0:00

What

0:00

seems to be happening to me is that

0:02

not only do they get all the gold, but they get

0:04

all the bloody unearned moral virtue because

0:06

now they have the gold and they think, well, I'm

0:08

gonna atone for my sins by what?

0:10

By standing forward for equity now that

0:13

I've made a fortune and by what?

0:15

Trying to save the planet by decarbonizing it

0:17

despite the fact that my industries, at least

0:20

in principle, by my own standards contributed

0:22

to that?

0:22

It's not even their money. Mhmm.

0:24

It's the money of everyday citizens

0:26

in that democratic society,

0:28

which has been aggregated in the hands of these small institutions,

0:30

that

0:31

are using the money of other people to

0:34

advance social and political agendas

0:36

through the market that

0:37

most of the owners of capital actually

0:40

disagree with. This is a in certain sense,

0:42

there's a large scale breach of trust here.

0:47

Welcome

0:47

to episode one hundred and sixty

0:49

of my podcast. I'm Mikaela Peterson.

0:51

I had my dad, Jordan Peterson. and

0:54

Vivek Ramaswamy on for this episode.

0:56

I heard about Vivek through a mutual friend

0:58

because of his book, Wolk Inc. where he talked

1:00

about e s ESGs. He's on today

1:02

to discuss ESGs and his new book

1:05

which is out now LinkedIn show notes

1:07

called nation of victims. ESGs

1:09

are something that everyone should know about. When

1:11

I was opening for dad's shows, I was actually

1:13

talking about them because I think it's

1:15

one of the most important topics

1:18

that people should be discussing now. It's an

1:20

acronym that discusses how people who have control

1:22

over companies like BlackRock are influencing

1:25

policies that are contributing to issues

1:27

like massive energy shortages. This

1:29

is really serious. We trust companies

1:31

to do what's in a company's best interest

1:34

you can trust that the CEO of a corporation

1:36

is going to be greedy to make his company worth

1:38

more. That's at least trustworthy. What

1:40

you can't trust are CEOs who are not

1:42

elected banding together, deciding

1:45

they know what direction society needs

1:47

to take, then influencing how companies

1:49

operate in order to push society

1:51

in that direction. And the worst part

1:53

is most people don't know this is happening

1:56

or what the outcomes are. This

1:58

kind of setup is not how America was built.

2:00

It's not even capitalism really.

2:02

So I wanted dad on in this episode,

2:04

and I didn't do much talking, really. It was mostly

2:07

listening and learning. Vivek's

2:09

a former technology and biotech entrepreneur

2:12

and his most recent venture is an asset

2:14

management company that's very interesting

2:16

called Striv. Vivek Striv

2:19

to promote excellence capitalism, which

2:22

he hopes will offer a better alternative to

2:24

the popular and very destructive ESG

2:27

model of asset management, which

2:29

like I said, is deeply and

2:31

largely responsible for Europe's growing

2:33

energy crisis. In this

2:35

episode, we discussed and defined what

2:37

ESG is. We discussed the asset

2:39

management company BlackRock and its founder,

2:42

Larry think the revival

2:44

of civic duty in the west, the dangers

2:46

of too much centralization, optimal

2:48

resistance, the invitation play and

2:50

much more. Before we jump into this

2:52

episode, this episode of the podcast is

2:54

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4:54

today,

4:56

Ramaswamy,

4:57

and dad, Jordan

4:59

Peterson. Welcome to my podcast.

5:02

Gonna be on. Looking

5:03

forward to it.

5:05

Vivek, before we get started, can you

5:07

give a brief background about who you are and

5:09

what it is you do? Yeah.

5:11

So I was born and raised in

5:13

Cincinnati, Ohio, not far from home

5:15

in Columbus, Ohio, where I am today.

5:17

I began my career as an entrepreneur.

5:19

I had studied molecular biology in undergrad.

5:22

At Harvard, I thought I was going to be a scientist

5:24

on an academic track. I ended

5:26

up getting into the world of biotech investing

5:28

at a hedge fund from two thousand seven to

5:30

twenty fourteen where a co managed a

5:32

biotech portfolio, spent

5:34

three of those years in law school at Yale,

5:36

thought I was gonna be interested in law and political

5:38

philosophy, scratching an itch that I had

5:40

as a as a long time scientist. I

5:42

ended up leaving my career as an

5:44

investor though in twenty fourteen to start a

5:46

biotech company called RoyVent, which

5:48

I built as CEO for seven years.

5:50

We

5:50

developed a number of medicines. Five of them

5:52

are FDA approved products today, but

5:54

I stepped down from my career as a biotech

5:57

CEO and I thought I was done with my business

5:59

career when I

5:59

stepped down to write a pair of books

6:02

low inc, and and nation of victims, the

6:04

most recent one. And I've, you know, been

6:06

writing in the Wall Street Journal producing

6:08

scholarship on issues relating stakeholder

6:10

capitalism in the ESG movement. I

6:12

thought that that was going to be my future

6:14

in writing and possibly

6:17

dare I say a thought lead in this particular

6:19

area that was a passion of mine.

6:21

But I was called back to the world of

6:23

entrepreneurship in part by

6:25

my own writing. highlighting

6:26

a problem was was somewhat

6:29

important, but I thought that addressing

6:31

the problem was was even more important,

6:33

and that led me to start the latest

6:35

company that I'm now leading, which is

6:37

Strive. And it's a new asset management

6:39

firm that's competing against companies

6:42

like BlackRock and other leaders in the so

6:44

called ESG and stakeholder capitalism

6:46

movement. And so that's made

6:48

this a a very busy year with a new book and

6:50

and a new company and hopefully

6:52

hopefully reviving what I think

6:54

of as as excellence in our economy, in our

6:56

culture, in the process.

6:58

Okay. That was fantastic. I think

7:01

before we get into this conversation, you

7:03

should describe to people who don't know exactly

7:05

what ESG stands for and what it

7:07

means for people. Yeah.

7:09

That's a that's a good table stakes

7:12

point because the definition keeps changing even

7:14

by its biggest proponents. So I think it's

7:16

important we flash freeze it, so we can talk

7:18

about whether or not we agree. Yeah.

7:20

ESG stands for environmental, social,

7:22

and governance factors

7:24

influencing the allocation

7:25

of capital in global capital

7:27

markets. Okay? That's a mouthful. Well,

7:30

that's a close cousin of a broader movement

7:33

called stakeholder capitalism. which

7:35

refers to the basic idea that businesses

7:38

should not just focus on selling

7:40

products and services for a profit.

7:42

but that they should also advance

7:45

other social agendas and

7:47

societal

7:47

interests. That sounds benign

7:49

enough. Now, This was designed

7:51

as a contrast to the worldview advanced

7:53

by Milton Friedman in the nineteen

7:55

seventies and nineteen eighties where he said, no, the right

7:57

purpose of a business is exclusively to

7:59

focus on

7:59

selling products and services for profit

8:02

to maximize value for shareholders.

8:04

Mhmm. And the thing that Milton Friedman worried

8:06

about was that If companies didn't do that, they'd

8:08

be less effective at making widgets and the size of

8:10

the economy would shrink and everyone would lose

8:12

out. As you know,

8:14

we can get into this, but my

8:16

critique of this trend is actually quite

8:18

different than Milton Friedman's. My

8:20

main concern is not just that it

8:22

threatens the effectiveness of American capitalism

8:25

or the effectiveness of corporations. Though

8:27

I believe all that's true,

8:29

my bigger concern is that the ESG movement

8:31

in this broader philosophy of stakeholder

8:34

capitalism

8:35

actually threatens democracy. Because

8:38

democracy is a system built on the idea

8:40

that everyone's voice and vote

8:42

counts equally. on questions ranging from

8:44

climate change to addressing

8:46

racial injustice. Whatever the right

8:48

answers may be, those are the political questions.

8:50

that democracy settles through free speech and

8:52

open debate in the public square.

8:54

And it's

8:54

my view that what the ESG movement

8:57

demands and what the stakeholder capitalist

8:59

movement demands is that actually, we

9:01

take those questions out of the political

9:03

process and settle them through the

9:05

use of capital force in boardrooms

9:07

across America and across the West

9:09

more broadly. And

9:09

that's a betrayal of of the democratic

9:12

system that we built in seventeen seventy six

9:14

in in this side of the ocean. But

9:16

but even more broadly, a betrayal

9:18

of of a system of self governance

9:20

of of free agents in a in a free

9:22

society. Let

9:22

let me ask you if you don't mind a

9:25

couple of questions pertaining to

9:27

ESG

9:29

three, I would say,

9:30

it isn't obvious that if

9:33

the focus

9:35

of return switches to

9:37

the stakeholders, let's say, the broader

9:39

stakeholders, that doesn't mean something

9:41

like,

9:41

I have particular ideological

9:44

agenda, and

9:45

it's the moral one. And because of that,

9:47

you should subordinate your company to

9:50

me rather

9:50

than

9:51

say, dedicating it towards these

9:54

hypothetical social

9:57

agenda and interests. So the first

9:59

question might be just exactly

10:01

what are those hypothetical broader

10:03

social interests and who

10:05

determines what they are? And

10:07

then on the Friedman side,

10:09

Now, I've always been curious about this because

10:12

Friedman's notion was that a company

10:14

should maximize shareholder value

10:16

And my issue with that as a research

10:19

psychologist was always,

10:21

well, maximize shareholder

10:23

value over what time period

10:25

because if it's quarterly returns, that

10:27

looks a hell of a lot different than it's if it's if

10:29

it's a pension fund and it's a twenty

10:31

year investment horizon. And that's very

10:33

much relevant to the issue, let's say, of the

10:36

sustainability that the

10:38

ESG power mongers

10:40

hypothetically are working to promote.

10:42

So the first question is, what

10:44

are these social agendas and interests?

10:46

And why is it that some

10:49

arbitrary third party, let's say, should be

10:51

able to set what those are? I know

10:53

that your concerns pertain to that to

10:55

some degree. Oh, to a large

10:57

degree, actually. So you're

10:59

you're getting right to the heart of the most important questions

11:02

here, which is great. I mean, look, think

11:04

that

11:04

the

11:04

questions that are the prime targets of

11:06

the ESG movement today generally relate

11:09

to staving off global

11:11

climate change and delivering

11:13

equity to

11:15

rectify what they view as historical group

11:17

identity based injustices, racial and

11:19

gender based and sexual orientation based.

11:21

Those are When you think about the e and the s,

11:23

the environmental and the social prong, which are

11:25

really doing most of the work here, the g is just

11:27

a nice little add on at the end. it's

11:30

really mostly related to

11:32

staving off global climate change through

11:34

decarbonization and achieving

11:37

global equity, both between different

11:39

identity driven groups based on race or gender

11:41

or sexual orientation, and also even

11:43

transnational equity, which actually relates to the

11:45

first agenda. of staving off global climate

11:47

change. So those two things work in concert. But the

11:49

question is, who gets to decide? And I think

11:51

that's actually the that's actually the biggest

11:53

and most mysterious question of

11:55

all. It turns

11:55

out that that it's it's the answer to

11:58

that question is is what are the principles

11:59

that I have revived in in my first book,

12:02

which is the principle of the golden rule, not the

12:04

golden rule. that

12:05

that most people know that you treat people like

12:07

you wanna be treated in return. You know,

12:09

the golden rule that says that he who has the

12:11

gold makes the

12:12

rules, which is to say that the people who

12:14

control the largest swaths of

12:16

capital are the

12:17

ones who make

12:18

the, you know, unilateral dividends

12:21

as to what? question, hypothetically,

12:23

hypothetically, that would be fine if the

12:25

rules they were making pertain to their

12:27

capital, but what seems to be happening

12:29

to me is that not only do they get

12:31

all the gold, but get all the bloody

12:33

unearned moral virtue. Because now they have the

12:35

gold and they think, well, I'm gonna

12:37

atone for my sins, by what? By

12:39

standing forward for equity, now that I've made

12:41

a fortune and by what? Trying to

12:43

save the planet by decarbonizing it

12:45

despite the fact that my industries, at

12:47

least in principle, by my own standards

12:49

contributed to that, So

12:51

so much to sit there. I think first

12:53

though we have to pause on on whose gold

12:55

they're actually holding. So

12:56

it's a this is different than the

12:58

John d rock feller JP

13:00

Morgan and Andrew Carnegie era where it was their

13:02

own goal and they would wield it to

13:04

advance not only market power but certain

13:06

forms of political power and that's one debate. and we

13:08

can get to that debate. My

13:09

biggest beef is actually even simpler than

13:11

that. What's happened for in the twenty first

13:14

century is that, for example, let's just take the

13:16

three largest managers in the United States.

