After Collapse with Author Max Borders

 We start to become dependent and beholden on Washington, DC in New York. And these are the two in conclusion with one another, the banking system and the government. And when we do that, we don't know how to depend on ourselves in our communities and in a peer to peer relationship. I call it decentralization. You've probably heard the term decentralization or federalism. But this decentralization of power and finance in these areas, this concentration, causes us to forget that we are able together to solve problems collectively without the intercession of this great big third party. This is better well with Caleb Williams. Max, welcome to the better world podcast. My pleasure. So I'm an optimist. I am someone that loves the idea of you being your greatest asset, creating, creating value in the world. And so when one of our good mutual friends Tim Turemack reached out to me and said, Caleb, you need to get Max on the show. I did my research and you came out with a book called After the Collapse, the end of America and the rebirth of her ideals. And what's ironic is I got the book and then I realized how big it was and in the time I haven't had a chance to read it all. And preparing for the interview and my assistant Mariah was proactive and got another book. So here I'm sitting with two massive books on my desk talking about the collapse of America. So with that man, thank you so much for making it a priority to be on the show. My hope is to help you or just understand better unpacking what you've done your research on. And the idea is can my audience start getting opening their eyes and seeing like, what can we take advantage of? What should we be doing based on your findings? Oh, it's I'm so looking forward to this. So before we before we jump into America collapsing, let's take a look back on who you are. I know you live in Austin, but I know you didn't grow up there. And then I think it's, tell us a little bit about yourself. And if we were on like an elevator that was going all the way to a top of a large, large building. What would you say? What were some of the highlights that would be that you would include in your story to give us a little bit more context in your research. Sure, I think I, I, I distinguish myself as an observer of life as a writer and a thinker. And I think that's probably a lot of the folks you've had on your show or actual value creators. I, I hope to create, I hope to move human souls and create value in the minds of people. If I can eat and feed my kids doing that, I'm, every day, I'm happy. So that sense of fulfillment that a lot of entrepreneurs and innovators derived from getting out there and creating value in the world. And I think that's the same sense of fulfillment in, in, in moving human souls and giving that in, in, I guess you could say animating the life of the mind. And Max, you're the, the co founder of an event called future found frontiers and also founder of social evolution. What are those two groups? You'll notice a through line, not only through the work that we'll be talking about, hopefully, in a little bit, that, and that is this. I think if you could really boil it down. It is, it is that we should not let fear govern us. And instead we should be the change we want to see in the world. That's a good old Gandhi saying, but I think it's applicable to just about every situation. So the future frontiers event is for, you know, visionaries, entrepreneurs, innovators who want to create social change that is not through activism. It's through, we call it criticized by creating. It's about getting out there and doing something. If you see a problem, solve it through entrepreneurial means, solve it through innovative means, or even artistic means. The artists out there are going to, I believe, rise up just as much as any because we're entering into an era of the experience economy where we can create value to each other for each other by virtue of our experiences. So that, that festival is really a celebration of the people of people who create value in the world instead of criticizing. So it's, it's an apolitical event, if you like, and it, and it celebrates entrepreneurship and innovation. And likewise for social evolution, I, I distinguish myself from colleagues and what you might call the space of human freedom more broadly, who are into the three P's politics, policy and punditry. I love those guys. I think it's wonderful. And I myself have been a punnet, pundit for many years. But the punditry I engage in is more about creating value for people instead of, instead of agitating through political means. Political means is really, it's kind of a galactic tug of war between parties who never serve anyone anyway. They just, it's a, it's a, I think of politics and enlarge measure is a big spectacle. That's not to say I don't have some political stances on particular views, but it is rather to say that the entrepreneurs and the innovators are the ones out there making real social change and the activists and people holding holding placards are just along for the ride. So I know you've said a lot about voting and, and how is your vote doesn't matter. And I know that some people might be triggered by that. But let's be honest, like a lot of people think they're, their duty to America is to go to the polls every, every four years. And I think you really much lean into something deeper than that. So I want to, I want your thoughts on that. I want to give kind of the overview of what I, in my research of what your book is all about. And then you go through the seven breakdowns. And I would love to get a good idea of all seven and, and really get a good takeaway. Sure. Yeah. Well, first on voting. I mean, I, I would compare it statistically to crying your tear drop in the air. And then you're trying your tear drop in the ocean and expecting the tide to turn. Yeah. That's really how much your vote, your particular vote counts. And of course, anyone can say, well, it's, we don't, this is not something that we do alone. It's not, but we, it's the only way that we seem to kind of register our preferences. And then you have a two party system. It's sort of like if you woke up in the morning