VCP: NNZP on manufacturing, mining and what it will take to produce products in the US

Guest [00:00:00] They control that market, they can control the prices in that market. They have, they have the, the lion's share of the production. And so it's not, you know, we are a marginal producer. And so if they want to subsidize manufacturing in their world, in, in their economy, they can decide to subsidize the steel part, which they do, and through energy, through labor laws and things like that, and through, through pollution laws. And they can tell those people to sell it to their domestic manufacturers at a certain price and sell it to the world at a different price. And they do. So it's a, it's a, it's a supply chain. It's a, it's a vertically integrated supply chain in Asia and we don't really have that vertically integrated supply chain anymore. So our costs are much higher for that reason alone. And then if you, if you wanna run a steel plant in, in America, in the United States or Canada or Western Europe, you basically have to meet a lot of pollution standards and a lot of other labor standards and OSHA standards and regulations. And those are very different than what you find in Asia. And so there's a, there's an inherited comparative advantage.

Guest [00:01:34] I don't say competitive advantage, it's a comparative advantage because of the way they run their economy, in my opinion.

Vance Crowe [00:01:42] You know, steel seems like one of those things that's like, yeah, we used to have to produce steel back, you know, in the industrial age. But, you know, do we, do we need to be producing steel now?

Guest [00:01:52] I don't know. Do you need to be producing bridges and roads because a lot of the steel goes into rebar and you know, bridges and do you want to produce, be able to produce an aircraft carrier or any other type of ship or truck or car? I don't know. It's up, up to, up to the public, right? I mean, what they wanna produce, I guess. But there is a moment of no return and that moment may have come and gone to some extent where you lose enough of the knowhow that you literally can't restart it. And I think there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal probably three or four years ago about how we need, we wanted to make a new icebreaker and it's taking a long time because we've forgotten how to u work with the steel that we make icebreakers out of. So that talent basically was gone and they had to relearn how to work with the steel that icebreakers are made out of so they could build a new icebreaker.

Vance Crowe [00:02:55] Yeah, I remember when I was working in the shipping industry and you heard like, oh, it takes, you know, two decades to build a Navy. And you think like, how is that possible? And then you actually start doing the sailing and you realize there's so much to know that you couldn't possibly put it all in a book. There's this just like essence of things that you have to actually have the physical skill and to imagine that we had some knowledge and then lost it, is, it's like hard to imagine that it can happen unless you've ever been around a, a deep skill and realize like, oh, this is so much more than you could put in a textbook.

Guest [00:03:28] And, and that's exactly right. And the doing teaches you so much of what you wanna do and what you don't want to do. And not all of that goes in the book. And there, there is a, there is a generation that is retiring right now. I'm 50, I'll be 56 here shortly. And so I'm at the tail end of that generation. I've got another 10 or 15 years ago before I decide I'm gonna do something. Maybe I'll do it till I fall over which kind I, 'cause I kinda like it. But there's a, there's a generation that is retiring that has not been replaced in the United States as far as technical skill and knowledge. Just knowledge. And I don't mean educational technical skill, I mean technical skill learned on the job and doing what they're doing. And we do, we have not replaced that with that. We have continued to innovate to some extent and optimize. So we need fewer and fewer of those people for our output. Our output has gone down in say the steel making industry or the aluminum making industry or the magnesium industry. Titanium went to zero basically last year because we don't make any magnesium anymore. It's a long story. But you know, there's a skill set there that we are not continuing to build on.

Guest [00:04:59] And that will atrophy and we will, we will have to import people to be able to do it because we won't have the skills and knowledge to, to do it anymore, which is a little scary In my book, we, we, we exchanged the Carl Sagan, you know, quote. And, and that, that is the world that I see, which is where we're turning into a service and information economy and we've forgotten how to do hard things.

Vance Crowe [00:05:29] Right. Well, and it seems like it's pretty dangerous if you're saying, you know, our, our battleships get built, our, our aircraft carriers, our vehicles with steel. 'cause if you were to get in a war and somebody were to cut that off from you, then you, you'd be done building or you'd, and you'd have to rebuild an industry while you're in the middle of an war, being in a war.

Guest [00:05:47] Correct. And you know, the interesting part is everybody brings up World War II and, and the Americans can do whatever they want when they, when they have to. Right. And look at what we did during World War ii.

Vance Crowe [00:05:59] Okay, I'm gonna take just a moment to hop in here and introduce the show and do a couple of housekeeping items. To start off, I should probably introduce the guest. This is NNZP. He is a guy that I have met through X and then become friends with, but he wants to remain anonymous. He builds cutting edge factories in his design technologies. And he says it really doesn't benefit him much for people to know who he is. He's not trying to get any kind of fame or anything. So he talks about his ideas without having his name attached to them. And I am totally okay with that. He is not a guy that throws stones at other people. So his anonymity isn't a way for him to hide behind trees and rocks and be able to snipe people instead. He has really great ideas. He's somebody that is fun to interact with. And I have been asking and inviting him on the podcast for years and years now. And it was only recently that he agreed to do the podcast and we decided that we would talk about his knowledge of things like minerals and mining and manufacturing and how this impacts our own country. And this is a great conversation. I was so glad to do it. I did it from a wintery day here in St. Louis, Missouri. You know, if you are a Vance Crowe podcast listener, you've probably noticed that this is the first episode I've done in more than a month. I decided that I was going to make a deliberate choice to only do interviews that I thought would be really powerful.

Vance Crowe [00:07:32] There was a stretch there where I was doing the weekly podcast and sometimes I would just call up somebody and be like, Hey man, I need a guest, let's just talk. And that was okay for a long period of time. But now, because my business Legacy Interviews has grown so substantially, it didn't really fit. And so I've taken some time and this has given me the opportunity to really wear down people like NNZP and some other guests I have coming up to sit down and have a long form conversation. So I mentioned Legacy Interviews. Yes, we have been busier than ever. The Christmas holiday season we exploded. But we have continued that people realizing, hey, mom and dad or grandma and granddad aren't gonna be around forever. And it is totally worth it for me to call up Legacy Interviews and find out what kind of interview can I do with them so we can preserve their stories, their adventures, their experiences, their wisdom, and be able to pass it on to future generations. So if you have been thinking about doing this for one of your loved ones, I implore you don't wait around. There is no benefit. Once you've had the idea to do it, that you might put it off. It's not gonna get better with age. In fact, the only thing that gets better with age is the actual recording. But waiting to record it comes with its own risk. And I would really encourage you that if you've been thinking about it, go to Legacy Interviews dot com and sign up for me to contact you. I call every single person that wants to do these Legacy Interviews.

Vance Crowe [00:09:05] And once we've come to an agreement, then we have somebody call and schedule and it all works out great. It is turning into a really robust and beautiful business. And if you'd like to support the show and you'd like to get this incredible heirloom for your family, go to Legacy Interviews dot com. Alright, let's head back to the interview with NNZP.

Guest [00:09:28] Well, world War ii, we were a leader in the world already for all of these materials. And we had giants of industry. Now it helped that, you know, it helped that our lands were pretty much unscathed except for Hawaii by the war, and we were able to continue to build on that. But what we did in Europe, while we were destroying in Japan, while we were destroying their industry, we were continuing to build our from a fairly good base. And so we just literally overwhelmed them with volume. Could that happen again? Who's sitting in that situation today? Is who, what I would ask and who's sitting in that situation today is China. China could literally overwhelm you with volume. And not only people, but steal and aluminum and titanium and, and just manufacturing capacity in general. They could just literally overwhelm you, like in, in volume like we did in World War ii.

Vance Crowe [00:10:37] So we talked about steel. What are these other metals, you know, I know these terms, but aluminum I use for foil and, and you know, what do I use?