13:18

BlackRock,

13:18

State Street, and Vanguard. Those

13:20

three institution wheel institutions wheel,

13:22

not tens of billions or even hundreds of billions

13:24

of dollars. or even trillions of dollars, but tens

13:26

of trillions of balance. Twenty

13:27

one trillion dollars just in the hands of

13:29

those three

13:30

institutions. Half of that, twenty one

13:32

trillion almost in the hands of one. yet,

13:34

the here's

13:35

the rub. It's

13:36

not even their money. It's

13:38

the money of everyday citizens

13:40

in that democratic society. who

13:42

has been aggregated by the hands of

13:44

which has been aggregated in

13:45

the hands of these small institutions that

13:48

are using the money of other people

13:50

to

13:50

advance social and political agendas

13:52

through

13:52

the market

13:54

that most of the owners of capital

13:56

actually disagree with. This is an in

13:58

certain sense there's a large scale breach of trust

13:59

here. Even if you even if you accepted

14:02

that the guys who have the gold get to make the rules

14:04

if it's their own goal, that's a proposition

14:06

we can itself debate. The

14:08

funny part here is it's not even their gold. So

14:10

that's the betrayal at the heart of the modern

14:12

ESG system, and you ask the question of who gets to

14:14

decide. The answer

14:14

is it's a small handful of actors. People like

14:17

Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock.

14:18

And, you know, does Larry Larry think worth a billion

14:20

dollars or whatever sure he is, but he's not worth twenty

14:22

one trillion dollars. He's using twenty one

14:24

trillion dollars or ten trillion dollars of BlackRock

14:26

case of other people's money, most

14:28

of whom don't even know that he's doing it,

14:30

and most of whom don't even know that he's using

14:32

it to advance social and political agendas

14:34

that most of those people disagree with. Now let's

14:37

get to the deeper question that you raised

14:39

though is, look,

14:40

if you earned a lot of money or aggregate a lot

14:42

of market power, Presumably it

14:44

was by market judgments

14:45

that give you standing to decide which products

14:48

rise to the top, whether this jacket or a

14:50

different jacket or this phone or a different

14:52

phone rise to the top,

14:53

That's not a one person one vote system, and I don't

14:55

think

14:55

it should be. That's a one dollars one vote system.

14:57

But if

14:58

you're talking about how to settle, how

15:00

in weather,

15:01

to address global climate change

15:03

through higher prices for goods versus lower

15:05

carbon emissions or racial equity

15:07

through quota systems or some other means. Those

15:09

are

15:09

not the kinds of questions

15:11

that one ought to settle through

15:13

the use of capital force because there's no greater

15:15

standing for Larry Fink or anyone else

15:17

to

15:17

have a superior view as a citizen on

15:20

the answer to that question. Those

15:21

are the kinds of

15:22

questions

15:23

where everyone's voice and vote ought to, in my

15:25

opinion,

15:25

count equally regardless of

15:27

the number of dollars they wield in the

15:29

marketplace, unadjusted by the number of

15:31

dollars they control, and that's the

15:33

perversion at the heart of this system. So so

15:35

there's really two perversions. One is the theme of other

15:37

people's money, not their own money, and they're actually

15:39

using other people's money who mostly disagree with the

15:41

agendas they're dancing. But

15:42

the second perversion is the the the

15:44

nature of the question. It's a question of the wrong kind

15:46

that they're

15:46

using capital force to settle when

15:49

in a Democratic society, at least those are questions

15:51

of a kind that we settle through a shared political

15:53

process that we set into motion through a constitutional

15:55

republic. How

15:56

did BlackRock come to be so dominant?

15:58

How did they manage to leverage

16:00

the to leverage themselves into

16:02

a position like this?

16:04

Yes. So it's a it's a long story.

16:06

I I started to tell it in my in my

16:08

first book that there's two halves there's

16:10

two halves to the story. One is the top down

16:12

cynical version, that's the that's the version I told

16:14

in Woke Inc. and that's half the story. The

16:16

second of it relates to our culture and the

16:18

cultural

16:18

and generational moment we live in because it takes

16:20

two to tango consumers have to fall for

16:22

it. What are the conditions that allow consumers to fall

16:24

for it? That's the subject of of my most recent

16:26

book nation of victims, which relates to our culture

16:28

of our general populace that left our

16:31

population vulnerable to the trick.

16:33

But let me start with the first. I

16:35

mean On the

16:35

on the realist side here, the

16:37

top down version of this, what

16:40

happened was on the back of the two

16:42

thousand eight financial

16:42

crisis. And by the way, I

16:45

I lived this. I got my first job in New York

16:47

City at a prominent hedge fund on the

16:49

eve of the o eight financial crisis. I I

16:51

had somewhat of a front row seat to this.

16:53

What

16:53

happened is that Wall Street and financial

16:55

institutions and big banks, big

16:57

business more broadly, but financial institutions

16:59

in particular. went

17:00

from being the heroes of modern capitalism

17:03

to becoming the bad guys. Okay.

17:05

Occupy Wall Street was knocking on

17:07

Wall Street's door step. The new

17:09

version of the barbarians were at the gate. And they were

17:12

barricading the gate. They were they were barraging the

17:14

gate. Okay? Now,

17:16

there was a trick that came up right around the

17:18

same time that the occupy wall street with movement was saying,

17:20

you know what, we need to take money from those wealthy

17:22

corporate fat cats and redistributed to poor people to help

17:24

poor people. There was the birth

17:26

of this new strand on the left

17:28

that started to say, well, It

17:31

wasn't quite just economic injustice or just

17:33

poverty that we need to address. It's

17:35

also

17:35

racial injustice, and

17:37

misogyny, and bigotry, and

17:40

climate change, and the racially disparate impact

17:42

of climate change, that's

17:43

actually the real problem. And that's when

17:45

Wall Street woke up. When they said, wait a

17:46

minute, this is an opportunity. this

17:49

is an opportunity generation to say that, okay, we

17:51

can do that. We'll talk about

17:53

systemic racism if you stop talking

17:55

about systemic financial risk. Right?

17:57

We'll talk about news about

17:59

the racially

17:59

disparate impact of climate change after we fly

18:02

in a private jet to Davos. We'll do that

18:03

all day long. But

18:05

we expect that the new left, work

18:08

with that

18:08

old left and come to a bargain where you agree to

18:10

look the other way and leave our game intact

18:12

as long as we use our game, our

18:15

power. corporate power included to

18:17

advance some of the agendas that

18:19

you all love. So

18:20

it was this cynical arranged marriage

18:21

between two bedfellows who didn't really love

18:24

each other. it was closer to mutual prostitution than an arranged

18:26

marriage. But the net result

18:27

was the birth of this hybrid of

18:29

state power and corporate power that together

18:31

was more powerful than either one alone

18:34

That was the what what do you wanna call it? The woke industrial

18:36

complex, the ESG industrial complex.

18:38

That was what through characteristic Just call

18:41

it fascism. You could call it faster.

18:43

Yeah. You could. Because that's the

18:45

clashes of means. Fashion is the classic

18:47

union of people out the

18:49

talk. Yeah.

18:49

The merger of state power and corporate power to

18:51

advance, but neither one could alone. This is

18:53

a modern fascism. No doubt about it. So, Jony,

18:55

that that was the birth of that story top

18:58

down. But

18:58

but as I said, it takes two to tango. Right?

19:00

I mean, it it takes a

19:01

culture to fall for this trend. Right? To not be

19:04

able to see through it. And so

19:05

what's going on there? So that's that's what

19:07

nation of victims is is all about. It's the spread

19:09

of this new apologist

19:12

psychological attitude in our

19:14

culture that left an entire general population that was vulnerable

19:16

to be exploited by this trick. And

19:18

at the end of the day, we also

19:20

live in a

19:21

moment where, you know, my

19:23

generation McKelly, your generation, our generation

19:25

probably in younger,

19:26

millennials, Gen Z, whatever. We're

19:29

so hungry for

19:30

cause and purpose and meaning and identity.

19:32

We're in the I mean,

19:33

probably not you and I personally

19:35

as as much. III know I'm not,

19:38

but on

19:38

the receiving end of of the largest inter generational

19:40

wealth transfer in human history. And,

19:42

you know, von

19:43

Mises said this a century ago, Shumpter

19:45

said it at points along the

19:47

way.

19:47

capitalism creates the psychological

19:50

need that anti capitalism

19:51

ultimately fills. And so

19:52

this culture of of accepting

19:55

the self criticism, those moral and

19:57

psychological insecurities

19:58

in a generation. That's part

19:59

of what allowed the ESG movement to make

20:01

for good business, good business over the

20:03

last ten years. to

20:04

aggregate funds, to say that you're going to invest,

20:06

not just for return, but also

20:08

for virtue. And the two kind

20:10

of there's really three factors there. I mean, one

20:13

is defying the occupy Wall Street old

20:15

left. The second is a business

20:16

opportunity, but third is a business opportunity

20:18

created by a generation of

20:20

consumers that were so

20:21

psychologically hungry for

20:23

purpose and meaning and identity and a cause

20:25

that they fell for it, that together

20:27

you got the the new version of modern

20:30

capitalism what was supposed to be a challenge to the system

20:32

became the system. And it's

20:34

become, I think, the the new form

20:36

of a fascist totalitarianism effectuated

20:40

ironically in the

20:40

Trojan horse and in the

20:42

veneer of the free market itself,

20:44

which is actually pretty frightening.

20:45

Mhmm. Interesting. How much

20:48

of this ESG, these

20:50

mandates, are contributing to

20:52

the energy crisis at the moment? A

20:54

lot

20:54

is the answer to that question. So

20:57

the number one sector

21:00

palpably

21:00

damaged. the demands of

21:02

the ESG movement, is no doubt

21:04

U. S. energy, Western energy

21:06

more broadly. Okay? And

21:09

That's that

21:10

there's reasonable debate for that because is it the policy

21:12

makers that are responsible for it?

21:13

There's the ESG movement. I I think the answer is both, but I

21:15

think the underappreciated role is

21:17

the role that the actors themselves display have played. So

21:20

so I actually sent a

21:20

you guys may have seen that I sent a public

21:23

letter to the board of Chevron this

21:25

week. as as a shareholder of Chevron. Right?

