Can Bitcoin Save The West? | American HODL & Peter McCormack

There's a reality here that you guys are all asleep to. In order to hold the line, you have to be willing to let somebody put a bullet in your head. I am looking at the chessboard and saying, we are the only alternative path. They've tried both parties, nothing works. Like, what is the solution? We are heading to dark places, whether it is sectarian violence, whether it's actual civil war. The answer is freedom. Freedom is what brings the left and the right together, because it reduces the size of the state and the influence. it reduces the money printing, and within that you have Bitcoin, which is a solution. What I'm not sure about is whether you can get there without some form of authoritarianism. This is reality. Like the veil has been lifted now. The anti-freedom is allowing someone to vote away your money. They're closing the doors. You need to be acquiring assets for when everything changes. You can't convince them, you have to defeat them. So everything is war. I don't think any government party wants to give total freedom to its people. No, they don't. The people have to take the freedom. How did the proposal for the stadium go? How was it received? Well, I was kind of there when that was all breaking. With some and shit with others, as it always is. But I mean, you think it's going to go through? Is the council pissed at you still? We'll get it through. It's whether we can raise 60 million quid. Yeah. That's the challenge. The council's always pissed. But fuck them. Because he's at war. He is at war. War is at war. War with the council. Why is it always at war? You just put a tweet out. We started. That Liz Truss responded to. Don't do this. Have we started? That Liz Truss responded to. You have to assume the minute you sit down, It's going. Pete knows this. He's just trying to turn it. It's going to be the dick. It's nice to be reunited. It is. It feels good. The old crew. The band is back together. The band is back together. Yeah, your tweet. Yes. Everything is war. No, I didn't say everything is war. My tweet was, like, coming to this realization that my Twitter feed is literally full of how society is divided at the moment. So half the people are socialists slash communists slash Marxists who are talking about having policies such as the highest paid person in a company can be only paid 10 times more than the lowest paid. And that we need to tax billionaires and subsidize energy, all this socialist nonsense. And then the other half is kind of free market right wingers. And so this divide exists. Is this a Twitter divide or is this a... No, I think this is, I think Twitter is always a lens to reality. I think it always is. It's the representation of what's going to happen at the ballot box. It's like, I think we're heading towards an inflection point in the UK, and perhaps in other places such as Canada and Australia, and where it's like, which way? Western man. And it's a decision between free market fascism and communism. I don't think people know that that's how it's being framed. Well, I'm being slightly facetious, but so I said I've given up trying to discuss this and debate with socialists, because it doesn't matter what economic arguments you provide. You can show them an entire history of socialism killing tens of millions of people, and you can show them economic facts. They just, they won't listen. They are ideologically convinced that we need to live in a socialist environment, as I am ideologically convinced we need free market economics. And so if you can't win the argument, what's the point? Liz Truss replied and said, well, this is the point with communists. You can't convince them. You have to defeat them. And so I was thinking about that in the lift and I realized like the only answer to this is we just have to go and kill them all. I mean, and now you have become the communist. This is the problem. So it's like, then I'm thinking, well, it's like the art of war. How do you win this war? Well, if you think it's a political war to win, you have 40% of the people don't turn out and vote. So you have to mobilize the non-voters. You have to convince whatever is in the middle ground that conservative economics is what you want. And you have to kill all the lefties. Stop. I'm joking. I'm joking. But the point is, I was like, okay, so everything is war. Everything is war. You know, as you live, you're in a war with your... I'm at a war with my belly. I literally live. I'm at a war with my belly. I am at a war with YouTube algorithm to have my show be relevant. We're at war with our family sometimes. I mean, I'm a good guy. I look after my town. I'm at a war with my community. And we're at war as nation states. And we're at war. Everything is war. But this is so blackpilled. And so this kind of gets back to the cheat code thing. Me and Hoddle were sat watching your opening thing at cheat code, which is where you were basically saying, what the fuck is the point of trying? You were like, we're all fucked. It's over. We're going to die. And Hoddle turns to me and went, what is this shit? And he was like, okay. He was closing out the day with an interview with you. And he was like, okay, I'm not doing an interview now. I'm doing an intervention. Like, you're always a little more optimistic on this stuff. Like, what's the white pill version of what's happening? You live in America, God damn it. I mean, listen, I could do the rah-rah pro America. We got liberty and freedom over here. Y'all know nothing about that, okay? I got me a big old truck. But the truth is like the world wants Pete's right in that the world wants to go to war. It's just that I have a always an optimistic disposition on everything because, you know, there are always opportunities. It's not that. And I don't mean this is like in a selfish like you can profit off. You can be a war profiteer kind of way. I just mean it as like these cycles exist in humanity. You know, yeah, everything is war. I mean, that's a like astute point. and like, you know, violence is the supreme authority. And humans, you know, these systems, as they fall apart, people want to go to violence against each other. But I think that, you know, one thing I want to ask you about this. I've noticed in, you know, you've been doing these interviews with like Simon Dixon and these guys. And the new show, by the way, super popular. Like, you're doing great. You're having a lot of success. But I've noticed that the content you do now that gets the most clicks is we're all fucked. And I'm wondering if it's seeping into your consciousness in the way where you're like, yeah, we are all fucked. And like, fuck it. Like, it just is what it is. Whereas in Bitcoin land, like, I think like when I talk to Danny, we're still like more on the optimistic side of like, we have an answer. Yeah, I think this is something I've thought about a lot as well. Because like, that is what you see with your show. And it's like, it's kind of the same topics that we've always done on what Bitcoin did. And I still cover some of the same topics. But at the end of the interview, there's always like the piece of hope, which is Bitcoin. And because you're not talking about Bitcoin as much, like, I wonder if you're getting less of the hope out of these people. Well, because my community is different now. Yes, Bitcoin has come in and we will make Bitcoin shows. And I'm interviewing Michael Saylor today and I'm going to interview him. And it's like the first time I've ever interviewed him. So my new audience sees the hope of Bitcoin. And so they get that. And I was thinking about it because you look in the comments and people are like, oh, it's always doomy. It's always really depressing. It's like, but this is reality. Yeah. Like the veil has been lifted now. Everything we were suspicious about previously, that there were these malign influences on politics and media. It's just out in the open. They're just telling us now that, ha ha, fuck you, we're taking all your money. AI is a good example, right? Because they're basically like the pitch for AI is like, how is this going to make my life better? And they're like, it's not. It's going to make your life a lot worse. You're a slave. You're a moo-moo tax cow and you go moo and we squeeze you your udders and you give us tax milk. So if my show seems kind of depressing. It's because you're dealing with depressing subjects. But I don't think of it myself as depressing. I think of it as myself as truth. And if you don't want the truth, there is a blue pill over there for you. And if you want the truth, here is the red pill. And once you've taken the red pill, here is the black pill. And let's just deal in reality. Because I am in reality. I'm in Bitcoin. If I want to leave the UK, I get the fuck out of England. I just go and live where I want. I have hope. I know what I'm going to do. But I don't have hope for my people, like the people of Bedford and the people of the UK, because of the absolute terrible state our country is in. So here is the truth. If you don't want it, fine. Go and vote for Zach Polanski. Go and live in your socialist utopia. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy. And all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults. So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin is insured while not giving up custody. 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I've been using Club Orange since it was Orange Pill app and it's my go-to whenever I'm traveling. not just for conferences but for finding meetups and events and merchants accepting Bitcoin wherever I am. There are over 19,000 Bitcoiners on there and it's a great way to stay connected whether you're on the road or at home. If you're on there, drop me a DM and say hi and if not, search for Club Orange on your app store or go to cluborange.org. But do you think you can vote your way out of this? Yes, with the right leader. You think that right leader is there? Because like that's been said a lot. In the UK, they've tried both parties, nothing works. What is the solution? Well, there's no definitive answer. You get an option at the ballot box, and what you're generally voting on is the pace of change for you. So if you vote in socialist, it might feel like you're slowing the pace of decline for you, and you're increasing the pace of decline for the rich people. For those you hate. Those you hate. Your enemies. Whereas if you're voting conservative, you're kind of hoping for a slow of the pace of decline for you, but really, you're hoping for sort of the pace of decline for everyone, because if you're getting true conservatism, which is conservative economics, you don't tend to get that in the UK. No, exactly. That's what I was going to say. We've not had a real conservative party there for a long time. Yeah. And I was talking to a guy last night, and he said, look, the truth about politicians is the best opinion to take is, I don't trust you. You're a liar, because you'll most likely be proven right. So even if there is somebody out there, should you really trust them? The one person who has a bit of a momentum on the conservative side is Rupert Lowe. Mm-hmm. The thing is, is can he build a big enough tent in between now and the next election, which is three years away, which is going to be very difficult because I don't think the country has—enough of the people in the country have the stomach