Guest [00:10:45] Yeah, aluminum, you know, aluminum, we've shrunk 33% while China's gone from basically zero to the, to the world leader having 60%. And it's used in everything. Cars F1 fifties are made out of aluminum today. The body panels and the hoods are made out of aluminum. A lot of the power trains are made outta aluminum. Electric motors and Bevs are made out of aluminum, you know, so your transmission case is aluminum, airplanes, mostly aluminum, you know, so a lot of uses for aluminum, including as an industrial metal for your tin cans, which are aluminum cans and your tin foil, which is aluminum foil, right? So China is the world leader in aluminum magnesium, which is used for all sorts of alloying purposes, but it also has one huge use or two huge uses. The huge use is desulfurization of steel. You cannot make high strength steel without magnesium. It is a catalyst that takes out impurities. So that is the major use for magnesium is the making of steel through the Fisher Fisher process. So you mix it in and you convert it and, and it des sulfur rises, takes the sulfur out of the steel, which is an impurity. It also makes ductile iron through the fisher process. That's the fisher process. Steel process is a completely different process, sorry. And, and that creates ductile iron from gray iron.

Guest [00:12:21] So it changes the structure of the material. And that's what we use for, you know, steering knuckles and rear differentials and train couplings and train, you know, ra train wheels and things like that. That's all ductile iron. And then you have the other use for magnesium, besides casting into, into forms is, is making titanium and titanium. It takes over one pound of magnesium to make a pound of titanium. It is the catalyst that turns titanium, you know, it takes the impurities out and turns it into titanium. So it's magnesium is right next to lithium and sodium on the periodic table. And so it's very super reactive. It reacts with everything and we use it as purification and other things. So, and then there's the rare earth. So, so for titanium, we went from basically the world leader, 84% of titanium in 1995 to basically zero in 2023. Now I, you know, meanwhile China's gone from, what is it, 7,000, what is this metric? Tons, tons. 7,000 tons to 26, 200 60,000 tons, while we've basically gone from zero. Now Titanium's used in a lot of military products, airplanes and, and all kinds of, all kinds of things. A super lightweight, super strong metal. Then you have rare earths where we've started to get involved again.

Guest [00:13:53] And I see 2023, they're saying that we have, you know, 43 metric tons of mine production, which it was up from zero in 2010. Meanwhile, China's gone from zero to 240,000 and owns about 70% of that market. So, you know, when you think about the big industrial metals, major metals, pig, iron, you know, this is the, from the USGS website and their annual, so

Vance Crowe [00:14:19] This is what we, mine what we pull out of the ground.

Guest [00:14:21] Well, no, they, they, they have a report, okay? And so they give reports on mining, they give reports on processing, you know, smelting, things of that nature. So it's, so it's a little different. The only one that's mining that I quoted was Rare Earth. The rest of it is tons produced of raw material. So pig iron, China has 68% of the world's output. We have two raw steel, they have 53, we have four aluminum, they have 59%, we have five magnesium, they have 88%, we have basically zero. I know there's a startup out in ca in California that's trying to do it from seawater titanium. We have, they have 79%, we have basically zero rare earth, they have 70%, and we have about 12 up from zero in 2010. And it's all basically related to the one mine out in, out in California that was shut down between 95 and 2000. So they basically control the metals markets, the major metals markets.

Vance Crowe [00:15:23] And if you wanted to turn these things on you, of course, like you said earlier, you, you have to have the expertise. But how long does it take to bring this back online? If you were like, all right, all systems go flip all the switches.

Guest [00:15:36] It would take probably somewhere between five years and 15 years depending on what it, what, what it's Right. Even if you threw all the money at it in the world. And you know, I I once told a ahead of purchasing one time, it's at some point there's no amount of money that makes a difference. You know, all that, all it takes is time and you have to do the work, right? You can't speed it up with money.

Vance Crowe [00:16:04] So I mentioned the danger of if you go to war, what, what else should people be thinking about as they, as they hear these numbers seemingly to have crashed down?

Guest [00:16:13] Well, I think it affects our costs for manufacturing in the United States. I mean, we have to buy from, we have to buy a lot of these things from the world market because we frankly just don't make enough of them. And our prices are high because of our environmental regulations and labor practices and OSHA, prac o OSHA regulations and other regulations. So we are not competing on a level playing field and that, that makes our products much higher price than, than others. I'm not saying that we should, that we should do away with all our environmental policies and our labor policies and blah, blah, blah. I'm not, I'm not saying any of that. What I'm saying is, is that the people that say that, well, it's a, it's a competitive market. Yeah, it's a competitive market, but it's not, it, it's not a fair market. If you want to buy a, you know, like Tupperware, say Tupperware sent all of their stuff overseas. I think they're bankrupt. I could talk about them now. They sent all of their stuff, they made it all in America, then they sent it all overseas, right? And you could buy a Tupperware bowl for a buck versus it used to cost you, you know, a couple bucks in the states, right? But the reality is, you know, the, the, the, the working conditions and the environmental conditions and other things to get to that dollar reduction, that was, that was worth something, right? And, but because we transferred those issues offshore to the other side of the world, we're good.

Guest [00:17:49] They're not good. I mean, it's okay because it's over there, right? And the reality is there's more, there's probably more pollution going into the, the world from that side of the world than what we had over here. But we're okay because it's on that side of the world. Well, I tell people it's still in the world, right? If they're really interested, they would, they would be interested in that. So, and if they're really interested in having, you know, good jobs versus, you know, service jobs where everybody's gonna sell each other a pizza, you know, I'm gonna sell you a pizza and I'm gonna collect my, my, my profit, and then you're gonna sell me a pizza back and you're gonna collect the profit back. Is that really, you know, it all, both of those add to GDP, but did we get, did we go anywhere?

Vance Crowe [00:18:35] Yeah. And you have the problem that like, as companies are continuing to try and add more to their bottom line or continue to drive their stock price up, if you move your stuff over to China, so then you save on labor costs, eventually you get to a point where you're like, yeah, but we gotta keep growing and the way we're gonna grow is to lower our costs to goods sold. And so we're gonna make the plastic a little thinner. We're gonna make the lids, you know, a little bit like less sturdy. And then you go down this path where eventually their stuff isn't markedly high quality, so you don't use it. So you, either you look for another brand or you're just stuck in this world of crappy products.

Guest [00:19:16] Well, yeah, I, and I think, you know, some of that's the old planned obsolescence, you know, and you know, I know some international and General Motors freezers that are still running in northern Michigan. I helped moved one couple years ago, a General Motors freezer, right? Still running.

Vance Crowe [00:19:35] Yeah. I mean, and that's exactly what I want. I want a dishwasher that has those big thunk thunk buttons. 'cause when we moved into our house, it's a 1960s house. The dishwasher was original and it worked awesome. It had no pre, you know, it had no water flow issues. It probably used a lot of water, right? But that thing got everything cleaned. And now I've got one with digital buttons that sometimes the digital buttons don't work and sometimes it doesn't turn on right. I just want the big like clunky analog thing instead of everybody relay making my stuff wifi connected.

Guest [00:20:08] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and yeah, I, I think there's some of that. I think, I honestly think bvs are sort of that way too. Ba battery electric vehicles, you know, they're kind of throwaways, you know, I mean, you're gonna use 'em for a while. They're not gonna be on the road, you know, in, in 20 years.

Vance Crowe [00:20:25] Is that right? I don't know. This is not my perspective. I don't, I don't know any,

Guest [00:20:29] Unless they come away with a way to swap out batteries, which I know China has some companies that are doing swap out batteries, but you know, there, those batteries aren't gonna last. They're, that's just the nature of the battery pack, you know, it's like, you know, rechargeable battery state. I will get better, they'll get a lot better. But there are reasons why we have certain things and, and why certain things don't last long, as long as they used to. A lot of it's thrifting and the thrifting is a thing. And that's what you were talking about. We're gonna thrift the, we're gonna thrift the product down by reducing walls or taking out things or you know, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about an appliance company just, you know, cheapening up products by not painting them, not painting parts of them, right? It was in the Wall Street Journal last week I think, or earlier this week. You know, so that's, that's known as thrifting. And it's real, and you know, we can do some of that. We can change materials, we can do some other things. We can, you know, but at some point, you know, people want things that work and, but we've, we've grown, we've become a throwaway world.

Vance Crowe [00:21:45] My sense is that all roads lead back to inflation. You probably already know where I'm going with this, but like, of course, corporations are trying to do this because their costs to the, to like the raw materials just keeps going up. And the, the, like, there's no way they can put as much value into it because they need that planned obsolescence. They need to have the, you continue to buy things because money is turning over so much faster. Whereas when you have a harder money, people will be much more careful about what they buy, but they wanna buy something only one time.