21:27

So my my new firm launched US

21:29

energy fund through that US energy fund as

21:31

a shareholder of Chevron. We sent a

21:33

letter to the boards. questioning certain

21:35

of their behaviors,

21:36

that it's a good case study, but it's just

21:39

an example of a broader trend of a

21:40

company that did not want

21:42

to adopt. many of these toxic measures. How do we know that

21:45

we didn't want to adopt them? Because when

21:47

a

21:47

scope three emissions proposal, and I can tell you

21:49

what that means, but when toxic

21:51

scope three emissions proposal was imposed

21:53

by shareholders on this company in twenty

21:55

twenty one. The Board of Directors

21:56

said no. We

21:58

recommend against this. It

22:00

was proposed by a Dutch nonprofit founded by

22:02

a former refrigerator salesman who wanted to fight

22:04

climate change who had, on the face of it,

22:06

no interest in

22:07

Chevron's business success, but

22:09

put up a shareholder proposal that fifteen years ago

22:11

would have been appropriately ignored. But

22:13

in twenty twenty

22:14

one, earned the support of

22:17

BlackRock state street, and

22:18

Vanguard, giving it majority

22:21

shareholder support. I you're

22:23

shareholder in airports because it's not their own money. It's the

22:25

money of everyday citizens that are using to vote

22:27

in favor of it. But at the

22:28

end of the day, even though Chevron's board

22:30

said no, we don't want to adopt this

22:32

we recommend against it. It earned

22:34

majority shareholder support

22:36

with the aid of folks like Larry

22:38

Fink's BlackRock, State Street,

22:41

and Vanguard. And

22:41

and, you know, what does this kind of proposal call

22:43

for? Let me just be specific about it. It's it's

22:45

a little technical, but it's important to understand

22:48

what a scope three proposal calls

22:50

for. It says an oil

22:50

company like Chevron is

22:53

responsible not

22:53

just for reducing its own emissions and

22:56

not just reducing the

22:58

emissions resulting from its own use of electricity and

23:00

power in its own business. Those are Scope

23:02

one and Scope two respectively. But

23:05

Scope three emissions, which means that it has to

23:07

reduce

23:07

the of its employees their

23:09

commuting costs to work, carbon

23:12

costs, in their employee business

23:14

travel, in their investments

23:15

that they make, even

23:17

in the

23:17

use of their fuel by

23:19

every customer in their supply chains. So

23:21

if you get this straight Jesus. I

23:23

mean, this

23:24

is staggering. Right? So this is how they the private

23:26

sector, the the private companies too,

23:27

because there's many private companies in the supply chain even

23:29

though Chevron's the public company. So I'm just gonna

23:31

make this really real for you. Okay? Here,

23:34

just to crystal clear.

23:36

This means

23:36

that Chevron has to take

23:38

responsibility for

23:41

the emissions of a truck,

23:43

an Amazon Prime truck that

23:45

burns its fuel, delivering food to someone's home

23:47

without demanding that Amazon make a reciprocal

23:49

commitment in return. That

23:51

makes about as much business sense

23:53

as

23:53

McDonald's voluntarily committing

23:56

to reducing the body weight of everyone

23:58

who's ever consumed a big mac. without

24:00

asking the consumer to bear any responsibility

24:02

and return. So the question I asked at

24:04

the heart of the second section of my letter to

24:06

Chevron this week was

24:08

why on Earth is this

24:11

possibly in

24:11

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24:12

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24:14

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24:29

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25:59

ESGs. It's messed

26:01

up. And I

26:02

think that is the question at the heart of this debate.

26:04

If it's in the

26:04

right interest of society, great. Let's debate it as

26:07

a society.

26:07

through the democratic process where everyone votes count and

26:09

votes counts equally. But what your debate in

26:11

the boardroom of Chevron or the shareholders bring to the

26:14

boardroom of Chevron ought to be guided by a

26:16

more narrow question. what is in the best long run?

26:18

And this is to your second question, Deckard

26:20

Peterson. But your second question, what is the long run

26:22

best interest of Chevron? That's

26:24

the scope what ought to be debated in

26:26

Chevron's boardroom. And and I

26:28

think that there haven't been other shareholder

26:30

voices to the table. That's why I found it Stryv. At the end of

26:32

the day, We showed up as a shareholder and

26:33

and, you know, Mike Wirth, the CEO responded to me the

26:36

very day. I sent the letter. You know,

26:37

he I was on CNBC. He was on Bloomberg.

26:39

Great. Let's have this discussion

26:41

out in the open. But,

26:42

Michele, I think the positive part

26:44

of this just to, you know, end that

26:46

rather pessimistic answer with a small note of

26:48

optimism here, is that The

26:50

employees, I've learned this pretty quickly even

26:51

in recent weeks. I mean, my company, we've

26:53

engaged with over ten US energy companies

26:56

already since we launched our first fund that

26:58

that's a shareholder of these companies. What

27:00

I've learned

27:00

is the employees of US energy companies and even

27:02

their CEOs

27:03

and their boards, they're not the

27:05

employees of Twitter. And I mean that in

27:07

a good way. where Elon

27:08

Musk could buy Twitter. He's gonna

27:10

have a lot of

27:11

trouble changing the behavior of fifteen thousand people who don't

27:13

wanna do the thing he actually wants them to

27:15

do. In

27:16

the US energy industry, it's almost the other

27:17

way around where most of these employees --

27:20

Yeah. -- are quietly waiting to run-in this new

27:22

direction. They just need to be liberated from the

27:24

handcuffs of the BlackRock of the world who

27:26

are imposing these ESG mandates.

27:27

Okay. So what exactly is

27:30

Striv doing to help

27:31

liberate these people? bringing

27:34

a different shareholder voice to the

27:36

boardroom. Texting. Okay. Pretty

27:38

simple. So so just like BlackRock

27:40

and State Street and Vanguard offer index

27:43

funds. That's what Striv is in the business of

27:45

offering as well. We'll export ways for people to

27:47

invest in different segments of

27:49

the market. The

27:49

first And tell people what an index fund

27:52

is. So everybody's real clear about that and

27:54

what BlackRock offers. That's part of was

27:56

part of my question about why they be they're

27:58

in a position where they manage so much money.

28:00

Why would some what is an index fund?

28:02

Why would or should someone

28:04

purchase one? And why yours

28:07

say just out of curiosity rather than say

28:09

black rocks. Yeah. Well, only well,

28:10

I'll get to the part about Stripe in a second. But

28:13

actually, unity is a good point. Let's let's

28:15

actually go through a short history lesson of of where

28:17

this index fund concept came

28:19

from and how it was

28:20

that that resulted in

28:23

three

28:23

institutions having twenty one trillion dollars

28:25

of capital. It's a parallel to

28:27

what happened in social media, which

28:29

I think most people understand better.

28:31

you

28:31

have companies that gave away their products for free,

28:34

right? You don't have to pay to use

28:36

Facebook or Twitter or

28:38

whatever, Instagram. but

28:40

it's not actually free. You only realize that

28:42

after the company's build a network effect and realize that,

28:44

you know, you traded off a lot of other

28:47

contractual giveaways. your access to your data, your

28:49

privacy, even what you see on the Internet.

28:51

Well, there was a

28:51

similar game that resulted in a network effect

28:54

in the asset management And that

28:56

was the rise of passive index funds,

28:57

which said that, you know what,

28:59

the old school mutual funds, which

29:01

charged higher fees to have portfolio

29:03

managers that were supposedly skilled at picking

29:05

individual stocks to outperform the market. Mhmm.

29:07

You

29:07

know, Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, kinda

29:09

said that, you know what? That was bunk. ninety

29:12

nine percent of those people or monkeys throwing

29:14

darts on a board. They're not outperforming. They're just

29:16

charging you a high fee for it. So

29:18

what we'll invent is a new industry

29:21

that offers you

29:21

really low fee exposure to the market, which

29:24

isn't about outperforming the market. It's just about

29:26

owning the market, but you get to own the

29:28

market for a much lower fee

29:30

than

29:30

so called actively managed funds like mutual

29:33

funds. Right. In the middle of

29:34

evidence. There is no evidence that

29:37

actively managed funds outperformed the

29:39

market. From what I understand is

29:41

that the typical active

29:43

fund manager underperformed the

29:45

market. means they actually did worse than monkeys

29:48

throwing darts at a dartboard because the

29:50

money didn't charge the fees. Right. Well,

29:52

and also the monkeys were

29:54

sampling randomly. Yeah.

29:56

I mean, I think so so so the III said

29:58

the empirical data on this is

29:59

is cherry picked around all sides,

30:02

but I think I I'm very sympathetic to

30:04

that claim. having

30:04

looked at all the empirical data, what they'll say in response is, yeah.

30:06

But if you take out the really bad active

30:09

managers, then the ones who really know what

30:11

they're doing, actually outperform, which is, of course, a

30:13

self serving argument. Yeah. But but it's it's

30:15

a

30:15

rich empirical debate. But anyway, I'm just given the

30:17

descriptive facts. I think the bad Jack Bogle

30:19

made a compelling case to say that

30:21

You can't

30:22

know who the good ones are or the bad ones are. In fact,

30:24

that may itself be random. So forget

30:26

about it and just use low fee exposure because

30:28

even if they're just monkeys throwing a guard at the board

30:30

and they're no better than owning the mark, it. After you

30:32

charge high fees, you might actually be worse

30:34

off than just owning the market at a low fee.

30:36

So so this was a convincing proposition. I I

30:38

think it makes a lot of sense. But

30:40

what happened was there

30:41

was an invisible trade off. The

30:43

invisible trade off was in social media, you

30:45

know, they're giving a privacy, what you see on the Internet, and

30:47

and all that all those that good stuff. Here, the

30:49

trade

30:49

off was they

30:50

aggregated not just the capital

30:52

in providing exposure

30:54

to the market, but they also

30:55

aggregated voting to

30:58

vote the shares of those everyday

31:00

individuals who invest in the market. Now

31:01

that may not be a problem. If they're

31:03

just taking financial considerations

31:05

into account, into

31:06

how they vote their shares. But starting in

31:09

about twenty eighteen, and this is led by

31:11

BlackRock. It's it's

31:11

worth remembering how recent this

31:13

really is in the voting problem.

31:14

It's it's only started in twenty eighteen, when Larry

31:16

Fink said,

31:17

alright, look, we can use this

31:18

voting power to advance certain

31:21

social agendas and burnish my own

31:23

social standing. and derive business benefits from

31:25

that by doing so. That's really

31:26

when this story took

31:28

a dark turn. And

31:30

and

31:30

the irony at the heart of this, if you think

31:32

about that history lesson, is

31:34

that the very people who told

31:36

you that by admission,

31:37

we're too dumb to pick stocks. We're

31:40

not smart enough to pick stocks.

31:42

Yeah.

31:42

Suddenly thought were segacious enough to know

31:44

how to design

31:45

an entire social universe

31:48

based on the social

31:48

and environmental mandates for how companies are supposed

31:50

to operate. Right? So that that's a bit of an irony if you if

31:53

you think about it. Yeah. Yep. You might say that.

31:55

Right. A bit of an irony is that you can't

31:57

pick single stocks. You

31:59

can't

31:59

determine

32:00

the probable course of the companies that you

32:03

hypothetically have expertise in

32:05

assessing, but you can actually picked

32:07

with a non narrowing eye the direction of the entire

32:09

planet -- Yeah.

32:10

-- environmental

32:11

and the economy. Right? It's

32:14

quick. So I don't want monkeys throwing darts at a

32:16

dartboard and picking stocks, but I definitely don't want those

32:18

same monkeys throwing darts at the design

32:20

of the social universe. in

32:22

Western society as we know it, yet that's

32:24

exactly what happened because one became the

32:26

vehicle to aggregate the the capital

32:28

to do the latter. So as I've ever really said

32:30

it that way, but actually you're you're

32:32

exactly right. But more than more than a bit of an

32:34

irony. And and so so

32:35

anyway, that that's the problem. So

32:36

so what am I doing? I'm writing about the

32:39

problem. I'm peeking about it. I know I was a former CEO. I've seen this from the

32:41

inside. At the end of the

32:43

day though,

32:43

okay, you're only gonna move the needle by shining a

32:45

spotlight on the problem. Okay. I wrote a book

32:48

last year I'm writing this other book that's coming

32:50

out in a month and that's more about the culture, the

32:52

revival of excellence over these

32:54

apologists values. Okay. We're gonna move the needle a little

32:56

bit, but How about solving

32:57

it? So as I thought about I

32:59

thought

32:59

about maybe is this a political problem that needs

33:01

to be solved through state action,

33:04

aggregate

33:04

disillusioned by that path for a range of reasons we

33:06

can talk about. But then it became critical to me, look,

33:08

if this is a

33:08

problem that originated in the market,

33:12

by

33:12

golly, let's solve it through the market by

33:14

actually bringing competition to the table. If

33:16

this is an anti competitive problem,

33:19

And

33:19

and I can

33:20

talk for a

33:21

long time, if you guys are interested in this about why

33:23

I do think it's an anti competitive problem.

