Resisting Enshittification w/ Michael from Systems of Human Performance: Ep. 563

0:00To realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us. To face each threat and all. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. Right now at Subway, try the 499 Sub of the day. Get a different 6-inch sub every day for just 499 each. Like Meatball Marinera on Mondays, tuna on Tuesdays, and the BMT on Saturdays. It's a different 6-inch sub every day. Pack with protein and your choice of chopped veggies for just 499 each. Or make it a meal with chips and a drink for just $2 more. But hurry, it's only for a limited time and only its subway. At participating restaurants, prices higher in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, and on third party delivery. Add on taxes and fees for delivery additional. Quite a lot recently, you have heard me talk about technology from the perspective.

1:05Quite a lot recently, you have heard me talk about technology from the perspective of science fiction. It serves as a useful lens, but I think it's important to step back and talk about the topic in and of itself. What is the direction of technological progress? Is this something we can change, something we can alter, and what does a future in which we've aligned industry technological progress with us as a people look like? It's why I'm excited for today's episode with Michael from Systems of Human Performance. An interesting episode, definitely more theoretical, but I think you guys are going to get a lot out of it. Of course, these episodes are sponsored, Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching Fox and Suns Coffee. Check both those guys out. Tell them I sent you, helps keep the lights on here.

2:08And if you want access to the episodes early and at free, you can do so on Patreon, Substack, or Gumroad. Thank you. Alright, Michael, welcome to the J Burn Show. How you doing, man? Good pleasure to be here. Yeah, man. So I'll be honest, I fairly rarely respond to anonymous guest pitches because most of the time it is a lunatic. And look, you know, you haven't run the experiment yet, but you connected with me on Substack. I was really fascinated by what you had to say, kind of your background, so to speak. And so, you know what, I figured this would make a great episode. But before we get into it, man, who are you and what do you do? Yeah, my name is Michael. I may be a lunatic, so we'll evaluate that at the end of the episode. Essentially, I'm a consultant. I'm an engineer by training. And I write on Substack. That's how we got connected about matters of technology, some things a little bit more technical called systems thinking and human air.

3:11But essentially, I'm really passionate about the intersection of technology and how that interacts with civilization and society. So I thought we could talk a little bit about that and the implications it might have for the things we care about. Yeah, a couple of things, big picture. I just wanted to features of the 20th century I find interesting is this sort of gradual decay of techno optimism. Look, I completely understand it why people of a certain era are techno optimists. You know, I think of people in my family who were born before the Russians are fell and died in the era of chat GPT. That's a crazy run and you could understand why someone who grew up under those circumstances would assume that things were just going to keep getting kind of arithmetically better year after year. But really on both sides of the broad political spectrum, that attitude is decayed.

4:13I hate talking about AI because it's so over discussed. But if you look at sentiment surrounding that, on both the left and the right there is a strong strain of techno pessimism, lot of it is, and whatever you want to say. And so I think as a sort of changing variable over time, it's an interesting issue if you see what I'm getting at. Yeah, I think you've hit something there. I would definitely agree that the tide is shifting away from techno optimism to something more what's the word tentative. We don't know exactly where it's going to go. There's a book I was reading. It's called like changing attitudes and US technology. It was just like an overview of different authors from the late or early 19th century through the late 19th century into the 20th century. And it follows different thought patterns that we see in America. So you've got like a Henry thorough, you know, talking about, hey, this is Eden regained.

5:17You know, we're going to use the steam engine. We're going to create the new paradise on earth. You've got Henry Adams, I think talking about the dynamo and the virgin, right? You know, creating like technology is now this religious experience that you can have. And you have different ideas of how technology is shaping society. Certainly after World War One, there was like a terrible on we about like what have we created? What have God brought? We see that similarly in at the end of World War Two and then it's becoming like, you know, suburbia, everything's great. But then finally again, you've got the environmental crisis. You've got questions about nuclear security and these sorts of things. So I would definitely say we've been in the era of techno optimism for the last 20 years, 30 years, maybe even before Fukuyama. But certainly I think the tide is turning. Yeah, there are a couple of things there. One, I think the transition from, shall we say mechanical to information technology needs to be addressed because those sort of our different things.

6:24Obviously, there's a change to social formation when you move from animal based modes of transportation, right? A horse, maybe something as high tech as a river to, you know, the internal combustion engine in the steam locomotive. That is a, that is a major change. And you hear a certain strain of, again, I don't want to use the term, Ludite as a slur, but a certain form of Ludite who regrets that who says things like, you know, public transportation really harmed a lot of local communities because all of a sudden the village is no longer a constrained social unit. It is a bedroom community for a economic engine, right, for a city fair enough. But there is sort of an order of magnitude shift when we move from primarily, let's just say physical or mechanical technology to data systems, right? It is a different sort of thing, even if it's under the kind of broad pen number of technology. And that I think is interesting as well. You know, you look at something like the internet. And I think of this, and I can't exactly remember which early kind of pioneer computer science, it was an Australian guy talking about his dream for the internet.