Guest [00:22:20] Yeah. I think that inflation is in our future. I think it almost has to be given our debt levels and, but we've already seen a huge amount of inflation since, since 2019. And I'm not, COVID was a big part of that. We threw a lot of money at, at supply when supply chains were, were breaking down. But that caused a second round of inflation in, in wages and services and other things that is still rippling through the industry, through the country, period. You know, wages are up significantly, and I don't, you know, including in the company that I own and run, and I don't begrudge anybody that, but I have to pass it on, which means that they're gonna pay more for stuff. And so there is a, you know, there is a circular factor as you, you know, inflation feeds on inflation until we have some sort of event where we, where the markets break down and there's too much supply. You know, s inflation is a supply driven issue, whether it's monetary or goods, you know, if there's only, you know, 10 of something versus a hundred of something, the 10 will be more expensive, right? It's, it's, there is a supply piece to that, that, that is important. And that's what we saw during COVID. I mean, we saw a huge amount of money being dished out to people in checks from our government while supply chains were breaking down and everybody was staying at home.

Guest [00:24:04] And this is where I always joke about, you know, electricity from the outlet, wifi from the air water, from the water, from the tap, right? I mean, nobody, nobody cares until they can't get those things right. And they, they have most people, I, I don't know, most people, maybe that's way too broad, but a lot of people have no idea what it takes to get the water to your faucet or the electricity to your outlet or the wifi that's in the air or, or

Vance Crowe [00:24:33] The garbage from your house.

Guest [00:24:34] Groceries, groceries to the grocery store, garbage away from your house. You know, there are truck drivers and there are linemen and there are gas linemen and electric linemen. There are all sorts of people that have to make things to keep all of those things going and repair things. And those people were called essential workers, you know, and we all worked through COVID in our factories. I never missed a day in a factory. And you know, that's what kept the wheels on the bus, right? But there's a lot of folks that don't understand that the wheels are on the bus because we manufacture things and we fix things and we, we get out of our house, we walk outdoors, take the risk and do what we need to do. And if we don't do that, then you can order all you want on Amazon. It's not gonna show up because it wasn't made or it can't get to you.

Vance Crowe [00:25:36] Yeah. I mean, I can feel this still as a issue in my world, not just the supply chains, but the high demand on labor I went to get my truck worked on. It was a problem that only the dealership could handle. Like I took it to somebody else and they're like, yeah, this is too far into the engine for us to work on. And when you go to call the dealership, it's three weeks to get into, get an appointment and you're like, yeah, but I need this fixed now. Yeah. And, and like, doesn't matter, doesn't matter how bad you need it fixed. Doesn't matter how, I mean, you could maybe use money to try and jump ahead in the line, but then to your point, you just further inflation keeps going up because the, the supply of people that can actually fix these problems is so low.

Guest [00:26:19] Yeah, I, I think that's right. And I mean, I will tell you that labor is more available today than it was two years ago. It is in our area. It unemployment doubled. I can get people to come in and work, you know, pretty much immediately now. Whereas two years ago it was virtually impossible and labor, labor went up substantially. I think we're up about 35% all in, you know, from, from 2020. So it's, it, it, and that ripples through the economy, right? I mean, you know, I, you know, all my supplies are up, all my, everything that I buy is up from 2019. Everything, some of them as much as double right? And it has not come down. And, and we're continuing to make some policy mistakes. I think that will continue to drive that,

Vance Crowe [00:27:25] Such as

Guest [00:27:27] I love the planet as much as anybody, but affordable, abundant, available energy is the key to everything. And it is not windmills and solar panels, which are intermittent energy. There has to be base load power and it has to be abundant. So basically all of those things that you are putting up in the terms of, of wind and sun, unless you have a storage device somehow, and you could store a lot of energy, you have to build redundant energy in the form of natural gas peaker plants or nuclear or burn coal or nuclear full-time. I mean there coal or natural gas full-time, they, there has to be a base load power because people want power. When they want power. It's not like, you know, they are very accepting. It's like water. It's like the internet now, right? They want it when they want it, which is right now, whenever they decide. And so, you know, if you tell 'em the sun will shine tomorrow, you know, and you can have some power or the wind will blow tomorrow, that doesn't work. So we have to come up with a plan that, that satisfies that. And if we have that plan, we talk about robotics and we talk about ai, all of those things are massive power hogs, right? And so you need abundant, affordable, available energy to solve some of these problems

Vance Crowe [00:28:55] At orders of magnitude more than we have, right? Where you're talking about we need to generate not, not just like, oh, let's bring back on the plants that we had before that we've shut down, but like many, many orders of magnitude more because we need a bottomless, well we need as much energy as we can produce because whoever can produce more energy are the ones that can make the, the AI give you the, the answers to really incredibly difficult problems. Can, you know, serve as service, can smelt, you know, steal all, all these things. But okay, like we're in agreement with that. What are you building? Are you building nuclear? Are you gonna go send a generation of kids to go become nuclear engineers? All the ones that did it before got their asses handed to 'em.

Guest [00:29:40] Yeah, they sure did, didn't they? You know, I think, you know, China's building everything. They're gonna build more coal plants in the next five years than exist on the face of the planet today. They're building nuclear. They're gonna, they're gonna put online the first thorium nuclear reactor before us. We developed it, but they're gonna put it online.

Vance Crowe [00:30:01] And what is a thorium nuclear reactor?

Guest [00:30:03] Thorium Salt says thorium is a radioactive substance and it, it, they, it's the next generation modular reactor, new generation modular reactor is the fuel that they use instead of using uranium and some other things. And it's the way I read it, it's virtually meltdown proof. So, and they can use it in small, small batches. I mean, like the size of a baseball will power a city for 20 years. I mean it's, it's pretty incredible stuff. But that's nuclear in general. Nuclear is, when you talk about energy sources, you know, you, you not only talk about the source, but you talk about the density of the source. And if you talk about what is the most dense energy that we know of it is, it is radioactive materials, right? And the, the next one is, is coal or oil. And then you move up the chain of hydrocarbons and finally you get to, you know, wind and solar and, and, and water, right? So you gotta talk about the density of energy and how to do that. And, and that's why China is still building coal plants. They're building everything. Solar, wind, coal, nuclear, natural gas, whatever they can get their hands on. They're building power in massive amounts. So my suggestion would currently is, is nuclear. And the people that I, that say to me, well, yeah, but we've had all these problems. I'm like, yeah, we've had, we've had some issues, but I think there's new technology out there.

Guest [00:31:38] Our technology has never been bad. It's always been a failure of cooling. That is, that has caused the problem except for in the, in the Russian reactors, which is has a void, a negative void problem as I understand it from reading and, and things like that. It was a, it was a design flaw. And so, but we've also had nuclear power in our navy for how many years, how many decades? And seemed to be doing pretty good there, right? We have a pretty good handle on that. And we train a lot of nuclear engineers through our Navy. And so they're out there. I have a good friend, one of my best friend in, in high school became a navy nuke in the, in the nineties, eighties I guess 88. You know, he's an environmental environmental engineer now. But, but you know, I think that that's the source of the future and we need to get out of our own way and figure it out. I mean, even even water, if you wanna solve the water problem, it takes energy just desalination and it takes electricity, right? You wanna make lithium, it's, it's electricity, you know, you wanna make magnesium, it's electricity, you wanna make steel, it's electricity,

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] Right? It sounds like Trump is looking to come in. I mean, he's talked about how much more energy we need. Do you get the sense that this new administration is prepared to go the distance that you would need to go?

Guest [00:33:18] I don't know. I mean, I have my hopes, right? And I think that he's trying to change the direction. He certainly changed the direction and the conversation that we were having on China in his last administration and brought to light that. So can he do that for energy? I hope he can and I hope he can for some manufacturing. And I'm not saying we need to bring back everything, but certainly we need to, we need to be some, we have to have some self sufficiency. America, United States or North America is an, is is an amazing continent from a resource perspective. There's virtually nothing like it. If you exclude Africa, which is, you know, is an amazing resource continent as well. But it has all kinds of issues that, so the energy, it's all kind of trapped there. All the minerals and energy are kind of trapped right now because of corruption and, and government issues, right? So, so the United States and Canada stand out in the world for, for what we can do, but we have to want to

Vance Crowe [00:34:27] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is that, you know, right now to the average person, they're like, look, I plug, you know, every single TV and computer and cell phone into my wall. I get my electric bill and it all works and I have all the power I need if the, these other people are telling me that it we're gonna bring back coal, I've been told for years, this is like, you know, the worst thing you could do for the environment. You know, nuclear is so scary. What in the world would it take to make it so the regular general public would be supportive of making the sort of step up change that you'd need to do to get orders of magnitude more energy?