33:26

Well, at the

33:26

end of the day, don't complain about it, solve it through

33:28

competition. so that's what I did. So I found it Strive.

33:31

It's

33:31

a new asset management firm competing directly

33:33

against BlackRock,

33:34

starting by also launching index funds.

33:36

index funds that say we're just not gonna pick

33:39

stocks. We're just gonna offer exposure to the

33:41

market. Exposure

33:42

to different sectors of the

33:44

market.

33:44

but crucially bring a

33:47

different voice and

33:49

vote to the table. And

33:50

the voice and vote that Stripe brings to the table

33:52

is to mandate companies. We're not asking

33:54

We're

33:55

mandating them as a shareholder

33:57

to

33:57

focus exclusively on

33:59

delivering excellent products and

34:02

services

34:02

to their customers over

34:04

any other agenda, including social or

34:06

political agendas. Without

34:07

regard to Larry Finks or anyone

34:09

else's social or

34:12

environmental or climate change or racial equity goals.

34:14

And and that actually closes

34:15

the loop, doctor Peterson, you said something

34:17

interesting about Milton Free you had

34:19

a

34:19

critic of him which was he doesn't say anything about

34:21

the time horizon. I agree with you. My

34:23

other critic of Milton Friedman is he

34:25

doesn't say much about how it is a

34:27

corporate

34:27

board is supposed to go about monumental task of maximizing

34:29

shareholder value. That's

34:32

irreducibly vague. In

34:33

fact, that's part of the vagueness that

34:35

allowed the ESG movement to then actually fill the

34:37

void and say, no. No. We're actually concerned with

34:39

long run shareholder

34:41

value. Yeah. what I wanna do it really clear and say focus

34:43

on your products and services for your customers. That's

34:45

how you maximize shareholder value. Anyway,

34:47

that's the voice that's driving Right.

34:50

So you take responsibility for your your particular level of

34:52

interaction with the actual market is

34:56

that people

34:57

people who

34:58

run a big company, they have a domain of responsibility.

35:00

It's not universal. Perhaps

35:02

they should be acting universally

35:05

in their private lives. But

35:07

in their public and corporate life, they

35:09

should be doing the right thing

35:11

by their customers. And then we'd hope

35:13

that the aggregate wants of all

35:15

the companies doing right by their customers

35:18

would be everyone doing

35:20

right in the broadest possible sense.

35:22

in the absence of a centralized control system. And the

35:24

problem with a centralized control system

35:26

is you can't predict outcome.

35:30

Rich, which is exactly as you pointed out, what the index fund managers

35:32

were telling their customers to begin with.

35:35

Exactly. Exactly. So so

35:37

in a certain sense, this

35:40

business opportunity should not have existed. I I

35:42

never imagined I was gonna start another

35:44

business. Again, I thought I was done with

35:45

that. But it was staggering to me that the investment

35:48

firms that should have taken this on.

35:50

And, you know, yeah, III

35:52

don't mind I'm beyond the

35:54

stage where I need to I need to play delicately here,

35:56

so I'll just tell you guys, you know, so so before I

35:58

started to strive, I had before I

35:59

got into started and knowing what what what the

36:02

next step entailed, I

36:03

was meeting with asset management CEOs across the

36:05

country and was curious, almost encouraging them.

36:07

This is a great business opportunity you guys should

36:09

pursue. And sometimes my life would be easier if somebody

36:11

else was doing this and I could go back to

36:14

hanging out with my family and writing books.

36:16

But,

36:16

you know, none of them wanted to do it. And so

36:18

I actually actually

36:19

met with the

36:21

CEO of Invesco. I'll just I don't mind. Let's just life's too

36:23

short not to just be transparent about this stuff. It's

36:26

it's a so, you know, that's another trillion dollar

36:28

plus asset

36:30

management firm. and CEO is is a guy who I'm told was sympathetic to

36:32

a lot of things that I was saying in in Wolk Inc.

36:34

and elsewhere. And so so we we had

36:36

lunch when

36:36

I was in town

36:37

in Atlanta. And and privately,

36:39

what does he tell

36:40

me? Okay? Well, you know, at the end of

36:42

the day, I I think it's fair game. Let's let's just talk about

36:44

this in the open privately. What does he tell me?

36:46

he agrees with everything I'm saying. Okay. Well, that's that's comforting. Except for the

36:48

fact that when you look publicly at the things

36:51

he's saying afterwards, and and even though afterwards, I

36:53

went to look at

36:53

publicly the things he'd

36:56

been saying, I promise you you could not distinguish that his

36:58

quotes from Larry Fink's quotes about the ESG

37:00

movement. Things

37:00

like ESG is woven into everything we

37:04

do. ESG is the way of the future. There is no investment

37:06

process without ESG. Stuff like this.

37:08

Coming out of his mouth, very similar

37:09

to what Larry Think has been saying. Now now

37:11

his reason

37:11

for why is

37:13

that

37:13

large clients of his

37:16

firm

37:16

would not

37:17

allow him

37:19

him to speak

37:20

openly about his actual views. So in a

37:23

certain sense, pension

37:23

funds like calpers in the state of New York. And otherwise, what

37:25

they've done is they've gone to these asset managers and say that

37:27

if you don't adopt a

37:29

firm wide commitment, to

37:31

the Climate Action hundred Network or or to the

37:33

Paris Climate Acords or to these

37:36

ESG linked agendas, then we're not

37:38

gonna do business with you. So what

37:39

that creates is is a is a difficult

37:42

business decision for a new

37:43

asset manager to make, which is to say that if I

37:45

don't abide by these agendas, I'm gonna lose business that I

37:47

have today. Yes. there may be

37:49

everyday citizens out there who want me to do something else, but they're not the ones

37:51

exercising power in my boardroom or in

37:54

my meetings.

37:56

And so

37:57

I'm just gonna drag them along for the ride because that's the most profitable thing

37:59

for me to do

37:59

as a business. Well, you know

38:02

what? The

38:02

beautiful part then about starting as

38:05

as a new company is that you don't

38:07

have

38:07

those legacy commitments. And and by the way,

38:09

from Invesco to BlackRock, the

38:11

biggest constituent that they don't like to talk about

38:13

out loud is China. Those

38:15

are some

38:15

of their biggest growth opportunities is

38:18

building asset

38:18

management subsidiaries in China, and

38:20

you will

38:21

note, interestingly, that as

38:23

these companies apply their ESG mandates to Western

38:25

companies like Exxon and

38:26

Chevron, they don't see a

38:27

peak -- Yeah. --

38:28

about ESG to Petro China, and

38:31

that's not accident.

38:32

China wants them to be

38:33

behaving that way because that weakens the

38:35

United States and

38:36

strengthens China by advantage. I

38:39

cannot Petro China is literally picking up some of

38:41

the very projects that firms

38:42

like Exxon and and and and

38:45

and Chevron are dropping. And

38:48

the irony

38:48

of this is that, you know, owing six percent of

38:51

approximately five percent or six percent of shit. Exxon is

38:53

is a firm like BlackRock. You

38:56

know who owns five percent of

38:57

Metro China? There would be a blackro And

38:59

blackro Yeah. There's a really

39:01

show. staggering.

39:04

So what do

39:04

you think think is up to exactly? I mean,

39:06

is this is there any of this that's

39:08

genuine or is it just, like, unbelievably

39:11

large scale, moral posturing? What

39:13

what's I mean, look, I feel I feel some

39:16

sympathy, you know, because I can understand why

39:18

people would wanna

39:20

devote their

39:21

money towards

39:22

hypothetically moral ventures.

39:24

But

39:24

I also understand that devoting

39:26

your time and money to a moral

39:29

venture is an unbelievably difficult thing to do. And

39:31

if you think you

39:32

could what would you call reduce

39:34

your moral venture to a

39:36

handful of ESG algorithms, you've

39:38

got another thing coming. And and especially

39:41

when you see what's happening now too, because

39:43

I'm in Europe at the moment. I'm in the

39:45

UK -- Okay. -- which I guess

39:47

counts as Europe in. They're facing a

39:49

vicious winter and so are the Germans. And the Swiss

39:51

announced yesterday or the day before that

39:53

they would put people in

39:55

prison for up to three years

39:57

if they turned their thermostats above, I

39:59

can't remember if it was sixty six

40:02

degrees. Sixty six degrees. Three

40:04

years in jail. And all of this

40:06

is coming out of this idiot

40:08

ESG and

40:08

its subsidiary DEI WOTE

40:11

Morality. And we're starting to put

40:13

people in real danger here.

40:15

So

40:15

what do you think up to exactly? Like,

40:17

what's going on here as far as you're

40:19

concerned? Well, in Spain, actually, Congress said it was

40:21

less than eighty one degrees Fahrenheit

40:22

is actually the the legal threshold below what you can't set your thermostat

40:24

in the summer in Spain. Right. Right.

40:27

You know, you know, it's

40:29

yeah it has You're

40:31

you're right. difficult use your own money

40:33

to advance a moral agenda in your

40:35

own time and

40:38

effort. But

40:39

the easier thing to do is just to use someone else's money to

40:41

do it instead. So so he hasn't got very things up

40:43

too. That's what he's saying.

40:45

what what why is he doing this?

40:47

Do you think he believes it? And Well, you

40:49

know, he doesn't

40:49

believe it's why Well, it's so

40:52

leftist. Why in the world would Larry

40:54

Fink develop an

40:56

an affinity for a radical left

40:58

policy. Well, see,

40:59

there's a few things going on

41:01

here. I I may reflect his personal politics.

41:03

I haven't met him yet. So so so

41:05

I can't speak to what his personal politics are from what I hear that may reflect some of

41:07

his own, you know, perspectives. But but I think there's a

41:09

couple

41:09

of things going on here.

41:12

One is A lot

41:13

of these guys. Right? I mean, I was in a room with Jamie Diamond couple years ago. Sid, same

41:14

thing about him. They actually, a funny

41:16

story with

41:17

Jamie Diamond at that dinner, but but I think this stands

41:19

for Larry Fink too. He was

41:22

asked by someone else at the dinner. You know, hey, Jamie, you know, you're you're spouting,

41:24

you're you're saying all these great things,

41:26

wouldn't you wanna be president

41:28

of

41:28

the United States ever?

41:31

and

41:31

he responded in

41:32

candor. It was it was presented as a joke,

41:34

but it was so it was funny, not because it

41:36

was false, but because it was true. You

41:38

know what? Of course, I would wanna be president. I just wouldn't wanna ever

41:40

run for president. Never ever laugh

41:44

because because oh, yeah. That's

41:46

real funny. It was it was so it

41:48

was funny not because it was so obviously false, but

41:50

because it was so obviously true. So in a certain sense

41:52

for these

41:53

guys, it's about exercising political

41:55

power. Right? The the the

41:57

power hungry version of of impulse in each

41:59

of

41:59

us as a human being. You're able to exercise that,

42:02

discharge that. But

42:03

without the messiness, of actually going

42:05

through the electoral process or the democratic process. That's messy. Why bother with that when

42:07

I can exercise and flex my muscle as

42:09

a social actor through the

42:12

private sector So I think that's part

42:14

of the story. Part of

42:15

the story. billion dollars

42:17

isn't enough. Yeah.

42:18

Yeah. Exactly. You know, exactly. But your marginal

42:20

utility of money goes

42:21

down once you have over goes down every step.

42:23

But definitely, after you have over one billion dollars, an

42:26

extra unit of of dollars, a

42:28

green piece of paper, matter less. ability

42:30

to actually make your mark on the world. Right?

42:32

So I think that's a bit of what's going on here.

