The Great Disconnect: Media, Money, and the Modern Social Crisis

Summary

In this conversation, Daniel and Beewan explore the current state of society, focusing on the influence of media narratives, the struggle for identity, and the pervasive issues of greed and complacency within the political landscape. They discuss the illusion of freedom in a corporatized democracy and the role of education in shaping the future. The conversation culminates in reflections on the potential for revolution and the need for collective action to address systemic issues. In this conversation, Daniel and Beewan explore the pressing issues facing society today, including the importance of individual development, the pitfalls of a society focused solely on monetary gain, the implications of tariffs, the influence of money in politics, and the hope for a more egalitarian future. They discuss the need for systemic change and the role of education in empowering individuals to challenge the status quo.

Chapters

00:00 The Nature of Society and Media Narratives
06:01 The Struggle for Meaning and Identity
11:52 Greed, Complacency, and the Political Landscape
17:47 The Illusion of Freedom and Oligarchy
23:55 The Role of Education and the Future of Society
30:12 Revolution, Violence, and the Path Forward
38:47 The Quest for Individual Development
46:45 The Impact of Tariffs on Society
55:58 Hope for a More Egalitarian Society

Takeaways

The media often distracts from meaningful issues.
People's basic needs, like food and jobs, are paramount.
Greed and complacency are significant societal problems.
Democracy has become corporatized, limiting true freedom.
Education is increasingly bureaucratic and less effective.
Complacency leads to a loss of faith in institutions.
Historical revolutions are often violent due to state oppression.
Understanding the loss of freedom is crucial for change.
Collective action is necessary for societal transformation.
The current political landscape is rigged against the average person. Creating conditions for individual development leads to societal improvement.
A focus on monetary gain can undermine societal values and well-being.
40% of Americans struggle to meet basic living expenses.
Tariffs may not effectively bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
Money plays a significant role in influencing political outcomes.
The current societal structure may not prioritize the needs of the many.
Education is crucial for understanding and combating propaganda.
Hope exists for a more egalitarian society despite current challenges.
The influence of corporations on public policy is profound.
Change requires collective awareness and action.

Transcript

Daniel (00:00.91)
Hello everybody, welcome. have B1 with me today. Thank you for joining, sir.

Beewan (00:05.895)
Thanks for having me.

Daniel (00:07.17)
That's great pleasure. So there's been a lot on my mind recently and I've been kind of busy and I'm happy to be here again. One of the things that I've been reflecting on is, as I'm sure many of you might be surprised, is the current nature of the society in which we live. So there's a couple of things that have really hit home over the past probably month or two.

One, I've been thinking a lot about media. I've been thinking a lot about the narratives that are portrayed in media specifically. like, let's look at a couple of examples. One side, and I'm talking in North America here, but I think you also see this in Europe and other parts of the world, in India for sure, another country that I follow regularly. But it's a similar pattern. So we extract the...

We kind of take the focus away from the actual issues at hand and the things that are actually meaningful to people. And instead, we have the puppeteers, if you will, just pulling out issues that are not beneficial to anybody, but things that people might start with a grievance against and have a valid grievance against, but then they just

quickly deviate into things that are completely meaningless and will not affect the average person at all in any way. But the key is that they incite the emotions of fear or disgust or something like this specifically because people will react to that physically.

And if people react to that physically, then they're more likely to act and then become a single issue voter against that, that perceived threat or injustice or whatever it may be. Right. So you see how this is all framed up. But then you have to think, you have to take a step back and you have to OK, why are we so much at each other's throats? It doesn't make any sense. What only makes sense, actually, if you want the entire population to be distracted

Daniel (02:24.77)
by these simple and ridiculous issues. Like in the United States, we have abortion on the right side. Everybody's completely against it. The evangelical base has been completely captured by the Republican Party, even though the average person in the evangelical base isn't going to be materially benefited by any policy that the Republicans would implement.

because what are they good at? You can see this in Donald Trump's cabinet picks right now. They're good at appointing billionaires and people who have invested incredible amounts of money into their campaigns and putting them in positions of power and authority. So they can probably manipulate the rules in the system to make more money for them and their friends. So this, and then you think about that issue. So because I'm a single voter issue and I'm going to vote against that because it's disgusting to me to have that, right?

occurring in society, what we should actually take a step back and think is, well, if I'm against that, then I should be I guess I should go and educate people as to why they shouldn't do that. Right. Or we should take this up at the state level. But instead of making it a federal issue, which is just insane to me. You know, on the other side of it, you're you're you're so focused on identity politics that you completely miss the mark. And the mark is people care if they can eat. Right. They care if they have if they can have jobs, if their families can be taken care of. But

You know, the Democratic Party has abandoned their base well and often, starting with Bill Clinton with all the NAFTA stuff in the 90s, and then continuing to export jobs overseas. So that killed a lot of industry in the United States, which didn't exactly make us stronger in that regard. But you see this, you also see this religious fundamentalism happening in

other countries. mean, you see it in Turkey where it's, you more Islamist. You see it in India, Hindu. You see it in the United States here with the Trump's rallying cry here for the, again, with the evangelical base. And again, I'm very religious as a person and Christian and I don't, but what I think is that people would just have been co-opted into something that they're unwilling to think about, which is kind of utterly baffling to me.

