FTP014: The Exponential Revolution: Are You Prepared?

Euvie: Hello…

Mike: You almost said bitches.

Euvie: Yeah, I did.

Mike: Euvie… Welcome, this is episode number 14. We’re going to talk about revolutions today.

Euvie: [00:00:30] Yes, it’s something that has been brooding in our minds for a while now.

Mike: Yeah. We read Russel Brand’s new book called Revolution. Excellent book, highly recommended. I definitely recommend the audio book version, because he narrates it himself.

Euvie: It’s hilarious.

Mike: He’s obviously quite the performer if you’re familiar with what he does. Yeah, it was an interesting book, got us thinking a lot. Quite a bit of it is analysing the current state of our social and political systems [00:01:00] and trying to figure out ways to revolutionize how we are organizing as societies. Euvie and I have been doing the digital nomad thing and travelling around and pretty much existing pretty far outside of the systems as they are. Because of that perspective, I think looking back into the way the system is, it’s really obvious and really easy to see how fucked up the whole system is.

I don’t mean that from a very general [00:01:30] point, like it sounds, “Fuck the system, fuck the police,” all of that kind of stuff. It’s very clear how we’re being manipulated in the media by corporations, by the government to believe that this quote unquote democratic system works, that we can vote in people who are going to solve all the problems and it’s just a matter of voting the right person between the two people. Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about today [00:02:00] is alternative systems, some of the problems we’re going to face if we can collectively organize and bring on a new system.

Euvie: Of course, Russel Brand is by far not the first person to talk about this. I think he just put it in a really hilarious and accessible way that everyone can understand. The Venus Project has talked about this and I’m a fan of it myself. Zeitgeist Movement, as well, have talked about this, how the current systems [00:02:30] are not working and we need to organize ourselves in different systems that are more ecologically sound and don’t manipulate people and don’t use cheap labour in the third world that results in suffering and death to bring cheaply made goods with built in planned obsolescence.

Mike: Yeah, exactly. Our generation has always been pretty inspired by revolutionary movies like the Matrix, or Fight Club, or Hunger Games, [00:03:00] things that take a look at our current paradigm and turn it on its head. Those movies interest me and there’s definitely a common theme between them where we’re all controlled by a system and we’re all trying to fight to find out who we are as people and who we are as a society. Those movies have really been a long-term theme in my mind. Now that I’ve read Russel Brand’s book, it feels like I’ve got more of a handle on what those themes really mean, and that it’s not just a fiction [00:03:30] it’s actually possible for us to create these alternative systems, that government systems only exist to govern us, to tell us what to do, to give us rules, to gives us an infrastructure.

But because of the internet, because of new technologies that we’ve developed now, we could actually have an alternative system that’s not centralized, that’s not managed by a handful of people in high places. As the internet has shown, we can collectivize very easily, we can get together, we can organize, we can change the way [00:04:00] things are done. Why don’t we talk about the status quo first? What is the paradigm we’re existing in right now and why is it not serving us anymore?

Euvie: I think we’re living in an illusion of democracy, in the west at least, but also in Asian countries and developing countries it’s the same. People go and vote and there’s these political parties competing against each other. One of them wins and sometimes the other one wins but, in the end, [00:04:30] nothing really changes in a major way. That’s because those political parties don’t actually control anything, it’s the corporations, the people with the money that have vested interest in keeping things a certain way that control things. They do the lobbying to make sure those things happen.

Mike: 100 percent of the presidents that have won, the political parties that have won in the United States, have been the parties with the most money. 100 percent. It’s never happened that someone who had less money won [00:05:00] their presidency. Isn’t that interesting? When you look at how pervasive corporate lobbying is, it just makes you realize, at that point, that your vote is worth nothing compared to a corporation. I watched Jeremy Paxton just tear into Russel Brand in an interview, saying, “If you want change, you have to vote,” and Russel Brand’s saying, “No, there’s no way I’m voting. It’s irrelevant, it doesn’t do anything. It perpetuates the illusion that [00:05:30] you can make a difference in the current system, which is completely false.”

Euvie: Yeah, it’s just meant to pacify people, make them feel like they have a choice.