42:34

But but I think a bit of what's going on here is also the

42:36

economic incentives. actually.

42:38

So so on the

42:39

flip side, look, BlackRock

42:40

has enjoyed a great relationship with

42:42

the US government, including with this

42:45

current administration who is staffed by many alumni

42:47

of BlackRock who in return send a lot of their business

42:49

back through BlackRock. And I think that if you

42:51

want proof of this, If

42:53

you look at asymmetry

42:54

of how they behave in China

42:56

and how they behave in the

42:57

United States, both are tailored to

42:59

how they gain greater

43:01

state favors return. In China, they gained state state favors

43:04

by criticizing the United States and applying ESG in

43:06

the US without applying those same standards.

43:08

In China, Great. They'll roll

43:10

out the red carpet. BlackRock got

43:11

to be the first foreign owner of

43:13

an asset management business, a whole owner

43:15

of an asset management in China. That's

43:17

a great opportunity. You never believe me. Larry thinks it himself. So what are the

43:19

big growth opportunities? Conversely, in the

43:22

United States,

43:22

you get capital mandates from

43:25

calpers in the

43:25

state of New York

43:26

and and and favorable treatment from the

43:29

presidential administration that's in power. So in a

43:31

certain sense, the incentives are set up for them to

43:33

be able to do it. Now, That

43:34

doesn't mean their clients benefit from it. because their their clients money

43:36

who's being used to advance agendas that

43:39

are destroying the very industries that they

43:41

invest in, in

43:41

certain case,

43:43

like the US energy industry. But the

43:45

people

43:45

who run that money

43:47

gain a both economic and

43:49

political advantage in so

43:51

doing so so Does that

43:53

sound cynical? Yes. But but sometimes the truth requires the the

43:56

cynicism

43:56

that is impossible real world. It's impossible

43:58

to be

43:59

cynical enough. about the situation we're in now where the

44:02

entire energy market in

44:04

Europe and in other places around the world is

44:06

now starting to

44:08

fall apart for no other

44:10

reason that that idiots

44:11

broke it. That's right. That's right. No doubt. How

44:13

can I not be cynical about

44:16

that? It's a it's a crime not to be

44:18

cynical about that. I

44:19

agree. I mean, you have your head in the sand

44:21

and

44:21

are contributing to the problem indirectly if you

44:23

don't actually exhibit some agency

44:25

in in seeing the conspiracy

44:28

that's hiding in plain sight.

44:29

I mean, I I now joke that

44:30

ESG

44:31

in Europe stands for export Soviet

44:33

gas because that's effectively the effect

44:35

it's had on on global energy markets. At the

44:37

end of the day, for every

44:38

unit of oil or

44:40

gas production that's reduced in the

44:42

United States, Canada or Norway, which by

44:44

the way

44:45

are through the click cleanest places

44:47

on the planet to produce oil or gas. In a

44:48

global market, that's the slack

44:50

is picked up by Russia and China. And

44:53

by

44:53

the way, Methane

44:55

leakage is far worse from oil production in places like Russia

44:57

or China than it is in US,

44:59

US, Canada, or Norway.

45:02

And even if you buy into the entire religion, lock stock and

45:04

barrel, methane is eighty

45:06

times worse for global

45:07

climate change and

45:10

global warming Then

45:10

carbon dioxide, yet somehow, we indulge

45:12

the virtue that we're helping the

45:14

planet by shifting production

45:16

to places like Russia and

45:18

China It's

45:20

all about and this

45:21

is this is the problem. No. And and freezing

45:23

and starving poor people. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean,

45:25

I'm additional benefit. internal

45:28

contradictions. I mean, there's a whole the whole

45:30

the whole cost that's actually imposing

45:32

on the rest of the world. That

45:35

We could go on for hours about that, but even

45:37

on its own terms, it's -- Yep.

45:38

-- it's debatable whether that's

45:40

even achieving the said decarbonization

45:42

agenda because methane is a form of

45:43

carbon too, that even on the terms of the greatest adherence

45:45

to the climate religion is eighty

45:46

times worse for global warming the carbon dioxide. So

45:48

so and and by the way,

45:52

you know, the cherry on top, the biggest opponents to fossil fuels

45:54

in the ESG movement, or also

45:56

the biggest opponents to nuclear energy

45:58

--

45:58

Mhmm. -- which by the way

45:59

is supposedly the most

46:02

carbon neutral form of

46:04

large scale energy production known to

46:06

mankind,

46:06

Vanguard's ESG funds

46:09

by rule exclude

46:10

nuclear energy companies, which show you what this

46:12

debate is really about. To to me, those

46:14

two facts. Right? The

46:15

fact

46:18

that it really

46:18

was it wasn't about reducing carbon emissions so much

46:20

as shifting those same carbon emissions

46:22

to the east from the west.

46:25

And then the second

46:26

fact that actually even as we're opposed

46:28

to burning

46:29

fossil fuels, we're also going

46:31

to be opposed to the utilization

46:33

of nuclear energy. reveal

46:35

something really important about what's going

46:37

on here. And the thing

46:38

it reveals that is that this actually wasn't about

46:40

climate change at all. This

46:42

wasn't about the energy

46:43

debate at all. This

46:45

was about an attack on

46:47

human flourishing, particularly

46:48

human flourishing in the west

46:50

relative

46:51

to other parts of the

46:53

world And the

46:53

problem with nuclear energy,

46:54

for example, is that

46:56

it might actually solve the

46:58

energy

46:58

crisis, even the

46:59

clean clean energy demand

47:02

energy demand too

47:02

effectively. And the problem is

47:03

once you've solved the problem,

47:06

then you lose the Trojan

47:07

horse to pack in all of

47:09

the

47:09

other social agendas. because, wait

47:11

a minute. How are we Now are you

47:13

also you also lose the opportunity

47:15

to exercise your unearned moral

47:17

superiority? Exactly. God only knows you don't wanna

47:19

give that up. Exactly.

47:20

And and this is as as I say in my in my books, both

47:22

of them, the problem with virtue

47:24

signaling is at

47:27

some point the

47:28

appearance of virtue becomes more

47:31

important than being virtuous.

47:32

And

47:33

that's exactly

47:35

what's happening here.

47:36

where

47:37

it's it's AA4 of dishonesty

47:39

where there were other agendas at work, the

47:41

global equity agenda. How else would the rest of

47:43

the world catch up with the West?

47:45

If it weren't for asymmetrically imposing fossil fuel

47:47

caps on the west? Well, that's what explains the

47:49

asymmetry

47:49

in not applying the ESG

47:50

standards to other parts of

47:54

the world. It's also what explains the opposition of the EST movement to

47:56

nuclear energy because both of those could

47:58

actually solve the

47:59

alleged

47:59

energy driven

48:02

climate crisis without

48:03

actually accomplishing the other social goals of addressing

48:05

other global injustices. Instead, I'm not

48:07

minimizing that conversation. But if we're

48:09

gonna have

48:09

that conversation, Let's have that

48:12

debate on the open in the open on its own

48:14

terms rather than using the Trojan horse of

48:16

a climate religion to advance that

48:18

agenda instead And by

48:19

the way, you're not even

48:21

as we talked about, even helping that third world.

48:23

I mean, at the end of the day, more eight

48:25

times more people today

48:28

die of coal

48:28

temperatures rather than warm temperatures and the best answers to

48:31

all temperature related deaths

48:32

is more plentiful and abundant access

48:35

to global energy. You know where is net

48:37

zero? Some of them, man. Okay. So at the end of the day, they can be net zero, but

48:39

they have bigger problems and they're they're starving

48:42

their people. So so this is

48:44

so, anyway, I think there's so much going on

48:46

here, but I think that you you know, we're we're

48:48

very much on the same page on this, I would say.

48:51

Tad, can you talk -- this is kind

48:53

of off topic, but can you talk a little bit about

48:55

what you told me a couple of weeks ago about

48:57

ambassadors from Europe coming to Canada?

48:59

AND AMERICA TO ASK FOR --

49:01

Reporter: IT WASN'T THE EMBASTOR. IT WAS

49:03

THE CHANCELLER OF GERMANY WHO

49:05

IS A LEFTEST. HE CAME ALL OF SHOTES, CAME

49:07

TO CANADA, CAPTAIN HAND, ABOUT

49:10

THREE WEEKS AGO

49:12

AND SAID said to

49:14

Trudeau, do you think you could open up the LNG

49:16

pumps, so to speak? And

49:19

Canada has massive reserves

49:22

of natural gas. And natural gas

49:24

is a very, very clean energy

49:27

source, high

49:28

density clean energy source. I mean,

49:31

The Americans started fracking for natural

49:33

gas in a big way

49:35

back around the turn of the millennium, and

49:37

they cut their carbon output, and this

49:39

is relevant to to the next point

49:41

about what just exactly what are we trying to accomplish here? The death of

49:44

Western civilization or saving

49:46

the planet. The

49:48

Americans cut their carbon output by fifteen percent by

49:50

turning to fracking, and Canada, could

49:53

have, over the last decade,

49:55

invested heavily heavily in in

49:58

liquid natural gas production and movement. And then

50:00

shipping, we have the technical

50:02

ability to do it and to do

50:05

it cleanly. provided Europe with an alternative

50:07

energy source that was clean and efficient. They're

50:09

gonna turn back to burning coal here right away.

50:11

They're already doing that

50:14

in Germany. And, anyways, all of shots, who's one

50:16

of Canada's great allies, let's put let's

50:18

remember that, came to

50:21

Trudeau, one of his fellow left wingers and said,

50:23

man, we could sure use some gas here

50:25

since we're putin' surf

50:28

and slave because we set

50:31

ourselves up to be that, and Trudeau said,

50:33

well, we don't think we

50:35

can make a business

50:37

case for that. And the reason he

50:39

couldn't make a business case for that is because his bloody appalling administration

50:42

has done everything they possibly

50:46

could have to make it absolutely impossible for energy energy

50:48

company to make a business case for it

50:50

because it's become so

50:52

expensive and So difficult

50:54

to do business in Canada on the energy front

50:56

that no one's willing to risk the investment.

50:58

You can't make this

51:00

stuff up. You you

51:01

really can't It

51:02

it was beyond comprehension. This is at

51:05

the same

51:05

prime minister who's who's spouting

51:08

off at every

51:10

moment. His ritual adherence to the support

51:12

for the brave people of Ukraine.

51:14

But when it but he's still willing to

51:16

put all the power in the hands of

51:18

Putin, who

51:20

is much

51:20

more masterful as far as I can tell at the moment, at

51:22

the use of arbitrary power than any of

51:24

the opponents he faces in the west.

51:28

means he's already put the screws to Europe and wait just

51:30

wait till the winter comes if you think you've

51:32

seen screws so far, man.

51:34

We ain't seen nothing yet.

51:36

Right. You're so right about this. I mean, winter is coming to Europe. No

51:38

doubt about it. And and and and you know

51:41

what? Putin's

51:41

Putin making a historical bet here. I mean,

51:43

III You

51:45

know, obviously, I can't get in his head, but, you know,

51:48

if I

51:48

if if you're putting yourself in his shoes, what are

51:50

you gonna say? Russia has a long history

51:53

about lasting its European opponents

51:55

through long cold winters. Look

51:57

at Napoleon, look at Hitler, they're not gonna be

51:59

able to

51:59

muster the political power through this winter when they

52:02

lack enough energy to actually heat

52:03

their homes. And and you have to think about, you know,

52:06

it's not just Trudeau. I mean, out of you

52:08

know, you look at this from the Canadian

52:10

perspective as a Canadian, that's I think you're

52:12

spot on. I'll also

52:14

make a

52:14

very similar observation as American about president

52:16

Biden, who

52:17

with one hand is giving forty

52:19

five billion dollars

52:20

in aid to Ukraine to fight

52:22

against Putin. On the

52:23

other hand, the

52:25

number one lobby

52:27

against the European

52:30

ban on Russian

52:32

oil imports was

52:32

actually the US White House, who was actually president Biden,

52:34

which is in turn

52:35

financing Putin war machine that in turn allows him, the

52:38

one thing that's gone well

52:38

for Russia, of course, is its oil and gas sales.

