-in or something like that, where basically for $10 million, you could be like, oh, you can become a immediate passport holding whatever full ride citizen of, you know, our tiny little, however big island sese, you're just gonna need to pay us a, you know, $10 million fee, right? So they like know who their target customer is In that scenario, it's the same target customer who's probably keeping hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. And you know, these rinky dink little little banks over there. It's a, it's a funny thing.

Vance Crowe [00:52:41] Yeah. And if you're a little country and you're trying to attract immigration, you're not trying to attract the immigration of just manual laborers. You have enough of those. What you want is people that already have a large, you know, income or, or at least a balance sheet, and then are able to innovate and create new structures where your intelligent citizenry, but maybe you don't have the organizational skills to start a business or you don't have the connections with people from other countries. So by, by doing this, I think it's a very smart move. And I think, you know, Balaji, who's always out on Twitter talking about this, you know, kind of digital citizenship that happens when Bitcoin comes about, he's basically been calling this for, for, I dunno, years at this point, basically saying the coun the countries and cities that embrace entrepreneurs in this way are gonna get a first mover advantage. This is like once in a, you know, even further than a generation innovation. And it's not gonna come around again. There's not gonna be Bitcoin 2.0 that is as revolutionary as the first one.

Benjamin Anderson [00:53:47] Yeah. I mean, that's right. And there's like the saying that goes around kind of in circles that follow Balaji, that if Bji scenarios are starting to play out, then watch out because there's like the, the, the transitionary period from, you know, one form of operating as a society to another, as these sorts of changes start to take place. What does it look like when the old ones break down? I don't know. I think it'll be an inter an interesting thing,

Vance Crowe [00:54:13] Well, you've mentioned this concept a couple of times while we've been talking so far, is that things are slow right up until they're not right. Like the, the, the way that society changes is it's like incremental, incremental, incremental, and then you hit a tipping point and then it, it, like, and I'm trying to think, it's called a trophic cascade, right? So this is when you, you've got an environmental stressor that's on there, maybe mosquitoes start dying off and suddenly the, like, there's less and less food for the bats to eat, and then that's really not that big of a deal. There's less bats, less bats less, you know, as, as mosquitoes go down and then there's no mosquitoes and now there's no bats. And then boom, that hits some massive change in the environment and now all of a sudden there's not enough beavers and there's no beaver dams and water is flowing in totally different ways. And so you see the actual physical environment change, even though the one thing that was happening was that mosquito populations were going down slowly.

Benjamin Anderson [00:55:11] Yeah. I, I, and frankly, I think that this is the sort of thing that we'll start to see whether it's over the next decade or over the next couple decades, and maybe why it's like, it's come up here a couple times because I think that I, I, I frankly don't know how much longer, like, like a, like a, a country in its current structure can last, you know what I mean, with the amount of waste that makes its way through the system and what are the, like I was reading on this concept the other day, and it was of the taxpayer versus the tax consumer, right? So it's like we all kind of position ourselves as taxpayers, but then like, while we all might be paying taxes in one form or another, there's maybe it's tax payers and tax beneficiaries, but there's one portion of society that is, you know, paying more taxes than they're benefiting from. That's not to say that they're not getting to drive on roads or take advantage of some of the other benefits that come from taking part in society, but then there's people that are highly leveraging their ability, that they're getting different sorts of benefits that come from taking part in the system that, you know, these taxes are being paid to. So it's cycling out of one. And this isn't like a novel concept, it's cycling out of a high income to, I think it was something ridiculous, like the top X percent of earners paid for 30%. And I, I can't remember if it was like 1% or 10%, frankly, either of those would be shocking. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it was the highest 10% of income earners that are paying, you know, to 30.8% into our income taxes that are taken in by the government to redistribute.