Guest [00:35:03] It's, it's gonna take higher, much higher prices and it's gonna take brownouts and blackouts.

Vance Crowe [00:35:09] Oh man, I do not wanna live in a world where I'm enduring fucking brownouts.

Guest [00:35:15] I hear you. But I mean people, you know, you go back to Machiavelli and, and his quote on change and people are are very hesitant to change when they believe that a a a system is, is working, right? And they're, they, they feel comfortable with the system. So usually change happens when they can no longer stand what's going on.

Vance Crowe [00:35:43] Alright, we're gonna take a quick break right here for me to talk about a change that I have made this year, which is that in the past I never used to talk about exactly how I purchased Bitcoin. I am one of those people that does what's called dollar cost averaging, which means I just buy a little bit every day or every week maybe the amount that you would spend on a cup of coffee. And I convert that into Bitcoin. And on the old site that I used to use, I didn't really pay much attention to the fees until one day I happened to log in and was looking at stuff and I was like, wait a second, I am giving up a lot of Bitcoin to be able to pay these fees. So I went looking around for another site and I had heard my friends people I trust people that are in this space and they were all talking about a company called river.com. So I went to River, I checked it out and I was astonished to find out that if you purchase your Bitcoin reoccurring on their site, they actually waive all the fees. So I was now going to be able to stack just a little bit more Bitcoin. I'm not looking to do huge purchases, I just wanna do a little bit at a time, just convert those dollars into Bitcoin. And if you have been a person that's heard me talk about Bitcoin, and I know hundreds of you have written to ask me about it, to ask where I buy to get suggestions on how to make it all work, don't worry. I never dox anybody, even if you've been a hater online and then said, well, maybe I should think about doing this. But if you're one of those people in the past, I've just kinda said, ah, there's a bunch of different sites out there now I'm saying I personally buy on River.

Vance Crowe [00:37:14] And I would recommend, if you're looking for a site that is trustworthy and one that you know somebody is using, then river.com. And if you use the affiliate link in the show notes, you will see that will actually help both me the show, 'cause I'll get a few Bitcoin for it, and it will also help you out. You will get some Bitcoin for it. So if you've been thinking about doing it, go to river.com using the affiliate link below. We don't actually have a formal relationship. They just said, Hey, if you wanna do this, you can get support for your own thing. So go check that out and let's get back to the episode with NNZP.

Guest [00:37:51] So it takes that sort of thing. And I, we might be seeing it right now in Germany. I mean Germany is de industrializing at a rate that, that is unbelievable because of their lack of power. And they have been in industrial power because they have had massive amounts of power and they've decided to go a different direction. Now, will they stay on that path? I don't know, right?

Vance Crowe [00:38:16] Yeah, Texas certainly got a, a wake up call when they had all those winter outages and then all of a sudden they went to the, the government came around and was like, all right, what do we have to do to have a base load that no matter what can handle all this? And that's ended up being what brought Bitcoin and the state of Texas together was the energy grid because it could build way more base load than they needed. And the miners would sit there and say, all right, we'll we'll suck up all this energy and then if you guys have, you know, higher than average demand, you, you pay us to turn our miners off and now you still have access to all that energy.

Guest [00:38:50] Well, you're seeing that in AI too. I mean, there's the conversations about restarting nuclear plants that have been shut down because they want to put an AI data center right next to 'em, you know, because it's constant power or as much as you want, right? So we're seeing that, we're seeing some of those discussions. I just don't know how that's gonna affect if we're gonna be a leader in ai, if we're gonna be, if we're gonna bring some industrialization back. We require energy, we require it. It's not like, you know, now if we want to be a service economy, I mean, if we want to not be who we used to be, we can get by with less energy. But, but I, I do believe that, you know, we have to realize that a lot of what we're seeing in the world, in the western world is sort of a death cult. I mean, they won't be happy until we're living in caves, you know? Did I lose you?

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] No, I'm, I'm right here. Yeah.

Guest [00:40:00] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:40:01] I I, I, I think that the things that people were talked into to support, they were genuinely like, I want to be a good person. How do you be a good person? You oppose these things because industry is bad, and look at how they treat workers and look at how they treat the, the environment when they're making this energy. And I, I think that people just kind of slowly walk towards that nodding their head, yes, let's get rid of

Guest [00:40:27] This. Always the case, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I believe like you, that 99 plus percent of people are good, they want good, right? I do not believe that there's a lot of evil in the world, although there is evil in the world, right? But I believe that 99 plus percent of people are good and want good things and want progress and, and want to continue down the path. There are limits to that, that, that keep the lights on, right? There are compromises and there are trade-offs. And what we want is a world without compromises and trade-offs.

Vance Crowe [00:41:04] Yeah, I've heard the, the, I actually heard a Thomas Sowell quote not that long ago that really has stuck with me. It's, there are no right answers. There are only trade-offs.

Guest [00:41:13] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:41:14] So like, you, you like, that's, that's the actual answer is like, you can have whatever desire you want, you just have to understand what it will cost you. And that's the conversation we haven't been having with general society of like, okay, well if you want all these environmental things, then this is what it's going to cost you. There's going to be people out of work that could be working. Your competitors may actually become a, a menacing threat. Not just like, oh, they're gonna have a higher standard of living. Like no, they may actually be able to build battleships and threaten you. They may be able to build nuclear submarines and, and, you know, haunt your, your dreams and make the, the world terrible for you.

Guest [00:41:53] That's right. And you know, Thomas Sowell by the way, is my wife's favorite economist or writer. She's, she's read him since she was a kid. Her dad used to read him.

Vance Crowe [00:42:05] Oh man, you married, right dude. Oh,

Guest [00:42:09] And he's he's a fantastic font of knowledge, right? And he's right. And, and you see it as being an engineer. You know, you see that all the time being a business owner and running a business. You see it all the time. There are good answers, there are better answers, there are perfect answers. They all have a cost associated with them. They all have trade offs associated with them. Some of them are unachievable just because of physics or you know, how the world works, right. Chemistry or physics. But there are these, there are multiple answers and you have to choose based on what you can afford. And I don't mean in dollars, but in all kinds of things, you know, environmental hurting somebody, you know, you may have the perfect answer, but it may run the risk of hurting somebody badly. And so you

Vance Crowe [00:43:10] Walk, walk away from Yeah, I mean the trades that we can see are, are manifest in the California wildfires that are happening down in la Right? Like it is very clear you decided to do certain things because you wanted to achieve these goals and that led you down a path.

Guest [00:43:28] Yeah. And again, I think, you know, it's, it's fascinating to watch and, and I feel for those people. I, you know, I went through a house fire as a kid and lost a lot of our stuff and you know, you could still, when you walk into mom's house, you can still smell, you know, if you know what you're smelling, you know what you're smelling. Right? And I was in grade school, so I remember it. And we lived in a trailer, a, a fifth wheel trailer for about six or eight months while they rebuilt stuff and cleaned, cleaned up, right? So I feel for those people, I mean, it's, it's, it's brutal. I've been through a flood and had to throw a bunch of stuff away, you know, and you lose a lot of memories and things like that and, you know, but on the other hand, there is a reason why some of that is happening. It's, it's, yeah, okay, maybe it's climate change, maybe it's not. I, I got my own theories on some of that stuff, but it is dry in December and January in California almost always. And they have fires there almost always. There are things that they can do to help themselves, but because it's, they don't believe it's environmentally correct. They didn't do some of those things like cleaning out brush or creating, creating forest lines because, you know, or, or, or forest breaks because it would look wouldn't look great or blah, blah, blah. And now, right now they're driving bulldozers up and down mountains, right?

Guest [00:45:00] So all the things they didn't do, they're doing right now, right? It's cleaning out the brush and they're, they're making fire breaks with bulldozers on mountains. And so it's, it's a problem, right?