52:41

going up since

52:41

his invasion of Ukraine. So in one hand, giving

52:43

forty five billion of Ukraine, with the other hand lobbying

52:45

against the policy that has the effect in

52:48

turn

52:48

of increasing cash

52:50

machine to finance his war machine. So

52:52

yeah. Well, let's not forget cozy up to

52:54

the Iranian set at the same point. Yeah.

52:57

Yeah. Of course. because that's a fun little side affair. Yeah. Fun

52:59

little side of that. Oh, yeah.

53:02

That's just, yeah, just a trivial. And and also

53:04

alienating the Saudis at the same time.

53:06

Well, he's

53:08

doing that. So so

53:08

it's you know, if this is bad for if this is bad

53:10

economically, if this is bad

53:12

geopolitically,

53:12

if it's even as I

53:14

made an argument before, bad environmentally,

53:17

its own on

53:19

the terms of the environmentalist movement's own terms. Then,

53:21

why is it happening? And

53:23

at the end of the day,

53:24

it's that the small handful of

53:27

actors who have benefited,

53:28

both politically and

53:29

economically, they

53:31

reeled so much aggregated

53:34

capital, including capital aggregate from every

53:36

citizens across Western nations,

53:38

they are actually

53:38

the ones who are able to

53:41

influence

53:41

all of these decisions because in their

53:43

self interest, that sounds conspiratorial, but it's

53:45

hiding in plain sight. And this

53:46

is not a left wing or right wing debate as a consequence. I I think -- Right. --

53:49

this is a this is a seventeen seventies exhibition. This

53:51

is a question about whether you believe

53:53

in the distributed power

53:56

both

53:56

distributed political power and distributed market power that

53:58

we set into motion in

53:59

seventeen seventy six, the year of the declaration of

54:01

independence, the year of the wealth of nations, both of

54:04

those people

54:06

forget where both in seventeen seventy six. Is that what we

54:08

believe?

54:08

Or do we believe in the

54:09

old world European model?

54:10

We're a small group of

54:13

enlightened

54:13

elites, decide the

54:15

right answers to how

54:16

societies to organize its affairs for

54:18

the rest of society

54:19

at large. mean, that's

54:21

a that's a legitimate debate. It was a historical debate. We

54:23

settled it

54:24

in seventeen seventy six through a war.

54:25

We we it it reared its head again

54:27

in World War one. That was

54:29

that was that issue sides of

54:30

the World War one battle. At

54:32

the end of the day, that

54:34

has now reared head

54:37

again in the

54:37

twenty first century version of

54:39

this. And what's at stake in the

54:41

ESG movement is the debate between distributed

54:43

power through democracy,

54:44

distributed power through actual decentralized

54:46

free market capitalism, or the

54:48

new version of monarchy.

54:51

And and this is not a left wing, actually, agenda.

54:53

It is a monarchical agenda. That

54:55

I think people once they see what it

54:57

is, hopefully, can debate this issue in in terms that

54:59

Times disorder

54:59

was a partisanship. that's the sort of thing

55:02

that Russell brand keeps objecting to because in some sense he's an objector

55:04

on the left. And what he's fundamentally

55:07

objecting to is monarchical

55:10

pretensions on the part of gigantic

55:12

corporations

55:13

rather

55:14

than gigantic government

55:17

actors. But a a common enemy, as you just pointed

55:19

out, or a common threat, I would

55:21

say, is unconstrained

55:24

gigantism, period. It doesn't matter whether

55:26

it's on the corporate front or the government front.

55:28

And remember back in two thousand and eight, the

55:30

mantra was too big to

55:32

fail.

55:32

That's right. Okay.

55:33

How about this for a mantra? So

55:36

big, you must certainly

55:38

fail. I like that, actually. Yeah.

55:40

Absolutely like that. And And while it's

55:42

relevant to this issue

55:44

of of the fundamental

55:46

debate that you see going on here is

55:48

that And it it it's

55:50

relevant to this issue of so called fascism that we talked about earlier.

55:52

Too much centralized control constitutes

55:57

a catastrophe in and of itself.

55:59

It doesn't

55:59

matter if it's corporate or

56:02

governmental. And that's

56:03

the same problem. And the

56:05

problem is the tower of Babbel problem

56:07

essentially, which is you have

56:09

one centralized authority who has all the

56:11

responsibility and all the power and everyone

56:14

else has turned into a voiceless

56:16

peon. And that means

56:18

the centralized authority turns into

56:20

a tyrant partly because they get dissociated from the populace

56:22

and all of the intermediary

56:24

structures of responsibility that should be

56:26

there as an antidote

56:28

to that totalitarian

56:30

structure are wiped

56:32

out, are demolished. And then

56:34

you have the

56:35

moral hazard that that all

56:37

cruise benefit term to the people who are

56:39

wielding the the the

56:40

power and

56:41

and accruing the moral virtue.

56:44

It's utterly

56:46

appalling. It

56:46

is it is appalling, but I think that, you know, I'm also just increasingly

56:49

focused on how it is we're gonna

56:51

do something about

56:52

this. And I I know this is something that that both of you think

56:55

a lot about. I think about it. At the end of the day, you know,

56:57

you you could think about breaking up that distributed power. I

56:59

like breaking that up through market competition.

57:02

It is It is

57:04

wild to me. It is staggering to

57:06

me that literally no one else

57:08

has taken

57:09

up the mantle of creating

57:11

an affirmative alternative to ESG. I

57:13

founded StriVE earlier this year.

57:16

Okay? I think others should be ashamed

57:18

of the fact that Within the first year,

57:20

Striv is unambiguously the

57:22

world's, I think,

57:23

leading voice, offering an

57:25

affirmative alternative to ESG

57:27

in the marketplace. how much

57:29

– can you talk about how much capital you are

57:32

now

57:33

now indirectly

57:34

the directly responsible

57:36

for it. Also, what dangers you think

57:38

your approach might produce? You know,

57:40

because

57:40

some of this was unintended consequence of

57:43

index development. Right? Totally. what

57:45

are there dangers and what you're doing that you see

57:47

on the gigantism side? And how are you guys doing

57:49

its drive? Well, so so there's

57:51

there's I mean, I have

57:52

I I was not without some reluctant

57:55

that I started

57:55

to strive because III do

57:57

worry about the

57:59

bifurcation of a of an economy

58:02

in Democratic

58:03

society. I think a private sector needs

58:05

to be

58:05

a place that provides cohesion in an

58:07

otherwise divided body politics. I mean, this is

58:09

tokeville. The intermediating institutions of

58:12

American capitalism, is an apolitical

58:14

intermediated institution. And so the last thing, and I'm and I'm

58:16

very focused in the way we're building strive

58:18

to

58:18

to minimize the risk. It is a risk.

58:20

But

58:20

to minimize the risk that we actually contribute,

58:23

to

58:23

that to that fracturing and the

58:25

politicization of the private sector by

58:27

affirmatively keeping our North Star as depolarizing the

58:29

private sector, but that won't be easy. So

58:31

subscribers' brand new and its first

58:33

fund only launched on

58:34

August ninth. And

58:36

the thing it was staggering is within the

58:37

first month, within the first three weeks, we exceeded three

58:40

hundred million dollars in just that first

58:42

fund, which makes it I think I'm told the

58:44

fastest launching non seeded

58:46

ETF

58:46

exchange traded fund of the year.

58:49

which

58:49

for a newcomer, you know, it turned a

58:51

lot of heads in the

58:52

in you could, you know, look at the press around it.

58:54

The financial press, it turned a lot of heads before shocked.

58:56

What does that say? And by

58:57

the way, the average trade

58:58

size in that first in that

59:01

first few weeks was less

59:02

than five thousand dollars.

59:04

So the other funds that launch that

59:06

launched over a hundred million dollars in the first week. The average trade size was millions of

59:08

dollars. In our first week, it was less than

59:10

five thousand dollars. In our first three weeks,

59:13

I think we had over four

59:15

hundred thousand visits our messages were flooded by

59:17

them. So so this is a bottom up

59:19

demand of the everyday

59:21

citizen who understands their

59:24

their their money in in their voices being exploited by someone

59:26

else today. I I think that

59:28

there's

59:28

a potential tidal

59:30

wave of everyday citizens who are hungry

59:33

for a different alternative, but the system is so set up in an intermediate

59:35

way

59:35

that that, you know, it's gonna

59:36

take a new market actor, and that's not easy. That's

59:39

the mountain climbing, taking a jack camera

59:41

to that system to

59:42

ultimately break the dam, to actually allow

59:44

the voice of the everyday citizen to be

59:46

heard

59:46

over all of the intermediating financial institutions

59:49

that actually serve as gatekeepers to

59:51

advancing the voice in the interests of the capital owners, the everyday citizen whose

59:53

money is being invested. Now, I

59:55

think that

59:56

now

59:57

I think that part of

59:59

this, you know, I'm solving this, aiming to solve this, I

59:59

hope through through the market. I hope to god, there

1:00:02

are other competitors like Striv

1:00:04

that step up to

1:00:06

the play. And I think that

1:00:08

will help solve the problem that I worry about, which is that there's one unilateral institution

1:00:10

that represents

1:00:11

this other alternative viewpoint

1:00:13

to the otherwise

1:00:15

codified ESG hegemony. I don't want to hegemony

1:00:17

in any direction. I want a diversity of

1:00:20

viewpoints

1:00:20

represented in a marketplace of

1:00:22

ideas and represent the marketplace

1:00:24

of capital and products that's distributed.

1:00:26

So I don't want -- strive to ever become

1:00:28

a twenty trillion dollars financial

1:00:30

institution. I think we

1:00:31

should by that point have greater competition in

1:00:33

the marketplace of capital and products and

1:00:36

ideas that

1:00:36

keeps the flow of capital competitive

1:00:38

for the everyday citizens who are participants in that economy. And and so do I

1:00:41

worry a little bit about that? That's

1:00:42

a high class problem as a business

1:00:44

that

1:00:45

will turn to in

1:00:47

the future. But I

1:00:48

worry in the meantime about

1:00:50

also politicizing this whole debate, which

1:00:52

is

1:00:52

unfortunately what the ESG movement has done,

1:00:54

But even when you counter it through a movement of depolarization, it's

1:00:56

hard not

1:00:57

to be seen as a as

1:00:59

a

1:00:59

politicized effort in own

1:01:01

right. So that's what makes this a uniquely challenging thing

1:01:03

to really do right, not just to go

1:01:05

to the lowest hanging fruit and say that, well,

1:01:07

we're gonna create

1:01:08

the conservative version of the

1:01:10

liberal ESG movement. I think that'll be the wrong way to do this versus to

1:01:12

say that the way

1:01:13

we wanna do this is to actually

1:01:15

take a depoliticized

1:01:16

approach that focuses exclusively on what

1:01:19

companies should be doing. And to take

1:01:21

those

1:01:21

political questions as important as they may be and to

1:01:23

have the humility to say that we don't

1:01:25

deal with

1:01:25

those questions. Those should be reserved to the political

1:01:28

process. And

1:01:28

that was part of why I wrote the

1:01:29

book as well.

1:01:30

So it's I mean, I'm releasing

1:01:32

the book, you know, this week. Right?

1:01:35

And and at the end of the day,

1:01:38

look, part of the

1:01:38

book, what I hope to achieve

1:01:40

through the book is it's gonna take

1:01:42

a citizenry

1:01:44

who is

1:01:44

no longer susceptible or vulnerable to the demands

1:01:47

and to the to the siren

1:01:48

song of the virtue

1:01:50

signaling and the advertising through

1:01:54

virtue that has empowered the ESG movement. And and what I

1:01:56

worry about is

1:01:57

that we we can live in this moment where

1:01:59

we have this

1:01:59

black hole

1:02:02

of identity in an entire generation, an entire nation, and an

1:02:04

entire western civilization, that

1:02:06

the kinds of things that used to fill

1:02:08

those moral voids, whatever they

1:02:09

may have been, Right?