7:44And it was this dream of, you know, a fully connected world where people could talk to each other from anywhere. And look, you know, I realize that's what you and I are doing now. Some degree that came true. But nonetheless, right, what that became very quickly was if not entirely negative for people, but people realized, like, wait a minute, this is a in some way destructive force. Both on the broad right and the broad left, you have concerns about, you know, radicalization, Russian bots, and we can obviously dispute the specifics of that. But it seems as if for a lot of people, that became very sinister. And when you combine that with economic upheaval, right, moving from a productive or production to sort of a service-based economy, it is understandable why people are feeling unsettled and insecure about that. So I'm curious, do you see a difference in quality when we're talking about advances in mechanical versus sort of information technology?

8:47Yeah, I think I might disagree with you and say it's a difference of degree and not of kind. So, you know, the mechanical technologies, essentially what you're getting at when you're talking about the steam locomotive and you're talking about roads that are taking us away from our rootedness, that's really like an infrastructional change to society. And I certainly think we see the same thing with technology. I will grant you the fact that technology allows for much faster change and the digital economies that are allowed within technology we're all well aware with. We all don't buy CDs anymore. You know, we all stream or download music. So I definitely see that there's merit to the potentiality for change within the digital sphere. And I certainly think you're correct at getting at a lot of these things come with such promise yet they're quickly turned against themselves.

9:48The internet broadly, as you mentioned, is one of them. Social media is another one. We're a little bit different in age. I had a Myspace before I had a Facebook and I remember how you navigated social media albeit in one still on one site as you would go to people's friend pages. And what was really revolutionary about Facebook is they created the timeline, right? They created one page that was curated by the algorithm. And that algorithm has really bastardized what social media was and it's created this control network that is actually kind of like cannibalized itself, right? We don't really enjoy social media, but we're all on it is kind of this continuation bias. Yeah, and that's an interesting thing in and of itself. You know, the ability for thought control through algorithm. And I don't mean that in this sort of like tinfo hat sense.

10:49But this has been recognized for a long time. I'm sure you remember the experiments Facebook ran and I believe it was the 2012 election where it was very, very simple. They just sent push notifications to people in swing counties to say get out and vote. Not even a partisan message. Apparently, right? But based off of their picture of both where this person was and their demographic details, it pushed the election for Obama in 2012. Now, was that the Cambridge Analytica? Was that with that scandal? Or is that something different? Cambridge Analytica. I think if I'm not mistaken, I think that was related to the 2016 election, pushing the other direction. But point is, regardless, right? That is a very, very nation version of that sort of incentive based political technology. It's a very vague way of saying that. But you look at that and you're like, OK, well, they say it was an accident. They say they didn't mean to do anything by it. Draw you will from that. Be like, OK, well, if Facebook was doing that, what, you know, over a decade ago,

12:03well, let's assume a roughly normal rate of sophistication over time. And look, like that mechanism, social media, is no longer really a machine for you to connect with high school friends anymore. It is a system that can do that, but functionally is a machine of, well, narrative control in a way. And you don't even have to look at that in the kind of maximally conspiratorial lens. But I think that what we often see with not even technology, but just systems in general is there is a breakdown between the sort of written description, what's on the tin, and what the system actually does, per se. Yeah. And I'm speaking hypothetically here, but at a certain point, you wonder if you get into this problem of internal dissonance, where the stated reason you are using something and the actual experience of it are so different that produces some sort of dissatisfaction. Now clearly that did satisfaction is not enough to actually change anyone's actions, because functionally everyone is addicted to social media.

13:08But do you see what I'm getting at there, that sort of contradiction between stated and real purpose, I guess? Yeah. And I actually think you might have convinced me of your previous claim of difference in kind between mechanical technology and digital technology. One of the things that you mention about what's on the can versus what's behind it, with like mechanical technology or factories, industry, one in 2.0, is you can kind of pull it apart. You can dissect it. You can see what's under the hood, so to speak. And with digital technologies, it's ossified, right? It's a black box. It's inscrutable and you can't get into it, and you really have to trust what the people are telling you is actually in the product. And I certainly think that's true, I think with AI, and even like there's all kinds of AI models that we can deduce and can understand how AI has reached these conclusions. But a lot of the ones that we're using, they're actually creating black boxes for us.