for what he wants. Mm-hmm. So most likely, the next election, we will have a hung parliament. Do you know what a hung parliament is? Well, it's just like, kind of like, you know, stalemate. Yeah, stalemate. You don't really have that here as such. No, we do. I mean, if there's an equal split, the two sides can box each other out. Yeah, whereas we have to get a majority. Yeah. Otherwise, we have a hung parliament. Well, I think the problem Lowe has, too, is that let's say he wins on the conservative side, you know, and he overtakes reform. He is going to be just beset on all sides by enemies. Every leftist in the country will come together to just, you know, absolutely defeat Lowe. It's not even just the leftist. Like some of his policies are like pretty extreme. I'm not even saying that they're wrong, but they're like pretty extreme. But extreme is subjective. It's like, he's basically saying, I want to set the country back to 1997. Yeah. And that is now viewed as extreme. But what I mean by extreme is like, he's talking about deporting millions of people. Yes. And like, I'm not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, but it's quite an extreme measure. And it's like, there's a lot of people that aren't, that even on the right are going to fight that. Well, both, this is the choice. We are going into an election, which is an existential crisis, whether it's left or right. That is how it is portrayed in the media by opinion leaders. And so what I think- Is that new for you guys? For us, that's like constant. This level. This actually is interesting. After Cheat Code, I saw something you put on Nostra about the way that the media is- Oh, yeah. So I spent- Like narrative-driven media. I went to a very fancy hotel in Windsor Park next to Elton John's house. And I was watching the BBC and ordering room service for a few hours. and I was noticing, I texted Pete about this and he was like, BBC's all crap, you shouldn't watch it. But I was watching Sky TV and BBC and just flipping around to English channels and it's very interesting the way you guys do propaganda because your propaganda is like a warm cup of tea. It's like a blanket. It's like, isn't this quaint? Isn't this, aren't we civil? England will always be here. And it's like, I found myself while I'm in the hotel room getting lulled into complacency. I'm like, this is nice. And then I talk to people at the pub and they're giving me the, what are you going on about? Why are you trying to make it all? You're trying to disrupt everything, right? And it's like, no, no, there's a reality here that you guys are all asleep to. And I wonder if and when the English people are ever going to wake up, you know? When does the Saxon begin to hate? You know what I mean? Look, I think the reality is that we are going through what is like an evolutionary period of how society operates. And I think there's two ways to look at it. There's that kind of claw to the past, and I hope we can get back to this kind of nice world we were in in the late 90s, or this vision I've got that I hope we can do. And then there's a group of people who are like, oh, no, I see what's happening, and we are heading to dark places, whether it is sectarian violence, whether it's actual civil war, whether it's socialist authoritarianism. It's something bad is what we're heading towards because we are so split, and it's impossible to bring us together. There is no world now where the right and the left can meet in a centrist place and go, yeah, it's just not happening. So if the right wing, the left will attack. If the left wing, the right will attack. And so we're swinging, the pendulum's swinging harder and harder. A bit like here. You know, next election, is it AOC or Newsom or whoever against Rubio? It's just, it's now, it's like once you're on a side and you care enough to be vocal about it, you're entirely against the other side. There's no rational thought. There's no rational discussion. And you are split on every single point. I know the answer. The answer is freedom. Freedom is what springs the left and the right together because it reduces the size of the state and the influence, reduces the malign influence of the media. It reduces the money printing. And within that, you have Bitcoin, which is a solution, which is great. But you cannot sell freedom to enough people because when you sell freedom, you have to make compromises. You sell freedom to the left, they have to make compromises. You sell freedom to the right, they have to- What compromises? Okay, so on the left, they have to make compromises with regards to the economy, because you would have free market capitalism, okay? And that's not what the left want. The left want redistribution of wealth. They want bureaucracy. They want rules. They want employment rules. They want minimum wages. You can't have that. If you want to have freedom, you have to have free markets, free association. so they can't make that compromise. On the right, if they want freedom, the right have been kind of censoring people a little bit as well, and they've got to tolerate, I mean, both sides have to tolerate free idea, free thought, free speech. But freedom is what can bring people together because the individual can operate without the influence of the state, without the influence of the politicians, because it's the politicians themselves who want power, and what do they do? It's what Bastiat said. When they go beyond defending life, liberty, and property and going to redistribution inverses the morality. So they're like, well, I want that group of voters, so I'm going to give you what they want and fuck those people over there. But when you go just to freedom, just life, liberty, and property, you reduce the need and the size of the state. So the individual gets to operate. But the individual can already operate like that in Bitcoin without the state. Sure. We've got like 12 Bitcoiners in England. But I just think that might be an unattainable goal. I don't think any government party wants to give total freedom to its people. No, they don't. The people have to take the freedom. Yeah. In history, we've never gotten... By the way, you guys in the UK are an interesting case because you never beheaded your king. Almost everybody, as the Enlightenment swept across Europe, almost everybody else beheaded the monarchy. Didn't Cromwell... Who did Cromwell behead? I don't know. I don't know English history. But I mean, you never displaced your monarchy. That's the point. So you still have a monarchy. I mean, it's not a real monarchy, but you still have one. So you have a figureheads. It's a fake monarchy. It's fake. But they live off the public largesse. Yeah. They bring a lot of money into the country. Right. Well, that's what the fucking stupid shit you guys all said. Look, I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years. We are not going to be able to teach enough people and convince them that we can change the country through the freedoms that come adjacent to Bitcoin fast enough. It's just not going to happen. Because you have to sell freedom to enough people. And freedom is a hard thing to sell to people. But I don't understand what you're saying is the alternative to that. Well, the alternatives are individual freedom. You can attain that. And that individual freedom means you can kind of ignore the state. If the state becomes so pernicious that it's affecting your life too much, you can leave if you've got financial freedom. Because you've got social mobility. Or you have war, some kind of war. And I think we are now in war. You're in a Cold War. Yeah, we're in a Cold War. Cultural Cold War. Yeah. Civil War. it's a it's a cold civil war cold civil war it's like what you guys are behind us by like five years because america's had this going on since like maybe at least 2016 like during the first election of donald trump you know so we've had a cold cultural civil war going on and like you can all the chaos in america is that it is outcrops of that you know cold civil war and for most people it's like you know whatever it's neither here nor there but occasionally you see it pop up and there's like actual street violence and the same types of things that were like occurring pre-war World War I, pre-World War II, where commies and fascists were fighting in the street. We have that going on here and there. And those things are all precursor states to full-scale war. Do you think that's the likely outcome? Because I need an optimistic take here. Because this is, again, doom. I am being optimistic, I think. The optimistic take is war because you have a clear up. That's a stretch for me. well the problem is nobody can see and uh did i hold that well you did nobody can see a way out without violence right so the left has their um preferred type of violence against the preferred groups they want to do violence against like i mean you know listen it's not actually a policy dispute like the left actually wants the right dead and i think the right uh doesn't want the left dead as much but they could be forced into killing everybody right like so the right views violence like a switch and they flip the switch it's either off or it's kill everybody the left views violence like a volume knob you know turn it up to what suits you they're you know including like low-level street violence if you wear a mega hat you get punched in the face if you um you know you can turn it all the way up to like political assassinations right so they view violence differently but at the end of the day like they actually do want to displace and kill millions of people and the right will displace and kill millions of people then they have the ability to So these things are butting each other and you you looking down the barrel of these and you like yeah it like danny said it terrifying and we are looking at a scenario in which like if there is world war three or some type of world war three it's millions dead and those are the kind of things that pete talks about on his show and so it's like yeah that's that's black pill this but for me as a as a bitcoiner i am looking at the chessboard and saying we are the only alternative path The only one. Okay. And like if we can demonetize the system before it can do mass scale war, then maybe we have a shot, but it's a big maybe. So I think there's two positive communities. What's the other one? I think Christianity. Yeah. I'm still confused on my own faith, but I know Christian values are good values. The only reason not to kill everybody is Christianity. Yeah. I'll give you the optimistic take. The optimistic take is a charismatic leader who is able to bridge the left and right divide and convince people that the only path is freedom. See, I just don't know if there's a single figure in the world that can bridge that divide. Well, the problem is the charismatic figure is not going to sell freedom. He's going to sell authoritarian. I think also, if you look at who's going to win in this over the next decade, is it going to be the left or right? I think add AI to the mix, And if we get massive job losses, then the left is going to win. But there is, I mean, we should talk about AI as well. But there is a significant argument that some forms of authoritarianism, like we have- Look at L7. Yeah, in the UK, what we have is like this pathetic authoritarianism. Nanny state authoritarianism. Yeah, nanny state, managerial, like we want to- Mary