Daniel (04:50.284)
But, know, I think that's, I think it speaks to a more fundamental problem of the individual in this day and era. Because, and I'll let you chime in here in a second. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts, but it's my firm belief that you actually can't choose anything until you've become your own person. Like you fully developed the self, if you will. and until you've done that, you're not actually choosing, you're just kind of following the crowd.

Right? So then your choice is not really a choice then, you know, it's more like an instinct. And so if you're operating in that mode, because you haven't developed yourself, then here we are. And that's the other critique that I have of the evangelicals. Typically. They basically neglect the development of self completely, which I think is just, it leads to the situation that we see.

at scale here now. But obviously there's a lot to unpack here, to talk about. We'd love to hear your thoughts and your initial thoughts.

Beewan (06:01.457)
Yeah, there's a lot you touched on and it's very telling on where we are headed to as a society or as individuals in the world because, it's the basic science, that individuals make up a society. So what exactly is going on where people seem to be getting onto the more extremist parts of their minds?

Whereas neglecting, as you said, the more pressing issue as to basic economics people have into it. I think the understanding comes from, to me, a perspective of struggle. Like you said, people want to struggle for a worthy cause, whether or not they would admit it to you. Maybe that cause is relaxation or the cause is having more money or cash, which is a donism. But people want a cause.

And in a world where there is no truth, there's no reality, mean, 2003, Iraq war was what we know now to be a sham. mean, we having different kind of retribution from what I would say is the warrior class of the society, the military or the veterans of the military and subsequent.

people going into the military, going into the wars, coming out and discovering that it's all just some sick game. So people sometimes feel like there is nothing real to go after. And that's why it's easy for them to go after such an ideologist to maybe sex change or abortion, whatever the new taught schools are.

that has been perpetrated by this, all this of the canister of truth, should I say, where we say they could poison reality and give people a different ideology. Like we could see it's happening across the world. We talked about India and Turkey, religious fundamentalism is getting deep into the marrow of society. And it's, telling on what could happen.

Beewan (08:23.237)
In the world, if some unifying ideas on what we should be looking after doesn't come into play because we could have another crusade anytime soon, it's that scary. And I think we should put back in focus as a society what matters, which is people, which is the future.

I can say, which is potential of what the human race could achieve. I mean, most of technology was brought about by, well, should I say modern technology was brought about by the instigation of war, the necessity to win battles. And once you've taken that away from people, previously, wanted to, people would want to go to war because it felt like there was a cause. I think that was one of the most.

Even in most societies right now, that's highest calling for people. People respect the military. you know, every time, thank you for your service. They see people to see the military and say thank you for your service. But right now, even that well of meaning has been poisoned by people seeking profits. So where do we go from here? What exactly are we going to?

Daniel (09:41.566)
Yeah.

Beewan (09:45.959)
take as the focal point of human achievement in society? Is it entertainment? Is it radical ideas of religion? Or is it something else? I'm also seeking those answers and I'm hoping we could discuss them today.

Daniel (10:03.49)
No, thank you for, thank you for sharing that. mean, you hit on a few things that are quite telling. mean, like the, the poisoning of the reality, you know, I mean, that is true. And I I've been thinking about this a lot and here we go. So if, if the whole society, if Western society is predicated on monetary growth, okay. Then.

Well, let's break this down. Last time I checked the public relations media industry was a trillion dollar industry. Okay. That's insane. And so think about what it takes to participate in politics in the United States. If PR and media is a trillion dollars and you want to get your name out there, your word out there, it's not about the best idea.

It's about who has the most money. And that's what the both political parties in the United States have turned into. The one that, which people can raise the most money for the party so that we can remain relevant. In which issues can we manufacture the most grievances against another segment of the population to drive essentially political party revenue. So, and then what actually happens? Well, if you have a bunch of donors,

They give your party a bunch of money and then you get elected. Do you going to maybe throw them a bone? That certainly seems to have been happening for a long time. And, well, and we can get more concise. So.

Beewan (11:42.33)
It definitely.

Daniel (11:52.77)
You have in the North America, have legislators who are elected, but you also have a tremendous number of lobbyists that actually work with legislators to write the actual bills that would go be put in front of Congress to be passed. So again, people who have a monopoly on money or, you know, corporations, organizations, whatever, funding campaigns, and then

putting their lobbyists in front of people, legislators, and making this stuff happen. And I think the majority of what we see on the front lines of the political base are those kind of manufactured grievances taking precedence so that we attract all the single issue voters, one, and that two, we distract from the actual stuff that's going on.

Because if the reality of the situation is that we're making it easier for companies to export labor, well, this is something that goes back to Adam Smith's work. What you have to have to have a true free market economy is the ability to move both capital and people across boundaries, borders, et cetera. We can freely move capital across many borders, but we cannot move people.