and picked up, picked up your device, right. And we all have one now. And, and, and then you held up that device and, and you looked and you opened it up and there were two apps, the red app and the blue app. And that was your choice set every single day. That's not really a choice in any appreciable way. And in fact, the apps don't work very well. And neither of them is really looking, looking out for your interest to, to beat the metaphor to death. So it's not just that the statistical probability of your vote affecting the outcome is a problematic idea. It's also that once the parties get into power with all the law rolling with all the special interest politics with all of the, you know, we've got to, you know, mute the aspirations of the other side play ball with this team for a little while. So, because that's what's going to happen, the passionations of politics mean you don't ever get your choices. Even though you get someone in office, who seems to more closely reflect your preferences or your conceptions of the good. It's not politics is, is more of a game of obscuring what actually happens, which is making sausage and doing deals that are almost never to the benefit of the people but to the benefit of the certain constituency groups or special interests or whatever. And these are people who, as you like to talk about, don't really create all that much value. Yeah, so without getting super political on mine, you can, I want you to not hold back, share your views. I just have a big belief that government doesn't do a ton right? I mean, I think these last couple of years, you take a look and say like, why do we want government to do more for us? I look at all the money that's being printed. I think our debts over $28 trillion in accounting and the unfunded liabilities are make that number look small. And you look at just all the social things that we're focused on, and by all means, not all of them are bad, but I feel like we're focused on all the wrong things. And I think the media very much makes it that way, where we focus on what the media or what government wants us to focus on, and we're missing the big point. And I'm just curious, is that what you're writing about? Of like, where this collapse is not necessarily going to be what the media's three talking points are, it's going to be something deeper. And so with that, I would love for you to give the thesis. I know your last breakdown is talking about debt. And that's, it's funny because when I think of just what's going to happen to America, I just go right to our debt and say like, this trend is not a great trend. If I was, if I was coaching someone financially and saw their financial situation, I'd be like, there's some red flags here. And yeah, we just keep on printing money. Well, let's start with debt. Let's start with that. Even though it appears in terms of setting up the breakdowns, there's a lot of reasons. If listeners read the book, they'll see why I put it last. But I alluded to it in the introduction in any case, because it's just, it's really the linchpin is debt spending by government. There is a, you might call it an unholy alliance between the Federal Reserve Bank on the one hand and the Federal Government on the other. They're supposed to be independent entities, but one appoints the other. And so the rank and file of the central bank is beholden to the appointer. That's one thing. But another thing is in order to be able to keep the tremendous, in fact, nearly unprecedented federal levels of debt from triggering some sort of sovereign crisis, sovereign debt crisis. You know, the Federal Reserve can't really do anything but inflate the currency. And that means that everyone's purchasing power, including the poorest among us, is going down and down and down. And there's no doubt with all of these trillion, it's as if they're like trillion dollars this, trillion dollars that. Oh, global pandemic, we have to do a couple of, they spent more on supposedly pandemic preparedness and helping people recover from the pandemic. Then they did in the Iraq and Afghan wars over 20 years combined. That level of debt spending is just outrageous. And we're getting to a point where we don't even know, we're getting into a territory that we've never seen before. Only Japan, I think, has success, well, I wouldn't call it successful because Japan had the lost decade. And Japan's debt to GDP right now is also scary. And they're one of our biggest allies and trading partners. So that we've come under this idea that debt spending doesn't matter. But one day, you know, the Federal Reserve is going to run out of tricks to paper over this false reality that we're living in. This giant burning credit card that the government is using to try to solve every problem under the sun. And that's really what these breakdowns represent is. And I can go through them systematically if you like. But the really the overall idea is, we start to become dependent and beholden on Washington, DC in New York. And these are the two in collusion with one another, the banking system and the government. And when we do that, we don't know how to depend on ourselves in our communities and in a peer-to-peer relationship. I call it decentralization. You've probably heard the term decentralization or federalism. But this centralization of power and finance in these areas, this concentration, causes us to forget that we are able together to solve problems collectively without the intercession of this great big third party. And in fact, one of the breakdowns I point to in the book is the breakdown of our communities and civil society. We've become so inert to the fact of the welfare state, for example, that we've forgotten how to actually help people, at least many of us have. It doesn't even occur to us that you could just directly help people, that this is some sort of something that we have to outsource to distant capitals. And so so many of these political debates is between which sort of, which group of people is going to control this course of apparatus of the state. And by what centralized mechanism you're going to quote to help the poor do whatever problem you purport to solve, when there's so many interesting ways to do that