Vance Crowe [00:45:15] So you have a unique experience in the world of, of building things and kind of, I don't even really kind of know where I'm, where I'm going with this, because what I really want is what's your take on what's going on with the drones in, in the us

Guest [00:45:31] What's my take on the drones? Do you want my conspiracy theory or do you want my my my real theory?

Vance Crowe [00:45:41] Oh, I mean, I, I think I want, what, what do you actually think? What is, what is really going on?

Guest [00:45:48] It's hard to tell what it is. It could be a number of things. My guess is, is that it's social contagion to some, some, some extent that, you know, that it's, it's on social media, so now everybody's looking for stuff. And when you start looking for stuff, you find stuff. So I think a lot of it is social contagion. There might be some military pieces to this. I think it, I think the big thing that drives people nuts is nobody can answer the question succinctly. It's like, well, whose is it? You know, what is it? Are you seeing it? You know? And we get answers from the government. Well, it's not, it's not our adversaries, it's not us, you know, but it's not, you know, it's not detrimental to you, so don't worry about it. Well, that's, that actually creates the whole conspiracy theory, you know, starts 'em off running

Vance Crowe [00:46:45] Well, and if you were awake during COVID at all, you learn, your government will lie to you. They will lie to you as a noble lie that they are convinced will help you in the long run. And so whatever their answer is, particularly when their answer is, we can't really say, but you should just trust us. It definitely doesn't feel good.

Guest [00:47:05] I'm distraught over what happened during COVID and what has happened over the last, probably two or three decades as far as, you know, social cohesion and, and public trust and how much we have lost. COVID was a major event for a lot of people, including me, you know, on the vaccines and on the what's going on PPE and, and other things. The lab leak theory versus other theories. You know, they did not tell us the truth, I believe. And that has destroyed trust to a large extent in the United States.

Vance Crowe [00:47:54] Yeah. Our patriotism was used against us. I remember they were, you know, Hey, the masks won't help you, but we do need them in a hospital setting. So my wife and I who had prepared and actually had masks, she's a forward thinker. We were like, all right, it's our civic duty. Let's help our countrymen hand it off the masks. And then all of a sudden they're like, now everybody has to wear masks and you need to wear masks. And then all of a sudden you're going through that and then they're forcing 'em on you. Like, all of these things that we were told like you need to do for other people, we're actually just ways to control us. I I like, you'd be a fool to go back and trust this, this group if you know, whatever they say next.

Guest [00:48:32] Well, and then you, you, you go to the ivermectin and you go to the hydroxychloroquine and you know, I ask my doctor for hydroxychloroquine in February of, of 2020, and I had heard in Asia that that's what they were using. And he told me I was nuts. He later came back and told me, oh, that's preventative that they're having doctors take now. He'll never admit to that anymore Because that is, you know, for boating and then ivermectin and that, that whole deal, you know, this is a wonder drug that is harmless to humans. Okay? I mean, it has been around forever and we use it for a lot of things. It's nano parasitical and we use it for a lot of things. And they basically told us that we were gonna die if we took it. You know, anybody that's gone to, you know, a third world country that with mosquitoes, they give you ivermectin. You know, it's one of the things, the parasites there, it's one of the things to ward off parasites and they give it to you in large doses. There, it's, it's probably one of the things that's been used more widely than a lot of other things, you know, like aspirin, you know, and if you do the research and you dig into it, I was really interested in 2020, Henry Ford Hospital here in Detroit had a study, it was prophylactic, a prophylactic cocktail that they were giving their people to use.

Guest [00:50:18] And they were doing a full on study, and they never published that study. And I think it's still up on their site. They have a letter about why they didn't publish the study. And it basically says that it's not politically the right time to release the study. Okay? And what I heard was it was working as a prophylactic, not for treatment. I mean, the, the, the thing was, is these things are not, you know, to, to use if you are in the hospital on a ventilator, all right? But as a prophylactic, they were working, they were helping your body, and then you get into the vitamin D, vitamin C, you know, and zinc. And the zinc is a disruptor. And I use that for common colds now. I mean, if I start feeling bad, I load up on my vitamin Z, vitamin T and zinc, you know? And, and sure enough, it knocks it out. And guess what? That's exactly what Zicam was basically doing, you know, that's what the xi cam spray is. It's, it's Z is zinc, you know, and there's

Vance Crowe [00:51:29] So much, so

Guest [00:51:29] They're using as a, as a va as a virus disruptor.

Vance Crowe [00:51:32] Yeah. The, like, the things that you're bringing up. Like I, I actually have started hearing about zinc a lot more lately and like, hey, when you start getting a cold, take it. There's so many things now that are coming up that were, you know, totally hooed. Like, you, you, oh, don't use that stuff. Like, we're running outta,

Guest [00:51:49] We're running outta conspiracy theories.

Vance Crowe [00:51:51] Yeah. It's making it so like you, there's a bunch of stuff where you're like, I don't, I don't know. I mean, like, I heard that you should pasteurize your milk. I lived in Africa where we even pasteurized the milk there 'cause it's dirty. You're taking it off a dirty teat off of a off of a goat. But all these other people are telling me it tastes better and it's actually not been denatured and there's these benefits to it. Well, I, I now have a very clear time when the government lied to me, and now I have these other people who are saying, this is a benefit. How do you navigate this? Like, what,

Guest [00:52:25] You

Vance Crowe [00:52:25] Know, you start to look at the statistics and they're like, well, it's one in 10,000 may get slightly ill from it. And it's one in, I don't know what the other numbers are about, like, that'll actually get hurt from raw milk. But like, why did we go to this path? I don't think people went down this path as a nefarious trick. So how do you, how do you get to the bottom of it?

Guest [00:52:47] I don't know whether you ever get to the bottom of it, because you have to have trust to get to the bottom of it. And that's what we've lost. And that's, that's my biggest, that's why I'm distraught about what happened and what continues to happen. Because democracies operate on trust and okay, maybe we're not a democracy. We're a, you know, a a

Vance Crowe [00:53:08] A republic, yeah.

Guest [00:53:09] A representative republic, right? Okay. But okay, representative republics or democracies both work on trust, right? And if you can't trust your government, then you have all kinds of other problems that crop up. And you, you, you can't function as a society. And that's a real problem, you know? And I spent a lot of time talking to my mom about, during COVID, and my mom at first, you know, stayed home and you know, my mom, she stayed home, sharp

Vance Crowe [00:53:40] Lady.

Guest [00:53:42] But you know, after a while she's like, eh, this, you know, I wanna see, I wanna see you guys. I wanna see my grandkids. I wanna see, you know, I, I'm, what was it, I'm 85 years old, I haven't got that many years left, so I'm not gonna give up these years. So you guys keep coming, you know, if you're sick, don't come like normal. I'm old, right? But, but, but I don't wanna stop doing stuff, so let's just keep doing it. She'd go to the doctor and she'd go into town to rehab, you know, which is her social hour and all these other things, you know, and go town to eat. And you know, it was a, she's like, I lived through polio, I lived through sm smallpox. Th there were multiple other scarlet fever, you know, these things were killers, right? And this one doesn't appear to be, unless you're already sick, which I'm old and I'm all, I'm kind of sick too, but, so it might get me, but you know, what, if I give up three, two or three years of my life, what, you know, what did I get right? I'd rather keep living and if I die, I die. And that was what she said to me, you know, I'd say, mom, you know, maybe you shouldn't go to, you know, the big city, right? Where, you know, to chop or whatever. So you go, eh, it's gonna get, if it's gonna get me, it's gonna get me.

Vance Crowe [00:55:05] Well you bring up these terrible diseases like polio and, and scarlet fever and stuff. And right now we have a battery of vaccines. They start putting your infant on them almost right away. I had a good friend, hardcore, like very aspy dude that will go through the data and he's had two kids and now he's got a third one. And he's like, actually, we're looking at what they're bringing up about vaccines and I'm not sure it's worth the trade off. And that's exactly where we started this, right? Which is what is the trade off? You don't trust your government. You think, hey, they, they have other people's interests, either pharmaceutical interests or, you know, whatever it is that, that now we're, now we're questioning vaccines, which I would've said four years ago, you know, that is as close to getting something that I would mandate on other people as you could have, I'm a pretty hardcore libertarian, and I still wasn't at the point where I'd say, you, you mandate the polio or measles vaccine, but like, once this breaks out, you know, smallpox, this is terrible, this is gonna cause all kinds of problems. And now further down the path, I'm all the more, you know, anarchist and there's no chance that the government should have the power to mandate anything. But like now I'm like, I don't know, should you even take voluntary? Should you give voluntary vaccines to your kids? So we are now at the total breakdown and are we doing the same thing that California did when we're like, yeah, we don't want to take vaccines, and then now there's a wildfire and it burns everything down.