14:12And just another fun little conspiracy theory that I have about using data to create their own directionality of a product. I believe Jeopardy is doing this. Right around the time Alex Trebek died, is you saw a number of long-term champions coming on for much longer runs than you would usually see in the past. And if you know anything about Jeopardy, you have to go through very extensive tests beforehand. And it's very possible. And again, if you say, well, they're doing this 10 years ago, so just assume the smallest level of sophistication. You have that data, you can identify who you want to be the champion against the people who you do not want to be the champion. And you can, based off of their performance of their tests, you could easily make those questions the ones that they see when they actually compete on the show.

15:13So again, a little conspiratorial, not tinfoil hat. Right? Definitely something within the realm and possibilities of what we know the technology we have. Yeah, a couple of things there. Maybe if we're talking about this change in sentiment, that move towards the kind of black box model is a big part of it. Because look, I'm by no means a mechanical engineer, but even something is sophisticated as a jet engine or a space rocket is, okay, maybe not on the specific level, but broadly comprehensible to me. Sure. Like I could draw you a picture of a jet engine and it by no means is a technical diagram, but like, you know, I got the vague idea of it. Yeah, exactly. And that's actually when I think about, you know, whether it is the algorithm, we'll use that the kind of vague kind of social sorting mechanism. That is not only a black box from inception, but is it constantly evolving black box? And as someone who, you know, in sort of a monkeys, Paul Curse has ended up on social media quite a bit.

16:19It's very interesting for me to see other people sort of scrambling to figure out the algorithm change. For instance, it'll be like, oh, you know, this month we think it's XYZ. But that's at best informed guess sort of a crude experiment. And so many of these systems are two most people completely and totally incomprehensible. Like sure, I know the broadest possible, you know, series of factual information about, you know, how social media website, something like that works. But for a lot of people, it's again, functions on a similar level to something like magic, where it does this thing. I can't tell you why. And some of that, I think, is simply due to sort of complexity, the fact that more and more of digital technology is moving towards a sort of model of, I guess you would say, sort of a closed box model.

17:19So for instance, right, obviously you see this in like the automotive or agricultural space, more and more of those systems are designed to be fixed by a sort of select class of in-house employees. But I mean, I think about this even, you know, talking to, you know, one of my friends, his wife is an engineer. She was handed an intern. And, you know, there's maybe five years difference between them. But this intern was unable to search for files on a computer. Because, you know, that information was largely superfluous in an era when most of, most people's interaction with digital technology is basically like a Fisher price. Black box, I can't get under the hood anyway. I have three buttons, you know, we're kind of simple UI to engage with it. And look, my point in this is not to, you know, decry the state of the youth, not at all. But to say, that is a meaningful difference or a meaningful change from the kind of mechanical technology of yesterday, which even if it was complicated, was on a certain level intuitive and understandable by an average to slightly above average human name.

18:29Yeah, indeed. You know, I think you hit kind of on two key notes that I care deeply about. The first one is like repairability. And the way technology is going, and indeed, this is one of the reasons I care so deeply about this intersection of technology and society is we need to make sure that we're shaping technology in the way that we want to see the future look for our children. We started our conversation by talking about infrastructure, right? I can't imagine a world without vehicles or railroads or anything like that. Will my children be able to imagine a world where they can repair anything, where they can look under the hood and do an oil change or diagnose what the issue is, or will that be the work of some select class, as you said. The other thing that you mentioned is kind of this algorithm and people really responding to the changes of the algorithm, right?

19:31They're dancing, it's kind of like they're the monkey and there's the music box grinder, right? Where they're dancing around, they're trying to figure out what the incentive is this month. They're not trying to interact and maybe a present company excluded, right? Maybe you're playing the game as well. But you're certainly creating this dead internet, right? We've heard a dead internet theory where people are essentially interacting with the algorithm and less about people. Yeah, I mean that brings up a sort of an interesting point in and of itself because you're sure I have my my Luddite sympathies. But I consider the political project to basically be the art of the possible. And so it is an interesting question. Is it possible to shape, to actively shape the direction which technology develops?

20:31Because I mean I think it is, but that is a premise that must be examined because oftentimes particularly from certain industries, particularly from kind of like certain chapters of I would say kind of 90s neolips. This idea that technology is simply this kind of like zeitgeist esports that goes in the way it will and you cannot resist it sort of this external force. So is that possible? Is it possible to direct or sort of shepherd the way technology manifests or are we simply sort of at the mercy of whatever the next smartest guy in the country figures out? Yeah, I mean, yes, I agree with you. I think there's a lot that we can do to shape the way technology goes. A lot of that means being entrepreneurial or being in those seats where you're designing and directing the direction of some of these things. I'll give you just a couple of principles that come to mind when I think of of things that I would like to see applied to how we design and deliver technology.