ourselves. You know, it is interesting. You've mentioned in your writing and in your interviews that we care way more about like big politics, the president. And we a lot of times don't even know who's locally running our towns and cities. And it's interesting because I don't know who's running my towns and cities. And you don't look at, if you go on news, you're not looking at that. And yet that could also be a big distraction. And we're not even focused on the things that will actually make a change in our lives. Right. I mean, these are the people who are running your kids' schools or not effectively. These are the people who are building your roads effectively or not. These are the people who are taking care of all the things in your community around you. You don't know their name, much less who to vote for and why. And you're focusing on this distant spectacle. And the more the media apparatus, and this is an evolutionary phenomenon that's very hard to get out of. It's almost like you want to grab people by the lapel and say, wake up. This is a giant distraction. This is a distant spectacle over which you have no power. Go local immediately, start working local, start using your entrepreneurial savvy and acumen locally to change the world. Maybe some of your listeners like Jordan Peterson, for example. And they beat him up day after day about this clean your room metaphor. But the clean your room metaphor means start with you, start with your own personal sovereignty and get your poop together. Yeah. Then you can move out to your family. And you have responsibilities to your family, get that house in order, and then move outward in your concentric circles from there. Don't shoot because of the media apparatus to agitating for change at the national level because then you're just crying your teardrop in the ocean and you're playing into the spectacle. Now, it's not to say we should be apolitical. It's just to say that we should start turning our entrepreneurial lenses not only on what's around us and problems we can solve, but the cleverest and most exciting entrepreneurs among us can start to make big changes at the national level through what I call subversive innovation. And we can talk about that later if you like. Okay, so I want to get the prediction because obviously I'm going to be the click baity person that goes for the end of America. What is if you're like Caleb, I don't want to overstate this, but this is what I think is going to happen in the future. I don't know if you have time frames, but when you write a book called After Collapse, that's making you, I'm making the assumption that the end of America means some bad things are going to happen. And so we can get all idealistic by saying, yes, clean your room, change yourself, your family, I love all that. But what happens in the midst of everything around you's fallen apart, that could highly affect you. And so what is your big prediction? And then let's go into really the seven. And I know you've already delved into a part of that, but then let's go into the seven breakdowns as it relates to that. Well, there's so many great embedded questions in what you just said. So let me try to take them and break them down a little bit before we go into those breakdowns. I don't, this is not a book about being a Doomsday Prepper. Okay, but I think it is worth thinking about that in the effort to clean your room. And I'm not trying to scare people because I never in a million years thought of myself as Doomsday Prepper. But if you can imagine what we were talking about with debt, a day when the Federal Reserve runs out of resources to mop up the problems of the federal government, okay? And that's really what we're seeing here. We would have to either, and it's not even clear that some of the, you know, the World Bank IMF and all these other groups would have the resources to put together a rescue package for us because our debt is so colossal. Our economy, our false economy, our credit card economy is so big. Imagine an inflation on the order of 25%, 50%. So all of the goods and service we buy double in price within a small stretch of time. What would you do in that circumstance? Because you're right, you don't have much control over that. The forces that are impaling us in this direction, they don't wanna talk about anything, but trying to get people into some sort of, you know, racialized culture warfare, which is one of the chapters of breakdown I talk about is the lack of civil, civility and civil discourse. These kinds of distractions and these modes of breaking us down culturally will distract us when the day comes, when that seventh breakdown happens, which is a financial collapse. Whatever that looks like, you have to prepare for it. We all have to prepare for it. And by preparing for it, I do kind of mean prepper stuff, like make sure you have food on hand, make sure you have, you know, some people want to buy gold, some people wanna buy cryptocurrencies, whatever it is, your head, your personal hedges and your financial hedge against these kinds of antics. The system itself is not going to be able to sustain this level of spending and this level of ignoring the real systemic problems we're in right now. And that's a scary thought for me, because every time the bell rings and we have this, we have all of these inflated assets and the S&P 500 and the bells ringing and everybody's clapping their hands because it seems like it's a never ending supply of joy in our 401Ks. Those are denominated in dollars, those are the ones those are denominated in dollars, those could collapse tomorrow too. We can't count on any of that really. So what are the mechanisms through which we can survive and then get to the after collapse scenario, which is the optimistic part of things? Now, to turn to your question about the way we're breaking down and don't forget in the process of this and anticipation of this, we have to begin to create the parallel institutions that will be driven by entrepreneurs and innovators. What's gonna be waiting for us after collapse, if collapse happens? Maybe it won't, maybe we'll get lucky. I don't know how you can have 118 plus percent of GDP debt and not run into a sovereign debt crisis sometime