Mike: It’s the illusion of choice, yeah. Part of the problem that we’re facing in this system is that the system has domesticated us, it’s made us dependent on the system. We don’t go hunting, we don’t go foraging, we don’t farm. If we need anything, we go to the store and we buy it.

Euvie: Yeah.

Mike: That’s a big problem, because if those systems all of a sudden disappear, we’re helpless [00:06:00] children, not able to fend for ourselves.

Euvie: I’d like to relay my own experience here. I grew up in Soviet Union, then when I was six or seven years old Soviet Union crashed and there was pretty much anarchy for a couple of years. There was no stable government in Russia. The economic system was screwed up and a lot of people had trouble having enough food. There were shortages of everything. You would walk into a store and the shelves [00:06:30] were empty. You could come up to the store clerk and ask them what they had today, and maybe they had bread, or maybe they had something else. Maybe they had two things in the whole store.

My family actually did farming and we grew our own vegetables, fruit, we had pigs and chickens. We were able to have food but most people around us had no idea how to do that. They were jealous of us that we had food. I think, even with the internet, [00:07:00] it takes time to learn those skills. I do think they’re very useful, just knowing what kind of even wild plants you could use for different things. I grew up in the countryside, so I learned those things. People see it as, “Doom and gloom, you’re a doomsday prepper,” or whatever, but I actually think it’s a really useful skill. Or, at least knowledge to have, how to do those things.

Mike: You think it takes time to do that, to learn and get the experience. My attitude, [00:07:30] maybe I’m naïve about this because I’ve never had to do it, I think anything I’ve ever needed to learn, I’ve just been a quick Google search away. Why is this any different?

Euvie: Yeah. I think just from personal experience, I can see that it’s not easy to do it, but I do think that we’re getting a lot of new technologies now that will make it a lot easier for an average person to do it. You don’t have to be a farmer or have had experience for five years to know how to do it. With aeroponics, [00:08:00] for example, I think a lot of it can be automated. I’m very interested in learning more about that myself and to actually know how to set it up, how to set up aeroponic systems, hydroponics, all that stuff.

Mike: Okay. What about the dependency on money? We’re not living in a democracy, we’re living in a corporatocracy, an age where money is the only thing that matters to everybody. A lot of people can’t even imagine what it would be like existing in a society [00:08:30] in a world without money, where we didn’t need to exchange this number for something else.

Euvie: Obviously, the reason why we use money is because we want to be able to quantify the value of something. So far, money is the closest thing we’ve found that could easily quantify anything to make it possible for people to exchange things. I think the problem is not money per say but how we use money and how it is controlled right now. Like you mentioned, it’s not actually based on gold or anything like that anymore. [00:09:00] I can’t remember what the number is but I think something like 99 percent of all money nowadays is digital. It’s not even cash and it’s not based on anything.

Mike: It’s based on debt and the federal reserve is printing money year on year just to keep the economy afloat, so it’s not even really based on anything physical and tangible that can be traded. It’s created out of nothing, it’s created out of more debt. Already, we are under this assumption that this thing is real, it has such real value [00:09:30] and we should be dedicating our entire lives to accumulating this fake money. It’s a big problem. I think to me, it’s not so much creating the external systems that allow us to exist outside of money, it’s actually the psychology and the belief system that we have in our head that is going to be the most difficult thing to transition into a post-revolution culture. How do we stop believing psychologically that money has that intrinsic value?

Euvie: [00:10:00] Yeah, I think that’s the problem exactly, that people believe that money is valuable in itself. Before, money was just a means of exchange. If you wanted to exchange your pound of iron for however many apples that equalled, you needed to find out how much those things were worth, what the exchange rate of iron to apples would be. Money was the middle man that you used. Now, money has value in itself. I think if people [00:10:30] get back to the idea that money is just a means to measure something, to measure tangible things, I think that would help everyone. I think also we might need just a system of money that is not based on debt and all the sketchy shit that banks are doing. I don’t know if Bitcoin is it. I think Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general, I think they’re in their infancy. I do think it’s an interesting system that is decentralized. It’s not [00:11:00] based on Fiat currency or, at least, it shouldn’t be. Right now, it’s still traded.

