Season 3

Jim:
I gotta switch to going live.

Lionel:
We've only been doing this for like a year and a half.

Jim:
I'm still learning.

Lionel:
Wuh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-du

Jim:
All right, it's time for a new theme song. I wrote a Substack article about why the rise of AI means the death of money. And I wrote it because I was, I keep hearing these, you know, people, all these companies are getting on board with AI. They're like, they're like trying to beat each other to the, to the race, to the finish line here. And I don't know that they've thought this completely

Lionel:
They're

Jim:
through.

Lionel:
beating, they're pushing each other out of the way so they can be first to the cliff.

Jim:
Right. That's

Lionel:
Out of my way!

Jim:
exactly it.

Lionel:
I'm going

Jim:
That's exactly

Lionel:
first.

Jim:
it. Yeah. So I mean, the upshot of the article is is and, you know, you know, me, I just I make things up. I just I, you know, I get obsessed about some topic at four o'clock in the morning and then I then I write something down and then people are like, what? You know, so this that, you know, I got some new subscribers from it. But my base, the basic idea is that when you eliminate work, it may seem like a capitalist dream, right? So, you know, cheap labor, free labor, free labor. You can do all of your insurance quotes and all of your stock market tips and your investments and your diagnostics and your page layout and your website development and your computer programming and all those things, movies, books, all those or knowledgeable people or experts for, well, that's free now, right? Because you can get a program to do it good enough, and better and better, as it learns. But what you basically do is eliminate the rest of work. So there would still be some manual labor jobs left because robotics isn't really up to speed yet. We don't have robots doing all our farming. sewer system and

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
road work and I'm trying to think about it, manufacturing of cars actually, I think Elon Musk tried to build a completely automated factory and it didn't work. So there's still manual labor out there, but in terms of the work of thinking in the mind and creating, that can be done by a robot now. is that money will become worthless because you knock out work. And without work, you have no loans because there's no possibility

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
of repayment. I mean, of course, there's like uniform disaster for everybody. But in the middle of that, there's no loans being made because there's no employment. If there's no loans, the banks can't collect, can't earn interest. Um, money's just starts going down the tube. Now you could have government payouts to everybody, but what that'll lead to is an inflationary reaction because the companies that have the AI that are creating products or creating services will simply raise prices to whatever it is you've got in your pocket because it arrived there without any work and then, you know, prices kind of

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
go up and up and you have inflationary and worse problems. I'm not sure they're thinking it all the way through. You know, money,

Lionel:
you

Jim:
I was saying in the article, is like an electric current. It needs to

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
circulate. It needs a circuit. Or else it simply goes to ground. It goes away. You can somehow store it in one way or another, but eventually the value will go to nothing if everyone is not involved in the circulation of money, which maintains its value. fungible if it's used. So if it stops being used, it becomes collectible instead of fungible. And there's an interesting, I'm forgetting, so there's an interesting book I was reading, just a little bit of that went into this. And it was about the Middle Ages and the feudal system. And what a lot of the peasants and the serfs created was the commons.

Lionel:
Mm-hmm.

Jim:
which ended up really having resonance in many of the states here, some of the commonwealths was this notion of we all own this and we're all sharing it. And a lot of the service were able to get by by sharing goods and pooling services and getting together without, because they had no money, right? Because all of it went straight up to the landowners. So I think that's what's left. of people figuring out a different way to value, to value each other's presence and efforts and figure out what it is that we will do to get by. But it can't involve money if there's no work. Sounds kind of crazy, huh?

Lionel:
It sort of hits tangents of what I'm thinking. So what I was thinking about today, I'm not sure about money, but I am certain about this, which is that the job is the primary method by which P is the primary mechanism, employment and the job is the primary mechanism by which resources for most of the people on this planet. Not for the ultra wealthy, but for you and for me, how much stuff we get, how much stuff we can consume depends primarily upon our job, upon our employment.

Jim:
Yep.

Lionel:
I get a wage,

Jim:
Yep.

Lionel:
I get a certain amount every month, and I can go into debt and I can do credit, but basically, that's basically society telling me how much I get. It gives me a certain bundle of cash every month and it says, okay, go knock yourself out. You can do whatever you can. Go out and buy, you know, peeps for Easter season or whatever you want to do.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
And we therefore, we as human beings, invest an enormous amount of meaning and emotion into our jobs because jobs determine enormous jobs come with a title.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
You know, so it's part of our identity and it's how much money we get and we spend an enormous amount of time and Socialize with enormous amount of people at work and it's a huge it's so huge The job is such a huge mechanism and it determines so many things and we invest so much into it I'm not really worried about money. I'm worried about the disappearance of the job. That's what

Jim:
Oh,

Lionel:
I'm interested by

Jim:
oh, yeah. No, I mean, I agree with that, but I think I'm just reacting to the glee with which the companies are kind of going all in on

Lionel:
Oh,

Jim:
AI.

Lionel:
I think it's nuts. I mean, I truly,

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I mean, I'm really not a hyperbolic person. I really avoid hyperbole, but I could really see AI be a game ender.

Jim:
No.