in the future, but let's say we don't. We still need to have, we still are breaking down on so many other vectors like the way we talk to each other, the way we think of each other as people, the way that we have racialized and reintroduced this neo-segregationist agenda through wokeism and all of that, excuse my mouth. All of these things are tearing at the fabric of society. So it's not all about money, it's also about who we are as a people. We are getting away from the admonition of people like Martin Luther King Jr. who said to judge people by the content of their character. Now we're being asked to fall into the trap of understanding everything that is white as being some sort of weird, original sin that is the only way you can, the only way you can to get away from that original sin of whiteness is to defer to robin deangelo's anti-racist creeds, screeds, I'm ranting now, forgive me, but these are the kinds of ways that the republic is tearing apart. And I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. It's part of me is going, it's hard to think of America because someone that traveled, I wouldn't say quite a bit, but loved to travel, I couldn't wait to get back to the United States. I love this country. And yet, so it's kind of hard to imagine if I'm being honest, the idea of this collapsing and what the world would look at look like, but you look at all the signs. I mean, we're not headed in a great direction. I don't think anyone on either side would be like, yeah, we've really good about where the direction of America is going. So my question is time frame, or do you refrain from saying, hey, this could happen tomorrow this next year, or this could happen like 20 years from now. Again, this is where people get written off because it's like, oh, Max predicted that we were going to be in a collapse and he was wrong. I don't think you are. I think you're just doing your research and saying, this is going to happen, but you have a time frame that you're like, I wouldn't be shocked if it happened here. I wouldn't be shocked if it happened in the next 10 years, to be honest. But I don't know. And that's the thing about complex systems. In the book, I talk about a group of folks who you might call Bayesian's. Okay, they use Bayesian thinking. And it's a way of analyzing based on limited information and making predictions. Bayesian's are very good at making the best kinds of predictions. Philip Tetlock calls them foxes as opposed to hedgehogs. They evaluate and they think in terms of probabilities, like percentages and stuff like that. And you have to do that with complex systems. But the complex system on the scale of the United States economy and its society and the interplay between society and economy is so difficult. I'm okay with just not having a date certain and saying, just look out. The things we're doing are unhealthy, unhealthy for complex systems that are dependent on good rules, good rules being the rule of law and some sort of rational basic understanding of the economy and finance. You can't just, there's no magical, there's this theory of economics now that are, they're whispering in the ears of power right now called, called modern monetary theory. I call it magic monetary theory because they honestly believe that at the end of the day, debt spending that's been really doesn't matter. Or it's really hard to, for the, when a currency is denominated, when you're talking about your country is being denominated in the currency that you hold, that it's easy just to have debt spending. And if you relativize that to other currencies, the dollar can look pretty good. I think that's deeply problematic for the very common sense reasons you named earlier, which is if you advise someone personally on their personal finances, you would never see this. And I don't think that there's a universe in which we can think of money as a non-scarish good and have it be infinitely divisible and not see some sort of another phenomenon, whether that's inflated asset prices in the S&P 500 or housing or some other inflated asset or inflated currency itself. And we are starting to see inflation appear. If we get to hyperinflation, there'll be very, very difficult to control. Do you see a world where before this collapse happens that the American currency falls to another currency? Yes and no. So let me explain myself. I am a big advocate of cryptocurrencies, okay? And I think cryptocurrencies are very early in their development. Any system, any monetary system is a system and it depends for its continued existence on what we would call and this is fancy language, I'll try to break it down. What we call network effects. And network effects are really like how many people are using it, how many people depend on it. And they, so the dollar is kind of an old school way of organizing money. It's, it's, it depends on a central banking institution that is the banker of last resort. It's an inflationary regime in the sense that the value of your dollar over the years goes down and down and down by, you know, a couple, couple percentage points a year. And so we always talk about adjusting for inflation and we always have to adjust in one direction because since the dollar regime was started in the central banking regime in 1913, the dollar has lost 96% of its value. To give you an idea that just in a single person's long lifetime, the dollar has lost its value. So if we think about our own lifetimes, we know the dollar is going to lose value. And when the know, we know the mechanisms behind why that's happening. And it can, that process can accelerate given the antics of the federal government in saying, oh, we just hit the gas. So cryptocurrencies are waive saying, okay, at least this is not a def, you can have stable coins, which have a stable value over time. But you can also have something like Bitcoin that has a deflationary effect. And deflationary sounds paradoxical, but that just means its value goes up over time. It's purchasing power goes up. Now, if your debt isn't denominated in that, that can be problematic because over time, your debt balloons. So you want to be careful about incurring debt when you hold a deflationary currency. That being said, cryptocurrencies