Therefore, the system is inherently rigged against who? People. So you have to consider that. And we allow this to happen because it makes money for the people who fund the political spheres of influence and write the laws. to answer your question, it's greed. Greed is the top of the list. The second thing is,

complacency. So the society that we live in, in the West is very, I think we're probably far more complacent than we have ever been. We have Netflix, we have video games galore, we have media at our fingertips, the artifice of trance, if you will. And I'm just, it's baffling to me how people would just get lost in that for years, like a generation. And then where are we? You know?

Daniel (14:18.328)
I mean, I think the majority of us want what's best for our families and friends and to see people actually develop and to have a society that actually wants people to develop into the best versions of themselves. Because who does that benefit? Everybody. It benefits everybody. So to me,

it doesn't make any sense not to do it unless you have a very, very, very, small percentage of the population who wants to maintain and rest control out of the masses. And this would be the, like the class of opulence, if you will, which is referred to in the same works. So, which is actually interesting because the Senate in the United States was actually not voted for.

until more recent history. Originally, they were all appointed and they were appointed by people already in power and probably people who had or influenced via wealth. So you can kind of see how this is built over time. And you can consider America as an actual empire, probably starting from post-World War I in all reality. And you see the pattern because there was no federal income tax until I think

Beewan (15:25.948)
Yeah.

Daniel (15:41.678)
what 1912 or 1913. So somewhere around there. And then obviously the outcome of the First World War. And then certainly the Second World War. But I think, you the monetary focus that pure monetary focus and capitalistic drive, which is kind of an adulterated capitalistic drive, as far as I'm concerned, because what what you have in the in the West is like libertarian values now is not the true libertarian values that were described.

in those philosophies. So, and I mean that because it's not a tenable political philosophy because it says me overall, essentially. And that can never work because go move to nowhere in the middle of Yakutsk or something like this in the middle of nowhere in Russia and tell me how long you live by yourself, right? We're all dependent on each other at this point in time.

And we're all better off for it if we orient ourselves in a positive and meaningful direction. Right. So I'll pause here. That's probably information.

Beewan (16:47.059)
Yeah, mean, no, you touch on a lot, find very telling of our present society, touch on greed and complicity. And I'd like to talk on those ideas, not ideas, but I'd say realities of our present society. The concept of greed is, of course, one that would never end. mean, which follows that this will only get worse.

I mean, this is the best it's going to get going further from this point. So the corporatization of democracy or should I say the capitalization of democracy, making the decisions of a select few groups of people become the main prime mover of a society. That's all this time as we understand, but we...

tend to want to make the idea, especially in the Western democracies today, that we are somewhat free. I mean, we now understand that to be just complete propaganda. While we do have those freedoms, like you said, from the onset, the instruments of governance, like the Senate, were not chosen by the people.

pointed by whoever was in the chair at that time. And that tradition somewhat continues to this point on because maybe not directly, but hey, if you don't get those funds, you don't get to propagandize people to your own idea, to your own team, to bring you into office, which is what these people do, I think. So I'm spending half their terms trying to appease the very person, so I've brought them into that position, you know, by...

championing their policies over their different constituents. So what exactly does that mean to a freedom loving person? Just simply oligarchy, if you're going to look at that from a very

Beewan (19:06.223)
agnostic lens, if I'm to use that word. So that grid is never going to stop. And I understand that something has to be done about that. I don't exactly know what, but we also understand that educating people and having them understand the essence of these ideas and get the origins from like most people would not know as much as you do, Daniel, the origins of what the Senate was or what society was.

And the idea of complacency also is something you called very, very modern in today's society. it's a lot, it's very negative to any society to be complacent. mean, lately, right, which was what I was going to discuss, but let me hear your thoughts. Where does it stem from?

Daniel (19:53.42)
I think I know what it stems from.

Daniel (20:01.4)
Think about this.

How would you combat a guys oligarchy? Well, you would have everybody stop working, right? Because if they stopped working, then the people who actually held the power would be impacted. And then you would see how that would play out. Will you do that by mobilizing people and setting up your own system or way of being right?

Beewan (20:17.448)
Bye.

Daniel (20:34.574)
And but you have to be careful and some brief historical analysis can show why why those efforts have failed historically and it's because they get crushed. Why? Because as you mentioned the other day, states monopolize violence. So, you know, you have to think about that. But, you know, at the same time, and we can talk more about that in a minute, but, you know, at the same time, people are insecure.

in their working position now in this time and era, More so than they probably have been in any point in modern history. And that's not a coincidence, right? If I restrict the ability of people to move, I can lower their wages, which means they're going to be doing more work for less pay, which means that the people who hold positions of power are going to get more for less. Which again, when you think about it from an oligarchy perspective, makes perfect sense and that's exactly what we want.

inside what they want. It's not what we want. And you see this effect and people say, it's the free market, you know, and you need to go specialize. It's like, how can someone go and re specialize five times in their life? When they're paying for it? You know, like we have, we're built to become consumers to become slaves to debt, right? Which, I mean, it's like, kind of

Beewan (21:46.503)
Right.