21:39First one human centered design. This is actually in Vogue. This is something that a lot of people in tech care deeply about. There's a firm called I do which is based in Silicon Valley. Very well respected in the human centered design community. There's a guy he wrote designed for every day and things his name is done Norman and he his whole thing is we need to be designing for humans and not just the apparatus not don't worry just about functionality of does the thing work. But look also at the usability and I think the conversations we've had about being able to diagnose and being able to repair things falls well within that category. I would also say pursuing productivity in our designs over anything else superfluous. So I have a bit of a hobby horse. I hate touch screens in vehicles because I think they I mean they force you to take your hands away for your eyes away from the wheels.

22:43They're very difficult to navigate while driving and if you think about that it's very kind of superfluous that that's even part of our design where you know six buttons and a radio dial was just fine for most people. I recently saw that you can get a Bluetooth toaster for like $390. Have you ever wanted a Bluetooth toaster. I don't think so right like I rather have a $5 toaster. But what you see is a lot of these designs they're not shaping productivity we're not investing to reduce costs and create economies of scale and deliver value in what I would consider like the good society. We're just making things either overly precise or more complex or more integrated. That's a big theme with like industry 4.0 and like wearables. We don't you know these are design considerations that are really not oriented at some what I would say is the good society. They're just kind of increasing costs smart TVs is another example of this.

23:47You can't buy a regular TV I've got a Roku I've got a Roku USB I can plug that in and connect to the internet but I can't buy a new TV that's dumb. And then lastly just as a principle I think we can find ways to use technology for self limitation and employee technology not just limiting technology but also using it as a use case to limit maybe our voices and our bad habits. Yeah I mean there's several things there one we understand that it actually has been possible to limit certain social technologies so access to credit is a great example that was something that it is essentially a technology right it is not something human sort of come pre loaded with a complicated credit system. But up until fairly recently we understood that that was a social technology that needed limitations placed on it. There's a world of difference between hey you know my business is growing I need alone to buy a second shop space and hey you're 18 the guy from capital one showed up on campus and is handing out credit cards as actually happened I believe in the late 80s.

25:03But point is right okay that's an example that can be done now towards your point on human centered design when I went to school I hung out with a bunch of architects and designers and it was always interesting talking to those guys because with a few notable exceptions they're all massive narcissists sorry you know I'm right and one of the things that was really interesting is this move away from the human scale so you see this in how homes were created right you have things like the open floor plan which I guess is sort of out of fashion but functionally that's actually not a very nice way for people to live having a series of sequent or segmented rooms is convenient especially if you have a family because you know the kids can go over here and be loud whatever or you see this in office buildings right you want the things in a building to be perfect. To be person-sized to be accessible to a person yes whereas if you look at particularly a lot of kind of high profile sort of prestige architecture in places like New York and Los Angeles it is a design statement right it is a visually striking thing but it's actually a very poor container for humans now you mentioned cars I will 100% get off on a rabbit hole if we go too far down that but you see the exact same thing right there are certain things that older designers were very happy.

26:32Very good at you know cockpit design is a great one. Weird enough sob was really really good at this because they were a lot of artistic. Exactly yeah they did fighter planes and it turns out if the consequences are you and a 50 million dollar missile if it's technically a jet airplane go into the ground at mock three if you can't reach a switch you get pretty good at figuring out ergonomics and okay you know I can complain about how cool things used to be but nonetheless you can see a shift for you. And some of this has to do with the change in consumer base the age of consumers actual breakdown of who is spending money but nonetheless we're seeing a change in design philosophy it's easy to see in kind of physical products you interact with that is also scalable across certainly software someone who has a burning hatred for Microsoft but anything else you sort of interact with. One other thing I'm curious to get your thoughts on it seems like a number of actually a great number of industries but particularly technology there's been a shift towards quantity over quality of employees you see this obviously at the kind of big tech companies Microsoft and Google where they're using these large suites of.

27:52Underpaid foreign labor to accomplish what a smaller more highly compensated group of talented Americans could do you think that that has some that plays into this a little bit because one of the things that I have noticed is that a great number of the software packages I interact with seem like they were designed by giant teams of low IQ people and I know I don't want to be too punitive to know the software engineers of the buy or whatever. Is that just you know my sort of punitive thoughts towards India or do you think that there is a meaningful change when we change when we shift who makes our technology. Yeah I will say everything you touched on there from the size and scale of architecture to maybe the labor force behind the latest release I think is really getting at kind of this like mono optimization where we're optimizing towards one thing it might be the aesthetic appeal of a design building rather than the functional use of it.