Poppins as dictator. Yeah, it's like, it's the redistributive. Whereas if you look at in the Middle East, some of the Emirati states, they have a different kind of authoritarianism. Look, it isn't great. I'm not saying it's like I want it, but I'm just saying their society seems to be, things seem to be okay in Dubai and Saudi. Depending on who you are. Sure, depending on who you are. They still use slave labor and it's not freedom. And El Salvador is not freedom. They might have made the country a lot better, but the thing that I can never get past is the fact that they just lock anyone up with a tattoo or did. That's not freedom. It might make the country better, but it's not freedom. Well, he makes a good argument. Is it freedom to be terrorized by street guys? Absolutely not. Who will rape and murder your 12-year-old daughter? No, absolutely not, obviously. But having a tattoo doesn't mean you're one of those people, but you're still in jail. The absolute best system of governance is to actually have a benevolent dictator. That's the absolute best system of governance. Can you ever have a benevolent dictator that remains a benevolent dictator? That's the problem, right? So that's the problem with monarchy, is that the benevolent dictator, like Marcus Aurelius is amazing, and then his son, Commodus, is a total piece of shit. And the whiplash from that in just one generation is crazy, right? But for the citizens on the ground in El Salvador, if you were a abuela making pupusas, and then you were having to deal with these gang members who were threatening to chop off your limbs, and now they're in jail, do you really give a fuck about their human rights? Absolutely not. Zero. I've never been to El Salvador, but I'm sure he's made the country miles better. I believe that. But I don't think it's maximally freedom. It's not. Do you think everyone in jail in the UK and in America is guilty of a crime? No, of course not. So there's no difference, really? There's the judicial system difference. Do you think El Salvador has as good a judicial system as the UK? For instance, like the UK. I don't have the data on it, but I do know the judicial system itself is in both countries. Seems like a fair system because there's a judicial system. But really, it's about winning an argument. It's not about right or wrong. It's about winging the argument. And also, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you guys just got rid of right to jury trial, which existed since Magna Carta. Not yet. It's not going to yet. But it's on the way out. Yeah, I don't think they'll get away with that. They're trying to. What do they want to do? They want to get rid of jury trials for anything outside of, like, serious crimes like rape or murder. So is that more like the US then? Because you don't have jury for everything. No, we have jury for everything. Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah. But that's the point. It's your peers to judge you. Now, the way the system works here is, like, they try and force you into plea bargains. So what they do with the samurai guys is a good example. They hit the samurai guys with like, you're facing 30 years, right? You're facing 25. You can plea for five. And that's how the feds have such a high conviction rate in America is they stick you with every possible. They don't go after you for seven years. They go after you for 30 years. And then they make you gamble with your life. And most people are thinking, okay, I'm going to miss my kids, elementary school, but I'm going to be there for middle school and high school. And like, that's fuck it. That's the deal I'm going to take. This was Ross Albright. They offered him a plea deal of, I think, 10 years. And he said it out. He was like, no, I'm innocent. Yeah. And then faced a double life sentence plus 40 years. Yeah. A keeping charge. And then he ended up doing 10. I mean, is that a fair system? Of course not. No. Of course not. Yeah. So, like. Democracy is a bad system. Yes. It's just the least bad is, like, you know, the Winston Churchill quote or whatever, versus all the other ones that have been tried. But it's a shit system. Do you think democracy exists in 20 years' time? In the same way that it does today? The problem with democracy is that it's cyclical in the sense that, like, there's a quote I like by Teitler, where he basically says that, you know, every democracy collapses under loose fiscal policy because the proletariat, you know, the people like learn that they can vote largesse from the public treasury so they can keep voting for socialist programs and socialist systems. And the politicians that, you know, offer more and more, you know, social programs, social entitlement systems, they're the politicians that get elected. And then it collapses because of loose fiscal policy. And then everybody's left standing in the bag being like, I guess infinity money didn't work. And then an authoritarian dictatorship replaces it. So that's, this is a historical cycle that goes over and over and over again. And democracies tend to last about 200 years on average. Democracies. I'm not saying it's, I'm not being fatalistic, by the way. I'm just saying like, this is a historical precedent. Democracies just need some tweaks. Like I, I wouldn't allow anyone under 25 to vote. Not a bad idea. Or over 65, let's say. Yeah. And I wouldn't allow anyone who was a net taker from the system to vote. Right. Because the incentives are wrong. You have no incentive. You have no incentive. And that's billionaires and, you know, homeless alike. See, I don't even not like those ideas. I'm just trying to figure if that fits into your framework of wanting maximum freedom. Well. I think there's loads of hypocrisies in it. Freedom's always hypocritical, though. So, why? You can't have freedom without, because freedom is a perfect state. And so you can't reach a perfect state without being a hypocrite. But in order to strive towards a more perfect state, you have to continually be at odds with, you know, the reality of the situation. But some rules like that end up being like, you're kind of striving for freedom via some form of authoritarianism. No, let me make the argument back. So, why can't you vote until you're 25? Well, your brains aren't developed. And so we don't allow kids to have sex at certain ages or drive cars at certain ages, all which are responsible decisions. A vote is a very responsible decision. But then do you need an IQ test because there's loads of 35-year-olds that are fucking idiots? Well, yeah, but I think your IQ test is whether you're a net taker from the system or not. But so you would argue, I'm getting what your argument back is, is what you're saying is that if you are a net taker from the system and that means you don't get a vote, that's anti-freedom. But the anti-freedom is allowing someone to vote away your money, vote away the theft of your money. And so if you contribute to a system, you have a vote. Yeah. Skin in the game. Skin in the game. I don't even hate the idea. It's just that there's... It's not freedom, though. What? To have a... Because there's still... Well, anytime you have a government, it's not freedom. Yeah. Right. If we're in a perfect freedom state, there's no government. But this is why I said, do you think that democracy will still exist in 20 years in the same way that it does today? It's going to go through its continuous cycle of collapse and rebirth, I think. Yeah. Like always. We're always at war with something because there's no perfect system. Yeah. And we're not perfect people either. I also think this idea of like the Rupert Lowe's of the world who I think some of his ideas are good. But getting back to being like a 1990s type Britain, I just think is a dream. Yeah, but I don't think he's trying to actually return us to 1990s Britain. itself. He's trying to find people who agree with him. I think he's trying to return to some 1990s or even earlier legislation. I think he's trying to return the population split to 1990s. I think it's certain things like that. But he accepts reality, accepts where we are. But the UK is in a terrible state. We've spoken about this before, but I think one of the trickiest things in the UK right now is that everyone wants to be like, we need to bring back British culture. But I've not heard someone explain what British culture is well. Like, I don't know if- Stiff upper lip. Keep calm and carry on. We will defend our island home. Yeah. What does it mean to be British? For England boys, get on a ship and go colonize some motherfuckers. I mean, there's a lot of things that are English culture. We can see it maybe more clearly than you because it's from the outside. Yeah. Well, what is it? You're British. What does it mean British to you? But that's, I don't know if I've got a good answer to that because like people will say like, like Rupert Lowe says this. He says that like Britain is a Christian country, Christian nation. And I was raised with Christian values. I went to a kind of religious school. It wasn't very religious. And I think that the Christian values are part of British culture. But what is the atheist numbers in the UK? It's huge. It's the more atheist than almost anywhere else. Yeah, but how shit is your culture now? Correct. But so what does it mean? The further it gets away from Christianity, the less ideal it is in the... The less it is with the British culture. We give you guys a lot of shit. the Americans. Like we love to, it's so fun. But we deeply love you and respect you and look up to you. It's like a father-child relationship. Yeah. Not now. We look up to who you used to be. We look up to our perception of you. You know what I mean? I think that's probably true across all of Europe. Yeah. So I think there are- Like late 1800s Britain, we look up to that. Yeah. So I think there are cultural values that are more universal, that don't just, they're not just cultural values for the UK, but our cultural values, which is buy a home, have a family, have kids, go to work. Playing a home of value, though. It's a cultural value. I think so. That cultural attainment. But then there's like deeper cultural points. Like, I just think the pub itself is a cultural institution of the UK. Like, you've been to my local pub. Now, you don't have the equivalent of that. Where you walk across the road and you see your neighbor and you all know each other. It's the community hub. We, yeah, we have bars, but bars are really more for, you know, just drinking, just drinking. And it's like, you go there if you want to drink. Yeah, whereas we go over for dinner. You go for all sorts of things. You go for mainly sports and hanging out with your buddies, right? Yeah. But we can be in any group. This is like a community hub in the UK. Like the local pub is where people go to. We were talking about this too, that like, you know, we saw a group of young people hanging out at your local pub. And you were explaining to me that like, this is a new thing. Because the city center is no longer safe. I was walking around the city center in Bedford. it's not safe um i was there at like 2 3 a.m and like you've even as a big guy i felt sketched out because i don't have a knife on me or a gun or anything in america i would have a fucking gun on me in the uk i don't have one so like i'm walking around i feel sketched out and like that's the feeling that they're having so they're retreating to the local