Daniel (22:02.156)
Reminds me of Chateau slavery in a way, right? But, it's just the modern version with the prettier lipstick or something. don't know. Right. But it really isn't great. and we're, brought up to be again, consumers from, from day one, we marketing companies were advertising to children. Like why does Disney advertise to children? Because they know that

Beewan (22:04.723)
I'm so sorry.

Daniel (22:30.51)
their parents will buy them stuff to keep them complacent because I don't want to deal with it because I'm stressed out because I don't have the time to do what I need to do because I'm working all the time and I don't make enough money. You know, like it, it's just like never ending cycle. And I think it was 1997, Alan Greenspan, Fed chair was giving a briefing to Congress and in that briefing,

He noted that general insecurity in the labor market, and this is post NAFTA, that general insecurity in the labor market is driving GDP growth because people are willing to work for less. And noted essentially that that pattern should continue. And if that pattern continues, then GDP growth will continue to go and go. And then we talked about what I was alluding to earlier where we have freedom of capital and investor rights agreements galore.

Beewan (23:25.853)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (23:26.99)
People can't move and we're not free and education is enormously expensive. And again, even those, even the education industry has been captured by greed in the sense that, you know, if you look back to pre 1970, I believe 80 % of funds into the institution went to educating people and 20 % went to administration. As of three years ago, that has flipped.

How insane is that? Now, 80 % of funds go to administration, 20 % go to teaching. So, it's like these...

these, these, you might come out and say it's an inefficient, inefficient use of resources, right? Well, it certainly is. why do I need to administer? Why is there that much bureaucracy involved in educating people? And it's like, well, it's more like an opportunity to capture resources and, not really in, and you get the same propagandistic fricking education, at least for the first, you know,

Beewan (24:12.221)
course.

Daniel (24:34.124)
half dozen classes in the majority of these institutions, which is just unfortunate. I think it drives back to that class and social grievance thing, right? Because when we talk about manufacturing grievances, you can do it across the board, right? So I don't think it all plays into the same picture, but I'll pause here for a minute.

Beewan (24:36.307)
Thank

Beewan (24:55.911)
Yeah, that completely describes the reasons for the loss of faith in the system, which of course would consequently lead to protest, which in this case is the general complacency of people. And they would seek other outlets with which to become useful, which leads, of course, to the ideas of this extremism in terms of Nazi-ism or, you know, extreme

communism. It's hard to say it's true communism because communism is communism anyway but yeah because they they do not and it's it's it's an intrinsic thing right because people would know if the society they are living by economic signatures is advancing or is retrogressing and for the United States this is going to be a problem that should be

address because it's more than just looking at numbers, right? It's more than just looking at how well the stock market is doing. It's the general idea of security of a specific country, of a people. And the Chinese people currently have less complacency in my own understanding as compared to the Americans. Why? Because for some reason the government is

of the type which can enforce without the necessary use of propaganda. mean, they have the monopoly of force, they are not afraid to use it. And they can of course instigate their production facilities to develop real fast. I think I saw a chart of the most recently built nuclear facilities and China is in the leading.

head of that. know, they've got, think, well, I forgot the figures was a little bit over what the United States has got in the past 10 years in terms of development of nuclear facilities. So we are seeing a different school of thought here, as opposed to the one that should encapsulate freedom, and which is of course being completely run over by corporate interest. So the point is, if you're going to look at what's

Beewan (27:21.393)
the best for everyone involved in terms of the American society, in terms of a freedom loving society, in terms of a society that would respect the liberties of people in general, we should be looking at ways with which to re-instill faith into the governing bodies of the country, which I don't think is possible right now, given this present structures of governments. I'll stop here.

Daniel (27:50.178)
No, it's true. Now, there is a, the Chinese have consolidated power significantly in recent times. And they are at least able to orchestrate the interests of the government, which enable their continued growth and track for prosperity in kind of a unified.

Daniel (28:20.088)
productive way. I wouldn't say that there's no propaganda on that front. mean, you see the Chinese propagandists working certainly in the Western spheres of influence, I think, for sure. everybody has it. It's no different than what... It's funny, if you look at media even in the United States, you're taking MSNBC and you're kind of on the far left and you take a Fox News and you're on the right.

Beewan (28:40.657)
Yeah, but...

Daniel (28:50.52)
They're kind of talking about the same things from a different perspective. But it's the same things. Meanwhile, everything else going on in the background that no one's really paying attention to. And you might get some stuff. Maybe you read an article on Counterpunch. Maybe you read the Washington Post I found to be quite helpful and many times, at least not completely following the mainstream narratives. But that's the propagandistic narrative that again, we talk back to

Beewan (28:55.219)
it.

Daniel (29:21.27)
what's actually happening. you know, like we, don't, we don't see that, we don't see that happen too much. And then that's kind of the point that I'm making, right? There's, there's following the status quo, the narrative. and, and it's just, it's vapid, you know?