Lionel:
That it's basically game over because you, because then the whole, it's gonna be very difficult to convince human beings that they have a purpose.

Jim:
Yeah. Well, yeah, I was actually I was going to have a very short back and forth with Hugh Howey, the author on Twitter. That can happen. You know, if you if you say the right thing and the right thread and suddenly somebody very famous

Lionel:
Hey you,

Jim:
chimes

Lionel:
I've got

Jim:
in.

Lionel:
your family, I've abducted your children, and I got a question.

Jim:
And I mean, actually, Howie was the one who said, robotics aren't there yet, which I actually found pretty interesting.

Lionel:
Oh, they're not.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
But they will be.

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
It

Jim:
well,

Lionel:
won't be long.

Jim:
and maybe what's missing is something that can reason better in terms of like how the farm equipment moves around and picks what or gets rid of whatever pest.

Lionel:
Well, I think people are inherently a lot more concerned about an object that can hold a gun than a computer program.

Jim:
We haven't even started. We haven't even started on that. I mean, the military uses of AI are horrifying, right? I mean,

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
but...

Lionel:
And as I said before, I mean, I was I was, as I mentioned, the last episode or the one before that, I was fascinated by that article in the New York Times where the guy said the A.I. doesn't have to pull the trigger. All it has to do is tell human beings the story, the right story that will make the human beings pull the trigger, which I thought was such a brilliant, I mean, a magnificently brilliant insight. The

Jim:
Hmm.

Lionel:
A.I. doesn't have to pull the trigger. All it has to do is tell the right person the right story and they will pull the trigger for them. But we digress.

Jim:
Yeah, I haven't read that article. But what I think what I was, oh, what I was getting at with

Lionel:
Owie.

Jim:
this back and forth with Howie was, and I think what I kind of gave up in terms of where the conversation was going with his other fans before I really got to the main thing was will we only be consumers of stories? Will we no longer be creators of stories?

Lionel:
Well, I'm not going to answer your question, but I will tell you this. The interesting thing is when I'm feeling in a very, very negative mood, my feeling is that right now that's all we are as consumers. The only value we serve to society is we make decisions between product A and product B. And we're basically a ratings agency. We say that CNN is better than blah, blah, blah, because that's mainly what we do is we

Jim:
It's

Lionel:
choose,

Jim:
pretty bleak and it...

Lionel:
no it's oblique,

Jim:
Sorry, go ahead.

Lionel:
it's oblique, I'm sorry I'm trying to grab, I'm trying to bend this light conversation back to where I want to go to,

Jim:
Okay.

Lionel:
but on your conversation to me money is not really the issue. I mean to me money is such a complex thing, it's really weird, it's very much a metaphysical thing, but the job is not. The job we all understand. The job is we show up, we do a certain amount of time, we do a certain number of things, and we get money in return. We understand that. It's an exchange. But it's so much more than that. It's so many of us base so much of our personality and so much of our self-image upon what we do. I'm a plumber. I'm a

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
this. What do you do? That's one of the first questions we ask people What do you do? We're not asking them, you know, do you clean out the cat litter pan every night at six o'clock? That's not what we're asking. We're asking about their job. And it's presumed that we're asking about their job and their profession. We're not asking about them building ships inside of a bottle. We're asking about what they do between 8 AM and 5 PM every day for which they get a salary. I mean, there are

Jim:
for which they get a salary. That's,

Lionel:
for

Jim:
I mean,

Lionel:
which.

Jim:
that's a key thing too, because people do a lot of things. And I'm certainly an example. I do about seven different things that I would list off if somebody said, what do you do? And one of them pays me the most and the others pay me nothing to a little. I'm not

Lionel:
That's

Jim:
a big fan

Lionel:
because

Jim:
of the

Lionel:
you're a creative, arty farty person.

Jim:
Yeah, but that's

Lionel:
I'm

Jim:
not

Lionel:
a

Jim:
true.

Lionel:
schlub.

Jim:
It's true of everyone. It's true of everyone.

Lionel:
No,

Jim:
You're

Lionel:
it's

Jim:
a father.

Lionel:
not.

Jim:
You're a father. You do that.

Lionel:
But nobody asks when people walk up to you to party say, what do you do? You don't say, well, I raise

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
children. It's like,

Jim:
yeah,

Lionel:
no.

Jim:
nobody wants to hear that. They're like, what do people pay you to do? That's what they

Lionel:
Well,

Jim:
wanna know.

Lionel:
no, but it's, yeah, that's one way of interpreting it. But I think the other way of interpreting it is that I'm not sure it's really that much about the money, but it's about the fact that we, maybe it's indirectly about the money, but we identify so much with our jobs. We pour so much, I do.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I pour so much of myself into my job. I mean, we spend eight hours a day doing it. We spend more time with these people at work than we do with our own families many times.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
So I think the first important thing to realize, all I'm getting at, is that the first important thing to realize is that the job is huge.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
The job is huge. It's an enormous structuring principle. It structures. It's how society doles out riches to people. It's how we define ourselves.

Jim:
It, there's a word that I was missing before in my introduction and the word is incentivize. It's how we incentivize people to do the things we want them to do.