Benjamin Anderson [00:56:48] You know, that's crazy. And that's where I'm saying what happens when viable alternatives start to pop up and it'll be like a market competition dynamic except in the form of countries, you know what I mean? Where it's like, you know, I'm not getting the ROI to the taxes that I'm paying here anymore, and I sell an information service, or I sell a technology, or whatever your deal is. It's becoming more and more feasible to be able to relocate to somewhere where it's gonna be more intrinsically beneficial and what's gonna happen to the structures that take in that wealth and use it to maintain their structure, however wasteful it may be. I don't know, like I could, I could be like just way off like Peter to paradox sort of thing, but I can't, and I don't think so there, I feel like there's a lot of like different little like, niche groups that subscribe to this idea that like the first time I came across, it was really good book, tried to get 'em on the podcast before, you know, listeners know, like filter guests through sometimes Para Kana wrote a really good book called Connectography, I think in early two thousands. And even before that, the book I referenced earlier in this podcast, the sovereign individual, this was written in the nineties, they kind of talk about some of these sorts of ideas, but I don't know of just like, it's gonna make more and more sense for things to kind of like Brexit, we saw this happen. It's like, you know, why are we paying taxes into the eu? And it's like, hey, if we were to keep these here and invest 'em in our country, it's like this, this doesn't make sense. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:13] I think Brexit is the perfect example for why the, why the liberal belief of, and maybe neoliberal belief of, and I mean liberal in the sense of international relations, not as in like progressive politics like you hear here. So in, in, in international relations, there's really two giant schools of thought. There's the, the realists and then the, the liberalists, right? So the realists believe there, there will be nation states or there's power amassed in groups, and that power is all that matters. And Liberalists believe, look, the more trade we have, the better that we are. And that ultimately the countries end up coming together, they grow together and they lar they, they amass more by conjoining themselves. And the EU was a perfect example of the liberalist concept really coming to fruition until all of a sudden the citizens of of the UK decided, no, we don't, we don't wanna be a part of that. And they had kept their currency out anyway. They didn't wanna be a part of it fully with the eu, but nobody was expecting that they would rip their country out of the, out of the EU system. And that was the same time that there was Trump coming into office. The five star party in Italy was going on. I mean, there's going to be increasing pressure, and I think the EU is probably the highest likelihood to break up as a whatever you want to call that conglomeration or Federation of States. I, I think that that's where we will see it happen first before you see something happen like the United States breaking up into some sort of federalist system because we just don't have, there's not enough differentiation between people living in the states in here, but in the countries inside of Europe, they, they've kept their own languages, they've kept their own traditions.

Vance Crowe [01:00:00] And I think given the chance, there are a lot of individuals there that would say, Hey, I wanna, I wanna break away from the eu.

Benjamin Anderson [01:00:07] Yeah, that's right. Which is why it goes back to kind of the original cultural things that hold people together and yeah, I mean that's interesting too with like what you described as like the neoliberal versus the rationalists

Vance Crowe [01:00:18] Realists

Benjamin Anderson [01:00:19] Realists, right? It's kind of similar to, I don't know what the dichotomy there would be, but like a communism slash a utopian ideal versus, you know, something else maybe just being like, go capitalism, go like go for the intrinsic benefit because going for the intrinsic benefit is gonna benefit society. These sorts of ideas kind of in conflict with each other. And this isn't, this isn't like a novel concept to think that like the, the former won't work like this, the utopian communist idea. It's like,

Vance Crowe [01:00:46] Well I'm probably not being fair. Like the liberalist idea has plenty of backing behind it to it. It's not as, as cut and dry as like, Hey, communism doesn't work because it falls apart and it actually becomes an oligarchy. And you know, the, the in, in the liberalist concept, what it's basically saying is the way that you create more peace is that you have more trade and the trade ends up binding people together. Whereas the realists say the way you get more peace is you have one or two major polls that, that exerts influence through force a bigger military. And that's what brings peace. 'cause essentially the international relations theories are all about what propels forward nation states to do the things that they're doing. And the realists believe you're in constant pursuit of, of power. And that power in terms of military can be in terms of financial and the liberalists believe it's constant in, in terms of gaining more resources. So how can you, how can you leverage the, the resources that you have to be able to amass more? Which I, the reason I want to clarify that is because it'd be very easy for people to default and be like, oh, I'm a realist and not one of those calm liberalists. But I think there are a lot of people that understand the value of trade really has created peace and there's very strong case for the liberalist idea. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:02:06] That, I mean, that makes sense, right? And I guess going back to this, and I'm not refreshed on like the ideas from that book, but like this Connectography Connectography kind of talks about some of these sorts of ideas of like, yeah, like trade will hold us together, but it'll hold us together when we're individual too, not becoming larger conglomerated entities that, you know, interr like, well this is why something like an EU makes sense because these sorts of things become easier until the entity that, you know, all of the goop in between the cracks starts to get thicker and thicker. And, and what, like the analogy of the goop is the entity that's taxing the ability to organize this sorts of trade to the degree where it's like, hey, if we could just leverage information and, you know, technology and whatever to be able to come to these sorts of agreements without this entity in the middle that's taking X percentage for facilitating question mark, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:02:57] Yeah. I, that I a hundred percent agree with. And, and like it makes less and less sense for the, for you to amass a larger and larger governance system, right? Like the Federalist system that we have in the us which is largely been discounted by people living on the coasts who say, look, we have all the population, therefore we should just do popular vote. We should, we should do things as one giant mass of a com country. And then you have people living out in the rural areas being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're growing the food. We're where the resources come from. You're extracting out this value. We want to have control over our lives, otherwise we are just serfs to you. And I, I think if you continue, if the, if the coasts continue and cities, it's not just the coast, it's also Chicago, it's probably St. Louis, it's these places where large groups of people keep trying to assert their authority over other people because they have a larger mob. I think you will start seeing more of what's going on in the state of Iowa where they're going into, or western Oregon counties and saying like, Hey, you guys want to come join us in greater Idaho? And I think you may see a breakup of things like that. Do you think the, the US government will allow counties to leave the state that they're in and join a different ca a different state?