Vance Crowe [00:56:40] So I don't want a part of that.

Guest [00:56:43] I think we are at that point, and I think we're, you know, listen, there are some of these that are very old and, and vaccines and they work, you know, and they have a long history with very low incidence rates. There are some newer ones that I, you know, I don't know, right? But I remember going into the cafeteria and taking the sugar cube with the, you know, the MMR, right? And I, my sister has a polio, you know, scar, polio vaccine scar. And I don't, I was the first one that didn't have, first generation didn't have it, but I remember growing up with people that, that had built up shoes. I saw one the other day, actually, you know, he had polo, that that was what happened, right? And they, they had, you know, one shoe has a, has a five inch sole on it, right? Because their legs short.

Vance Crowe [00:57:38] Yeah. It's indelibly marked on me. I have a buddy in college, he had a white, a mother that is just a staggeringly beautiful woman, but has a, a horrible limp. And like, and you're like, what happened there? Oh, she got polio. And, and so you see like, oh, that is disfiguring, like, can't even walk. Right? You know,

Guest [00:57:57] We have

Vance Crowe [00:57:57] Multiples. I don't want that running around. But at the same time, you, you hear these people saying, well, the government's put in all these, or allowed the pharmaceuticals to do it. They have adjuvants and preservatives and I think this is causing autism. And you're like, well, I, you know, they tell me it's not, but they also told me to give up my masks. So, and so you've got this situation where highly, you know, people that have the ability to discern things, for the most part are left in the position where you're like, I don't know what to do. I gotta trust somebody.

Guest [00:58:25] I agree. And I have a sister-in-law who had, her first child is aware of the state today. She's would be probably 24. And it was her first round of vaccines and she spiked 107 or 108 degree fever.

Vance Crowe [00:58:46] Ooh.

Guest [00:58:47] It fried her brain. They were still living with her when I was dating my wife and got married. And they had to make the, her decision to institutionalize her because they literally, all she did was scream and roll around. She couldn't walk, she couldn't feed herself, she couldn't take care of herself. There was nobody home. Right. And that was a vaccine injury. Almost certain happened the day after she took her first round of vaccines. So she had a reaction, you know, so, but she had her other two kids vaccinated, you know, and they're fine. My kids got vaccinated, they're fine. Right. We didn't take 'em all. But, you know, we also, you know, we've, we've increased the number so staggeringly over the last 30 years. And some of 'em, I think need to be looked at and some of 'em don't. I also, you know, if you wanna talk pharmaceuticals, I, I have no idea why pharmaceuticals can, can advertise on tv. Why are they allow, I mean, why do I need to know about, you know, Humira for example. Right. And

Vance Crowe [01:00:03] My sense though, and this is conspiratorial too, but I think probably makes sense. I don't think that those, well, I think it's money, but I think it's money in a very nefarious way. I think it's like it, NBC or, or CNBC can't afford these hosts that they have, unless they have huge amounts of money, then they pay. So the pharmaceutical companies, you

Guest [01:00:23] Can't, you can't, you can't advertise Jack Daniels anymore.

Vance Crowe [01:00:26] Yeah, right, right. I mean, I, you

Guest [01:00:29] Can't advertise Newports anymore.

Vance Crowe [01:00:31] I'm, I mean, I'm actually against all of these rules. What we, what I would say is the government shouldn't have control over the broadcast airwaves to begin with. And then you have the whole question of like, all right, well how do you, how do you allocate the, you know, the bandwidth and how do you choose? But at the end of the day, every time we set up one of these rules, we just create a system that whoever has the money piled up can, can start to, I,

Guest [01:00:56] I understand. I I guess what I'm, what I'm saying is, is that, you know, it is, EpiPen is a great example of people, you know, abusing the system, the pharmaceutical abusing the system. You know what epi epinephrine is, epinephrine is off, off label. You know, it's, it's, but they keep getting the patent for the pin renewed, the delivery device.

Vance Crowe [01:01:23] Okay. Yeah. I mean, you're, you and I, this actually may be an interesting discussion. I, I'm pretty much against patents. I, I think that we, like, I, I like, what are we doing? That is an idea. And the fact that you now have the force of the government to come along and say, you're not allowed to use that idea. 'cause that guy had it first. And I, you're in manufacturing, you've built things, so you probably have a very different perspective here. But to me it adds a whole lot of power in the government to enforce rules around ideas.

Guest [01:01:55] So there's, there's two sides to this coin, right? And the one side is, is that I am, I figured out something that nobody else has ever figured out. Should everybody be allowed to copy that on day one? Should I have the ability to monetize that? At least somehow? I would say you would get a whole lot less in May. You may get a whole lot less innovation. I won't say you will get, you may get a whole lot less innovation if you don't allow them to monetize. What's the point? Right? Unless, so you get a whole lot less patents for certain, and everybody will go to knowhow. I, I hold exactly zero patents, not because I've come up with zero patentable ideas. But in order to get a patent, you have to tell 'em exactly how you did it. Okay? So as long as you're in an area that enforces patents, that's great. Right? I can tell you exactly how you did it and you can't do it. But let's take the conversation that we had to begin this with minerals. And let's take a place that doesn't necessarily enforce patents. So now I've told you exactly how I did it. Okay? And so you're gonna go do exactly what I did and go to every place else that won't enforce that patent, right? And sell my product what I came up with.

Guest [01:03:29] So in my world, know how might be better, right? And knowhow is the other side of that coin, which is the un patentable idea that you ca the un patented idea that you came up with that nobody's figured out yet. So I'm, I built a better mouse trap, but I'm going to not even sell you the mouse trap. I'm going to sell you the mouse catching service, right? And you can't look at my mouse trap, it's in a box because I don't want you to know how I did it. Now you're gonna send all kinds of people around to try to steal my mouse traps, right? So I'm gonna have to probably put some sort of, you know, defeat device on them, right? So you can't figure out how I did it. But that's the other side of the patent conversation. And there's a lot of engineers and industries that operate on know-how, and especially I think since China really came into the WTO and was really ripping off patents. And that's what they do. And now it's interesting 'cause Japanese rings, patents, the Japanese ringed patents. So you'd come up with an idea and they would come up with every possible variation on that idea that they could think of and patent everything around you. So you were stuck with the original idea. And if you moved one way or the other, you know, they'd basically have a patent, you'd be infringing on their patent, right?

Guest [01:05:01] That was, the Japanese were brilliant on that actually, and really good. But the Chinese would just ignore your patent. And I was in the, you know, they talk about all the patents that China files and all this stuff. Listen, I was in, I've been, I've been been working in China since 2001. And in order to get our high tech license, you had to come up with three patents. And you talk to your patent people and they're like, well, why don't you patent that? Well, I didn't design that. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. You just gotta file patents so you get your high tech status, right? So you could patent somebody else's design, okay? If it makes it through the Chinese system, you get your three patents and you get your high tech status and you're all good, okay? You get tax tax rebates for another five years. So it's a, it's a game. And the whole knowhow patent thing is kind of a game that you gotta understand whether you want people to understand what you did or not.

Vance Crowe [01:06:08] Is China doing that to get you to participate in a, like a moral quandary? And then you've already, you've already, you know,

Guest [01:06:16] Oh, China as a whole is a moral quandary. But that's a whole other discussion. But the answer is yes and no. I think, but the bigger answer at that time was is that China's government is, the central government is very disconnected from provincial government. So the central government would put out, we wanna move to more high tech industry. Okay? So that gets laid down to the, to the provinces and the provincial leaders premiers get their grades on whether they move to an industrial, a more high tech industrial policy. So what do they do? They go out and they figure out how to move to a more high tech, at least on paper industrial policy. So, okay, let's have everybody file patents and then they could get this high tech credit that the central government is giving us. And we get credit too, right? So maybe nothing has changed, but everybody is now high tech and they can spout it out that we've, we've, we've filed this many patents and we're leading in the patent race and you know, so it a lot, some of it's propaganda and some of it's the incentives. You know, be careful what you measure. 'cause you get what you measure.