29:03Certainly you want to go down the car rabbit hole I think the greatest car ever is the Chevrolet al Camino because it's not mono optimized right it's a sedan and a pick up it's great it's very purposeful but then in terms of what you say about the workforce I think that's very true and I think what they're doing and it's it's not sexy and it's not conspiratorial but it's just simply the fact that they're optimizing for cost right they can get away with creating an inferior product there. You're king of the castle you know who Microsoft is and you don't have any you don't have any adversaries they're the incumbent and they're in charge and when you have a cash cow you don't innovate on it you don't try to make it better than what it has to be you just try to take all the cost out of it and break in the dough and I think that's what you're seeing I I have a couple kids and you can go look at Disney books they're doing the same thing the stuff that's that's really good.

30:03You know for the kids in Disney books it's garbage it's it's not well written it's probably written by somebody in China or somebody in the far east. Disney Disney still going to sell those books right they've got the IP for days they don't need to hire American labor they don't need to hit to hire poets and writers from America because they're cash a their cash cow is driving the sale of that book far more than the product itself I think you see something very similar with Microsoft as well. I mean a great example of this is something like the Ferrari luce right there electric crossover which you understandably when it came out people were dunking on it because it does look like a CRV with Down syndrome and it's also sort of an embarrassing thing for Ferrari to be making. But ultimately it doesn't matter there IP is so strong the name recognition is so strong and also there are not to get to into it but certain sort of rent seeking behaviors in allotment right if you want the thing you actually want what you have to buy you have to buy a luce first to get on the list and I think that.

31:16I mean that really is the kind of perfect example of that sort of like IP taking over sort of the simulacra taking over you know from the actual thing in and of itself and this is something that I think the. Right wing I mean that in the biggest possible sense really struggles with where look as a social technology property rights and free trader pretty great but the problem is once you scale it up to a global scale you get radically different incentives then if you are a national or sort of state level. So that's the kind of integration right and so really what you're seeing is that all of these companies all of these teams well they aren't really owned by any of them there's sort of these like a meba like constructions where sure there's a chairman of the board but functionally he'll be gone in three years anyway and he is to use your phrase mono optimizing for the profitability during the amount of time he is there.

32:23But later and find something similar and so I understand why. Right wingers particularly from a certain era are very cautious about attempts to limit or curtail business I get that I understand it. And yet if that system goes unchecked you get these sort of monopoly or monopsies trading on intellectual property. Really in no direction other than kind of short term rent seeking and this makes very sick industries like industries that are not producing innovative quality products and there are limited options for everyday American consumer. And if that weren't bad enough in pursuing that sort of mono variable these corporations will to be honest harm the long term prospects of the nation state right for instance by failing to train up employee citizens of that state and so to be honest I think it is imperative to limit or correct those systems and there is an American tradition of doing so.

33:41You have figures like the Roza vote who again is not a communist you know he's not a guy who wanted to make being rich illegal or you know wanted communal ownership of factories but did recognize that there is a that free markets and trade are not an unlimited good there's a point at which that no longer serves sort of the interest of the people so to speak Michael. Yes yes this is probably the most inscrutable challenge I think we have and as you mentioned there's people of a certain age who are reticent to curtail this kind of investment I think you can point to the cold war at that right we won the what the arms race right why did we beat the Soviet Union was it because we were American and it was our nationality knows our economy right like that's the narrative is we beat we crushed the Soviet Union because we. We have a better economy and we have free trade so I think technology and business and everything we're discussing is like it's a question of are we just an arms race if we hear it all the time with AI well if we don't do this China is going to do this and then China is going to win the great AI race you could hear the same thing in the 1960s about landing on the moon right is like it's it's this race where we have to constantly be on the cutting edge and order.

35:03To maintain a hegemon and I think that's something is like to your point there needs to be something to curtail that to regulate that I don't know what it is is it something like nuclear non proliferation you know it's worked before it's currently working so I think that's a possibility that we have some kind of technological agreements across the border but to your point I think these companies are certainly going to continue to hollow out the nation states they're working in now so long as capital and the social technology credit is fungible what is it matter to me whether I'm getting my capital from America or from Thailand right if I'm just going to hollow out a nation state and then move on to the next place that can offer me investment and money and opportunity. So what right and I think that is the most inscrutable challenge we have when facing technology as it relates to nation building.

36:10I think one of the most aggravating features of American conservatives is that they love to treat sort of the status quo anti as if it is a perfectly balanced and fair system so you'll oftentimes get the objection that oh you know any sort of trust busting or any sort of attempt to. You know limit individual corporations will always result in favorites being played and I would say that's true human is a corrupt this is what we do. But that also assumes we haven't been doing that the whole time it's sort of a feature of literally anything you do sure there's no way to get out of that and obviously you and I would both hope to live in the least corrupt system possible. But functionally again it's just a feature of of human politics and so when you look at you know that sort of relationship you described. The question is one of incentives right how do you align the incentives of a corporation with that of the nation right how do you define that because again you know it is entirely possible for industry to work to the benefit of the aggregate American people we have seen that happen before.