Benjamin Anderson [01:04:16] I have no conceptual framework for what the, my, my inclination would be no, because the, it seems like if, I don't know if I'm thinking on behalf of a complex entity that wants to maintain power and garner's money resources as it can, you know, the the ability for smaller units of my conglomerate to make agreements that benefit each other without my approval doesn't seem to be in my best interests. You know what I mean? So my inclination would be to say is that no, they would in fact be like, no states have drawn their lines like, I don't know. Or maybe just like being that goop in the middle that facilitates like, yeah, we can facilitate this, but it's gonna, I don't know if it's a financial cost or like a power. I, I, I don't, I don't know. My inclination would be is that they're going to, you know, play their role and make it a pain in the ass. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:05:04] I think those graphs that show, you know, th there's this many people living in this one, you know, county in LA and there, and then you show some giant mass of, of states like, let's just say like Montana, Wyoming, and part of Utah. And it's like there's the, the same number of people live in this one little county as live in this giant area. Therefore the people in this county should have as much power over the people with living with this much space. And like, this is like really, really polarizing logic, right? Like the people that don't, that are living in the cities that wanna say like, look, we, we have the votes and we've grown up with this philosophy that one person, one vote everybody's equal. And so therefore, any of this concept of the electoral college or the fact that you produce resources and we need resources as no bearing on things. We've agreed on the rules, eventually people will get tired of it and, and try and exert their own freedom. Now I don't know what happens outta that, but my guess is it cannot go on forever that the people in the cities keep exerting their will on the people living in the countryside.

Benjamin Anderson [01:06:15] Yeah. And that's where my mind, I guess was just going as you're saying that, right? It's, it was that idea of the rationalists versus the neoliberal there. And then there's this fallacy of, you know, all, and like it's not a fallacy, like all men are created equal, but as soon as you're created, as you start to navigate your way through the world, like differentiates pop up. But that's like a different thread, this idea of like the broader, broader geographical group. Like let's play through a scenario where, you know, the 20 million people in LA have their own sovereign entity and the 20 million people with the broader geographic group are their own sovereign entity, then who's gonna have the power Vance? You know, it's like, it's gonna be the ones with the resources that are filtering X percentage of like their land, their limited water, like their X and Y and Z and to this really small ingroup. And Yeah, well,

Vance Crowe [01:07:06] I mean, yes and no because the flip side of this is that county in LA also has the port that moves more freight through it than any other port in the, in the western hemisphere. So you can have all of the resources you want, but the reason those resources matter is not because you are going to consume them, but because you are planning to have somebody else buy them from you so that you can buy other goods that you want. And so that tension is not, it, it, well,

Benjamin Anderson [01:07:32] So this is great 'cause there's the realist power balance, right? Of like, all right, well you've got what we need here and alright, we've got what you need here, so let's just come to an agreement here and Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:07:41] Yeah. And, but I do think that right now most people view this through a lens that is way oversimplified. It is, it is like one person, one vote and you know, we, we've amassed a group of people that believe the same things, they fly the same flags. And if you don't like it doesn't matter, our mob is going to push you over, but people won't like, well, I don't wanna say that my conception is, or maybe my desire is that people won't accept that, but Coronavirus taught me that people will accept a lot more suffering and control by other people than I ever imagined. I, I, I was, I was personally quite shocked at how willing people were to give over their freedoms.

Benjamin Anderson [01:08:27] Yeah, I mean, what, what is freedom? But the ability to choose. And it's a scary thing to make a decision because their repercussions to decisions. So it's, you know, if you don't, if you don't have a framework for what might be a good decision and what might be a bad decision, if you aren't comfortable with ambiguity, someone, you know, stepping in and saying, Hey, I'm presenting any decision as opposed to ambiguity, it can be very attractive to just choose going forward with that decision as opposed to lurking in your own ambiguity or going through the effort that's required to create your own framework for making a better decision.

Vance Crowe [01:09:00] Yeah. And I, and with that, I think social pressure is a far, far more powerful thing than I really ever, like, I am willing to be extremely disagreeable. Like, it's, it's not something I like to do, but like, I'm completely comfortable telling somebody or having a group of people be very, very angry with me. It's, it's okay with me, but I don't think I would've walked into my local grocery store without a mask. And I don't think anybody would've hit me. I don't think, you know, maybe they would've asked me to leave and I'd have been embarrassed, but I don't think I had the actual fortitude on that one. And so then that makes me wonder, like if you can have somebody literally place a piece of cloth over your face in order to be outside and you're not willing to push back on that, then I have to ask myself, well what, what would I push back on? And I, I don't actually know the answer to that.