Vance Crowe [01:07:37] Yeah. Bureaucratic hellscape, I mean, this is the way our corporations work. Yeah,

Guest [01:07:42] There's some of that, but it's very prevalent in the provinces, you know, and they compete against each other for, you know, the next level up and, and how they are seen by the central committee and, and things of that nature. So they're gonna do, they're gonna help you scam the system.

Vance Crowe [01:08:01] So you're part on patents. I actually am surprised, I thought you were gonna be like, no, I'm, let me shove patents down your throat as hard as I can. 'cause that's the way most engineers are, man at Monsanto, when I would talk about, I don't think we should have intellectual property rights on, on genes, man, these people would flip out. And I, I like your your take on that, right? Like, you gotta tell

Guest [01:08:24] You should have patents on jeans because that's God's patent. I mean, I, I I just, okay, so you discovered something that's not creating something.

Vance Crowe [01:08:40] Yeah. You can't patent math, right? You can't patent a fact. Right? Right. If something is true, then you can't patent that. Right? They definitely got somehow found like a, a weird way to do a flip, flip over loop to, to be able to say, we can patent that because you're not allowed to patent a mathematical equation. 'cause that's considered discovered. Not, not created,

Guest [01:09:01] Isn't a gene discover.

Vance Crowe [01:09:03] Yeah. I mean I've, I've frankly, like, I really like your case against them on a purely like pragmatic level about like, well, I don't really wanna tell you how to do this because then the secret might get outta the box. And you've been in a position where you've benefited from being able to keep knowledge secret.

Guest [01:09:21] Yeah, ab absolutely working on some stuff right Now,

Vance Crowe [01:09:26] I of course, I'm not asking you to tell me what it is, but in what way? Like is it like the process of let's say smelting, like the order that you put it in? What do you mean?

Guest [01:09:36] I'm develop, I'm developing with a company that I am related, that I have a relationship with a new process to help pull back parts that have been overseas for years. And it's, it's an old process with a new idea, right? So I'm, I'm gonna do it differently and I'm going to be able to produce product much, much cheaper than anybody else in the United States and should be able to compete with my Asian competitors.

Vance Crowe [01:10:11] And this is a way to get around the fact that we're not producing the raw materials. So you're gonna go recycle them.

Guest [01:10:17] Yeah. So I mean, listen, I mean we're all, there's only one thing that's sellable in the world and it's time,

Vance Crowe [01:10:25] Ah,

Guest [01:10:26] Time is the only thing that's of value. And we monetize our time through a lot of things, right? We can sell corn or we can sell auto parts or we can sell anything, but I'm selling my time. You're selling your time. You know, we, the way we monetize it, maybe we're selling it directly. Maybe you work for somebody and they pay you to do stuff. So you're sold it directly. You sold eight hours a day of your time for X number of dollars, right? As a business owner, I sell my time by, I monetize my time by selling parts, right? So if I can figure out a way to make profit or make more per unit time or more good per unit time, then I can make more, I can still reduce my price and make more per hour, right? So in my world, everything circles back to time. It's the only thing that's of limited quantity in your life and you sell it every day. So, and what, what is it? I think it's Epicurious said, it's, it's not that we're given too little time, it's that we waste so much, right? So everything for me comes back to time.

Vance Crowe [01:11:48] I like this a great deal. And in fact, in my own world of Legacy Interviews, it, it actually maps directly to what I think because I'm always saying like, you could record your family. Like absolutely you have equipment to do it, you have the relationship, they're right there with you. But what happens with us is that we are going to take the time to do it and it's actually going to get done. And that's ultimately like why people are like, you know, it's just, yeah, I could do it myself, but like doing it this way just, just resolves the problem. And then you of course quality. But like the, the, I had never thought to directly say that. And that that's not just the business that I'm in, it's the business you're in. That's,

Guest [01:12:28] Its the business. Everybody's in stockbroker's selling his time, you know, trying to convince people to do something right. And a align.

Vance Crowe [01:12:37] Yeah. And then you don't have to go look up these ideas. You don't have to go look at the, you know, the p and e ratings. I'll, I'll just give it to you and that my time will be on that. So

Guest [01:12:45] Anything you can do to, I, you know, that's why you hire more people, right? Because you don't wanna spend 24 hours a day doing it and you can afford now to hire a couple people to help you. Right? You have other things you wanna do with your time. 'cause you know, it's valuable, right? And I had, you know, this is, my dad was pretty influential on some of this stuff. You know, he, he was like a gentleman philosopher. I didn't realize it until I was much older, right? But he had all these sayings about different stuff and, and then I started, you know, I'm an engineer and I've had some discussion with Luke Burgess online about, you know, people who should people study the classics or you know, humanities and things like that. And the answer is yes, but you gotta walk your way up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need to have a job and a, and a profession that you can support yourself and have extra time so that you can study those things. I think because they're super valuable. But I've also had a couple brushes with death and, you know, from young times to recent and you know, and, and what's the saying? I think it's Seneca or somebody said, every man lives two lives and the second begins when he realizes he has but won. Right? So once you realize and talking to young kids is hilarious like that because, you know, time is not a thing for them yet.

Vance Crowe [01:14:15] In fact, I'm so much Yeah. They're my co like my my 4-year-old. All she wants is time to move faster. She has no concept of like, so when you realized that you have only one life, what happened in your second life then?

Guest [01:14:27] Well, you know, I was told by one of my mentors that at some point you move from an innovator to being an innovator to being an educator. So I decided after a couple of the more recent ones, I had cancer in 2016 and then I wrecked a snowmobile pretty bad in, in 2019. I always joke about, I met my deductible and my family deductible all by midnight on January 1st, 2019. Yeah. 'cause I got a nice life flight and I got a nice private flight out of it and the whole nine yards. Right? But I decided that that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to teach what I know to other people, right down to the fact that we all sell our time. That's the only thing valuable in life and you know, how to do this stuff and pass on what I was taught by some great mentors. I had 2, 3, 4 really fantastic mentors. My dad, a couple bosses, a couple personal on the personal side, you know, and they taught me so much. And I've read, I'm a, I'm a voracious reader and you know, it's, it's time, it's time to pass that on to my kids and to others that want it, that want it, you know? And the old saying goes, you know, when, when the student knocks the, the teacher appears, you can't teach somebody that doesn't wanna learn.

Guest [01:16:03] So you have to wait for the student to knock. But you, but once they do, you know, you pick up people to mentor, right? And that's what I try to do. And in my industry, I try to continue to teach people, okay, this is the fundamentals. It is the basics. I've to a service guy yesterday and he's like, there aren't a lot of people around like you anymore. Right? That know the deep down, dark secrets of, of how we used to do it. Right? And I said, I'm trying to teach 'em, sometimes I teach 'em bad things, right. You know, things that they work, but you maybe you shouldn't know this. And I tell 'em that up

Vance Crowe [01:16:42] Upfront. You

Guest [01:16:44] Know, I'm gonna, I wanna give you a tool here, but please use it very sparingly. Right? But because you can destroy stuff if you don't pay attention. But

Vance Crowe [01:16:54] Well, there's a place for the dark arts, right? Once you, if if you're really an expert,

Guest [01:16:58] Yeah, there's a place for that. And it's not, I don't believe that there's alchemy to it. I believe that it's, I believe in science and I believe in physics and engineering and everything. You know, I, I kinda laugh at the whole Elon first principles thing because that was my mentor in the nineties. He was a first principles guy, right? I mean, it is like, he looked at me and he said, it's an engineering problem. You are an engineer. You could figure it out, right? Let physics be the determiner of what you could do. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:17:34] When you say first principles, I don't know that I could, if, if somebody said, what does it mean to be a first principles thinker? It's a concept I hear, but I don't know what it means.

