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Jake
Jake
9 years ago

Havent even listened and I just KNOW this is going to be EXACTLY what I needed to hear this week.

Rick Hatch
Rick Hatch
9 years ago

Dynamite episode Jack. Got me all fired up.

Stryder
Stryder
9 years ago

What Jake said. Cannot wait to download & listen. I’ve been sold on Anarchy for a little while now & would love to hear more ideas about what we can do to stay, as Toby Hemenway put it, “legal… but illegible”

downtoearththinking.com

You finally woke up, to what I have been saying for years, Jack ? We all live in massive illusions and they keep us bound to ignorance, so of course we cannot actually change anything as long as we stay in the illusions !

Here is how the illusions are created and perpetrated to keep them alive and well here in USSA today by the control freaks we call government !

http://www.downtoearththinking.com/cogdis-and-normalcy-bias.html

UnentitledMillennial
UnentitledMillennial
9 years ago

The shit has already hit the fan in America, just not for everybody.

Look at Detroit.

Look at downtown Denver in the shadow of I25 and I70, what was once an upscale neighborhood is now trash.

Look at the mass of chronically unemployed, and “those not in workforce.”

Look at the mass of people living a transient-esque lifestyle, not really homeless but far far far from the “American Dream” with an actual house to stay in for more than two months and a stable job. (What, you didn’t know about that? Oh yeah, it’s a pretty big thing.)

I think what’s coming is a return to more rural and home-y roots, along with this movement in the cities of younger people finding interesting work-arounds to the bullshit of “you MUST live in a 2,000 sq ft house in the suburbs OR an approved of overpriced apartment!” like tiny houses, converting the loft of a garage to a little (totally illegal) apartment, things like that. Entrepreneurship will make a comeback. And all this will be interspersed with wailing and gnashing of teeth (and violent massive riots) as people adjust to the new reality where you don’t get everything handed to you and the government isn’t there to take care of everybody.

I don’t think the shit will hit the fan in one big boom (at least not due to soleley economic causes), but this country will look wayyy different by the time I’m Jack’s age. Specialization will decrease as people are forced to become slightly more self reliant with the change in the employment paradigm. Living arrangements will be interesting and probably involve group living and a bunch of rooftop and backyard gardens.

I’m personally working towards the rural lifestyle, because as cool as going off grid in the city with a rooftop garden sounds, I don’t want to be there when things like giant riots and the responding crackdowns happen.

Also, I have a question. How the hell do people go along with the government trying to take like 1/3 of what they earn? Would you work 60 hours to only get paid for 40 hours? 15% for JUST Social Security, this is freaking insane…

Dick Haines
9 years ago

Dear Jack,
I’ve been following your podcasts for some time but today’s (No. 1644 “A Painful and Economic and Social Evolution…”) presentation was so outstanding in many ways that I have signed up for a year’s membership. As a retired NASA research scientist I can appreciate a systems’ approach to planning and execution of major projects and your overview, apart from some points I don’t agree with, was on-target and – as we used to say in the old NASA days – AOK. Keep up the great work for good of people living everywhere.
r.f.h.

B.E. Ward
B.E. Ward
9 years ago

Jack, you really ought to come up with a list of 20 or so episodes you’ve done and let people vote on a Top 10. I’m pretty sure this one would make that list. I don’t necessarily 100% agree with your solutions, but you argue them well and your presentation of the problems is spot-on.

Grover
Grover
9 years ago

Jack,
Welcome to the “Gospel According to Grover”.
“The Only Ligitimate Justification for the use of Force is the Protection and Preservation of Life, Liberty and Justly Aquired Property”.

The first Law of the
“Gospel According to Grover”.
“The Use of Force or Fraud, “In ANY of It’s Forms”, to Achieve Social, Political, Economic, Cultural, Religous, Personal or any OTHER Reason “Should Be A Capitol Offense”.

*******************************************************

Voluntary Association + Mutual Cooperation + 110% Personal Responsility = 100% Individual Liberty.

Respectfully Yours,
Grover

Brent Eamer
Brent Eamer
9 years ago

“The way to win the game is to understand the rules better than your opponent”

Big old 10,000 lumen light bulb just went off in my head

I’ve heard this before but the narrative leading up to is was the delivery mechanism I needed

Steven
Steven
9 years ago

Thanks for the excellent and insightful episode, Jack. However, your assessment of the current CDC vaccine schedule remains incorrect.

You transition from a criticism of our school system’s LACK of change in the last few hundred years (min 30), to a criticism of the EVOLVING CDC vaccine schedule. Which is it? Do you advocate change for the better, or not?