are a wonderful hedge against those antics at the federal level. Okay, lots here. Let's go into the seven breakdowns. And your first one is our social economic models are faulty. Yeah. I'll do them in tidy ways. And this is the really challenging for me, because I wrote a 500 page book. So, but this is going to be challenging for me. I want to see if I can do it. Okay, so you challenge me. All right, the seven breakdowns, and you just got to remind me of them as they come. Okay. So first, the breakdown of our models and metaphors. This is basically to say society's not a machine, but we talk about it as if it is, especially the macroeconomists like Paul Krugman. They talk about it as if it were a machine. That, you know, like there's a bunch of dudes at mission control who can control this machine because they understand all the causal mechanisms in it. But the economy's not like a machine at all. It's like an ecosystem. And you can't plan an or design an ecosystem. You might say only God can do that. And I haven't seen any gods on Earth. Okay, not in Washington, not New York, nowhere. All right, nor are there angels in government. So they're neither gods nor angels in government. And let's stop trying to plan an ecosystem. Okay. Second is the breakdown of hierarchy, if I recall. Yeah. And this is a really kind of, this one takes some time. But the idea is that hierarchies have its limits. And those limits are based on who are the knowledge and capabilities of sitting at people sitting at the top of a hierarchy. At the, and for national government to try to, to try to bring about any kind of pro-social result for a 350 million people, you're going to start to see the breakdown of that hierarchy in its ability to do anything well. Just look at the, just look at the complete disaster that has been the pandemic roll out of the vaccines. And that's the obvious bureaucratic snafu. And that's the nature of the beast. It's not like they could have done any better. I mean, the president would do well to just call, the president or whomever is in control of operation warp speed or whatever the Biden's calling it now, would just done better to call up, call up the best CEOs in the private sector and say, can you guys just handle this for us? And you'll have a halo effect if you do. We would have had everybody wanted to be vaccinated done by February. Never mind about getting stuff through the FDA that's, that's life saving. I mean, good gracious. Just the invisible graveyard of death based on the hierarchy trying to manage that process. It's, it's terrible. Hierarchies are limited to the knowledge and incentives of the person on top. Yeah. And that's their problem. Okay. I tried going to a DMV for, for like a driver's license and then start asking yourself, wow, should we try to do everything? Because the DMV sometimes can take hours to get your driver's license. And I don't want to be like this over, simplify everything. But I'm like, you really want these people like doing everything in our life? Yeah, it's, we're all familiar with bureaucratic hierarchies and the DMVization of everything is a terrible idea. So that's really what that chapter's about. What's, let's see, after that, what's the next one? Our belief in the founding ideals is fading. Yes, yes. Okay, don't throw tomatoes, audience, I would call that the founding ideas, I mean liberalism. But I don't mean liberalism in the sense of like, Rush Limbaugh, these, these darn liberals. What I mean is liberalism is our belief in human freedom, which is what the founders tried to do with this great experiment is that they believed in human freedom to varying degrees. And the constitution was a grand compromise to see how much freedom we could preserve. Okay, it was not a perfect document, but it's the best thing we have. And it becomes less and less perfect and ideal in its commitment to human freedom by the day. As we start to call, you know, buy into the idea of a living constitution or let's interpret this so far out of proportions that we can do anything we want as elected officials. This is terribly problematic because in so doing, you start to put everything back into that bureaucratic matrix that we already said is bad. Next one, let's see, what's the next one? After the art found here. After the art found here. Our dying. Yes, yes. There's a breakdown of mutual aid in society. In a lot of places in this country, we still know how to take care of our neighbors. It is the phenomenon of a barn raising. Back in the old days and the, you know, sort of age of agriculture in America, you knew that if your neighbor's barn burned down for some reason that everybody around would show up and help you if that happened. And so you better go help when that neighbor's barn burned down. That is the sense of mutual aid that at one point in our history in the United States and in the UK and Canada and the Angelfone countries went a fully, a one third of people belong to some mutual aid society. That was our welfare. That's how we depended on each other. But we depended on each other in such a way that we could use the local knowledge. I know you as my neighbor, I know whether or not I should give you money to help you through this time or if you're gonna drink it away. The welfare state is this distant thing, this machine that has no eyes that just executes an algorithm and drops money from the sky on people with very little, there's no mutual aid component to it at all. So our charity systems and our mutual aid systems were crowded out by that in the 20th century. And now we're living in the aftermath of that. While everyone blames capitalism and selfishness for that problem. And I think that's a terrible way of looking at things when you become completely dependent on this distant state apparatus and you don't even know what mutual aid is, you don't even know what fraternity means. You think that somehow Greek week on college campus know a fraternity is a brotherhood or a sorority is a sisterhood. It's a people coming together for common goals and common needs. And we've lost that in America to a very great degree. It's interesting because some of our clients do meta-share for health insurance. And it's this concept of