Beewan (29:46.003)
And yeah, this is a society heading for self-implosion if something is not thought of soon. I mean, how do single issue voters originate? Of course, it's probably everyone wants something from the government, right? Everybody has some sort of desire they would want to be fulfilled. But when you lose faith,

in the institution and you get a champion of one specific idea that may or may not be related to what exactly is your actual realistic problem. People tend to just want to win you know like if I can't get what I want if I don't get the true solutions to my problem I might as well get what everyone says is best for everyone you know and

that educational problem is there, that understanding of what should be government is not completely instilled into people. And I think it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort to get into what is the actual truth of things, which has become a problem, as we said. So I'm hoping that there is in some very close by future, a solution to this truth problem.

we have in society.

Daniel (31:13.408)
So when you think about, mean, you know, think about what's happened here in the United States. Okay. You have a demagogue and Donald Trump who excels in creating false narratives and manufacturing truth, if you will, because I don't even consider it lying because it's, it's like one step removed from that. and

Beewan (31:40.925)
Thank you.

Daniel (31:43.214)
He leverages those grievances and misconceptions and abuses them to actually, you know, motivate a significant base, which has, again, has some grievance generally and probably a decent grievance. But the real problem is that we're trying to grab on to the ways of the past, but the times have changed, right? This is 2024. It's not 1960.

And Reagan, and a lot of people glorify Reagan, he actually did more harm to this country than good. But, you know, I'm equally critical of both Republican and Democratic presidents. And as we were discussing earlier in the show, you can see the trail of money following, and that's the root of the problem. I mean, if you look at, again, the rate of economic growth in the United States in the eighties, it was significant, but what

also grew in the 1980s was the cost of goods. So the average pay started to separate drastically from cost of goods starting in 84 up to present. And I think that's why you see back to insecurity, back to all of these things. if I'm complacent because of the socioeconomic status and the enablement of complacency, but I'm not going to...

It's very hard for someone to be motivated to develop their sense of self. So that's why you see widespread use. think of illicit drugs and alcohol in this country. It's because people are faced with all these burdens and challenges and they don't see a way out. And, but I can just, again, sit around watching TV or playing video games or whatever the heck it is, and just kind of whittle away at life and

Beewan (33:14.216)
Right.

Daniel (33:39.502)
do the minimum necessary to kind of get by with my family. But I think we're built for more than that. But again, my point here is that I believe the system is kind of rigged to disable the development of the self because the people with the fully developed self are the ones who are going to, I think, stand out and question what the hell exactly is going on. Right? And if more people were of that mind, then we wouldn't be so captured as a whole. You know? And we would find collectively a way forward.

I mean, I have ideas for ways forward, but all these ideas are starting points that's going to require collaboration and effort between many, many people. And that's the difference, I think, in the generation that we live in, in any generation. We have people that are trying to hold on to power that have been there for too long and trying to mold the world back into the way that it was. But again, it's ossified.

It can't happen. That world no longer exists. So we have to find a unifying way and a better way forward.

Beewan (34:48.529)
Right, mean, you're right, that kind of word can no longer exist. But I think it's easy to bring people back to, you know, the Olympic reactive mode by the perpetration of violence, for example, or, you know, threat of war or something of that nature, which is of course now a very good skill of government all around the world. You know, if there's an idea, because people want to...

Daniel (35:05.687)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (35:19.069)
They want to struggle against an evil. Right. And once a government sees that there is a greater idea coming in, from my deepest understanding we've had, and of course, from a book you recommended to me by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, I got to understand that states as they do exist are not begotten of

rational compromise or the collective understanding of people to come together and share resources, it's brought about by subjugation. subjugation brought about by either complete destruction of one participant by the other, consecutively devours the participant, or of an external fear

that brings those people together under one banner, which is what is the oldest tool for control. If there is an idea out there that, hey, these people are coming after your kids or they're coming after your freedoms, even though the idea of freedom is not exactly...

understood by you, you know is something necessary, not understanding that of course the very people who rule you have been trading in your freedom for decades, close to a century now. And that response and that's, should I say, altered truth is what gives people the idea that, hey, I have to stick to this particular frame of thought or this particular party because I've got something to lose here.

But when we start understanding in society that we're all losing something either way, right? It doesn't matter what the other side wants you to think. If someone else is making decisions for you without your consent, and in fact, because they have the means to do so, which you probably wouldn't have, and it's not given to you by merit, but by, you know...

Beewan (37:34.427)
factors that are beyond your control, think people would begin to wake up to the fact that okay, things have to change and we are going to have to be the one to do it. And that might be the very first instance of a collaboration of humanity has never seen before. I'm that happens sometime soon, but with the powers as they are currently, that's of course, it's going to be a very difficult exchange to break even with

education because it takes both education and courage to go through something like that which I don't think most people would fall into without the proper knowledge on what they are losing and what they can gain.