At minute 33, you state that “vaccines probably cause some health risks.” I know you understand that the benefits outweigh any (unsubstantiated) risks, so please stop talking about the potential risks–as they just unnecessarily scare people away from making the smart decision to vaccinate following the CDC schedule. I think you are misunderstanding how the pharmaceutical industry is made to disclose side effects. During a medical study, subjects who have any negative health issues are labeled as having side effects. These are not necessarily caused by the treatment. Vaccine trials involve many subjects, and some will inevitably have unrelated health issues, which are not necessarily risks.

Next, you state vaccinations “are certainly done beyond what is necessary to make vaccinations effective.” Then, you make a comparison between the 1980s vaccine schedule and today’s schedule. You argue that the 80s course was successful, and there “was no need to increase the rate and numbers, other than to sell more vaccinations and make more money for a system that is designed to profit from scarcity and fear…”

Of course, we all understand that pharmaceutical companies want to make money. However, the vaccines added to the schedule since 1980 are for Hepatitis and Influenza and other newly developed vaccines. Medicine has progressed, and this means we have new vaccines. Medical science developed vaccines for the worst diseases first (polio, tetanus), and now we are working on the less devastating (or more difficult to create) vaccines. I worked in this field for 15 years (Hep B/C, HIV).

Jack has many areas of deep knowledge; however medicine is not one of them. Vaccine scare-mongering is popular now, but history will not be kind to those who advocate against the CDC childhood vaccination schedule. Please see the history of anti-vaccination, starting with the notorious and discredited Andrew Wakefield (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield).

Steven
Steven
9 years ago

Religious belief is held without proof. It is true that I ‘believe’ the CDC vaccination schedule, but it is not without proof.
Vaccines are the among the safest and most common-sense prevention-based therapies available in medicine. They are the primary reason almost everyone in first world countries survives childhood.
It is you that are holding on to the 1980s vaccination schedule with religious faith. Would you reduce the DTaP or HiB vaccinations to 1 shot, instead of 3-5? If so, I am guessing that your decision is based on emotion instead of proof.
I am giving reasonable arguments, but you are just embarrassing yourself by dropping a bunch of F bombs and insulting me. Instead of wasting your time in emotional arguments, look up what vaccines contain, and how they work. They are not plausibly dangerous.

horatio
horatio
9 years ago

You come across as such a dumb ass when you act like this to any criticism.

Corey
Corey
9 years ago

@Jack (or anyone else) would like to read up on the comments/discussion you mentioned you’ve already had with this individual. I was surprised at first reading through this comment string at what seemed to be a quick temper on your part, but when you mentioned that you’ve already had this discussion with this person it really resonated with me — would love to read the full discussion, if you can provide a link or just an episode number I can look up. Thank you.

Corey
Corey
9 years ago

@Jack thank you for your time and response, I know you’re incredibly busy; do appreciate it very much.

Mekanik
Mekanik
9 years ago

Mek visiting his banker dad at work in the early 80’s and going into the bank’s vault: “dad, where’s all the money?”
Banker Dad “the banks don’t keep all the money in one place. We have enough to cover expected daily needs… blah blah blah”

Then later on comes the realization that what we call “money” “finances” and the “economy” are numbers on a piece of paper. They are fictitious, fantastical illusions we have created for ourselves and arbitrary values we have assigned. We desire order and we create it where none exist in the same way we assign value to an object, process, or system that has no value save an arbitrary evaluation.

You say at most forty years. I suggest you may have underestimated the people’s intense commitment to their illusions. Especially when the alternatives, however well explained or rationalized, are foreign to them.

Some people will always just want to keep playing monopoly, man.

Bill c
Bill c
9 years ago

Government/Economic evolution is happening. “The lack of sustained and predictable funding at the state and national levels will thwart infrastructure projects”. That is from Jane Garvey at the opening of LBJ in Dallas. She was a member of Obama’s team and is now an executive at Meridian.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lbj-express-now-open-drivers-182300110.html;_ylt=AwrC1Cn_qvlVqlIAKp6TmYlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–
This is so common now they call it P3 (Public Private Partnership) for short. It is used here in the USA, Europe and around the world. The process is used for rail systems, airports, roads, and utilities.
So, government can’t build roads any more: what’s next?

Steven
Steven
9 years ago

Jack, can you please link me to that “cutting concrete corners and planting trees” thing you were speaking about? I have searched and am coming up empty handed. Or if there is a specific search term I should use, that would help. Thank you! Great podcast!