people being together. And you actually, and some of these programs, you get to know who your money's going to, you direct that money. And I think some of these organizations have figured out a way for them to make that payment more efficient. But it really makes it come alive. It's like, wow, this premium is not just going to this insurance company. I don't know what they're doing. It's actually going to the collective of helping out my fellow man. And so that is actually very interesting. And it's something that I 100% agree with. I think a lot of times we get disconnected. And if you ask someone what a fraternal means, I don't think majority of people would be able to actually give you a good answer to that. The next part you talk about is the collective intelligence is fractured. And this is something that you've talked earlier about that you said you would circle back to. Sure, sure. Yeah, think about this very old idea. I don't know if anybody remembers it, but it's called truth. OK? And collective intelligence is really a way for a whole lot of people, all of whom are individuals, but that together as individuals, we can get at least a piece of the truth, right? And the more pieces we have of this truth, the more we can sort of develop a better, bigger, mosaic of reality, or a better, bigger rendering of reality. We are limited in our ability to know the truth, because we're fallible human beings, and we have lots of, we have perspectives. But we are living in such an age where everything is mediated by screens. And everything, it's so cheap, it's so inexpensive to give your opinions, say, online. And not have to have any direct costs to being wrong. So all of a sudden, there are these just markets and crappy opinions about everything, and there's no skin in the game. And it's rated more on how many likes you get, and how, and so it's like you're the capitalistic society of trying to supply into man. You've got some people that don't know what is going on. And yet they get the attention. And so you even have the supply into man, but it's not based on truth. It's based on who's most popular. Yes, it's a giant popularity contest of virtue signaling, or even trolling. I mean, the reactionaries are just as bad. You can look at the kind of the ridiculous claims of the one side on the equation, the people with, you know, like the Molotov cocktails and the woke left. And then on the other side, you have these, these, you know, troglidites with teaky torches who were saying just as awful things who started off as trolls and ended up being the very thing that we all despise. And now they're at war with each other and trying to pull them into their matrix. And I say a pox on both of their houses. What we need to get back to is seeking truth, taking the time instead of just believing things on its face because someone you like post it, or because someone gets lots of likes and this and that, or has a lot of Twitter followers to take the time to be a little more circumspect and actually try to find a piece of truth in combination with others who are tracking the truth in the same way so you can form the basis of collective intelligence. And that's really weaving shared reality. And you may have just answered that. I feel like I could push back on truth because what is truth? I mean, you and I may be looking at the same thing or I might get my truth from something like the Bible whereas you say, well, I don't, I get my truth from some other thing. And so it is, that is a tough, and it's not something that we're gonna solve in this interview because there's people that have gone to war and had discussions and debates and countries and churches were split apart over this concept of truth. I think it's interesting. And I think there's multiple areas that we could look at, but I 100% agree that we have to figure out a way in society to like no one's believing the media anymore. And I say statements like that, obviously it's not true. There's many people that still do. But I feel like the people are just way more skeptical and I think we're seeing some of the biases on both sides. And by the way, I might look at one side of the aisle and I know that they're biased, but that's still like I still see the world through that lens versus my other friends that choose to look at other news. And so it is interesting and I know that time is not gonna permit us to go down this, but anything that you wanna say to that? Just that look, I think that religious pluralism and toleration in this country is also becoming a lost value. And I understand that there is at least in my mind, and I think the religious listeners out there or viewers out there would agree that there is a, that there's kind of a place for faith and there's a place for having skin in the game for understanding the world around us with our eyes. And if you believe in God, you know that God equips you with those eyes and ears for that very reason. So the place of faith is if you just used faith to know God, that is one thing and that is an aspect of religious experience that people ought to explore. But don't confuse, to me, the problem is the break, the part of the breakdown of commitment to our faith communities in this country has been this, they've taken away all of the patterns of religion and placed it on the state. That's right. So that the government is seen as omniscient and omnipotent. And the original sins are for not deferring to power. It's getting to be scary. The new religion is the state. 