Daniel (38:20.576)
I don't disagree at all. It makes me think part, partially of like historical revolutions. And you think about why are they so typically violent? That's because the state, think like you alluded to, know, the state monopolizes violence. Therefore it takes violence to overcome it. But, know, another thing could be the exceeding level of resentment that's built up over time before it's time to act, you know? I think you can only oppress.

Beewan (38:47.282)
Yeah.

Daniel (38:50.168)
groups of people for so long before they're evil, you know, either will rise up or move on, you know, and I don't, I'm not advocating for violence at all. Actually, I deplore violence. Generally speaking, I mean, if you think about the totality of humanity and you think that I can

Well, you know, let's just just have a discussion here. So if

Daniel (39:29.494)
If you create the conditions for the successful development of the individual consistently over time, will we not be better off the more people there are?

Beewan (39:40.765)
Yeah.

Daniel (39:40.94)
I think the answer is statistically yes. Right. And it's, it's about creating the framework for that to happen and for us to share ideas and not be part of the rat race, if you will. Like I would, I can never go back to this corporate driven society. And I can't work in that in the way that I did in my early thirties where I was motivated to make more money, but there's an end to that.

Beewan (39:45.363)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (39:55.538)
Yes.

Daniel (40:11.394)
And it never ends. You know what I mean? That's kind of the problem, right? It's not, you're never going to get fulfilled by that. doesn't matter how much money you make. I think that, but it's easy to get sucked down that path.

Beewan (40:11.495)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (40:21.244)
Yeah.

Beewan (40:29.585)
Yeah. And what reality does such a society provide for the future? Where people are only focused on monetary gain. There will be everything channeled through one source or one lens of reality, which is the accumulation of resources. And a society focused on accumulation will falter in multiple other areas. The idea of having

intrinsic value in what you do for example your job or you know your hobby for example without having I think that's one of the hallmarks of what brings an excellent person and by extension an excellent society I don't think it's necessarily the monetary perspective of things that shouldn't be the prime mover for every society although I might be talking about some

to my listeners, I think it might sound very far-fetched because society as it currently exists takes that to their stream in the sense that you have to literally put your life on the line in order to make any living at all for most people like Daniel said about the desperation of people being a significant hallmark to the profitability of.

of corporate masters.

Daniel (41:57.646)
Yeah, 40%, just real quick, 40 % of people in the United States right now cannot meet basic living expenses.

In the wealthiest country in the world history, 40 % of the population cannot. I'd say we're doing it wrong.

Beewan (42:19.059)
Yeah, I agree. Something has to change, Daniel. And it doesn't bode well for society in general. You're talking about the understanding of the ones who hold the train to this. Would it be better for a society to focus on the development of each of its constituents or a select few? And I don't think they have the foresight to see that all being...

completely blended disregard that for, you know, the most temporary gains, which is of course cash. But we have seen time over time how, you know, empires rise and fall because of the negligence of either the technology, as we are currently seeing right now in the replacement of technology. And I mean, taking out the manufacturing base of a country, all of it out to

Daniel (43:05.773)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (43:17.617)
the Asians, maybe even the Chinese currently. I've been one of the greatest manufacturing powers in the world right now because I would say by a good margin because of the American companies who had invested in their cheap label. So that doesn't sum up to a positive for the United States is what I'm trying to get across because

Daniel (43:36.34)
Exactly, exactly.

Beewan (43:44.751)
they get to develop their economies, they get to develop their manufacturing base and you've hollowed yours out for some numbers. And at the end of the day, that's what matters. Because when it gets to time to produce weapons of war, the guys who've got the manufacturing bases would be faster than those who don't. Why? Well, because it's much more easier to develop factories, which or change a factory from this. Well, it depends on how the factories are set, but

It's much easier to develop a factory with people who've got this experience of working in factories and trying to make matters more efficient for whatever select number of factories over a period of time than those who just be reintroduced to the factories. And this idea of this Trump's idea of making tariffs to bring back

the out out gone industries would to me would be maybe an auto maybe not a total complete failure but would be a failure because it takes more than just money it takes more than just money to build a factory you need people who are not complacent which you followed up yeah you did a lot of things to get it through you know you need

Daniel (45:06.773)
And you need resources. Yeah. Yeah.

Beewan (45:13.231)
a good education base, you know, you need a cheap education base, which I mean, it's just, it's just a whole line of the system. So I don't think that people who are on the reins of things actually appreciate the gravity of the situation. And I think something has to be done about that.

Daniel (45:33.422)
Yeah. So let's focus on tariffs for a second, because that's been in a lot of media coverage lately. if you implement tariffs, like what's the prime motivation of the implementation of tariffs? Is it to get companies to move production back to the United States? Well, that's only going to happen if people stop paying for products with tariffs on them. If people keep paying for the products, then there's no incentive to produce at an increased cost.

locally. So this doesn't pass the cost on to the Chinese. mean, if Apple manufactures phones in countries in Asia and China and everywhere else, guess what? If the tariff's 20%, then I guess the iPhone price is going up 20%, right? Or the Samsung phone or whatever it is. Okay, so what we're going to develop that in this country? You can't develop high-tech manufacturing in a year.