37:27Henry Ford you know say what you will have to semi-mythical figure on average he made life better for Americans there's this sort of a before and after Henry and okay you know what maybe he's that you know once in ten generations crazy roll of the dice you know where you're waiting around for a man like that but I look to the wealthy incapable man men of a different era the so called robber barons and I'm like okay well. Compared to what we've got now those guys seem to care about the country more you know there's a reason you can go around and see you know Carnegie libraries in every town in America. Like okay sure were they ruthless bastards were they you know mean to certain people I'm sure they were but guess what so are our rich people so are our corporations if we're going to have them and I think that on balance we should allow you know industry to grow to that scale. Well there must be some sort of alignment you've been able to do it before and I don't think that makes me some sort of you know insane socialist especially when we consider that the growth into you know digital technology as we were talking about is affecting very fundamental parts of the human organism obviously you know you have the change to sort of brain patterns you know how people are developing physically but also social formation and you know I was talking to a

38:51good friend of mine who's a little bit older in his early 50s and he was talking about how confusing it was to watch his children go about finding you know husbands and what right something that on a biological level has it changed and yeah functionally due to technology has massively changed inside of a generation in a half right and so you look at that you look okay well if the stakes were simply economics which I'm not trying to minimize that we would put that at a certain level of urgency but if the stakes are the ability of the human species to replicate itself through time. You see mainly the stakes there are quite high. Yeah I see what you mean and one of the things like what can the state do if we look at the historic predecessors that we have I think there's a number of tools at our disposal one of them and again these are not popular with the mainstream right but I think more and more if you get further over you see that a lot of these tools are very very

40:02practical in their use for what we want to get to okay so sorry Michael I just want to interject because I've been thinking about this a lot and then I will let you finish point. There's an interesting political realignment going on where we are truly in an era of populism on both the left and the right the New York Times actually just wrote an article about this where they were talking about the broad positions most Americans agree on and look as with any broad survey these are massively contradictory and usually impossible right so it's you know things like you expect like most people with the vast majority of people think you should have to present a photo ID to vote but also things like you know capping drug prices capping childcare prices you know limiting you know usery laws and you could look at that and say oh therefore you know 70% of Americans socialists.

41:02No that's the part of that's not what it means but what it does mean is that there is a potential for a large economic realignment and just in the past 24 hours Kevin Deanna interviewed Tom Woods and in his monologue at the beginning I highly recommend the full show you guys should listen to it. He makes he draws this comparison to Huey law and what he basically says is you can as long as you are rewarding your supporters as long as people feel as if they're getting something out of the system they don't really care what you're doing. He you know again pointed to Huey long pointed to Zorhan Mamdani who I personally don't like I don't think he should be in this country but he's a very good politician his approval rating is through the roof it is higher than it was when he came into office and why is that is it because he has a great budget no long term he is making bad decisions on a balance sheet but he understands that fundamental political process of rewarding your friend.

42:11So you look at that and you look at what we're seeing nationally there's an immense amount immense amount of hey to be made in economic populace again there are good ways and bad ways to do that there are ways that you look like Mamdani that will bear bad fruit but functionally that is an open anyway sorry Michael I interrupt you. I think that's a very salient point and it's it's it arises because of the frustration we have with kind of this laissez faire economics will just you know tear down our borders and get rid of tariffs and will all become more prosperous and perhaps that's true but it doesn't seem like it's panning out that way so I think a lot of that populate populism is motivated by this on we of how economy is going to be. So I think that's a very important point to be aware of is that the economy is going to be working.

43:11Just for me to conclude that point of what tools do we have available to us what we've seen historically regulation right the question you posed earlier is how can we make organizations businesses more aligned with the common good of the nation and regulation of course we don't let's say we don't want to overly pollute our rivers and lakes and again I'm sounding more like a lot of the people who are in the community are going to be in the community. And again I'm sounding more like a shit live here but that again I'm using the tools that are made available and as we all know that side of the aisle is far more capable politically of using these tools and we are so forgive me if my if my examples fall on that side of the aisle but we see lots of regulation used as a way to couple the actions of a business with what we perceive to be the common good of the nation. We also could talk about tax reform are the activities of an organization congruent with the taxes that are imposed upon them should Google pay the same amount of roadstacks road tax as Amazon I don't think so I think Amazon should probably be paving all of our roads with the amount that those trucks ride on them right so we could see that a realignment between the tax code and actual behaviors of an organization might might join the tax code.