1:02:12

You mean like family? Family. That was at the top of

1:02:14

this. It's just the least of an example. Family

1:02:16

as an example.

1:02:17

And we could we could we could have

1:02:19

other examples. Hard work. as

1:02:21

an idea. People used to derive identity from

1:02:23

hard work.

1:02:24

Religion. Patriot tension. Yeah.

1:02:26

Yeah. Community Nationalizing. All these all these

1:02:30

subsidiary organizations. that was a social organization? I mean,

1:02:32

in in

1:02:32

some ways, you you're you're you're gonna

1:02:34

intuit this even more

1:02:35

deeply than I did in writing this book, this this it's it's

1:02:38

where you

1:02:40

spend you're

1:02:40

you're, you know, waking hours over decades of scholarship, but

1:02:42

but you're right about that

1:02:43

whatever those may have been that filled those

1:02:46

void,

1:02:46

that void of identity and meaning and

1:02:48

purpose, when we've lost

1:02:49

that, there's this black hole of a vacuum -- Yeah. -- that

1:02:52

then allows poison to fill the void.

1:02:53

And so one of my goals with with nation

1:02:55

of victims was Look,

1:02:57

far be it for me to have all the answers, but at

1:02:59

least

1:02:59

to start the conversation about offering one

1:03:02

vision of what it means from an

1:03:04

American context What does it mean to

1:03:06

be an American in twenty twenty two? If you ask most of America's

1:03:07

citizenry, I don't believe they have a good answer to that

1:03:09

question. I offer one answer to that

1:03:11

question,

1:03:11

which is Part

1:03:14

of what it means to be an American includes the reason

1:03:16

why many immigrants, including my parents, travel

1:03:18

across the world, to be part of America,

1:03:20

is to pursue excellence unapologetically.

1:03:23

to say

1:03:23

that the shared pursuit of excellence of

1:03:26

self actualization

1:03:26

and to be free to do so in

1:03:28

whatever way we as individuals and free agents determine,

1:03:31

is the right way for us to pursue excellence in our lives, to be able

1:03:33

to do that, to be able to do it in an

1:03:35

unrestricted way, and to be able to do

1:03:38

it unapologetically, is

1:03:38

part of what it means to be America. Well, I'd rather

1:03:40

I would I would put a twist on that. So I I

1:03:43

just did a seminar

1:03:44

in Miami on the biblical story,

1:03:48

Exodus. And Exodus is the prime

1:03:50

story that

1:03:51

that, let's say, people

1:03:53

promoting

1:03:53

freedom of Equals

1:03:56

Stripe's referred to when trying to for full manned transformation

1:03:58

in the face

1:03:59

of

1:03:59

tyranny. And one of the

1:04:02

things that

1:04:02

God says to Moses

1:04:05

when he's enjoyeding Moses to

1:04:07

push back against the tyranny of the

1:04:09

Pharrow is let my people

1:04:11

go. And that's that call to

1:04:13

the sort of freedom that you just described, but that's actually not

1:04:15

what God says. And it said ten

1:04:17

times one for

1:04:20

each plague

1:04:21

He

1:04:22

says, let my people go so that

1:04:24

they may serve me in the wilderness. And

1:04:26

so it isn't freedom exactly.

1:04:29

It's constrained freedom. And the

1:04:31

reason I'm making this case is because

1:04:33

the case you just made there for

1:04:35

freedom versus, say, talk

1:04:38

down tyranny can

1:04:38

turn into kind of an atomistic

1:04:40

protestant liberalism where we're nothing but atomistic actors

1:04:43

defining our identities subjectively.

1:04:46

It's sort of and so here's an alternative vision of freedom. It's like,

1:04:48

well, you're free to free to vary

1:04:50

and play as an individual,

1:04:52

but

1:04:54

that's within a relationship, within a committed long term

1:04:56

relationship. because that put some boundaries on

1:04:58

you and then to devoted

1:05:00

double

1:05:01

towards family. and then devoted

1:05:03

towards

1:05:03

communities, and then devoted towards states and nations, and then

1:05:06

maybe devoted to the international

1:05:08

order. And you have to

1:05:10

have

1:05:10

fealty at all of those levels,

1:05:12

and that actually constitutes

1:05:14

your identity. Right. Which is

1:05:16

the freedom. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

1:05:18

And so so you responded

1:05:20

to the to the appropriately, to the way I

1:05:22

framed it in that in that twenty second rant

1:05:24

and summary of the book. But

1:05:27

but in actuality, you know, one of

1:05:29

the arguments I also make and and this is synchronous with

1:05:32

what you just said is that

1:05:33

actually actually virtue is

1:05:35

not a product of capitalism. Actually,

1:05:38

I think the virtue is a

1:05:40

precondition for

1:05:40

capitalism to deliver on its promise. Right?

1:05:42

And so so I'll give you an example and I

1:05:44

laid this out in I'm losing

1:05:45

track with which book it came up in, but

1:05:48

across the two books.

1:05:50

Facebook actually faced a lot of

1:05:52

Chris, I'm a public critic of a lot of the censorship on social

1:05:55

media. So people called me when Facebook faced criticism for

1:05:58

its knowledge,

1:05:58

it's knowledge that

1:06:00

teen

1:06:00

girls using Instagram suffered body image

1:06:02

issues that were caused by the platform and that

1:06:04

it's anger management, that that people suffered

1:06:08

anger issues. when using its platform and they knew about it and they didn't do anything about it. And

1:06:10

they expected me to criticize Facebook, since I

1:06:12

criticized Facebook for censorship practices. But my

1:06:14

response is

1:06:16

actually different. I actually said

1:06:16

that you know what? I'm not

1:06:19

sure I want Facebook.

1:06:20

In fact, I'm sure I

1:06:21

don't want Mark Zuckerberg.

1:06:24

in charge of being

1:06:25

responsible for cultivating the kind

1:06:27

of

1:06:27

self confidence and identity and

1:06:30

virtue in a teen girl that

1:06:32

gives her the

1:06:33

psychic security and

1:06:35

fortitude to

1:06:36

not be vulnerable, to being picked out

1:06:38

by an algorithm in the way that

1:06:40

that

1:06:41

Instagram works. In fact, I think that's part of the problem

1:06:43

is that, again, we didn't cultivate enough of

1:06:45

that psychic fortitude, that virtue, whatever you wanna

1:06:47

call it, in the offline

1:06:50

world, that

1:06:50

left him vulnerable to being algorithmically exploited in the

1:06:52

online world. But the answer isn't to

1:06:54

make Mark

1:06:54

Zuckerberg or Jack

1:06:55

Dorsey a modern rabbi or a modern

1:06:58

day priest. It's to actually the

1:07:00

hard work in the offline world even outside the

1:07:02

sphere of the market to get to the same

1:07:04

place. And so, one of the cases I make in the nation

1:07:06

of victims, and and I don't know if a lot of conservatives are gonna

1:07:08

love this.

1:07:09

That could be just not gonna I'd be really honest with you. I I

1:07:11

don't I don't much care. I I think

1:07:13

that there's there's there's two components

1:07:14

to this I am speaking from an

1:07:17

American context, American identity. Part

1:07:18

of it is responsive to

1:07:19

the half of us. That the half of us

1:07:21

internally, I

1:07:21

mean, the half of me internally, that wants to

1:07:24

be the

1:07:26

individualist the rugged individualist pursuing my own dream as a free

1:07:28

agent expressed through free market capitalism.

1:07:30

Okay? That that's half of the

1:07:33

story. The

1:07:34

individualist. But if we're

1:07:35

being honest with ourselves, each of us as citizens also hangers to

1:07:37

be part of something

1:07:38

that is greater than ourselves a

1:07:42

whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. And that too

1:07:44

is part of what it means in the American

1:07:46

context to to be an American. And

1:07:48

in that is is

1:07:49

I think the beautiful

1:07:51

tension at the heart of Western identity, at the heart

1:07:54

of American identity, the individual, the

1:07:56

whole, you know, individualism

1:07:58

in unity, It's

1:07:59

they they

1:07:59

sometimes run rough shot over one another. Capitalism

1:08:02

and democracy, I think, are the expressions of

1:08:04

each of those. And one of the things that I think the

1:08:06

conservative movement gets wrong. So

1:08:06

I would wanna be the last person that was that was

1:08:09

guilty of committing the same mistake, was talking

1:08:10

disproportionately at the former, which is just

1:08:12

the pursuit of of freedom to a

1:08:15

free market capitalism. It's something that we've lost and need to revive

1:08:17

no doubt. But without talking about the revival of

1:08:18

a bad word I'm gonna use here, but it's a word I

1:08:21

think

1:08:22

we need at least We

1:08:24

at least need to talk about more

1:08:26

the revival of civic

1:08:27

duty to a nation that also is part

1:08:28

of what it means

1:08:31

to be a citizen. And I

1:08:33

think that the two actually go hand

1:08:35

in hand because part of the stakeholder capitalist is to

1:08:38

be the

1:08:40

APOLOGIST. for being the capitalist pursuing your

1:08:42

own self interest, but that comes from the fact that you never were actually a fully formed

1:08:44

citizen who had lived

1:08:47

out

1:08:47

his civic duty in

1:08:49

the first place so you have

1:08:51

the psychic security that gave you the muscle

1:08:53

memory of neither pursuing self interest nor pursuing

1:08:55

sacrifice ever properly because

1:08:57

the two are always co mingle. And what I

1:08:59

think is we actually need to revive the

1:09:02

muscle memory of doing each of those things

1:09:04

unapologetically in our different

1:09:06

capacities as both capitalists and as citizens by separating

1:09:08

those activities and those

1:09:09

pursuits from one another. And and a

1:09:11

lot of the thing getting

1:09:12

at the conservative movement particularly in the

1:09:14

United States gets wrong is it's completely

1:09:17

sacrificed and given up on

1:09:19

this idea of civic duty as a constituent feature of citizenship itself

1:09:24

And the idea of being a citizen of

1:09:26

a nation is part and parcel of what gives you the foundation to then be

1:09:28

a self interested capitalist in

1:09:30

the

1:09:31

sphere of the market.

1:09:32

and part of

1:09:34

what allows

1:09:34

capitalism to then fulfill its promise in an otherwise democratic society, which is to say that, you

1:09:36

know, I often joke that but

1:09:38

it's not really a joke, but I do joke

1:09:39

to send it. everything

1:09:43

that's ever wrong with capitalism could be explained by the fact

1:09:46

that our wants do

1:09:47

not fully match our

1:09:50

needs And that divergence in the delta between the two is what

1:09:52

we might call virtue in the first place, which is why I

1:09:54

come back to what I started with, which is virtue

1:09:57

is a precondition for capitalism to

1:09:59

deliver on its

1:09:59

promise. So So so I don't know how much

1:10:02

of that resonates with you or you're growing up or not, but but that's the only big

1:10:06

part of the book. Well, I think

1:10:07

I'll have one thing to that and then I'll turn the questions over

1:10:09

to Mikaela again. Look, if you're

1:10:12

not a

1:10:12

virtue as citizen

1:10:15

and you're a capitalist, like a

1:10:17

self interested hedonistic, capitalist, free

1:10:19

market, individualist, you're gonna

1:10:21

be guilty

1:10:23

because you're not oriented

1:10:25

in the proper direction, but say towards the highest of all things.