Benjamin Anderson [01:09:54] Yeah. I don't know where that line gets drawn. Right. I think, I think there's a weird thing with this like new mob mentality that's coming up where it's almost like, I don't know, over, over the last X amount of time, like the, the, the return on invi or the return on investment towards violence has been going down and down and down and down and this trend towards, you know, the mob, the mob requesting x the mob requesting y we want you to behave this way, we want you to behave that way. Seems like the return, the ROI on, you know, violence is beginning to go back up and I, I, I don't know, it could

Vance Crowe [01:10:30] Be, oh wow, that's a really interesting idea. So we had Mark Rearden on last week, and he was talking about, you know, we, we talked about the, the kids jumping on cop cars and you know, it could have been any city in America, and it is one of the things that we talked about, right? This is going on. And then lo and behold, it did happen in other cities in America where people, young people drunk in the streets, you know, angry about whatever, saw a cop car got on top of it, and now you have a police officer with, let's, let's just be really conservative. Let's say he has 30 bullets in his Glock, you know, in, in his service weapon,

Benjamin Anderson [01:11:07] One, God forbid he used them, right?

Vance Crowe [01:11:09] Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:11:09] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:11:09] But there's way more than 30 people there. He's one person. Like he, what, what force could he have used there? I, not that I necessarily think he should have, I'm just saying like

Benjamin Anderson [01:11:19] Drive over, like, I don't know, whatever the scenario is, right? But playing, it's, it's like, it's weird because that was, that was a manifestation of like literal physical violence in one form, right? Literally jumping on a cop car, like that was, that was ridiculous. And this has began to happen. Like, look at the videos in Chicago, look at Miami, people like physically attacking a police officer. It's ridiculous. But that being, yeah, that, that, that being said, it's, yeah, it's weird because back to that idea of like the return to violence, it's like, it's, it's social violence. It's like what ushered out the feudal era, right? Where people used to give up their land to, you know, people to protect them from, like knights would just roam around and fricking take, take what they needed, right? Like early agrarian society, blah, blah, blah. It was, it was gunpowder the ability for the people to say like, no, we're like, come over here with your horse and your sword. I'm gonna blow your, your head off, right? So there's this weird like, like this conglomerated 10 nation states protecting people. Like, like society is coming waves, but now here we are in like the, the violence that we're enacting to say, no, you can't just, you know, shoot me law man. And I'm not comparing like the police to like the knights of old that used to like raid, you know, areas or anything like this. But that's what they're viewed as by these groups. It's, I don't know, it's weird. I don't, I don't have like a, I'm trying to like frame like fractal down this, like make it more concrete, but it's the mob having an ability to get what they want through social violence equivalently to how it used to be able to be gotten through physical violence.

Benjamin Anderson [01:12:59] Well,

Vance Crowe [01:12:59] And you've created a, well, the world right now, our country right now has created a certain amount of social pressure against people using force to stop, you know, violent acts like riots or people jumping on cop cars. I don't know how long that lasts, right? Like, I don't know how long, because eventually the people that are the faceless individuals or the people that are living out in the suburbs, eventually they just say like, look, I just don't want this problem anymore. So I'm going to authorize vastly more power to be used in those situations. And that, you know, then things then, you know, you ratchet up the violence. I don't think that that suddenly stops the problem. I think it just ratchets up the violence overall. But, you know, what is the alternative? I, I don't see how I have right now, no picture for how the violence goes down naturally without, without some sort of direct clear intervention of a group of people deciding that they are going to take charge of the situation.

Benjamin Anderson [01:13:59] Well, it's individual people like becoming better. Like this is the thing. It's like, it's the bottom up solutions versus like the top down solutions or like, you know, on this earlier, but it's you, what, what does this group want? You know, this group or any group that ever, you know, enacts violence, like sometimes it's goods and it's resources, but now we live in an abundant society where these people don't want resources. They want social change, they want like structural change. They want X or Y or ZI don't know, it's a, it's weird. Individual people need to be better. That's, that's like the pathway out. One person at a time needs to like, make the decision. It's, it's hard because that's, that's like the slow change versus the fast change is that you can't speed that process up. It has to happen over time.

Vance Crowe [01:14:46] So what are you working on these days to make yourself better? You're always honing something

Benjamin Anderson [01:14:52] In, in terms of making, in terms of making Ben better. Trying to, I've been like consuming a lot more than I've been outputting. I feel like over the last, you know, x amount of time. So I've been kind of been sitting down regularly like I'm writing and this is helping me. It's like the, it's your thing, right? You don't know what you say until you say it out loud. And if I don't always have a setting to speak through ideas like this, it's like, oh, I can open up my notebook and I can write out a concept and I'm doing this while reading sort of different things where it's like, oh, here's an idea here. It's amalgamating in my brain. I've like, you know, built up like the dam, the water's built overflow. Then I like put the pen down. You're just like, it's cathartic, right? It all just don't even really need to think about what you're writing sort of thing. It's like what Yung would call like automatic authoring or like different, Steven Pressfield has a term for it sort of thing. Yeah. You just put the pen down and write and it's like, that's, that's a surprisingly, a surprisingly beneficial practice that I would highly recommend to any anybody who's trying to be a better individual, right? To make yourself better is you gotta understand the problem and yourself as the problem. So put the pen down and understand yourself. How do you think, what are your demons? Like what are your desires? These sorts of things. Yeah, it's, it's, it's been fun. I would say very much that I guess writing and thinking, right?