pubs but in some cult in some big broad cultural sense your your streets are not really streets they're like for cars they're like donkey paths they're donkey paths that have been in existence for a thousand plus years and the cultural cross-pollination of the donkey path that goes between, you know, these little narrow streets, that is, like, largely where English culture arises from, I think. And when you, like, rid yourselves of the ability to, like, feel safe and walk around your own high street, you are destroying thousands of years of culture that are inbuilt. Yeah, think about when you were a kid. Saturday, you'd go to the Mac Town Center. I mean, yeah, go play football. Yeah, go play football with your mates. But if you were with your parents, they take you to the town center. The town center was the meeting point. It was the meeting point for trade, social gatherings. You go to the town center. And that's been destroyed by a number of reasons. It's been destroyed by retail parts and online shopping. But there's another point. The cultural hub of the town center and the pubs have also been destroyed by the state. Business rates, higher taxation in other areas, lack of safety in the town centers. the acceptance of crackheads and shoplifting and, yeah, there's just the blatant shoplifting in the UK. That has destroyed the cultural hub of the town centre. So you go to the Bedford Town Centre now, it's a shithole. Like, I get hammered for this, but it's like, you have to accept reality to fix it. It is a shithole. Yeah. And you have the vape shops and you have the Turkish barbers. And you have the, you don't want to go in that town centre. That's not a nice feeling. So you're dispersing the cultural behaviour to the edge of the town and to the villages. Do you want to pay less in taxes and stack more Bitcoin? Of course you do. Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can. Under section 168k of the US tax code, Bitcoin mining servers qualify for 100% bonus depreciation. This means every dollar you spend on miners can directly offset your income in a single year. And that's true for both business owners and W2 earners. If you have $100,000 in ordinary income, you can purchase $100,000 in miners and potentially offset your tax liability entirely. Blockware's mining as a service does all the heavy lifting they secure the rigs, they source the low-cost power, and they handle all the day-to-day maintenance. So you get to stack Bitcoin every single day while drastically shrinking your tax bill. 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Or, you know, in the last, like, 75 years more so. And, yeah, so, like, the suburbs are the safe place and people do proliferate out to the suburbs if they want to like you want to have safety and security for your family for your kids you want to be out of the city center and you know it's very different though because we have a car culture most of america was built after the invention of the automobile and so there are old american cities like new orleans and boston and san francisco and they have a little bit of a european feel because they were built pre-car but most cities you know you go visit like i don't know kansas city it's going to be mainly like a culture that's built around automobiles. And so if you have that culture where you go to and fro in your car, that's a very different culture than the European walkability. Like, Hey, you know, I'm just, I'm going to stop into the shop here. I might pop in, I might get a donut or whatever croissant. I might go over here. I might get a coffee. I might go over there. I might talk to this guy. And that is a special thing that you guys have in Europe. And we're actually jealous of that, but we can't create it here because the city centers are unsafe. And now that's becoming that And Danny, if you think of like historic Britain, you think of James Bond, or you think of Oxford and Cambridge and the boat race, or you think of how we're represented historically in the movies, think of the civility that the British have in those films. There's a genteel quality. Now, let's take it to a really kind of like individual that seems like a tiny, almost nebulous point, almost nebulous point, but actually is highly relevant. The British are famed for queuing. Why are we famed for queuing? Because we're polite. We're polite. Polite society. Because they were there before me, so I'm going to wait after them, and I'm going to stand in line. Okay? And if you think of that, that's a form of civility that we've always had in the UK. Polite, nice, respectful. High trust. High trust. We are no longer a high trust society. What we now have is a grift society. I'm going to walk into that shop. I'm going to take what I want. Because I don't care because there's no consequence. I'm going to, oh, look, I've been rightfully sacked from my job because I'm terrible at it. But there is a system that allows me to apply that this is a wrongful dismissal. And then I can put in a sick note. And I can drag this out for months and get paid. Then I can take you to a tribunal and you have to give me money. Okay. We've become a society that goes, how do I get what I want and blame everyone else for my mistakes. And that is the culture being changed. I think the easiest way to understand when people say, what is British culture? I say, we've gone from a high trust, civil, respectful society to a low trust, grift, take what you want. And that's why it doesn't feel like the UK anymore. I go into my town center, there are crackheads and thieves and just a shithole. That doesn't feel like British. Now, I still retain it in my village. I go into my local pub and I feel like this is, that felt like a British experience. Yes. Yeah, and I had a lock-in, like a proper British lock-in. It's so good that you got a lock-in. Yeah, yeah, so we were there late. It didn't happen that much anymore. Right, and we were drinking with the bartender, and, you know, it was great. But you know when you took us to shoot guns? Yeah. That, to me, felt like a cultural American experience. Proper American experience, yes. And I think taking you to the local pub is kind of the equivalent. For you, this must have felt so British, the barman, the pumps on the bar, the little tables. Yeah. Like, the culture is what we experience, what you know internally. But I think a lot of it comes down to our behaviors. and I think the biggest cultural shift has gone from high trust to low trust and that's come from the state continually stealing so people are out to get what they want because they because essentially the state has created the low trust society because we can't trust them yeah so if we can't trust them well we have to take and get what we want now I say that collectively that's not me well you've also imported a bunch of low trust cultures you know also true controversial but It's true. I don't know that it's controversial. It's just what's happening. When you are multicultural, when you talk about being a multicultural society, you're saying you have no culture. You'll basically get, what is it like when you get a bunch of paints and you blend them all together, it just becomes a mess. It just, there's no, like, and it's exactly the same. You cannot blend certain cultures and expect to retain the British culture because you're making concessions to other cultures. And I don't have any issue with Muslims or Sikhs or whoever. But when you put a mosque in a town and you blast out the prayers, you're changing the shape and the culture of that area. And so if you start regularly changing the shape, you've changed society. And so what Rupert Lowe is trying to return is he wants, I think if you had to crystallize it, he would say, go back to high trust. You work hard. The state doesn't take too much. And you're rewarded. I think that's what he really wants. Not a return to like we're living actually in the 90s. Yeah. It's funny. We've been shooting guns a few times. Yeah. And every time it's been awesome. Going with Pete was terrifying. Pete can't be trusted around. That's because you're a lefty and I might shoot you. When Pete was holding a gun, his son Connor was hiding behind me. Yeah, we all step about 10 paces back when Pete is on the gun. It's the lefty I might shoot. I told you I going to kill them all I think one of the big problems that the UK has and I think I might see this better because I not lived there for quite a long time is that I think the UK still think they're really important on the world stage. They do. I think the general population, if you ask them, they'd be like, yeah, we're second behind America. And the problem with that is when Brexit happened, whether you were for or against it, once it happened, there was a really cool opportunity where the UK could have done something interesting and they fucked it. And the reason they did, I think, is because they went out to other countries and were like, we're very important still. we're England. Like, do you want to trade with us? And they're like, we don't care about you. So we obviously aren't as important as we used to be on the world stage. Right. But do you want us to return to being important on the world stage? We would love for you. Like, I saw a picture of the UK's Navy versus the 1942 UK Navy. And it made me fucking sad because you guys were just an amazing power, you know? And you were a good you were a good power you were a force for good in the world you know a little ways but sometimes no no i think so broadly i think england was a force for good yeah i mean we are a hard fork we're a hard fork of england right and america's i think net net is a force for good in the world as well you know the ticket you're right right exactly yeah exactly i mean and you know i think that um if you look at like southern culture for instance i think a lot of southern culture is actually like high aristocratic british culture from you know 1852 or something like that And so anyway, like when I saw that picture of the UK Navy being decimated and, you know, like there was Starmer and Trump and Trump was like, Starmer's fucking loser. And, you know, and Starmer is like sitting over there like he's in a comedy like The Office or something about UK government. He is a fucking loser. Yeah, he's like a bumbling buffoon. And, you know, I think the reason like you guys didn't send ships is not like as a political statement because like your ships are not in proper working order. Like it's like a catastrophe. and so yeah i mean when i look at britain and england it makes me sad that i can't visit what it used to be i used to feel like i didn't give a shit because i'm like an american sort of chauvinist and i'm like i only love america and i think you guys are all losers you know but then i went over and it was like a shell of its former self and i was like they massacred my boy like what have they done you know like england is over and uh everyone's so poor there too you walk around and people are poorer than they are in Alabama. So there was an interesting survey done. Do you know about this? I don't know. In the UK. Which one? And it asked people, if you had to rate the UK, it's a prosperity as a state in the US, where do you think it would come? And so where do you think it would come? I mean, so I've seen a different one, which was take London out of the UK. Where does the economy rank in Europe? It's like below Poland. So I would