44:30Might join us closer to go closer together and couple their behaviors with the common good of the nation and then I would say lastly and again not a popular figure on the right but um FDR man that that guy you want to talk about common good in in the nation you want to talk about public works you want to talk about dams and electrifying our nation he has it in hand right so it's not as though I agree with everything he did certainly he's changed the shape and. Look of our nation but he also has something he's got the tools in the bag that we could employ it with in in the form of public works that would really allow organizations to invest in the nation rather than just go and create it as an economic zone to deploy capital. Yeah I mean a couple things there look when we're talking about politics you have to on one level step back from the moral prison I get a certain point it said it's an evolutionary game and he was good at the game so regardless of you like the ends he was directed to and look you know I think FDR's being Kentucky fried and hell but nonetheless he was a very very good politician in the same way that Stalin or Lenin were.

45:49And you're full if you turn your nose up the lessons they teach you because they were bad guys are you don't like it. I think that. Really that sort of premise of. Of sort of unchecked technological progress right the idea that technology cannot be shaped in a direction it simply goes where it will. Is a convenient things for guys who created technologies with obvious negative externalities to say you know like oh I I just followed the mutes you know it's not my fault right right but I think that there is a. Desire to retreat or step back from certain technologies right you see people talking obviously about the omnis you know obviously the sort of homestead or thing is sort of falling out of fashion but it's still very much there. And I'm curious if you think that is possible on a large scale maybe the answer you know if people have read their little is no scale is the problem you know we need to return the kind of smaller levels of work.

46:58Be that as it may but there is an element to sort of the tank problem here where if you sit out the game it's sort of like the last samurai you're going to get stomped by the guys with guns and of course you know that. Could be interpreted as the if we don't do this China will which I think is sort of dishonest for instance look at Chinese patterns of education training and immigration I'll leave that there. But nonetheless do you see that tension i'm sort of getting at Michael. Yeah and I'll be honest you through me because when you said amish I thought you meant the amish not the amish. My favorite thing about that joke is that every once in a while I will get someone who it completely goes over their head and they're like why are you talking about this Pennsylvania Dutch community like any political sway and I'm like all right stick around for a little bit sorry Michael yeah yeah but in this case you were yeah so. You know it reminds me there's a book as well kind of talking about the cultural.

48:00The issues that we have and it's called the Benedict option right and essentially this idea of like well we need to go we need to remove ourselves from society and just kind of wait this out it's kind of like the accelerationist move is like hey this is all going to burn itself to the ground. Let's just wait our turn let's build these these communities. These alternative communities which I don't necessarily think is a bad idea but I like you say I think you've got to be in the game I think what you really need is like the pioneering spirit is you need to have the principles that we've talked about the principles. The US bows on your show to really build up the tools and the future technologies and shape and you don't you don't have to be a programmer you don't have to be an entrepreneur but to find yourself in these positions where you can direct and shape technology. I do think like public works and infrastructure is a huge opportunity where if the government anybody in the government who was inspired to redirect the trajectory of technology they could deploy that sort of thing and we'd be far better for it.

49:15Yeah and I think that really there are several ideas that need to die and this sort of broad conservative idea that power or coercion is inherently immoral needs to be done away with because obviously our enemies don't think that way and if you look at the trajectory of the nation it is a series of pauses interrupted by disaster as social change. And also look you know this sort of these coercive tools are not in and of themselves evil or good it's the direction they are employed and so you know you can look at you know previous trust busting examples and say well that wasn't good okay the question of course becomes well why was it good or was it you know evil because the inherent concept is some will say that but I think that's a very foolish perspective especially the way I'm going to say that. Absolutely when we consider the fact that like it or not we are in a democratic system and if the broad right in America absolutely refuses to address these very real economic social and technological concerns someone else will and it is very likely that the person who will is an evil socialist right.

50:34Someone you know like mum Donnie and so I think that there is a desire to and and Sam Francis remarked on this but there is a desire to be that sort of beautiful loser to say no no no it would be illegitimate for me to ever do anything at all and so by extension I will allow myself to be swept into the dustbin of history. Look we're talking about long off and on and people will slur or smear him as a socialist though they'll smear him as a redistributionist but here's the thing guys he was active during the Great Depression it was sort of in the air and I think that this desire to separate ideology and politics from the context in which they exist right to pretend as if there are these sort of and there are principles that are bigger than the immediate political. But things like you know your 1980s view on the trade and manufacturing are not on that level those are changeable and just as it would have been completely and totally insane to give you know Chicago economics to America in the 18th century it is no longer fit for service in the 21st century and I think a big part of that is changing attitudes towards technology a recognition of how these systems have been.