Mike: It’s kind of tied, yeah. It’s because people trade between the dollar or whatever currency and Bitcoin, that’s the problem. I agree with you and I think the main point that makes the most difference here is Bitcoin and these cryptocurrencies are decentralized, that’s the main thing. No one really has control over it, it’s a community. We’ve all agreed on the value of it. Next point. There’s a lot of things that we have [00:11:30] no control over, like war, or destruction of the environment, or planned obsolescence with products that you buy. The amount of times I have to replace my God damn cables with my computer because Apple makes them to disintegrate. That kind of attitude with planned obsolescence is a huge problem and that’s based on that striving for profit.

It’s hard to imagine a system where that psychopathy doesn’t exist, where the profit doesn’t come first, where people come first, [00:12:00] longevity comes first, environment comes first, and profit is maybe fifth on the list. I wonder how that is possible to transition into, because it requires that everyone takes personal responsibility for where they choose to put their money, what products they choose to buy.

Euvie: Yeah, I think war, planned obsolescence, and destruction of the environment, all those things are symptoms of profiteering, of companies trying to make as much [00:12:30] profit as possible. I have trouble wrapping my head around it, why people would even need that much money.

Mike: Yeah, exactly.

Euvie: I have trouble understanding it.

Mike: Apple makes billions. How come they can’t extend the product lifecycle to a couple years, why does it have to be a single year? It’s very clear what the intentions are of companies like this, you just have to sit back and stare in awe at the psychopathic behaviour and mentality that has to exist in the [00:13:00] people that run these companies to waste so much money – consumer’s money – waste so much material on having these product lifecycles be no longer than a year. How much effort and brilliant minds are being put into the planning of these machines becoming obsolete within a year?

Euvie: And what kind of brainwashing has to go into that, to make these brilliant engineers believe that they’re doing the right thing?

Mike: Yeah, how do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning [00:13:30] and understand that you’ve cost so many people so much money, or that you’ve contributed on a deep level to the destruction of the environment? It’s pretty amazing. Okay, next up. That’s the status quo. What could a post-revolution society look like? What are some of the alternatives that we’re looking at?

Euvie: Some good alternatives have already been proposed. That’s the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project. I think when a lot of people look at those, [00:14:00] it’s hard to imagine how we would transition. For example, the Venus Project is designed by an architect called Jack Fresco and his idea is that we would have a resource-based economy, so all the resources in the world would be distributed equally to everyone around the world.

He’s designed these equal friendly cities that would be built by machines using available resources, [00:14:30] and that essentially most of the jobs would be outsourced and automated to machines and people would just focus on creative pursuits, on science, put a little bit of time out of their day to maintain the machines and maintain the systems. That’s the general idea. I love the idea but I think a lot of people just have trouble understanding how we would go from where we are now to this utopian system, pretty much.

Mike: I feel like one of the bigger obstacles in [00:15:00] people who believe they have to maintain the status quo, they believe this current system is what works, what they’re proposing is the only thing that’s keeping society together. I believe when people are left on their own, they turn into animals.

Euvie: Yeah, I think that’s so funny actually, because we’ve been living very much outside of the system for a few years now. We’re not totally off the grid, of course, we still use money, but we just don’t participate [00:15:30] in a lot of things. We don’t have jobs, we don’t vote.

Mike: We’re not huge consumers of anything really, aside from Apple products. I think the main point I’m getting at is that there are a lot of people that believe that they have to maintain the status quo, because they believe people can’t manage themselves, communities can’t manage themselves. They believe that there always needs to be a figure head or a leader. As we can see [00:16:00] with the internet, it is highly decentralized, people do organize, people do stand up and say, “I will lead this. I will contribute to this project for free.” It’s an amazing way, I think, to run a society. We’ve seen micro-examples of it with people contributing to giant pools of knowledge, like Wikipedia. No one’s getting paid to update posts in Wikipedia, no one’s getting paid to create posts and share things in Reddit.