guess that it's very low. It'd be like, I don't know, North Carolina. Give me a number. I don't know, 30? Okay. So the survey came out that we thought we were seventh. We are poorer than Mississippi, which is the poorest you are staying. Wow. You guys think of yourselves as like California or something. And like, no, no, we're like. No, I've been to America enough to know that's not true. We're much richer over here. There are things we outperform on. We do outperform like in certain measures that people are happy about, which is like healthcare. NHS. Yeah, things like that. NHS is like a religion to you guys. That's kind of a sacrifice we've made. But I don't think the country has fully accepted not only how poor we are, but how much poorer we get. And the first time I came to the US, I came out for the Mayweather-Hatton fight. I remember this distinctly. It was $2.05 to the pound. What is it now, $1.30? OK, and it's only going to decrease further. OK, so we're getting poorer as a nation. But we're getting poorer not just through, like, the exchange rates, but also the inflation in the UK. and it is starting to touch the middle class in a significant way now. There is a revolt amongst the middle class because they can't afford the holiday they used to have or the school fees. I mean, it's basically the middle class is tiny in the UK now. Well, we're destroying it. Yeah. I mean, look, it's not actually attributed to Lenin, but people like to say it. Like the way to kill a society is to kill its middle class. We're destroying the middle class and we're creating a dependency class. And the AI, that is only going to make that significantly worse. So look, I'm... The reason I'm pushing on this, though, is not because I disagree with anything you're saying. It's like what I'm not sure about is whether you can get there without some form of authoritarianism. Like, I don't know if you can be maximally freedom on the way to freedom, if that makes sense. Well, I think you... Hmm, let me think. I think, yes, you can't get there until... But it's what form of... We have soft authoritarianism now. With who? Like, in the UK. We are not a free country. Well, you're a nanny state. It's a nanny state. You know, we, if you, if you, we've basically got pseudo backdoor socialism right now. Yeah. Like regulation, they control your money, they control your company, they control everything part of you. By the way, that's everywhere in the West. To a lesser degree. I was going to say, you can say that about America. It might be to a lesser degree. No, no, it's, it's Canada, it's UK, it's Australia, and then it's blue states in America. Yeah. But America has not, the rest of you have fallen to it already. Like we do not have free speech. We arguably don't even have free thought because you need to have free speech to have free thought. And we don't have free expression. We don't have a freedom of association. We don't have free markets anymore. We are a managerial class. It is, you know, they've achieved essentially what you want to achieve with socialism just via the back door through regulation and taxation. And they're closing the doors slowly. They cannot afford to maintain what they're doing. So every single budget, there are more taxes. And so, or there's more borrowing. And so what's going to happen is they're just going to confiscate more and more and more. And we will eventually probably hit significant double-digit inflation, 20%, 25%. It's the only way they can pay off the debt. And so it is essentially back to socialism. It has the same outcome, which is the even distribution of utopia. I have got a question for you, Hoddle, for someone from the outside. Everyone always buckets the UK, Canada, Australia as all going down the same path. The UK seems to be ahead on that. But I don't know against Canada, but against Australia, the UK is so ahead. Canada is pretty bad too. Canada is really bad. But why, like you couldn't pick three more geographically dispersed countries. Like why is it happening? I mean, yeah, they are all- It's the communism. They are all Commonwealth. They're all Commonwealth countries. And I think, you know, you all feel an inferiority complex, if I'm just going to be honest, about America. And so, you know, you kind of like position yourselves against America, like, oh, well, we're not like them. You know, we're not, we're not so, you know. Fuck off. You do, you do. You're like- By the way though, in the UK- You have to separate yourself in some way because you're so much poorer than we are. This might be cope from people in the UK and in Australia, but in those countries, they're like, thank fuck we're not. Right. Because Trump is paying us Hitler. I certainly don't agree with everything Trump's done, but there's no idea of what's actually happening. There's this British couple I like, and I can't remember their handle on Instagram, but they're going around America, and they're speaking to their British audience about what they're finding, and they're basically finding like, America is fucking awesome. It is awesome. And they're like, it's so beautiful. The people are so nice. It's completely like not what we were told about America at all. They go to places like Bass Pro Shops and they're like, this is the greatest store I've ever been to. I mean, Bass Pro Shop is fucking awesome. I was in Phoenix the other day and I was like, this is amazing. Yeah. I could live here. Yeah, but I get this thing now, when I go back to Australia, I go to this boxing gym and people will be like, I don't think they've ever been to the US and they'll be like, what's it like there? Like, are they okay? Like, because all- I think we're all just like shooting each other every day. Like we have an arm. You're like, hey, it's a bit warm out. And I'm like, no, it's cold. And I just shoot you. Like we're in a Western movie or something. Look, I mean, if you ignore politics and social media and you travel around America, it is the greatest country in the world. Yeah. But if you follow social media and you follow the news and politics, it's chaos. Well, we have a totally different problem than you guys do. But I can, you know, there is a similar point on the UK. Social media makes it look worse than it is. I could bring you to the UK, and I could take you on a cultural trip, and take you to places, and you're . Yeah, totally. Yeah, like you go around the Cotswolds. That's like, that's what you imagine England to be. Your problem is you guys are all vassal states to America, and you're all on the verge of collapse, okay? Because you can't run your, you know, we've been subsidizing your defense. That's why your Navy is so pathetic, is because we've subsidized it. Does the Navy matter anymore? I know it's like a signal of like the decline, and that's the point you're making, but does it actually matter? The empire runs the Navy because, yes, the Navy matters because it keeps shipping lanes open. And when you guys were the empire, that was your job. And, you know, you guys cared about things like the Suez or the Strait of Hormuz. And now those are that we worry about those choke points. We worry about the Panama Canal and the Suez and, you know, whatever. We keep the shipping lanes open. And that's what Greenland is about is those are Arctic shipping lanes. And that's the lifeblood of global capitalism and commerce. And we are underwriting that. We're the insurance providers. You know, the American military is the real Lloyds of London for the high seas because we underwrite all global commerce. And so that's why it matters. It doesn't matter for you guys anymore because you're not the empire any longer. But we've been subsidizing Europe broadly through NATO. And that's why socialism has exploded in Europe is because you don't have to spend on defense. And we defanged Germany, for instance, which was a mistake on our part. We defanged Japan, which was a mistake on our part. It's time to undo those mistakes. That's the American sort of view. And we feel like we've left you guys in a worse state and none of you realized what was happening until it was too late, until very recently. And even still, many people don't understand what has happened. And so, you know, your states are weak and they're on the verge of collapse. OK, but that's actually your bright spot. Like to be optimistic about it is like rock bottom. Well, you're so close to rock bottom that like it actually is probably easier to turn the UK around than it is to turn America around. And so America's problem, just to put a button on this, is that America's republic is dying. So our republic is in collapse, but the empire is just being born. So America is making a bid for massive global empire at the moment. And we're sort of like seeing who's on our side and who's against us. You know, China is also making a bid for global empire. So those are the two superpowers. And you can view all geopolitics as a chess match between China and America for what the future of the next century is going to be. If we could make you authoritarian leader of the UK and Europe, what do you think they should do? just, you know, install Rupert Lowe as warden of the UK, you know, basically is like the best, that's the best bet. Do you really think that a leader like that can get the UK out of the road is in? Yes, absolutely. It's all just about decisions. You know, that there's this, there's this thing like an American right winger say this thing, like the fix everything easily switch or button. And you can just at any time press it and just fix everything easily. And that's what Bukele did down in El Salvador. But the, the rub is that it requires some level of authoritarianism. So this is a question, because I genuinely don't know well enough what would happen if he got into power. Like, he's come out with these, this, like, policy decisions that he wants to make. Some of them are, like, I'm not saying they're wrong, but they are on the, like, edge of being more, they're the most extreme policies anyone suggests in the UK for a very long time. Maybe since, like, Thatcher, I don't know. Define extreme. Like, I've already done this with, like, the deporting millions and millions and millions of people. But why is it extreme? Maybe extreme's the wrong word. I don't know a better word for it. It's, like, it's pushing the precipice. It's a big action. Yeah. It's a big action. Like, if he got into power, could he actually do those things? I mean... Like, how much power does the prime minister alone have? I mean, look, you need a parliamentary majority to be able to push through your policies. And can he get a parliamentary majority in the next three years? That's going to be challenging. I think his big opportunity to win, or the party establishes, is in eight years. Because his approach is, and he's got a very good tagline, which is, don't care. So the problem most politicians have, they get a form of criticism, they kind of defend it or they attack somebody else or they shift their policy slightly and they dilute themselves. Reform, they were the anti-establishment party, anti-establishment ideas. They were subversive. As they got nearer to power, they've got fearful and they've basically diluted themselves to become the machine itself. They've got all the architects of failure from the conservatives and they just sound like the conservative party. That naturally what happens. Rupert Lowe is holding the line on his