Vance Crowe [01:16:15] Yeah. I think the, the writing one is one that's like the easiest for me to give up, right? Like, you know, oh, I don't have time. Like I need to empty the dishwasher instead of taking this time at five in the morning to, to write. But you don't really necessarily notice how big of a change is happening when you're writing. So you think it's not like jogging where you're like, oh, I went jogging for two weeks and suddenly I'm able to jog a half a mile further or a little bit faster with the writing. It's not quite like that. But you do start noticing, there was a bunch of chaos in my life that started to just kinda sort itself off, or like some stress that I had that was really bothering me. And now the answers seem to be just a little bit clearer a little bit earlier and that just goes and goes and goes. But when you stop writing, you know, it doesn't just evaporate immediately, right? So it's, it's just like eating, it's just like exercise. It's, it's, it, it's a slow build towards it becoming valuable and then if it goes away, it slowly erodes away. And so it's hard to remember why am I spending the time to do this?

Benjamin Anderson [01:17:21] Yeah. It's, it is very much that like first step I think of understanding yourself and like removing the chaos from like what you just said of your own life. And then what do you do when you reach that point? Like say you don't give up writing and the chaos comes back. It's like, that's great, then you can start the cyclical cycle and, you know, start organizing the chaos in your life again. But then what do you do? What do you do when you get that chaos organized? You gotta look for, I dunno, look for other things to like, not organize, right? But look for other places to improve, like the net. Good.

Vance Crowe [01:17:53] Well, like Jordan Peterson talks about you gotta find another room to clean up, right?

Benjamin Anderson [01:17:56] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:17:56] That's right. Like you, you've, if you've cleaned up this room and you're like, ah, I'm getting bored. I got, I got that room cleaned up, like, we'll just walk into a different room. There's, there's, there's mess somewhere else. So Ben, you are the executive producer of the podcast. Let's have a little conversation about some of the favorite episodes that you've, you've heard or some of the, some of the people that you struck you as having particularly good ideas. What were some that stick out to you?

Benjamin Anderson [01:18:20] I guess most recent top of mind, right? As Ben, Ben Landau Taylor. He was a good one. We, like you mentioned at the beginning of that episode, I think like made the recommendation there because I had been reading some of the things he'd been putting out. And to be totally honest at that point, I didn't even know that he was working in tandem with Sam Oberg. It was like a, you know, Ben Landau came up somewhere that like podcast feed, I don't know. But I was like, I like these ideas. I want to hear what this guy has to say. And yeah, like the most recent thing, like I publish on a weekly basis, like some of the things that you guys talked about on that episode I thought were really interesting. 'cause like, as we've shown through our conversation here, like the think about kind of like what are, what are the underlying dynamics of like some of these like macro complex problems? And he, that was, that was a fun one I guess for that reason, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:19:08] Yeah. He, he talked about the concept of succession planning and if people haven't gone and listened to this episode, I, it was like really impactful to me. So I sit on a board for a community bank here, and as soon as I realized, like he was saying, one of the greatest threats to the western world is the fact that the baby boomers have not really been able to master passing down the information and how they got the institutions to work. And I don't know if his exact hypothesis is correct, but it's, it formed in my mind a, a hypothesis that I have, which is after World War ii, a whole bunch of people that had been living in rural communities where there was no anonymity that you had to participate because somebody had to be on the, on the school board, somebody had to run for mayor, somebody had to be the police chief, right? And you knew all these people. So they had learned, and over many, many years, many generations developed a culture around participating as a member of the community, using the institutions, being a part of them growing up in them and then passing them down. And then as the internet came up, as people moved, you know, in massive waves from the, the countryside to the city, the first generation had all those skills. So they were able to build massive companies, you know, the, the Monsanto of the world that were developing technologies to stop, you know, Parkinson's disease and to create glass that didn't cut your head off. If you, if you went through the windshield and, and DuPont and all, you know, 3M and all these companies.

Vance Crowe [01:20:42] And then you hit a point where those great people that were moving from the rural to the city, now all of a sudden are, have raising children that have only ever lived in the institution, less cities. And so they grow up and they don't learn those, but maybe they watch their parents, you know, be a part of it. But then you have another generation. So it's almost like everyone that moved into the city were immigrants as though the immigrant populations right now in the US or the hardworking ones that have bring a cultural tradition and then their children and especially their children's children, don't have any of the old world ways to pass on that institution like knowledge and how do you do the pass down and how do you participate in meetings and how do you solve problems and how do you get people to agree that don't want to agree? And so now you have this major, major problem of succession planning. And after we listened to that podcast, I sent out a survey, well, you know, this, that we sent out a survey to people that I'd gone and given speeches to in the past and said, Hey, out of all the things I've been working on over the last year, what would you like me to come talk about? And one of them that I wrote in there, I just kind of threw in there like, how to improve your ability to pass on institutional knowledge succession planning. Well, that one went through the roof, the number of groups that said, I mean, I think it was the like, most answered question, that's what they want because it's the problem that everyone is facing right now. And so I think Ben, really, Ben Lanzo Taylor really hit on something important. And it may be why the nation state itself is crumbling because we don't have that institutional knowledge on how to do succession planning.