1:10:27

And the problem with being guilty is that when

1:10:30

the mob comes for

1:10:32

you, and accuses you,

1:10:34

you're going to be guilty, and then you're going to do foolish things like abide by ESG

1:10:39

statutes, let's say, and try to back

1:10:42

pedal because you're guilty for what you've done. And and it is exactly as you said because

1:10:44

the sacred

1:10:47

duties of citizenship And

1:10:49

the identity that goes along with

1:10:51

that, which actually psychologically highest that's been sacrificed. And

1:10:54

part of what's happened

1:10:56

too is

1:10:58

now that's being replaced by

1:11:00

this insistence that only subjectivity defines identity, which

1:11:02

is an unbelievably immature and pathological insistence.

1:11:07

And so

1:11:07

that fractionates and alienates

1:11:08

everyone on the basis of

1:11:10

their subjectivity, and that also

1:11:13

facilitates the transfer of

1:11:15

responsibility and power to the

1:11:18

people at the top of towers of broadest

1:11:20

sense.

1:11:24

That's

1:11:24

that's absolutely necessary. And this is one of my failures in Wilkink.

1:11:26

It's what it was one of my regrets in that last

1:11:29

book. Is that is

1:11:31

that I didn't I didn't

1:11:33

do anything with this

1:11:34

idea of citizenship. And that was the gaping hole that led me to write this this new book.

1:11:36

So that

1:11:36

that's at the heart of

1:11:39

nation of victims, actually. And that

1:11:41

there's a chapter in the book duty. trope theory

1:11:44

of justice.

1:11:48

I

1:11:48

think that you know David Hume had a

1:11:50

famous thought experiment about the missing shade of blue. He believed that he could infer from

1:11:53

a

1:11:53

spectrum of shades

1:11:56

of blue a

1:11:58

shade

1:11:58

of blue that was missing from that. He could tell you exactly how it looked without ever having seen it, but

1:11:59

he called his

1:12:02

missing shade of blue.

1:12:05

I call this the missing shade

1:12:06

of red. For the American Conservative Movement, is this theory of duty. And so as if I had to

1:12:08

pick up a chapter of the book that

1:12:10

was the most important, it was the

1:12:14

chapter entitled The Theory of Duty.

1:12:16

And and

1:12:16

I think that that was that was part of what I

1:12:18

missed in in even what was in retrospect a

1:12:21

more myopic perspective. that I brought to Beren woke, Inc. that

1:12:23

I hope, at least, you know, begins the

1:12:25

project of filling out that vacuum in in

1:12:28

nation of victims. Okay.

1:12:29

you guys are talking about

1:12:31

revitalization of citizenship, but what are examples of civic duties people should

1:12:36

actually pursue?

1:12:37

So shall I start with

1:12:39

that? Please, please. Okay. Well, I

1:12:41

think

1:12:41

you can think

1:12:43

about it, Hirek. and

1:12:45

and that's the most effective way

1:12:48

to do it. You you owe yourself,

1:12:50

your extended self, you owe a duty.

1:12:53

which means you have to act

1:12:55

in a manner in the present that doesn't sacrifice your medium long term viability and

1:13:00

well-being. And I think

1:13:02

the voice of conscience and the voice of meaning are pointers to that. And so when

1:13:04

your conscience calls

1:13:07

you on your misbehavior, It's

1:13:10

because you're subordinating your long

1:13:13

term sustainability and growth to

1:13:15

the hedonistic and impulsive demands of

1:13:17

the present. And so you're acting in a very

1:13:20

immature way or not making

1:13:22

the proper sacrifices even in

1:13:24

relation to yourself. And then you

1:13:26

have to have someone along for the ride,

1:13:28

someone that you commit to over the long

1:13:30

run, a wife or a husband, who

1:13:33

you bind yourself together with and struggle through life with. And then

1:13:35

that's a foundation for

1:13:40

a family. and that family, the children

1:13:42

in your family, they remind you, I just watched Bill Burrows new special.

1:13:44

It was quite funny, very

1:13:46

politically incorrect. And Bill Burrows has

1:13:50

a real tamper, and he doesn't control it

1:13:52

well by his own admission. And he says

1:13:54

his his two and a half to four

1:13:57

year old daughters, so over a two year

1:13:59

span, has been a

1:13:59

signal what would you

1:14:02

call

1:14:02

it? Moderator of his temper

1:14:04

moderator

1:14:05

because when he gets

1:14:07

upset, His daughter has learned to come and pat him on the shoulder and tell him

1:14:09

that he's going off the handle and that he

1:14:11

should be careful and that he

1:14:13

doesn't have to be so

1:14:16

upset. And Your children do

1:14:18

modify you if you set the circumstance

1:14:19

upright to keep the harmonious balance. of

1:14:23

life going in

1:14:23

your family. You to modify your own stupidity, and

1:14:26

that keeps you sane. And then

1:14:28

you do that with

1:14:31

your family to your local community

1:14:33

and then the state and the province and then the national

1:14:35

sphere and the business sphere and the

1:14:36

sphere of your friends. And then

1:14:38

you can think of mental health

1:14:41

not

1:14:42

as something that's subjectively defined or subjectively experienced, as the felt

1:14:48

sense of the harmonious

1:14:50

balance between all these different levels of identity stemming

1:14:56

from you all the way out to, well,

1:14:58

to the broadest possible sphere. And that is, as the fact, pointed out, that

1:15:00

something conservatives haven't

1:15:03

figured out is that You

1:15:05

can sell to young people, and

1:15:07

I've seen this in my lectures. You can sell people young people the idea of multidimensional

1:15:10

social identity and responsibility.

1:15:14

as a solution to their problems of

1:15:16

nihilism and meaninglessness. And it it's

1:15:18

the genuine solution. It's not an

1:15:21

ideology or band

1:15:22

aid solution. It's

1:15:24

like that's life

1:15:25

to do all those

1:15:26

things at once properly. And

1:15:29

and that is It is, it's a

1:15:31

gaping hole in our culture that isn't

1:15:33

being filled by much at the

1:15:35

moment. Okay. So

1:15:36

would that be summed

1:15:38

up in, like, actual actionable things people can do? Would that be summed up

1:15:40

and figure out how

1:15:41

to have a proper relationship and

1:15:43

get married and ideally

1:15:47

have kids. Well, that's a start with. Yeah.

1:15:49

Yeah. Well, at the start of

1:15:50

your job, you have your friends,

1:15:52

you have your civic duty

1:15:55

as Vivek points out. Join a

1:15:57

political party, join a church. Don't your cynicism about

1:15:59

those things, especially when you're young,

1:15:59

doesn't justify

1:16:03

your of participation. Of course, corrupt and blind part

1:16:05

because no young people are

1:16:07

in there working diligently

1:16:10

to set them right.

1:16:12

No, I mean, young people have

1:16:14

things to learn too, but they can at least be eyes for the blind. Mhmm. So,

1:16:17

so

1:16:19

III

1:16:20

I'm gonna throw something out

1:16:22

here and and I'm gonna say that this is something that I'm not not there

1:16:24

on being fully committed

1:16:26

to yet, but I am

1:16:30

I'm

1:16:30

a lot closer than I would have been ten years ago.

1:16:32

I have to admit that or even five

1:16:34

years ago, even

1:16:35

two years ago.

1:16:36

mandatory

1:16:38

military service.

1:16:40

Mandatory military service, I I

1:16:42

struggle with that because of

1:16:44

the aggregation of state power

1:16:46

And

1:16:46

what that means, but the cultivation of citizenship and

1:16:49

coequal citizenship is

1:16:51

something

1:16:51

that cannot

1:16:53

be

1:16:54

simply wished upon a society. It it has to as if capacity

1:16:56

is a citizen, has to be earned. And

1:16:58

what I what

1:16:59

I believe is if we

1:17:01

see ourselves as truly

1:17:04

coequal citizens,

1:17:04

then we will stop obsessing, over fetishizing

1:17:06

the differences in the green pieces

1:17:07

of paper or whatever other

1:17:09

petty privileges there are,

1:17:11

the superficial privileges that

1:17:14

that now we obsess over over correcting

1:17:16

for.

1:17:16

And those latest psychological impulses,

1:17:19

I think, are are rendered

1:17:20

render silly

1:17:22

by comparison to

1:17:24

a deeper civic equality. And I think

1:17:26

many conservatives will cringe at

1:17:29

this idea. I I would have cringed at

1:17:31

this idea as recently as few ago. I think part our path

1:17:32

to the

1:17:35

shared revival

1:17:36

of excellence in individual

1:17:38

self actualization is the insecurities that stop us and chakulos from being able to

1:17:40

pursue our own vision of excellence in self

1:17:42

actualization as free agents in the world.

1:17:47

are

1:17:47

in part created by the psychological apologyism.

1:17:49

The

1:17:49

I I forget the word used

1:17:52

with the guilt.

1:17:54

Right? that was created by the lack of of civic equality

1:17:56

in the first place. There may be some very

1:17:58

pragmatic benefits to this in the west

1:17:59

anyway. I mean, we can talk about the rising

1:18:02

and I think potentially inevitable Thucydides, trap, esque, you know, destiny

1:18:04

that I think we in the

1:18:06

United States and Canada like may face

1:18:10

with the rise of China. And, you know, I think triggered by the invasion

1:18:12

of Taiwan, which I think is upon us in

1:18:14

the next couple of years, and the implications for

1:18:17

the global semiconductor supply chain to the way

1:18:19

we even live our western life style

1:18:21

very much at stake for what happens there. In in a

1:18:23

realist in a in a in a real sense of the world, this

1:18:25

may not be an

1:18:27

option

1:18:27

anyway. But but Putting

1:18:29

aside, for this part conversation, I'll call just a positive externality. I'm

1:18:31

actually solving for a different internal goal

1:18:34

of reviving the psychic

1:18:36

and and

1:18:38

civic fortitude of an entire

1:18:40

nation. In a certain sense, those

1:18:42

aren't two

1:18:43

different issues anyway. I think that our

1:18:45

foreign policy and our ability to project

1:18:47

strength of our broad start with our civic strength

1:18:49

at home, but brings me back to an

1:18:50

idea that I would not have even entertained as as

1:18:53

one that

1:18:53

made it to the

1:18:55

table of

1:18:56

conversation Two

1:18:57

years ago, to some that I'm

1:18:59

actually quite growing increasingly sympathetic to

1:18:59

in the American context, maybe in the context of

1:19:00

of liking an

1:19:03

Israeli sense of the

1:19:04

in

1:19:07

an in an Israeli sense of the model, a mandatory civic

1:19:09

service through a military. It

1:19:11

doesn't have to

1:19:12

be combative military, but but

1:19:14

in some sense of actually serving the

1:19:16

national security of the United States or Canada of being a citizen

1:19:18

of a nation state like it is to be

1:19:19

a citizen

1:19:23

of Israel part

1:19:24

of what it entails is is acting out that

1:19:26

civic duty over a one or two year period or period that's distributed

1:19:28

over the course of a

1:19:30

decade. That's the implementation question. the

1:19:34

idea itself, I really be curious for

1:19:36

your reaction to that because I'm Well, I'd be inclined to

1:19:38

make that an invitation rather than a necessity, and

1:19:40

that that

1:19:43

I think the right way to

1:19:43

do that perhaps is to do the sort

1:19:46

of thing that we're doing in this

1:19:48

conversation, which is to

1:19:50

make a case that without

1:19:53

pronounced civic engagement and the sacrifice of a

1:19:55

narrow hedonism that necessitates, we're all

1:19:57

going to be not

1:19:59

only

1:19:59

in trouble socially,

1:20:02

but we're also going to be in

1:20:04

trouble individually,

1:20:04

that you have to pick something above yourself to

1:20:06

serve, or you'll be miserable and unhappy. And

1:20:10

yet, but I but I think to the degree

1:20:12

that you do that voluntarily,

1:20:14

that

1:20:15

because voluntary participation

1:20:17

is so important psychologically as well,

1:20:19

And I think you can do that by telling people the right

1:20:22

compelling story. And

1:20:24

so you're optimistic. That's

1:20:26

an

1:20:26

optimistic view. That's an optimistic view. No. It

1:20:29

it isn't. It's not that easy to