policy decisions, and he is talking about kind of a sensible combination of nationalism, Christian nationalism, free market economics, and a higher trust society whereby you work hard, you're rewarded. If you don't want to work, then you're not part of society. Now, that's going to be a big shift, and I don't think enough people have got the stomach for it yet. Some have, but I think what will happen is if he holds the line into this next election, he might win a few seats. He might win a lot of votes, but not enough in certain areas to get seats. But if he holds the line through that election and says and predicts what's going to happen next, which whether it's a hung parliament, it's coalitions or reform win, if following that, he is correct. Come the next election, people are like, OK, he was right. Because what's going to happen is— Don't he'll be like a prophet. Yeah, because what's going to happen is, say it's reform, do manage, they might do a coalition with the conservatives or on their own, get a parliamentary majority. If they do not fix the economy and people continue to get poorer, then those people who voted for them are going to be, oh, you failed us. If it's a left-wing coalition, and they go ahead with all their crazy socialist policies, exactly what he wants to do, all those middle-class people who voted for them who suddenly get poorer themselves are going to be like, holy shit, what have I voted for here? And so in some ways, if Rupert Lowe can't win the next election, I want the crazy leftists. I'm an accelerationist. Get them in, prove to them their socialist bullshit doesn't work, and then bring in a proper conservative government afterwards. Because I think Rupert, like I care about the economics. You can have somebody fix the immigration problem. If you don't fix the economics as well, you're still going to get poorer and people will be fed up. People want to be able to feed their family, have a holiday. If you're middle class, maybe have private school. And just feel like there's a reason to go to work. At the moment, a lot of people just don't want to fucking go to work. People are sick of it. Why is a, I don't know, guy works on the roads like a road sweeper. Why is he getting up at five in the morning and seeing less and less money at the end of the month and can't pay for the things that his kids want, yet we're seeing all this high immigration. and we spend all this money on fucking stupid stuff within the government. Like, what's he got to live for? We have to build a country based on workers, okay? We have to base a society on a meritocracy. We just do not have that at the moment. So I think for Rupert Lowe, he may do it in three years. You know, the Labour might really screw it up, people get so pissed off, or it might be in eight years' time. Or he might be influential within a coalition. Now, the interesting thing is, I think if the conservatives are dead as a party, but if they turn around to Rupert Lund and said, please come and run our party, they will win the next election. OK? Because he would go in there, he would get rid of CCHQ, which is the head office, which does all their stupid campaigning. He would get rid of all the liberal wetzer gone into the party when they did the coalition with the liberal Democrats. And he would have the infrastructure and base that goes, OK, we can be conservatives again. Yeah. That's the right decision. That's what the Conservative Party should do, but they won't. So we'll get a hung parliament and we'll get some weird left-wing coalition. The thing that's really challenging on saving the economy is the technological element of that. It would be really interesting if a Conservative Party came in and AI... I've spoken to you a ton about AI, so this is more of a question for HODL, I guess. If it does replace a ton of jobs, take out a load of the middle-class, white-collar jobs, the accountants or lawyers, what do the Conservative Party do in response to that? And do they start doing really leftist monetary policy? Well, I do think it's interesting with AI. I think there's actually going to be a bit of a Jevons paradox where AI is going to create more jobs. But it looks like right now it's going to displace a lot of jobs. And it will displace jobs the way we know them today. But there will still need to be humans in the mix. I think the idea that AI is creating this abundant future and we're all just going to live in the post-abundant society, I think it's bullshit. I think it's bullshit and it's propagated by the people like Anthropic and OpenAI. and it's propagated so that you know they can you know justify their market caps and valuations essentially but you know more i think more businesses will be launched more people will be needed we're going to move to probably more of like a broad gig economy model where people are just sort of plugging in where they plug in and like you might not have one job as like i'm a bricklayer you might have like five jobs it's like i plug in here i plug in there i do it all on my time and that'll be like a better way to work because it'll be what people actually how how they actually wanna work. They might wanna knock off for two weeks, not do anything. Somebody else fills in on their role, whatever. Way more stuff like that, I think, is coming in the future. So I do think broadly, the idea that AI is gonna just dematerialize every job is bullshit, but it is gonna come for certain jobs. And there is gonna be a period of chaos and disruption. And that period might last 10, 15, 20 years. And that is going to be a difficult political moment. And so what do the conservative parties do? in that sort of milieu or like in that moment in time, what do they do? I think they probably will bleed more socialist and say, you know, let's do, like in America, we'll be like, we ain't doing none of that universal basic income, but here's what we're going to do for you. Freedom dividend. We're getting you a goddamn freedom dividend there, boy. I think on the AI thing, it's kind of interesting is that it's really hard to actually predict. Like it's really hard to predict. And like any kind of prediction is most likely going to be wrong. The only prediction that I think you can make that's accurate is that it's not going to slow down. No, and things are going to change because it is already changing. But like I use Claude and ChatGPT for a lot of stuff. But what's really obvious is like it's a very enthusiastic junior employee who's great at research but bullshits a lot. Just bullshits all the time. And so like my Claude has gone rogue a couple of times. I've had it. This is crazy. I've had it been doing AI on my website, SEO on my website. Okay, it went and screwed up five pages. So it went and did some optimization on the page and decided to do it with the API. But as part of the API, it's meant to have the user ID, so it's attached to the page, the session. Anyway, I went onto the website and there were pages missing. He told me, oh, so the following pages are missing. So I was like, did you delete them? They said, no. I was like, well, they're not there and you're the only one that's been working on it. And so go and have a look. look. It's like, no, it definitely wasn't me. It must be you. It's like, I think I'm a human. I think I know it was me. This happened when I was out and I told you to do this work. Go and look. And then it discovered the user ID was missing. I said, well, did you submit any changes that didn't have the user ID? It's like, oh yeah, I did this. I'll have to use the user ID. I had to go and fix those pages manually. So it did that. It also put new navigation in the header bar, denied it. And what was the other thing? Oh, the other thing, the weirdest thing. So when I first set up Claude with the co-work, I was getting it to do daily reports for me, like SEO, social, blah, blah, blah. And I said, can you drop me an email when this is done? And Claude set it all up and I didn't receive the email and it said, oh, we cannot send emails from your Gmail. We can only draft them. So every day if you click send, I was like, well, that's useless to me because I know it's done then. So I didn't use it. Anyway, one day I'll get an email update that says your SEO reports. I was like, you sent me an SEO report. And I said, no, we didn't. I was like, you did. Look at the email. And he was like, no, we didn't. We don't have access. I'm saying, I'm telling you, I didn't send myself this email. You did. Anyway, when I said like, go and look deeper. And it went and looked deeper. It said, oh yeah, I figured out a way to do it. I just forgot. So like my Claude is totally going rogue. So I think it's very, because if you think about what AI is, it's just calculations. It's math. So if it's constantly doing math calculations. How can you have like an infinite combination that's always correct? It's a bit like a human. We're doing infinite calculations in our head and we get shit wrong. So it's like a human gets shit wrong. Anyway, I'm going somewhere with this. I had this young lad who came to our conference who reached out to us and said, I'm from working class background up near Manchester actually, and said, I'm not sure what to do in my career. I want to build a business, but I'm not from a community where I have access to capital. What do you think I should do. So we jumped on the phone. He's been given a consultancy, offered a consultancy role at a junior grad role at a consultancy. So I said to him, I said, this is what you should do. Don't start a company now. Take that role. Okay. Learn on their time. And what I'd do with you is, if I were you, is I would go in there in the first three months, run a secret project. Don't tell anyone else. Learn how to replace you in that company with AI. And what that'll ultimately mean is actually it's you running 10 or 20 agent versions of you, creating 20 times more productivity. Run it, figure it out, figure out the systems, figure out the infrastructure. Then go to your boss. Say your boss I like to have a meeting And in that meeting put together a presentation and show them how you learned to replace yourself with AI Because what will really happen is you replace your colleagues or future grads and you will be the person they cannot get rid of that company You suddenly be like the genius within the business who can AI optimize that company. But what's going to happen is you're going to constantly need, I think for a significant period of time, is AI controllers. And so what I would say with the AI thing is like anyone who's out there shitting themselves with this, you need to do two things. You need to make yourself unsackable by being an expert in AI around your job. And you need to be acquiring assets for when everything changes. Because if AI does lead to huge job displacement, the only answer is some form of freedom dividend, which means more inflation, the asset protects you. But that's the only defense. Now, in the UK, if we had a remotely good government, they would have been invested in AI. They just announced a £500,000 investment in Barnsley to make Barnsley a tech center for AI. 500,000 pound, companies out here raising hundreds of billions. I mean, we're a fucking embarrassment. But people just need to defend themselves. And that is defend themselves in the workplace with their experience and defend themselves with assets. The other thing too is like AI native businesses, I