100%. And in my view, the people who are out there who are scary are not religious people, but the people who have made the course of apparatus of the state their religion. Whole other conversation, I know that we're going to be friends just in how you think. I could open up a can of worms, but I agree. I believe a lot of people are worth your things, something. And there's, but it just, it looks different in 2021. The six breakdowns, you say the civil discourse is deteriorating. Yes, yes. And that's just that on, that was starting to get to it with this sort of roar between people with Molotov cocktails and teaky torches, the victimologists and the reactionaries, the woke and the, and the troglodytes or the racists or whatever. You know, the reaction, the, you know, Newton's law is, is one of Newton's, I forget what it is, but it's, each, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah, okay. Comes from Isaac Newton. And I would say that this is a metaphor for our, for our culture war that we're having today. You know, I'm, I'm saying, why do you have to impose your conception of the good on everybody else? This is what good old pluralism is all about. This is what, this is what our founding fathers wanted us to do was to live in peace according to our own conceptions of the good, whether that's religious, faithful, ways of living, whatever. And we, there's space enough in this country for that level of pluralism, but the culture war sort of, and partisan politics sort of pits us against each other in this acrimonious power struggle over, over the gears of, of government. Yeah. And that is a false choice in my mind. So the breakdown of our, of our civil discourse, I believe is really, really originates to a very great degree in some of this critical theory and postmodern thinking that has been, it's been sort of, there's great, there is great postmodernist thinking out there. I'm a philosopher. I love some of it. I like some of it. I appreciate some of it. But what we've gotten is a distillation of it that completely jettison's reason, jettison's intellect and evidence and just makes claims. Yeah. So it's not empirical at all. It's like, okay, you just assume something bad happens in the media, it gets magnified. Yeah. But you look at any of the statistics surrounding it and you just blow this up, for example, and all of a sudden we have disproportional riots in the streets where nobody's actually looking to data on any of this stuff to see if there's, if that's a proportional response. Yeah. And these are the kind of things that are tearing our country apart and that break down of our discourse and our means of talking to each other in a reasonable and rational way by appeal to, I don't know, facts or at least statistics that have a lot of weight. You know, this is going away and the more this goes away, the more we're just at war with our words and that's going to soon turn to other more troubling means. Yeah. So here's the question and then the seventh breakdown is what we already talked about in the government debt printing of money and it just kind of, and would you say that that would be the domino that like that kind of not over? Okay. So here's all these other things are part of the picture and any of any two or three of them breaking down could hasten the rest, but no doubt about it. The financial one is the big one. So the first six don't seem to have an economic or money type, but it does because we're social beings. But I guess my question is, if one through six were good, but we were just spending money like it's going out of style, would we still see this or is it that perfect storm of all seven? Does that make, does that question make sense? Yes, yes, it does. I think yes. If everything else were good, that seventh one would be really hard on us. Okay. But I think that winter is coming. Yeah. That winter is coming and we're just going to have to be resilient, more resilient human beings. We're going to have to look to each other again to our neighbors, to our faith-based groups, to our mutual aid organizations. We're going to have to start forming them again. And we're going to have to start living on less. Yeah. Like they did in the, you know. Not going to win any office on that message. We got to. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not seeking office because I'm not willing to tell people what they want to hear with you. Yeah, with you. So let me ask, let me say I have this magical wand. And I say, Max, you're the president, which may not hold a lot of water with you based on your beliefs. But let's say you have a lot of power and you love this country. Yeah. Besides taking yourself out of power, what, what things, if, if the Biden administration or someone that can move the needle for a country, what needs to happen? Yeah, I mean, that question's framing is almost the opposite of the way I'm trying to get people to think. But if I could do it in a stroke just for giggles, it would be, first, it would be at the very least, restore the lost constitution and force the ninth and tenth amendments. The federal, the 95% of everything the federal government does is illegal and unconstitutional, according to the ninth and tenth amendment. All you have to do is read it. And by the way, our mutual friend Jason Rink would agree. He's, he's one I've talked about this many times with. The second, so restoring the lost constitution, particularly amendments nine and 10 and being absolutely respectful of those amendments and in the restoration of the rule of law, which gives the states, municipalities, and local governments the power to experiment with different systems. And we would be much more like 50 different countries in this regard. And if some country, like an Illinois or a California or New York wanted to spend itself into oblivion, it would be their oblivion and not anyone else's. The second thing I would do is liberalize every aspect of the socio-economy I could up to and including cryptocurrencies and digital ledgers, which the US federal government and the SEC in particular, in fact, there's about five different agencies are trying to control that because that's competition. We don't need a monopoly on money. We do not need a monopoly on money because that's what's driving us towards collapse. The third thing I would do is make it possible to self-determine in a new jurisdiction, whether that jurisdiction is in the cloud through digital connection with other people and other physical jurisdictions, or just carving off a new jurisdiction through some consensus process. So that if people don't want to be annexed by their crazy, profligate city, or they no longer want to be if I live in Minnesota and I'd rather belong to South Dakota, then there's some constitutional mechanism for secession. And coming on your show with a Southern accent and talking about secession, we'll automatically drive the wokies crazy because they're gonna think I'm some kind