51:55And I think it is ultimately to be honest kind of generational we're seeing a sort of paradigm shift with attitudes towards any of these things but there's one more thing I want to get at Michael this idea of and you know forget me for being a little bit profane but right this idea of inshitification which is that seemingly everything particularly everything digital is sort of all at once getting worse. And so I'm curious why do you think that is do you think it's simply the kind of rent seeking behavior the transition from you know a free credit environment or so many of these companies didn't really have to turn a profit because they were getting cheap investing money and they were willing to kind of push off that date of at some point will make money like what do you think is going on there. Yeah I think a lot of things are behind that one is the business model of software as a service so before you would have to you know buy software and install it and you know next year you'd have to re up it we're now they essentially what they're doing is their capturing audiences their capturing customers and it becomes incredibly difficult to remove yourself so if I am in a business and I have worked as a company.

53:18It's my client it's very or is my human resources platform whatever how I pay people it's very very difficult for me to change over to 80 p right is I can't change softwares because it's going to cost me a whole integration it's not just that I go and download a new software next year it's that I have to have you know multi million dollar multi year integration to move myself from one platform to another. The these captured customers or you can say we have transfer costs allows me to start with a really great product and then over time I'm not care so much because I've grown my product base and now again I'm not so worried about growth maybe I have my sales team but I'm much more about profitability and cutting operating expenses I think netflix is the same thing right they weren't profitable for years but they were growing and they had premium content. They were not all over their platform now there's nothing out there that I really want to watch and it's because they're they're shifting their business model from growth to trying to profit and they're trying to do that by creating their own content and not licensing out all of the same syndicated programs that they had in the past.

54:33So I think you see that is really just the tired and boring pressures of trying to turn a business from growth mindset into something that's profitable I think just in the era right we kind of had like this digital cliff in 2000 right where everything came on. So we've kind of run that lifespan we've kind of run 20 years maybe 2010 with social media but we're all certain to flip the switch and it's all kind of flipping at the same time and I think that's what you're seeing industry wide at least in the digital atmosphere. Yeah it's an interesting point I mean I think that that that environment is a huge part of it I mean I think that there is kind of another element as well which is that certain certain things are at the current level of technology effectively solved like realistically the technology behind a browser we figured it out.

55:37Yeah you know there's not really that much more to be done with it but one in order to if you were an employee justify your job to justify kind of a continuous number of updates right the new version of the thing you have to buy features have to be added in. So there is a definite feature creep and at a certain level of complexity it does become impossible to know an entire system right we get back to that kind of committee design process where it's like yes sure you know you yourself probably could. From a box of parts build an entire 1944 you know it's realistically not that complicated whereas you know a new 2027 4 to 150 is an order of magnitude more difficult to do. So and seemingly I again I say this is someone who really knows nothing about digital technology whatsoever it seems as if there's something similar happening to a lot of different software a lot of different systems if we can use that general term and obviously you know as teams grow people want to keep their job I think that that is an element to it but also I think that what we've seen is a massive consolidation of the internet.

56:54There are graphs that will show this right tracking the most viewed websites saying over time people are spending more and more time on fewer and fewer websites and that I guess is that process of consolidation that leads us to this sort of monopoly monopsie kind of I guess you could say formation do you think that that plays a part as well. Yeah well I think you're your first part of saying hey we're kind of building these things just to build them and we're kind of making them more complex just to make them more complex I don't think that's just in the digital environment I think you see that a lot in manufacturing space we already built the thing we can already build it at the rate of 30,000 second 30,000 a minute you know whatever that number is we've achieved our economies of scale but I've still got to employ capital I still have to turn a profit I still have to do it. I still have to add more value to the thing so what am I going to do well I'm going to either make a product that's more complicated and sell it at a higher value like we see with a Bluetooth toaster or I'm going to try to do something and make it more precise right so I'm going to use higher and CNC machines you know all these different technologies to create a more precise and product right you're M16 versus your AK never mind.

58:17What actually works better in the field right I've got a more sophisticated more precision made product and that's what I'm going to sell for more so I think you're you're seeing that trend not just in the digital sphere. I do think you're running into as you mentioned the the compression of the internet and of course the compression is mainly generated by algorithms even as we look at if I go I don't type with with Google with keywords like I used to I type with AI and now AI is the creating even a darker black box where now I used to know how to rank higher in Google based on the keywords right I'd have to get the back links and I'd have to you know do all these things to get the top seed well now it's just totally dictated by whatever Google wants to put up there and that is far far more precarious and I definitely see your point in saying hey this is this is all consolidating around kind of a centralized node versus the more exciting even scary disparate world of the internet 15 years ago.

59:26Michael this has been a really fascinating discussion as far as a bucket pole man you did great this was awesome but in the meantime where can people find you. Yeah thank you for having me on and I will say the best place to find me is on sub stack I write about systems and systems thinking human air and essentially all a lot of the topics that we've discussed here in the past hour so that sub stack is systems of human performance and the URL I'm going to trust J will put in the show notes for you. Well sure thing man it's great to speak with you to everyone at home keep your head up I can't last forever good night.

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