Guest [01:17:42] Well, for example, if you wanna, if you wanna, if you have something that's say too hot, right? Or say a part or something, how are you gonna, let's say that you are throttling a CNC machine because your cooling is too hot and it's tearing up tools, something like that, right? Okay. You shouldn't be throttling the CNC, you should be figuring out how to cool off the cooling, right? So let's not work on, let's not work on anything in that CNC, you know? 'cause people are like, well I need to speed it up and not do this, so I'm gonna change all this program and let's go to the direct source of this. This is BTU's in equals BTU's out.

Vance Crowe [01:18:29] Don't use workarounds, get to the core problem,

Guest [01:18:32] Go to the root cause. Find your Herbie. If you're, if you're a Goldratt guy, find your Herbie and work on your Herbie. Right? And you, you had Goldratt Eliyahu Goldratt, and the goal

Vance Crowe [01:18:45] Never even heard of it. One of the,

Guest [01:18:47] The goal is probably the best manufacturing book on the planet. That if you get Goldratt and dimming together, you have manufacturing whipped, right? That's Deming's. SPC and quality control. And Gold rad is all about throughput. It's constraint, constraint theory, right? So those are the two I always point people to. And you know, it's all about finding your Herbie, finding your, finding your real constraint or finding your real root cause and fixing that. And you know, Henry Ford said it, Elon said it that a lot of engineers spend a lot of time perfecting a process that shouldn't even exist. Right? It's a workaround. Why are you even doing it?

Vance Crowe [01:19:41] I mean, I think this is something said in science a lot that it's like the hardest part is actually defining the problem. If you define the problem, like you find it, right? If you know, like what is actually the thing that we're trying to solve here? That is most of the, the, the challenge because it's, once you discover the right problem to be solving, then when you solve it, you're at first principles. But it is very, very difficult. Like, you know, you look at a sales problem and you're like, well the problem is that we're not selling enough. Well, is it, is that the actual core it really, yeah. Like, or is there another problem that you're actually trying to solve

Guest [01:20:16] That may be a symptom. Maybe we have an inferior product or maybe our prices are too high or costs are too high, or maybe our sales marketing

Vance Crowe [01:20:23] Isn't done. Yeah.

Guest [01:20:24] Or, you know, there could be a number of issues that are leading to that outcome. That is a, that is an outcome. And you have to have inputs and outputs and you have to figure out which one it is. Sales revenue is an output, right? It's not an input. And it's, do you have what your customers need? Are you making it, can you make it in the quantities they need? Can you make it at the quality levels they need? And can you make it at the cost they need? And if you can do that, then you'll have more sales than you can possibly stand. Right? And if you look through history, that's what happens. That's the story of the Model T. Right? And the, the another book, who is that? It's not Womack, it's, it's the machine that changed the world. And it's about the, it's about the a moving assembly line and Henry Ford's invention of the moving assembly line. It's called a machine that changed the world. And it,

Vance Crowe [01:21:27] You know, you're talking about manufacturing and factories and things like this and you know, growing up the idea that you would become a factory worker was seen as like saying, I'm gonna go become a slave. I'm gonna go become a surf. What should people know about factory work that they don't know?

Guest [01:21:49] What do I say? I mean, it's reasonably well paid, but it's not as well paid as it should be. I think that, well, that's what we're trying, I mean, because we're not as efficient as we should be. It's a lot of fun. I mean, to be an engineer in a factory or to be part of the process team or the tooling team, it's a whole lot of fun. 'cause you're solving problems every day. You know, it's, it's, there's a lot of tedious work for the wor average worker. We try to, we try to eliminate as much of that as possible. And the question that I have to ask everyone, you know, when they're doing something and you know, when they're setting up the process or something, would you want your mom to do that for eight hours a day, five days a week? Right? But if you don't want your mom doing it, then why are you having this person do it? Let's figure out a different way.

Vance Crowe [01:22:46] So gimme an example of how that would change, you know, something.

Guest [01:22:50] I mean, somebody standing on a concrete floor with a file in their hand, filing something for eight hours a day, right? Carpal tunnel coming, coming your way

Vance Crowe [01:23:03] Right

Guest [01:23:04] Back, problems coming your way. So can we give them, is it something where they can sit down? Is it something where they can, we can put a rubber mat under them. Can we automate that process and eliminate that entirely? So somebody doesn't have to do that. Can we fix, can we go to first principles? Why is it happening? Why do we gotta file it, right? And can we fix the very root cause of it, or will it always kind of be there and we can't figure out how to fix that? Right? So that's what you gotta get 'em to focus on. And that's what you try to get people to focus on is, is eliminating those, those spots where, you know, people, we shouldn't have people doing those things. And by the way, that's what the Chinese do. It spades. There are boatloads of people standing there filing stuff. I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:23:54] That's a brilliant way to describe the comparative advantage in this because it, it shows like, well if, if you have people and you can throw them at that and you don't care whether or not,

Guest [01:24:07] And they cost nothing virtually,

Vance Crowe [01:24:08] Right? Then you don't have to solve problems. Like at the deeper level, you can just throw, you can just throw cheap labor at it. Yeah.

Guest [01:24:15] I mean, listen, when I first started going there, one of my JVs I was with a big state owned company and one of their metrics that we, as part of the JV that we had to report out on was how many deaths we had. Okay? It was a KPI, you know, K meant for things

Vance Crowe [01:24:34] Happen

Guest [01:24:35] Right now, we didn't have any, but the fact that it existed was like, oh, you know, and they were a big multi-billion dollar organ state owned, you know, you know, but it's there. How many people did you kill?

Vance Crowe [01:24:56] And there's probably tolerances there, right? How many people you employed versus how many people die. And

Guest [01:25:01] I, I, I don't know. I mean, maybe I don't remember whether it was still there when I, when I left that company, and I certainly didn't have it in any of my companies that I ran as wolfies, you know, if who owned, you know, but I guess, you know, it made me, you know, my, my my skin crawl a little bit, right?

Vance Crowe [01:25:23] It would, yeah.

Guest [01:25:24] But that's the world that we were part of over there. Now if you, so that happens over here. You got big problems. Big,

Vance Crowe [01:25:36] Yeah. That's something OSHA doesn't ask you is how many did

Guest [01:25:39] You get? They'll shut down your plant and they will crawl all over you forever. And, and they should, right? I mean, our job as, as business owners and, and manufacturing leaders or whatever, maybe it's an elevator leader or a, or a, you know, a whatever is to send everybody home at least as good as they came in. That's job number one. So,

Vance Crowe [01:26:05] So we're about to wrap up, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, what does NNZP mean?

Guest [01:26:11] Nothing

Vance Crowe [01:26:13] Really.

Guest [01:26:14] Absolutely nothing.

Vance Crowe [01:26:15] It's just static. It's just noise.

Guest [01:26:17] Just noise. 1730 doesn't mean anything if that's my Twitter, you know, and, and that doesn't mean anything either. It's just random.

Vance Crowe [01:26:27] Wow. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stack this away in my conspiracy theories that you're lying and that it does mean something and that there's like a hidden thing. If

Guest [01:26:35] It does,

Vance Crowe [01:26:35] We'll find out. I'd love to hear what

Guest [01:26:36] It means. I mean, but I decided at some point several years ago to change Twitter handles and, and I, you know, I, I just typed some numbers or letters and numbers in and, and picked a avatar that basically, I think it says if you don't do maintenance on your equipment, your equipment will decide when the maintenance is due or

Vance Crowe [01:27:00] Something like that.

Guest [01:27:01] I don't even really really know what it says, you know? And, you know, I wanted to be mostly anonymous because I know a lot of people in the industry and I don't wanna, you know, in my industry and the larger auto industry, and I really don't wanna be that guy calling people out. I, there were some people in my position that did that when I was a younger guy, and I just didn't think it was very se you know, I thought it was a little unseemly. And I wanna be, have good interactions with people online that, you know, a lot of people know who I am and a lot of people don't. And that's fine with me. I just like being who I am, I guess.

Vance Crowe [01:27:46] Well, that sounds like a perfect place to, to wrap up. So man, thank you so much for sitting down with me and doing this. This is something long, long time I've been wanting to do this.

Guest [01:27:57] Hopefully it's worthwhile. I mean, I, you know, I don't consider myself a philosopher or, or anything that's generally worth listening to. So there you go.

Vance Crowe [01:28:10] Well, I've known ever since our first conversation that this would be a great podcast and I was right.