Benjamin Anderson [01:22:20] Yeah. Maybe, right? Like you've got one group of people that are holding onto the, the power that they have for dear life and continuing to create processes that amalgamate more resources to, you know, keep that structure in place. And is, is there, like, I, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. Is there a competent, is there a competent group to come next?

Vance Crowe [01:22:41] I think it'll have to be a new, a culture that has been outside of the mainstream that will have developed and created things that matter that will then come and take over just like everything else. Right? Eventually the, the third generation or so loses the ability to hold onto it and a new group of invaders comes in and takes over.

Benjamin Anderson [01:22:59] Yeah, right. There was, yeah, yeah. Like sometimes I'll hear what you're talking about here, right? And my mind will like just shoot off in a different direction. But it shot towards the variance is a benefit. And this is like a, I give credit to this, to Kate, right? Like you've mentioned Kate, probably Kate

Vance Crowe [01:23:16] Crosby.

Benjamin Anderson [01:23:16] Yep. Kate Crosby, yeah. She's talking about this idea and like evolutionary biology, how if there is more, if there's more variance amongst the species, it has a greater evolutionary advantage, whether it's in a geography or whatever, right? Because when there are systems in place that cause conflict, whether it's like call it a plague or call it an X or Y or Z or

Vance Crowe [01:23:41] A drought.

Benjamin Anderson [01:23:42] A drought, any anything, right? Any en any environmental systems that would, you know, otherwise be a harm to the species, high variance amongst that species is going to be a good thing because there's going to be different strains that weather these different challenges and they can, you know, come back together like as, because it's all the same species at the end of the day with different variances. And it's just a, it was an interesting concept and thinking there, as you were saying this regarding succession planning, maybe this is part of the issue is there's not like a, there's not a whole lot of variance. We're facing a lot of challenges, but we're not varying our strategies for weathering those challenges. It's like the, we're always printing money, we're always doing X. It's like we're just, we

Vance Crowe [01:24:23] Keep coming back to the same solutions that we had. Exactly. You know, and, and so one of the things that I've talked with Kate about this, I've talked with Rob Long about this, like people don't realize that vegetables or, or the things that we eat or the animals, they come from essentially a lot of the same regions, right? So like the Andes Mountains is where all of our potatoes come from, and they believe that this occurs because you have this, let's just say a tuber, and it is way up in the air, so it's closer to the sun, it's near the equator and way more solar radiation hits this thing all the time. And so it's going to have way more mutations, just like we have mutations in our skin if we get all kinds of sunburn. And so there's a reason why if the closer you get to the, the, the mountains where potatoes came from in Peru, that all the sudden you see so much more variation and it's this, it's this mutation that occurs in this space, and then the further that you get away from it, the less variation you have. Which is why when they were planting potatoes in Ireland, they really only had like one or two potatoes because those were the only varieties that they could get to grow that far away from the, the equator in those soil conditions. And so then when they hit a blight boom, you have the potato famine game over for millions and millions of people. And that, that's a really interesting comparison to make with well is that what's going on with people, if they all go to the same education types, if they all are raised under the same media diet, if they all have the same education system that, that, that are, that, whether it's in grade school or all the way up to the university, then you start producing a really homogeneous way of, of dealing with problems and then you get into the danger zone.

Benjamin Anderson [01:26:07] Yeah, that's exactly right.

Vance Crowe [01:26:09] Other, other people that have been interesting podcast guests lately,

Benjamin Anderson [01:26:14] I mean, Lacey Hunt definitely is top of mind, right? Like I said, like I'm like, I think I, I think about, I'm paying attention to like the economy and it's, it's interesting like pattern about what's going on there. Like what things did he say? And not just Lacey, right? But like other, I'm trying to think of like, are other, any other,

Vance Crowe [01:26:30] Well, did Lacey get it right or where did, where did he say something that surprised you?

Benjamin Anderson [01:26:36] The deflationary expectations, frankly, like were still, I guess like the magnitude, the magnitude was like a question in my head there of like, what are the magnitude of like the comeback that we're gonna see there? Because I think like it's, I, I could follow the logic there and it's like honestly could go back and listen to it again, right? But I follow the logic of like, okay, where the deflationary expectations are gonna come back and swing, swing us back down. But in terms of like, I like to zoom out and like, what's the long-term trend? Like there's still going to be long-term inflationary repercussions of what we're doing, adding more money into our circulate, like into our, our money circulation. So I guess that was surprising in terms of the magnitude, but it, it's like a good voice of reason, right? To be like, okay, it's not gonna go wildly off the charts. We're not gonna see 500% inflation just because we added, you know, whatever it was, 40 something percent extra currency to the economy, it'll, it'll level back down. So that was surprising in one sense. I'm trying to think,