People are sharing information because they want other people to see that information. It seems so simple [00:16:30] to have a government system run under the same way that we run the rest of internet, like, “Okay, we’ve got to maintain roads, we’ve got to make sure everyone gets food, provide universal healthcare.” Even that, the basics that governments are supposed to do for us, they fail at miserably. Things like this are already not being provided. I think one of the bigger things that we need to transition to is more group participation, more people participating in co-ops [00:17:00] of about 100 to 150 people where you’re responsible for your own community, you’re responsible for the community being fed and sheltered, have access to medical facilities. All of that kind of stuff I think can be managed by small groups of people independent of a centralized governing body.

Euvie: Yeah, I think a lot of us are very much disconnected. We might feel like we’re connected through social networks, but we don’t even know our neighbours, we don’t know the people who live in our communities. [00:17:30] I think that makes it easy for us to not care. It’s funny, we’re still operating out of these meat suits that have evolved over thousands of years and we still have pretty much the same brains that our ancestors did 10,000 years ago. We’re programmed to only care about our extended group. When we see a homeless person on the street and he’s not part of our group, we just don’t care, we don’t feel any empathy. I think living in communities that are more connected [00:18:00] would really help that, if we actually knew our neighbours and we cared about what happened on our street.

Mike: I think it’s easy to imagine a utopian future. It’s easy to see the problems with our current system. The transition’s the real difficulty here.

Euvie: Yeah, it is.

Mike: A lot of people think the transition’s going to look like violence and heads being chopped off, SWAT teams versus giant crowds of people throwing cocktail bombs and all that kind of stuff. How does a transition happen in a peaceful way? [00:18:30] That’s really the big thing, when a centralized governing body has the monopoly on violence. That’s their go to tool for suppressing people, violence. How do we subvert that?

Euvie: Yeah. I think that actually is the perfect reason why we cannot use violence to have a revolution, because the powers to be already control that way more than we can imagine. They have drones and armies. If we use violence, [00:19:00] we can never win this. I think the best way we can do it is just to simply ween ourselves off of the current systems and create our own systems that are decentralized and switch over to those systems.

Mike: Yeah. That’s actually a really good point. New technologies pop up and they make old technologies obsolete. It’s not that they have to fight to gain a foothold in people’s lives, they just have to be better than the other system. I wonder if that would be the exact same for government. I have a feeling it would be. [00:19:30] Yeah, we need our own systems, we need to be separate from the government, we need to be separate from centralized power and depending on corporations to provide everything for us. It’s actually really not that difficult. If people like us are already doing it and are already completely mobile and just detached from any one area – if shit hits the fan in a single area, we just take off and leave.

Euvie: Exactly.

Mike: What enables us to do that? I think the main thing is [00:20:00] having income coming in through the internet, providing value on the internet that we get paid for.

Euvie: Yeah. It’s easier to travel on a Canadian passport than many other passports. In that sense, I guess we’re lucky. If I still had to travel on my Russian passport, it would be a lot more difficult. Peter Diamandis talks about this actually really well, it’s the different aspects that new technology needs to have in order for it to be disruptive. It’s the Eight Ds. [00:20:30] Mike can read it out to you.

Mike: The Eight Ds are deception, disruption, digitization, dematerialization, democratization, decentralization, demonetization, and disintermediation.

Euvie: What that means is that these new technologies can’t rely on a central governing body, they have to be available to everyone – that’s the democratizing. They have to be affordable – demonetizing – or they have to be near zero cost. [00:21:00] Disintermediation, that means that you don’t need an intermediary to access this technology, anyone can access it through the internet.

Mike: Yeah, there’s no middle men.

Euvie: Deceptive, that at first they might seem too crazy or out there, like maybe they won’t take off. For Bitcoin, some people think, “It’s too weird.”

Mike: I think deceptive is about getting the foothold into society before anyone can stop it, it’s deceptively disruptive.

Euvie: Right, yeah. That’s a good way to put it, as well. Disruptive, obviously it means that it puts the current [00:21:30] system on its head. Yeah. This is a really interesting way to look at that. I think that’s exactly what we need for these new technologies. You might think that it’s crazy or too out there or it’s not happening yet, but it’s already happening to a smaller degree. Maybe these technologies don’t have all the Eight Ds, but they have some. Bitcoin is one of them, or cryptocurrencies in general. Air BnB is doing it, Uber is doing it. There’s a new start-up in Europe [00:22:00] that is, essentially, an Air BnB for trading clean energy, like solar and wind. I’ll link to it in the show notes. We need these systems and we just have to switch over to them from the current systems that are controlled by corporations and governments, and essentially ween ourselves off of the old systems. The old systems will suffocate and collapse under their own weight.