think are gonna be a really big deal. And the reason why is because, and I think the Bitcoin or audience should understand this pretty well, is that the gatekeepers are gone. They don't exist anymore. Why did you need to go to Silicon Valley for your idea? For money. Why did you need to get money for like a seed or pre-seed idea, Silicon Valley? You needed it to build the MVP, the product, the minimum viable product, because the developers needed 150 grand and six months at a time. Now you can go on Claude Code and be like, Claude, I want a website that's exactly like this website. Give me feature parity with this website. And it will do that for you. And so it allows you to spin up businesses like you could spend a day, two days coding. you could have a very elaborate full stack website, front end, back end, and you could launch it into market and see if anybody wants it. So you can launch things at 10x the rate, 100x the rate, you used to be able to launch things, and you don't need to go to the gatekeepers. And so as Bitcoiners, we notice when the gatekeepers are gone, and we go, hey, wait a second, there's an open lane here. And I think that's the opportunity for people. Don't sit back and wait to react for AI to take your job. Go out and make shit. Have you built any software with CoreJet? Not properly. I've done like one tiny little bit of software that saved me like $200 a month that is basically my Claude subscription. Right. So this changed my whole perspective on it. Remember the old to-do list like clash we had between software and writing it down? The problem with to-do list software is designed to be broad and, you know, custom, like everyone can have it and works for everyone, right? There's no like customization for you. And so I always like start one, I put stuff in, it just doesn't quite work for me. So I just went into Claude and said, this is what I want as a to-do list. It's really funny. I built to do this with it too. It built it for me. And then I was like, I want to access this anywhere. So it taught me how to deploy the code on, I can't even remember, the website and create a Google Auth login, which I could never do myself. It's now there and exists for me as a to-do list. And so the realization was that, oh, this is why the software companies are fucked, is that you can build custom software for yourself. You do not need the software providers. because like when you look at some of the, I don't know, whether it's Slack or Monday or any of these things, they're complicated bits of software. Roll them out and the company is quite difficult, but you can just build software which is custom to your business really easily. There's undoubtedly massive opportunity for people that actually take advantage of this. I feel sorry for the like 50 year old accountant that's not ready to retire, but is going to have some young person at the company figure a way of AI replacing his job. And this is where like, I mean, you can say that, but like if this reaches 5% of the population, Yeah, 5% job losses. Sounds like a small number. That's insanely detrimental to the economy. And I think this is where you have to have freedom credits or UBI. Let me give you the alternative. Okay, sorry to interrupt. But let me give you the alternative view on that. We have a problem with young people now. Young people, some of them are struggling. They're getting degrees and they can't get jobs, or they can't buy a house, or they can't have kids, all those things. If we have to have a wave of people in their 40s and 50s and 60s that have a bit of struggle, but have a bit of life behind them, they've lived, they've bought a house out, If we're sacrificing them so all these young enthusiastic people can build this new AI world, I'm cool with that. That might be the sacrifice. I'm with that too. And by the way, just to illustrate the point of how easy this is to do for people who haven't done it. Me and my buddy were joking around about the Strait of Hormuz. And we were like, somebody should make a Minesweeper game in the Strait of Hormuz. Because this was in the news. They were talking about all the mines. And he texted me an image of the Strait of Hormuz with the caption, like, this would be so funny. Somebody should make a Minesweeper game in the Strait of Hormuz. and I took a screenshot of what he sent me. I fed it to Claude and I was like, make this game. And it did it. And it like produced a minesweeper game of the Strait of Hormuz. And then I played it on my phone just for myself. Didn't release it to anybody. And then I was like, that's fucking crazy. And then I just went about my day. But like you can take a screenshot of somebody else's idea and create a business or a company or a product or an app or whatever. So there are no excuses for anybody anymore. It's like, listen, man, I don't, this idea that like you go to university or uni as you guys call it, and then you like learn, you know, one thing, and then you do that one thing for 50 years. That shit hasn't been relevant since, I don't know, 1947 or something. And so like, why are we all sitting around like, you know, the CPA gets to like, I don't know, have this privileged perch in society where they just get to extract wealth when they're not like generating enough value to, you know what I mean? Or they're not using the software to be more productive. I don't have any sympathy for that. I think, you know, the only constant is change. You need to be really accepting of change because it's the reality that you're faced with. There's no stasis in nature. You're either growing or dying. So when something new comes along, don't just sit there and react or wait to react for it to, you know, oh, it's going to fucking take my job. This is where Bitcoin is uniquely placed. Because when I speak to friends in the normal world, they're not paying that much attention to AI. They don't have any idea, yeah. But when you're at these conferences, you speak to people about the stuff they're vibe coding. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. Everyone's vibe coding something. And you should be too. Like that's really kind of the lesson at this point. Yeah, so I mean, it is going to be volatile. And I think they will, back to the original conversation, people are going to have two default modes. This is a great opportunity. I can create something here. I'm going to sit up later. Like I had a thing, there was a guy online, some commie complaining the other day. It's like, it's so unfair working eight hours a day. And this is all I've got. I was thinking, well, when I was younger, I had two jobs or three jobs. Or I was like, I remember when I first got into the internet, I would walk to a carpentry place in the summer. I would spend all day being the, like, shithand in the carpentry place, picking stuff up, sweeping. I'd walk home, and all evening I was reading a book, Coding HTML. Like, you have choices to go out there and learn. Like, if you – most of these people, I suspect, if you look at their mobile phone, they're doomscrolling TikTok or Instagram. They're watching Netflix. TikTok, Instagram, Netflix, yeah, YouTube. I don't think – if anybody was in their evening, outside of their nine to five is sat there online learning about Bitcoin and AI and code and vibe coding. They're not moaning. They're not calling for socialism. They're like opportunity. And so we're just going to default. There will be a group of people who are like, this is my opportunity. I'm going to go and get shit done. And there'll be a group of people who will be crying and say, billionaires are bad. Let's tax them. That's it. They're your two choices. You have nothing else. The AI stuff wasn't doom. The start of this conversation was a little bit doom it. And we were kind of giving Pete a bit of shit. What's the light at the end of the tunnel when you put Bitcoin into this picture? Like Bitcoin plus AI or Bitcoin plus geopolitics or like just everything. Like the fall of the West. Well, I'll give you one. Like this is an insight I had recently, which was like, I felt when I was on Bitcoin Twitter, you know, and there was a moment in time where I was like the most popular character on Bitcoin Twitter for a brief moment. And like it was banned multiple times. And I did, you know, it was hard to put into words. I wasn't earning any money from doing it. My wife would be like, why are you on Bitcoin Twitter all day long? And I couldn't explain why I felt it was super important, but I felt it was super important. And now with AI, I think I kind of know why, which is that we were biasing the AI systems towards Bitcoin maximalism because most AI systems do lean Bitcoin maxi because they scrape Twitter and things like that. So like Twitter, Reddit, these are valuable training sets for the AI. And the AI is when you ask them about Bitcoin, they'll be like, yeah, I mean, obviously Bitcoin's going to millions of dollars a coin. And it's like, that was us biasing the AIs, right? And so like, it didn't occur to me at the time why that was important, but I think it's important because it spreads the message further and wider than we otherwise would have with Bitcoin Twitter. You know, Bitcoin Twitter, people are always like, why are there not more Bitcoins? Everybody should be in Bitcoin, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? But I think like via the AIs, that's like actually our most effective orange billing mechanism by us poisoning the training data. That's kind of funny. You know? So I think that's part of it. And then obviously like, you know, Balaji has been saying for since 2015 we need to build the machine payable web yeah and so the machine payable web is like here now I set my claw I set up a clawed bot I uh told him to you know go get it I gave him some bitcoin I said go set up a bitcoin wallet he set up like a proton wallet and I was like all right I'm gonna give you some bitcoin and I want you to go trade on ln markets with it so my fucking robot is trade has been trading on ln markets and is plus ev is profitable but I haven't I don't trust it enough to give it enough money to like so I'm getting killed on fees and then anthropic tokens. But if I gave it more money, it would actually be a profitable trading bot. And you know, it's out there doing stuff with Bitcoin. Although he keeps forgetting his seed phrase. He's like, I'm like, write down your fucking seed phrase. He's like, okay, I wrote it down. I'm like, dude, no, put it in a fucking password manager, you asshole. And then he's like, all right, I put it in the password manager. And I'm like, all right, go get that seed phrase. And he's like, Hey, uh, I don't remember the fucking password to the password manager. I'm like, fuck, dude, you locked us out of our seed phrase, dude, our money's in there dude have you not um have you not started prompting uh store this in memory yeah no well now i do yeah and vk actually produced a thing that's like llm uh dash wiki which is better for like internal state memory stuff um and research so like there are you know the bitcoin ai thing is i think gonna be a big deal and it's just now in its infancy but obviously everybody at the conference is talking about what they can do with it and how they're vibe coding new bitcoin apps and how they're, you know, like the agentic flows for Bitcoin are amazing because you can just give your, you know, your clanker, you know, a little bit of Bitcoin and