of racist who wants to bring back slavery. And that is not true at all because I think there are deal breakers in this world and the deal breaker is what should animate all of our systems is some sort of principle of non-harm or a hymnsa or the golden rule is that we don't harm each other no matter what and all law should be based on that. So that is the big one. If you ask me the question what I would do tomorrow, I would make the hymnsa, the hymnsa is the in the Vedic traditions, the principle of non-violence and thought word indeed. I would make non-violence, non-engury, the basis of all law. Man, you have some interesting thoughts and I appreciate you taking time to just articulating this. I wanna just ask the people that listen to my show are watching on YouTube support Max. We need this country will collapse if we are not open to different ideas. So whether you think Max should walk on water and run, which he's not, because he could do more by writing and coming on shows. Or if you're like, I just don't agree with what he's talking about. I encourage you to lean into things that you agree or disagree with. I think there's a lot to learn as relates to wealth and lean into like what does it even mean to live a wealthy life? So a couple things. Number one, best way to get the book is on Amazon or is there a preferred place for them to get the book? Yeah, it's really the best game in talent right now is Amazon. Okay, so get the book. As a fellow author it means the world if people take time and actually read it and leave a review, a thoughtful review. Yes. And so please do that. Is there, I want to end on a positive note? Not that this was like, by the way, I think I have a lot of down-earth listeners that are going, yep, like we know this is going to happen. So what do we do? And I guess what is the, what is the call the action that you would say if you're listening to this, if you think I'm on to something, what do you do other than stack up on gold guns and gardens? Gold guns, gardens and cryptocurrency. That's one thing you can do. The second thing I think that we can all do is get to know our neighbors again. Yeah. I mean, take the time to go over and walk over next door even if they have purple hair or worship a cow. Whatever that is, is to go over and be available. Yep. So, is there anything else you want to touch on on that? Yeah, yeah. And then I would say to the entrepreneurs out there. And I think a lot of your listeners are entrepreneurs is usured special gifts in the ways they don't want you to. And by the way, I mean authorities who claim to have power and expertise over you. And I don't mean that literally. I just mean to heck with them. And use your entrepreneurial zeal and talents and acumen on things that will change the world if not right around you in a big way. Yeah. I mean, we talk a lot about value creation. You being the number one derivative to make that a reality. And I just think again, regardless of what happens, the person that's able to create value for their other neighbors are going to be better off in the person that might be sitting on money that now is worth nothing and has no ability to create value. And so I appreciate that. Last question, this is your last day on Earth. You're with the people that you love the most. What would you say in this last conversation? You can't even give them any of your writings, your books. But you can give them one conversation. What would that conversation be to the people that you love the most? I'd say it would be a summary of another chapter of the book, Believe It Or Not, which is, which is I have a section called the spheres, okay? And I'm good as, I'm getting upset because I'm thinking about my baby daughter. You can't use a grown man crying on your show. Okay, start with a non-violence. Never initiate violence against any other human being that's innocent. Second, operate with integrity. Be honest with yourself and others and live up to your promises. Third, be compassionate. There are people around you. I don't know why I'm getting so upset. Be compassionate. Be a good steward. Think of everything you own and everything that you control in your life as being ephemeral, temporary. Going to go to somebody else and teach those people to leave it better than they found it. So be a good steward. So it's not just about property, it's about stewardship. And finally pluralism. There's always going to be somebody different from you in this world. It's good to find the common ground and it's good to love them anyway. Max, I appreciate you showing up and being authentic and real because I think sometimes when people can write people like you off, see what your political beliefs are and saying, oh, these people could care less about others. They're just all about their ideals. By the way, your list was very much on how you treat your fellow neighbor love on people. And I just appreciate that about you and I appreciate that you are leaning in to things that are not popular. And you're probably not invited on certain shows. Your life looks a little bit different because of your research, but I appreciate you taking the time and doing the work and being willing to share it with people like myself that haven't taken the time. And that's what's so beautiful about this time that we live in is where experts can get their information through podcasts and books and videos. And so from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And my hope is that you in that, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, that you're gaining some insight. And number one, you can't control Washington, DC, but you can control your own life. And my encouragement would be instead of looking at other people and all the problems they have, look at yourself, look at your family, look at your community, and how can you make that better? Because regardless of what happens, it's those people that are gonna make the biggest change. Max, thank you so much. And I look forward to future conversations and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much, listen to the Better World Podcast. It would mean the world to me if you could hit subscribe, leave a review, and share this with the people that you know and love.