Mike: A lot of young people listen to our podcast and they tend to ask us a lot [00:22:30] what should they do. In that post-high-school-graduation period where you have no idea what you want to do and you think, “Might as well go back to school, so which course should I take to start my career?” What advice would you give to somebody with this new paradigm in mind, with a post-revolution culture in mind? If they’re going to learn something, if they’re going to set their direction for the next 10 years of their life, what do you think that focus should be in terms of these Eight Ds?

Euvie: My answer in terms of [00:23:00] school is the same as it has always been – don’t go to university, because it’s a system and it’s trying to funnel you into a certain thing, it’s trying to funnel you into this position where you’re a cog in the wheel. If you actually want to contribute to this world change, then you can’t participate in that system. It might seem scary and you might not know what to do – and, of course, it’s easier to have some professor tell you what to do, but I don’t think that’s the right way if you want to participate in this world change [00:23:30] that’s going to happen whether you do or don’t.

Mike: I think Peter Diamandis puts it really well. He says, “You can have just one singular focus: try and change the lives of a billion people.” Okay, that sounds crazy, but there are ways that you can distribute a piece of software or a product or an idea that can really change the lives of a billion people. All you need to do is look at the current problems we face as a planet and try and dedicate your time to solving [00:24:00] one of those problems. That’s exactly what people like Elon Musk are trying to do. That would be my piece of advice is go after something that will solve world problems, not just the individual problems of small businesses, or the individual problems that you would see in late night infomercials. Don’t invent problems, there are tons of real problems that already exist.

Just look at what we face. Just because they seem too big doesn’t make them impossible, doesn’t make them even [00:24:30] hard necessarily. It just cuts your work out for you. If you get the right people together – and, with the internet, you have access to the right people – all you need to do is organize, get those people together, get their minds on solving the problem. If it’s a matter of creating systems for people to transition into a post-revolution culture, then, okay, what are they going to need? They’re going to need decentralized voting, they’re going to need food, they’re going to need shelter.

Euvie: Decentralized internet, decentralized power.

Mike: Exactly. They need access to information. [00:25:00] Really, that’s the big thing is they need access to information and food. If we can get those two to them, then I think things will really take care of themselves, because other people will be inventing new technologies that will be shared through these systems that you can help provide. Yeah, my piece of advice if you’re a young person just getting out of school and trying to figure out what you want to do and you see the problems that exist in the world but you don’t know how to try and fix them, is to set your sights on a problem that you think you have the ability to start learning about and start tackling, or that you think you could [00:25:30] organize other people who are experts in different fields that could help solve these problems. I think it’s much, much easier than it at first seems. If you dedicate your time and dedicate your life to it, you can actually solve them.

Euvie: Yeah, don’t waste your most fruitful years working for the system that’s going to probably collapse within the next decade anyway – or, at least, I hope.

Mike: Yeah. Okay, then there’s this other thing that even we have faced quite often in the past [00:26:00] is when you’re trying to put food on the table, you’re trying to get shelter, you’re trying to get clothes. Nothing else matters. You can’t even squeeze that mental energy into your brain.

Euvie: It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Mike: Yeah.

Euvie: I was thinking about this the other day actually, how corporations keep you at bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. All the products that are heavily advertised, all of them are food related, shelter related, sex related, [00:26:30] they keep you focused on those bottom needs instead of moving up the ladder and trying to get self-actualized but not even at the top, even halfway through, just getting community and acceptance and love and self-esteem, those things. People don’t even have that, they’re just focused on eating fatty donuts and getting laid.