Beewan (46:20.81)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Daniel (46:30.85)
These things, these projects take four or five, six, 10 years, right? This is a long, it's a more midterm strategy. So again, what, who actually benefits from this?

Beewan (46:31.379)
Thanks.

Thanks for your time.

Daniel (46:45.982)
not not the middle class, not the lower class, that's for sure. It's being it's being sold as that but it's absolutely not true.

Beewan (46:52.027)
see it.

Beewan (46:57.464)
And that's what's sold to the public and it seems like a good idea on paper because of the lack of education behind the whole system but I think it's engineered to be that way you know you don't want people pushing against the policies if you're going to just sell what you want to sell regardless you know.

Daniel (47:16.566)
Right, right. And if you look back to pre-income tax times in the United States, okay, how did the government make money? Tariffs, taxes on alcohol, know, tobacco, et cetera, and selling of land. again, you're trying to go back to the ways of old. So if you take this to its simplest form,

Beewan (47:25.895)
Good.

Beewan (47:32.765)
Yeah.

Daniel (47:43.532)
And you don't even think about the implications otherwise. know, say, know what, we used to have tariffs on products. Let's have tariffs on products again. It's like, well, your society's completely changed because we've outsourced manufacturing, you know, over the past 25, 20 years for sure. But again, we don't have freedom of movement. We only have freedom of movement of capital, not of people. So it's not really fair. Certainly not equal in that regard.

Beewan (47:54.791)
Right.

Daniel (48:13.984)
So, you know, it's just not, it's not a great situation.

Beewan (48:20.933)
a good situation at all. And at the end of the day, the reality is going to speak for itself. The policies are more than just things you would need public, shall I say, the present public ideas to make work. They would have to face economics of things. So maybe this would be a learning experience for Americans.

because I think, well, I'm no great economics, but I think it's going to pan out not so great in the following years. And hopefully we'll be to learn a thing or two from this. The idea that a single person is going to change a whole country's future is...

is beyond me. Why? Because it takes more than just one person to do that. And Trump also does an idea of a solution. So like a mythical creature that's going to come in and make everything okay. But most economists know that this is not true. In fact, most people understand the trend of the markets in past decades would understand that there is seemingly no

great light at the end of tunnel. Maybe a war will get us there. Maybe, you know, very significant war. Maybe we could redo World War II again and get some positives out of it. Who knows?

Daniel (49:52.332)
Well, I don't think there's any motivation from the American empire as we are here to engage at that scale. mean, we obviously have manufacturing issues as we've discussed, but let's think about

Beewan (49:58.151)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (50:14.998)
It's more economic and cost effective to deter war because we're already the controllers of the balance of power in the world. So you have the Russians of the world and China to some extent and obviously Korea, Iran, et cetera, who will want to openly challenge that because from their perspective, they're not getting

Beewan (50:36.253)
You're on.

Daniel (50:43.328)
fair share of the pie, if you will. you know, fair enough, but also let's see what happens. I mean, there are differences and I don't want to, I don't want to critique everybody here on this episode because we're, you we don't, we don't have enough time, but what, what, what I would say, like let's just circle back to politics for a second, right? Because if

Beewan (50:45.363)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (51:00.136)
Yeah.

Daniel (51:12.98)
Who? I just want to say this. Elon Musk had a pay package that was revoked by Delaware judge, like some $44 billion for Tesla. Obviously, he's up in arms and actively manipulates

Beewan (51:21.245)
Thank you.

Daniel (51:31.638)
the market, as far as I'm concerned with tweets and things that he says, because he has so many followers, it's very easy for him to do. Then what does he do? He goes and invests in Super PAC for Trump, at least 119 million, at least, which is nothing to him at all. Gives away money to get people to register to vote in Pennsylvania, absorbing it some, like million dollars person or something like this when they won the sweepstakes.

Beewan (51:31.667)
populist.

Daniel (52:00.77)
counter to that was thrown out in court. And it's just like, if that doesn't show you that money can buy elections, I'm not sure what will. Right? So now he, again, is the wealthiest person in the world, has a grievance against the government because the judge overturned his pay package and now gets to go and lead the department of government efficiency.

Beewan (52:07.237)
What else?

Daniel (52:26.508)
What? What is all I can say?

Beewan (52:29.875)
Thank

Daniel (52:33.005)
You know?

Beewan (52:35.126)
Reality is stranger than fiction in this case, know, it's almost like in your face, you know, we're doing this in your face.

Daniel (52:40.782)
100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. And I'm not saying that the government shouldn't be more efficient. Probably should be. Okay. I'm not saying that. I'm saying look at the whole picture, Like, come on.

Beewan (52:48.795)
Yeah.

Beewan (52:56.487)
Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to figure things out.