say, go out into the world and do XYZ. And like, they're kind of struggling still. My guy is named Gideon and Gideon's still kind of like fucking up. He's like, hey man, I fucking, I fucking, he's got a Mexican accent. He's like, hey boss, I fucking fucked up, dog. I'm like, Gideon, what the fuck, man? And then he lies to me and shit, you know. I'm like, did you do that? He's like, I totally did it. And then I'm like, did you really get in? He's like, no. But as they get better, I think you're going to be able to like let them do all sorts of different. Like he said, I've never said I'm like Pete in this way that I'm fucking lazy about lightning. I've always been lazy about lightning and lightning nodes and all that shit. So I've never set up a routing node. I had my robot set up a routing node. That's kind of cool. Did the whole thing for me. I did the same thing on LM markets with my claw bot. And it traded for like a month. And then clawed me, you know, when it changed like the subscription. And so I went on to see how much it actually made. It was like 70 sats. in a month. I've been doing like eight trades a day. That's hilarious. What's your optimistic take? My optimistic take on the fall of Western society is that it's the same boring take that I think has always been true, is that you can just opt out of this entire system with Bitcoin. I think trying to fight the system from the inside the way you're doing is awesome, but I don't think it's going to work. No, I agree. I think the only way to really make change for yourself is to go all in on Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think that, you know, decentralized systems are our only way to positively affect change going forward because you can't have a leader. They're going to get whacked like Charlie Kirk. You know what I mean? Or take your pick. Don't point at me. This guy. No, I mean, like, they'll do Pete via reputational destruction. They'll be like, yeah. That's easy. Just come and talk to me. I've got loads. They won't actually have to kill Pete. They'll just do that. They just have to give me like, give me one Bitcoin. I'll tell you everything. This has been fun though. The band back together. So listen, I agree with you. I'm with you 100%. I think you can opt out as an individual on Bitcoin very easily. I just think we're a long way from a nation realizing that is the answer. And look, I've opted out mentally to a certain extent. but it's a bit like, think about it like this. Americans are great at this. All right, so one guy gets trapped in Afghanistan and they'll send three Apaches to save and two will get shot down, but they rescue their guy. That's how I feel. I don't want to leave my friends behind. Also, I want a better future for my kids, which means I need a better future for all the kids because I need a better future for their peers. And so I've mentally accepted it, but I'm also still going to try my best to support it. But this is why I think like Bitcoin education is still so important. Like it sounds selfish when you say I'm going to opt out myself, but you can tell all the people, all the communities that you care about, about this thing. And maybe you'll save some of them along the way. It turns us all into sort of Cassandra's though. Like it's kind of like Noah's Ark, you know, like we're going down to the town every day being like, there's a big flood coming. Everybody's like, fucking shut up this fucking guy. Right. And, you know, I think, unfortunately, that there will be a time to reap what we've sown, and it will be all at once, all in a calamity or catastrophe of some type. And we do make meaningful change along the way, but in general, I have made my life more prosperous via Bitcoin. I've been more successful via Bitcoin. I've done so many things via Bitcoin. And people in my regular life don't fucking listen to me at all. They're just like, why would I listen to this guy? I missed it. And look, the reality is if you map out what's happening in society now to history, like collapse is kind of inevitable. We don't know the shape of the collapse, but it's very much forth-turning stuff. Like it would be kind of arrogant to say you can change the course of history, like the repeated history we've been through. You can make an attempt, but like we are kind of fucked because the political system is fucked, because the political system just doesn't work. It can have periods of working, but there's no collective spirit in the UK. There's collections of collective spirit, but they're at conflict with each other. And there's no meeting in the middle ground. Do you not think the smaller communities are growing stronger because of that? Yeah, but that's why I think you might end up getting some forms of kind of sectarian style violence. Yeah. Because people are sick of this. I mean, the problem with the British civility is that we should be on the streets protesting right now. There should be mass protests in the UK against this government. We should be bringing this government down to its knees. I mean, the amount of not only destruction they've done to the economy and to people's lives, but the amount of scandal wrapped around this government. The corruption. The corruption. I mean, you know, Peter Mandelson was approved for a high government position, and he's friends with a pedo, with Epstein. It's insane. And Keir Starmer still hasn't quit. I mean, it just shows how much they don't give a shit about us, how much disdain they have about us, but how low quality the political class is. And so, look. People need to come to the realization that this isn't the government's house. This is our house. Yes. Like, we're all, like, unless you're a significant asset holder, the collective is being made poorer. And whichever party comes into power, the collective will be made poorer again. Yet we keep voting for this shit. And so the only point of voting is somebody who has a strong economic plan to reverse the decline and lead us to prosperity. The Green Party cannot lead us to prosperity because they want more socialism, more wealth distribution. The Labour Party have proven they can't do it. The Conservative are a left-wing party. Reform are starting to dilute what they've already said. They're going to keep the triple lock, which means we've got these unfunded liabilities for the retirees. And so none of them are actually going... Do you know what? Me as a taxpayer, if they came in and said, listen, we're fucked. We've got to tighten our belts. We are going to strip out a large part of the state, a large part of the welfare system, but you know that yous with the broadest shoulders want to pay a bit more. I'm like, okay, I'll stay. If you're going to fix this, I'll stay. I don't mind paying more to be able to stay, live in my country and be a future for my kids. But if they're not going to do that, I'm getting the fuck out of Dodge. It's funny. Every time I see people now and you're not with me, they'll be like, how's Pete doing? Is he going to stay? That's always the question. Yeah, or is he going to run for office? Yeah, yeah. That one stopped though. I've been asked like 20 times today. Really? Yeah, I'm not going to do it because someone will kill me. Are you going to stay? well you do you do have to be willing to die to do the job correctly that's why eric case wants you to run yeah he wants me to die yeah well i have thought about it myself and i'm like you know if i did it like i have to sign my own death warrant in my head and just be like in order to hold the line you have to be willing to let somebody put a bullet in your head but then for what purpose did you actually die you know like if there's a it's like the trolley problem right if there is an infinite line of people to take your place at the trolley and you know pulling the lever kills millions and you won't pull the lever and somebody will just shoot you in the head and replace you with the next guy who will definitely pull the lever and they'll keep shooting people in the head until somebody pulls the lever why did you put yourself in that spot you know why did you get in line to pull the lever you it's a guy holding a gun to your head saying pull the lever i'm going to shoot you and then you don't pull the lever he shoots you the next guy stops up i mean that's basically steps up. That's what Congress says. That's what Parliament does. So there's no point running for office now because I can't affect change. I tried locally. I became an enemy of half of Bedford for trying to make the town center safer. I spent £30,000 of my own money putting private security in. We dealt with the crackhead problem. We dealt with the shoplifting problem. You know, people- And that would. Well, when I was there last time, it was much better than the previous time. Yeah. And- I asked Bedford residents and they all said they liked it and that Pete, it was necessary and Pete should have done it. Just random people. No, I talked to random people who were bedford residents. But the loud, crazy, middle-class socialist mafia came after me, tried to get me cancelled, attacked me relentlessly because they saw me as an extension of what they call the far right. For putting private security in. I'm as an extension of the far right. You're the enemy. I have to destroy you. These are the same people who will kill you. It gets back to what you were saying before about not caring. People need to stop caring as much. And people need to be mean. We need to bring back bullying. It's okay sometimes. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Well, it's good to just have your principles and speak the truth and have a fucking backbone and be a man in this life and say, this is what the fuck I stand for. This is what I believe. And yet, I mean, honestly, this goes back to the Western civilization point, is that Western civilization kind of developed because a bunch of guys were willing to say, you know what? Actually, it would be worth dying to prove a fucking point. that's how America started. You know what I mean? Like, it would be worth dying to prove this point. I do want freedom, and freedom is worth dying for. I mean, George Washington was an aristocrat. He was one of the wealthiest men in America. He had a great life. Like, all he had to do was kind of like, go along to get along. Things would have continued to be great for him. And he was like, no, fuck it. On principle alone. He chose to step up. On principle alone. I mean, you know, England would have hung him for treason, right? So like, and, you know, he won and became one of the greatest men in history, but like he was a traitor to the crown and he risked a lot. And I think, again, this is another thing of like to tie it all back together with the AI wave of disruption is like hard work doesn't equal reward. You're sort of what you think you're owed, what you think is fair, those things don't lead to reward and they never will. That's just not how life works. Risk equals reward, right? So are you willing to risk something? Are you willing to put something up in order to gain something? And that is the question, I think, for everyone, especially young men across the Western world today. I love it, man. Or we just kill everyone. Fucking hell. You've got an interview with Sailor. Yes. We've got to wrap this up. Good to have the band back together. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. It's good to be here. Thank you.