Vance Crowe [01:27:34] Well, his perspective that really blew my hair back was this concept of yes, we have supply chain problems. Yes, we have employment problems, but as we open up our ports, as the supply chain gets straightened out, you're gonna watch prices plummet and then, then that's going to cause all these other issues. Like suddenly the domestic producers that could pay their employees a whole bunch of money because they had no competition and they were able to demand high prices just like in the timber industry, right? The, those mills I'm sure are paying people more than they've ever paid 'em before. They're getting bonuses that are big. Well, now all of a sudden you're not gonna have that competitive financial advantage. You're gonna have low cost suppliers, so now you're gonna have to cut jobs, you're gonna have to cut wages, you're gonna have to, and I like it seemed before I spoke with him as though there was no way out other than hyperinflation, I had trouble imagining a way out. And now all of a sudden I do have this concept of like, ah, this disinflation might actually be a real thing if you, and then, and then you watch when the way he describes, Hey look, you keep injecting money into the, into the system, it stops going as far each time you do it. And you're like, yeah, that's exactly right. That's a hundred percent exactly what happens.

Benjamin Anderson [01:28:49] Yeah, that was a good one. I can't think of any other surprising things from that one top of mind. And then I always love like just the good conversations, you know, like I think you and Rob really hit on that in the last one. John Jennings was a good one. Like, I couldn't literally recall specific ideas from there. Like you guys talked about kind of like the organ, like the organization Dunbar number, some of these sorts of ideas, like just a good conversation, you know what I mean? Like a good different like sort of like topic to carry forward for a couple minutes through.

Vance Crowe [01:29:16] I

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:16] Like these. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:29:17] John Jennings is one of those great fines that that was like, that was, you know, he'll be on many times in the future. And I think a lot of what I like about him is the variation, right? Like we talk to a lot of people that they're already kind of in our genre, but this guy is reading prolifically but reading very different things than I'm reading. And and I think that that just makes for a really good conversation and, and he's just so easy to talk to. He's just a great guy.

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:45] Yeah. The thing that I really love to see afterwards is when past guests start to interact and you're, you're very proactive about this sort of thing, you know, the power of creating connections, like listen to yesterday was working at my house and I listened to Jim Rutt and Kenneth Stanley.

Vance Crowe [01:29:59] Oh yeah, absolutely. That was a great interview. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Benjamin Anderson [01:30:02] I would recommend it's not plug in our own podcast, right? But a good one to check out for two past guests, Jim Rutt. Kenneth Stanley talking about, you know, the, the myths of pursuing objectives and these sorts of things. That was a good one. I

Vance Crowe [01:30:13] Really enjoyed that one because, you know, in on my podcast, I, I wanna do, I wanna know who Ken Stanley is, right? It is really interesting to me to figure out like, what's going on? Do you have kids? And how does this impact how you think about curiosity and novelty search? But with Jim and Ken, they were able to just sit there and talk about the, the subject that Ken is deeply enmeshed in this kind of novelty search idea. And it's just a totally different podcast. And so it was interesting to hear, like, this is the conversation I've had with Jim, this is the conversation I've had with Ken. And now to see those two talk together was, it was like, it was awesome. And I'm, I'm really proud. Like I've, I've actually connected Jim Rutt with several people. Well,

Benjamin Anderson [01:30:55] Matt Ridley, after listening to Matt Ridley and Jim Rutts episode, I went back and I listened to our episode with Matt Ridley and Yeah, because it was like I'd listened to well and we, we'd had him on twice, right? But it was like, first time was when Yeah, but listened to the one where he's there and he had the blanket behind him. You know what I mean? Or, and I Was that the first one or

Vance Crowe [01:31:16] Second one? Yeah, that was the first one, yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:17] Yeah, that was the first one that was, that was a really good interview, like right when Coronavirus started, because you know, Matt has been very, very vocal over the last couple weeks here with the new swing back of this idea of the lag lab leak hypothesis. Like I just saw, like yesterday or the day before, he's co-authoring like a book kind of chronicling like the investigative process of like, okay, what's the probability of this? And he was very, you know, open to the idea of like, Hey, I wasn't like hard pushing this before, but I kept it open as a possibility. You guys even got on that conversation. Yeah, that was, that one was way long ago. Not recent, but still worth going back to. Like you guys, like the global greening concept. That was something you brought up with Todd Ksky too. That was another recent, like fir was that the first in person or He was right after John, right? He

Vance Crowe [01:31:59] Was right after John, yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:32:00] Yeah. So that was starting to get back into these in-person interviews, but yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:32:04] And then before we close out, talk a little bit about what's going on with Wand. So for people that don't know, Ben, in addition to being an executive producer, we do a bunch of work with our, we kind of have a boutique PR and marketing firm. We kind of only take on the clients we really like, but we do some interesting work. We can talk about that I, I guess a little bit later, but the wand is your primary source, right? So Ben runs an app where it's a little bit like Uber for housekeeping, and people can sign up both to have their house cleaned, or you have housekeepers that sign up because they say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm willing to clean people's houses. And so you match those two together. What's it like in this post COVID world?