Daniel (52:59.362)
Yeah, all in on this case Money if money is the driving factor to win elections. Well, my man's got it, you know, so

Beewan (53:01.904)
it

Beewan (53:06.618)
might.

Daniel (53:10.092)
What about, I was just thinking in parallel, you think about why these kind of distributed frameworks that you were discussing a few minutes ago don't really work. And it's because again, the state has a monopoly on violence. So if you had groups of people that were working distributedly,

You could, and you saw this in Spain with the anarcho-syndicalist frameworks in, I believe in the thirties, which worked well. And actually George Orwell was there when it happened. And I think what also informed his writings, certainly, and I can't say for certain, but I mean, my gosh, if you go through a revolution and you see other ways of governance, and then you see the way that...

Beewan (54:03.847)
We'll be just in here.

Daniel (54:07.992)
that those other ways of governance are rapidly crushed by force. And again, it comes back to that monopoly. So then people have to think even, know, to really evolve and revolutionize the ways of thought and governance to benefit the many instead of the few, then you need even people in military positions to see the picture and to want to participate.

Beewan (54:26.407)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (54:37.57)
by supporting the actual popular cause that's good for many instead of supporting the Supreme Leader, if you will. And I think that's the difference. And I don't know if we will ever be there. I hope we might, but.

Beewan (54:51.021)
Well, it's very unpopular to do that. mean, it's easy to label you a traitor by

Daniel (54:57.324)
Well, it is easy. It is easy. then, you know, people are conditioned from the time that they're in service to listen to orders. Right. So, it's, it's kind of. Again, in that role, you, you, you take your sense of self aside and you put on the persona of, of, of military person. Right. So, yeah, very, very, very interesting to, really break it down and think about it, you know,

Beewan (55:03.101)
Yes.

Beewan (55:14.546)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (55:18.322)
So

Daniel (55:25.952)
Do you have any final thoughts here?

Beewan (55:28.839)
The final thoughts are... I'm just curious as to how this will pan out. It's not looking positive, but I'm hoping at some point we might be able to hear some news or at the very least discuss about a much more egalitarian solution to what society has become. Because right now, especially for the American society, which I feel is the leading idea or the leading...

symbol, the emblem of human achievement in egalitarianism should at the very least not be brought to the gallows, you know, because that's happening really fast and as people's rights and people's sense of choice gets eroded by these companies.

Daniel (56:11.704)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (56:25.427)
I hope that at some point we will be discuss some solutions about that and maybe some... Well, I'm going to go as far as to say maybe some movement comes that would move the country to the positive direction. Those are my hopes for now and yes, there are just hopes, plans. Thank you.

Daniel (56:43.374)
Thank you for sharing, B1. my final thought after hearing that is that when you look at it, if you went person to person and you said, should everybody be able to eat? Should everybody have access to high quality education? You know, should everybody have an opportunity to succeed? I think the answers would resoundingly be yes.

Beewan (56:59.121)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (57:13.9)
But when you hear bills and solutions that would actually push those things forward, the propaganda from the controlling class in this will, in this case, the people with money who are backing the campaigns who have controlling interests, the majority of monetary gain in this country.

Beewan (57:32.85)
Yes.

Daniel (57:36.942)
I'll give you an example. People will think like, BlackRock, BlackRock, China, China. So they get vilified as a particular entity that's different from the rest of the financial and corporate entities that back things. that's like one example of propaganda that you see frequently in the United States. I mean, are any of these companies actually different? No. What's different is refocusing the attention.

Beewan (57:47.699)
It's interesting.

Daniel (58:07.046)
on the manufactured grievance instead of actually looking for and understanding that some of these proposals might benefit you and your family and your friends and your community upwards, from the bottom up, far more than anything that has ever been thrown out in the past 70, 80 years in this country. So what does that mean? It means that people have to understand

that the propagandistic attacks on policies and ideas and the vilification,

Daniel (58:46.958)
of the people and the potential proponents of such change. My gosh, you know, it's how do you combat that? Well, you have to educate people on what propaganda is and how it's used. But you'll never see that in the public school system in the United States because it of subverts the process of conditioning people to be subservient participants in society.

Beewan (59:05.757)
Mm-hmm.

Beewan (59:14.824)
Thanks.

Daniel (59:16.942)
Right? I mean, you see that, you see that in the common base, the education base all the way up to universities, generally, not all universities, but I mean, a lot. You're just, we're literally conditioned to just be parts of the, be cogs. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. Fantastic. Fantastic analogy. Yeah.

Beewan (59:34.609)
Because.

Daniel (59:44.77)
We need more people to wake up. We need people to understand, to want to question and to want to move forward in a more positive manner. And it is possible, of course it's possible. The fact that we're able to have this conversation means that it's possible.

Beewan (01:00:02.611)
That's interesting.

Daniel (01:00:04.177)
Thank you for joining me. I always appreciate you and your time.

Beewan (01:00:07.995)
I appreciate you Daniel for having me. It's wonderful sharing the thoughts with you in this conversation. Thank you for that.

Daniel (01:00:16.071)
Thank you very much.