Chris H.
Chris H.
9 years ago
Reply to  Steven

Steven – The guy’s name is Brad Lancaster, and he’s written a couple of great permaculture books on harvesting water in dry landscapes. If you just do a search for him you can find more info beyond Geoff’s video of him (which is great in its own right, but just an intro).

Steven
Steven
9 years ago
Reply to  Chris H.

Thank you Chris, I will check that out.

Chris H.
Chris H.
9 years ago

Great show, Jack. I really liked your analogy at the end to becoming “system martial artists” — looking for opportunities to use the state’s own momentum or action against them.

Another great analogy I’ve heard for the kind of approach you promote — just going on with your work to better yourself, your family, and your community regardless of what the state says you “can” and “cannot” do — is that we’re termites. We slowly eat away at the existing structures just by going about our daily work, hardly noticeable from day-to-day, but eventually the structure becomes so eaten away and rotted out that it just collapses under its own weight.

For my part, I’m raising 36 chickens (previously 37, but one turned into 5 qts of stock on the shelves in my basement) in my backyard doing a variant of Geoff Lawton’s chicken tractor on steroids — even though the Town Code says I can only have 10 on a lot less than 7 acres. I figure that by sharing lots of high-quality eggs with my neighbors I can head off any complaint from them — if anything, they would probably end up pissed off at the town officials if they came and gave me a hard time.

Tucker
Tucker
9 years ago

Love the different meaningful music at the end of the podcast. Very motivational.

Elizabeth
Elizabeth
9 years ago

This was such a tonic for me that I had to listen to is again. Thank you.

caribe - John
caribe - John
9 years ago

Great show Jack.

FYI: it was brilliant Pulitzer-winning American author Upton Sinclair who lived from 1878 to 1968 who wrote the many times quoted line “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

Our research of history going back at least 10,000 years shows the folly, and ultimate collapse, of virtually all organized, centralized societies.

That is why I believe, as I think, to a great extent, you do too, that we need to evolve to small farm-based communities of no more than 150 inhabitants, that still are linked to similar communities near and far for exchange of physical and intellectual “property” on a truly fair and open market basis.

However, as you use as an analogy the fat person not turning to diet and exercise because they want pleasure NOW, I feel that most people will be reluctant to give up their perceived pleasure of the moment (which we have been conditioned to hold on to). As a matter of fact, as you alluded to, and others have ascribed there is a “War Against Change.”

So only a relatively few will GET IT and will comparatively painlessly evolve into the future (near future) of their “World” having abundant healthy food, happy and healthy lives, more quality time, in self-sustaining communities that are capable of being independent of the “outside world” as far as energy, water, etc. and being capable of providing their own security, education of the young and care for the old (which can be mutually beneficial), and handling any special individual problems that may crop up eg. helping somebody who could be headed for a problem (Sandy Hook, Aurora, or even the woman, with a comparatively minor challenge you helped a few weeks ago).

While I sense, from what I am privy to as only a founder, there may be “growing pains” in the PermaEthos concept (c’est la vie), the “1.3” version of a concept I see is to develop such communities needs to evolve.

I trust my similar, but highly financially leveraged, approach can have the same outcome regarding developing such autonomous communities. – We’ll see.

kindersir
kindersir
9 years ago

I agree with 90% of Jacks arguments but anarchism breaks down at the morality level. Many people are not moral and never will be. Then you develop systems to deal with them and now you have government.

Then there is the problem of others coming from somewhere else (or within) to take your stuff and freedom. Where does the army come from to protect your stuff/land?

I see it working within a community but not on a large scale. Or maybe I don’t understand and large scale is not what you have in mind..,?

kindersir
kindersir
9 years ago

I appreciate your enlightened view! I have been studying these ideas for a while. The Founders brought us to a new level, but I know man can go further. I agree that government should only protect liberty and nothing more. The Founders wrote a law that could do that but they were not at the place where they could let go of a systematic governmental structure. I guess I am not there yet. It will be a long time before men will not want to dominate and control others using government, religion etc… (This coming from a church of Christ christian, super conservative biblical view).

I will keep listening and learning. I love the anarchist concept. I can see it as a solution, probably not in my life (57 years old). Keep doing what you are doing because I do think you are onto tremendous ideas.

Robert Middleswarth
Robert Middleswarth
9 years ago

Jack,

There will never be 100% of congress under 1 party. When you hit 80% of 1 party the other party will either crash and a new party will be born or the crashing party will redevelop itself to try and make itself relevant again.

Thanks
Robert