Benjamin Anderson [01:32:44] I've really got no complaints with Wand, right? You know, our, our bigger challenge I've been saying like has been finding cleaning providers, and I think this is like a broader like, issue people are having. It's like, you know, there's finding people to do the work right now. Like the world is reopening. We, we had launched maybe five or six months before our first podcast, like a year plus ago. And here we had good revenue and we're reinvesting this in the company and you know, you overspend to acquire customers and that money gets made back over time. And then this brick wall came down and that brick wall was coronavirus. So we very much spent a lot of energy over the last year building back up to that point where, okay, now we're generating better revenue than we ever have before. And that's all being reinvested in this, in the company. I've still like never taken a dime out of this asset, which is very much what I view it as at this point. It's, I'm not allocating the, you know, eight to 12 hours a day. I used to, I've, I've been loving, been a being able to watch it grow and work as like its own organism and, you know, feed it the things where it needs it. So it's, it's been really fun. And the thing it needs right now is cleaning providers. So that's, that's what we're working on. And then it's, we've kind of sprung up some of these other platforms centered around the same infrastructure where it's like, okay, here we're amidst Coronavirus, and lo and behold people aren't booking strangers to come into their home, at least to clean it for the time being. And, you know, until we worked around, got through that, but then I had different people coming to me and they were like, oh, hey, I need, like, my business literally had to shut down. Like, we did this once for a hair salon, right?

Benjamin Anderson [01:34:15] And it was, we literally can't do business in our usual place of business. So we've got to, but we're allowed to go do it in people's houses. We need what you've got, but for our infrastructure. So we did this for, you know, haircare, we've done this now for it just wrapped up a platform I would shout out, like Talent Boulevard for like hiring, connecting, hiring managers and on air news talent. It's just, it's, it's been fun and I guess that veers off from Wand, but I'm really, really proud of what's been done there and I'm just kind of still incubating it like it's a child and instead of kind of going this route of, you know, I need it to be the next Uber or the next Airbnb, you know, I've, I've found the alternative path of, you know, I never took on any like outside venture capital that I had to adhere to, to be like, okay, I've gotta get this, you know, 10 XROI for my investors in X amount of time. That's not to say that I'm running it as like a lifestyle business. I still have like, plans for growth. We're like getting up and going in Seattle and that's been really exciting. But yeah, just kind of this path of like, okay, it's, it's growing. Bootstrapping would be like the right term, right? Like bootstrapping the business, all the money that gets made goes right back into it and it's kind of snowballing from there. So it's been fun.

Vance Crowe [01:35:31] Well man, it has been a blast to be working with you. I'm excited about some of the upcoming podcasts we have. We're gonna be talking with Sam Oberg

Benjamin Anderson [01:35:40] Next week. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:35:40] Next week. That'll be a really good one. And it's just been great. But one of the things that you've done that I would love to give you a chance to shout out how people could sign up for is you've become a regular writer. So you're putting information out where can people find your writing that you put out, how often you do it, that sort of thing.

Benjamin Anderson [01:35:56] Yeah, so every, every Saturday I kind of take ideas, whether it's, you know, things, things talked about in the podcast. Like I'll read, you know, any scientific papers or really good articles I get my eyes on, be like, oh, let's, let's take some of the ideas, throw some of my own spins on 'em. But, so I've got a weekly newsletter that goes out every Saturday at 7:00 AM like, I'm usually scheduled out weeks ahead, so expect 'em to come until I get busy. But I plan to do it for the time being. It's at the benjamin.substack.com or you can go to my website. It's just, it's a little weird. It's the Benja Inn. I got a, do I think it's India or something like that. So it's the benja IN at the bottom there'll be,

Vance Crowe [01:36:38] We'll put a link in the show that's nobody can, nobody understands. That's insane Maniac. Easier

Benjamin Anderson [01:36:43] Able to do.

Vance Crowe [01:36:44] Well Ben, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We'll have you on as always,

Benjamin Anderson [01:36:48] Whenever. Yeah, cool.

Vance Crowe [01:36:50] Thanks for checking out this podcast. I'm so glad that you were able to join Ben and I for this interview. As I said at the beginning of the interview that we, if you are the type of person that has listened all the way to the end of this conversation, then you are the type of person that would love the Articulate Ventures network. This is a sort of digital neighborhood that we have where people can join it, find other people that listen to the podcast and have conversations about things going on in the world. One of the things that people really love about the network is that people put up ideas that other people don't agree with, but it doesn't devolve into some meaningless fight. Instead, it creates a dialogue and a conversation where people can learn and discuss and hear from people that think completely differently than you do. And I can tell you that it has pushed my thinking in all sorts of directions that I never would've had if I was only able to ever talk with the people that I see in person every day. So we would love to have you join this digital network, and if you would like to learn more, know that I'm talking directly to you and you can find out more at Network dot Articulate Ventures. And also, if you're interested in one of those Legacy Interviews that I talked about at the beginning of the podcast where I will interview one of your loved ones, you can find out more at Store dot Articulate Ventures. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll be back next week.