Mike: Fatty donuts. The national fatty donuts campaign is just a scourge on society. [00:27:00] Okay, the main thing I think that’s the problem we’re facing – that a lot of people are facing – is that it’s difficult to expand your focus when you’re just trying to put food on the table, and that’s what a lot of people are facing right now is just trying to live day to day. How do you get past that? I think it’s a matter of educating yourself, doing whatever you can in the moment to get that food on the table and take care of yourself, but educating yourself. [00:27:30] Spending the extra time. I know it’s tough if you’re depressed or if you’re just trying to make ends meat, it’s tough to find the extra time but I think you have to find it, you have to be able to push, to give yourself that extra couple of hours to learn and learn and learn.

Make yourself self-sufficient. There are ways to do it, there’s tons of people that have been able to take themselves out of the system and provide an income source for themselves, independent of any corporation or job or anything like that. I think that would be the [00:28:00] first step is try and gain some independence from the system.

Euvie: Even just being a freelancer.

Mike: A freelancer, totally.

Euvie: Learn a skill.

Mike: You can make ends meat that way. Actually, part of the reason we are traveling is because it was too difficult to make ends meat while we were still living in an expensive western city. We were like, “Screw it. We know how to make money on the internet. It’s not making ends meat right now but if we move to a south-east Asian country, we could actually make that money stretch a lot further.” [00:28:30] All I’m saying is there are a ton of options out there, you just have to take the time to educate yourself and prep, because I think the revolution is coming. A lot of people believe it’s coming. We can’t maintain this system for much longer.

Currencies are collapsing all over the place. People are losing jobs to automation and outsourcing. A society cannot sustain itself on zero income. People are going to wake up to this as more and more people lose their sources of income and can’t afford to feed themselves. You’ll see people marching on the streets, [00:29:00] you’ll see people protesting. You’ll see people fighting back. Now is the time to educate yourself on becoming independent. Become independent now, don’t wait until after it happens. If you can do that, then you can start looking at solving problems that are just bigger than food on the table.

Euvie: I think also some people might think it’s like taking a huge jump and it’s scary, but it’s actually just taking baby steps. Some of them might seem like a huge jump, like when we moved to south-east Asia, [00:29:30] that was pretty big. I think a lot of the other changes that we made are just gradual, you’re just trying to ween yourself off the old system and plug yourself into a new decentralized system. If you just do it one by one with little things. Even these start-ups like Uber and Air BnB and Bitcoin. I mean, it’s not a start-up but it’s a platform. Using these decentralized systems more, because I think they will be a lot more resilient when shit starts hitting the fan.

Mike: [00:30:00] It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. We need to be transitioning into a new system. I do think that – this is probably controversial to say – I do think that the worse it gets, the better and the quicker this is going to be. We’ll moving into the new system quicker and that’s what really needs to happen. If we can burn hard, if we can just go and nosedive into the ground quicker – this is just my personal opinion – if we can have more people unemployed quicker, [00:30:30] and then everyone wakes up all at once rather than it be a gradual and slow death, if it’s just quick then we can start to look at new systems a lot more quickly.

Euvie: Got to rip that band-aid off.

Mike: I think so, yeah. It’s going to be a little painful for some people, but I think the main thing is access to information, access to decentralized sources of income and food and shelter and all that stuff. I think that’s the most important thing.

Euvie: We talked a lot about all this money stuff and how we still need money to make all these things happen. Actually, there is a [00:31:00] chance that we might not need money, or as much money, to make thing happen in the future. There’s a lot of technologies being invented right now that will make near zero cost production possible. Maybe it’s just a setup cost for the system and then it maintains itself.

Mike: That actually brings me back to what I was talking about with co-ops, with 100, 150-person societies. You only need a handful of things to feed [00:31:30] and to provide for the needs of a small group of people. You need maybe one or two 3D printers, you need one or two large solar panels, you need a few people maintaining gardens and maintaining farms, that kind of thing. It really doesn’t have to be every single person investing a ton of money into the start-up costs of getting this self-sustaining architecture set up. It really is just a matter of you pre-organizing these groups, everyone agrees on the direction of the group. [00:32:00] I think we just really need group organization structures, we just need a training manual for becoming self-sufficient.

Euvie: And we need people to agree that this needs to happen and people to not be afraid. I think there’s a lot of interest, even just out of fear, to keep things as they are, because people are afraid of the unknown.

Mike: Face that fear. Jump off a cliff.