Lionel:
Yeah. And it's so many different things. And the problem is when that goes away, there's a big hole there. I mean, like

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
a really, really, really, really big hole. And so my question is, what are you going to do? I mean, just determining, like the simple issue of how you're going to determine who gets how much money, who gets what resources, that's immense.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
I mean, it's certainly not the big, it's not clear that that is the biggest thing. There's so many different, it's a bundle of issues. It's not a single thing. It's a bouquet of issues. And the issue is, so what are you if you're not a coder? What are you if you're not a plumber? What are you if you're not a school teacher? If you're not employed, then what are you? Now, of course, there may be answers to that, for that because the job has been such a successful metaphor, has been such a hugely successful, I mean it's universally used throughout the world.

Jim:
Right. I mean, I think that there's this, yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to think historically if this has always been the case,

Lionel:
No,

Jim:
maybe

Lionel:
no, not at all. No, the job

Jim:
it has.

Lionel:
is an incredibly recent invention. The job is no more than 200 years old. But before the job, everybody did the same job. They worked on the farm. That's what you did, period.

Jim:
Yeah, yeah, you were, you were,

Lionel:
You're a laborer because

Jim:
you're a, yeah,

Lionel:
there's like 3%

Jim:
peasant

Lionel:
of the

Jim:
as

Lionel:
people.

Jim:
Mark Bittman, you know,

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
you know,

Lionel:
There's

Jim:
not

Lionel:
like,

Jim:
a bad word.

Lionel:
no, it's not. It just means a person of the land. That's a paisano

Jim:
Yeah, Python.

Lionel:
and peasant. It just means like the priests and all that kind of stuff. But everybody worked on the farm. And as I said before, up until 1900, 50% of the people in America worked on the farm. I

Jim:
Right,

Lionel:
mean,

Jim:
right,

Lionel:
the

Jim:
right.

Lionel:
job is such an immensely recent invention, but it's so hugely successful and so prevalent. I mean, the percentage of the population involved in agriculture is like, I mean, it's in the single digits.

Jim:
Right,

Lionel:
And

Jim:
right, right.

Lionel:
like, maybe in the like, single digits. So that's a huge, that's an enormous change from

Jim:
No,

Lionel:
from 18th. Go ahead.

Jim:
and I just want to say, like, it reminds me, like a friend of mine bought a farmhouse in Vermont years ago, and she actually does raise chickens and, you know, she's doing some kind of, I don't even call it she's an educator. So she works, she works at a university, but she is, you know, but she's got chickens, right? That's not like running a farm. And, and I was at her place. And I always thought of her, her land is just kind of being this front, this very large kind of long kind of front, uh yard and there was a pond out back and she was like oh yeah but then there's the other four acres up the hill

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
and I realized oh this was a family farm this was a this was a family farm that probably had a lot of yield and or you know a decent amount of yield for a very small farm maybe 10-12 acres and um all of these trees are new likely right they were all probably plowed down uh the land that my father-in-law has in Connecticut it was farmland and there's covered in these tall trees now, he said, oh, they weren't here when I was a kid. You know, this was just a field where, where things were grown.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim:
And that, so that was much more common, right. And totally not totally doesn't exist now. Is that small farm in Connecticut and Vermont in these places where land is scarce.

Lionel:
Where are we going with this?

Jim:
All

Lionel:
So

Jim:
right, you saw

Lionel:
what

Jim:
it.

Lionel:
does

Jim:
Sorry,

Lionel:
that

Jim:
I

Lionel:
mean?

Jim:
was trying

Lionel:
What's the

Jim:
to embellish.

Lionel:
significance?

Jim:
I was trying to like add a little like.

Lionel:
I was waxing

Jim:
Fouissons.

Lionel:
bucolic.

Jim:
Is that a word?

Lionel:
I was waxing Arcadian. Let us speak of the joys

Jim:
All

Lionel:
of

Jim:
right.

Lionel:
the country song.

Jim:
Yes. I was just trying I was trying to follow up on that a little bit with some personal anecdotes. Isn't that good? I don't know. But but you were so single digits for for the people who farm.

Lionel:
Now Jim is desperately trying to stitch the dialogue back. But now you've

Jim:
So

Lionel:
sent me

Jim:
lost.

Lionel:
on a completely

Jim:
Rudderless.

Lionel:
different... No, no, now we're gonna... you can snip this out in the edit, but I really... I want to... I really want to read this from Mark Lader. I think

Jim:
Okay.

Lionel:
everybody... everybody... Unfortunately, it's in the first few pages of Mark Lader's incomparable novel, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.

Jim:
which I'm starting to read.

Lionel:
And he says there, because we mentioned Bucolic, and he says,

Jim:
I know this passage.

Lionel:
and he's writing, and he's writing along, he says, there's an inn nearby. It's called Little Bo Peeps. Its habituas are shepherds. And after a long day of herding, shearing, panpipe playing, muse invoking, and conversing in eclogs, it's Miller time. And Bo Peeps is packed with rustic Swains who've left their flocks and more pungent charms of hardcore social intercourse. Okay, so I think we're done with our rural theme

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
here. But what were you trying to talk about? So she has this farm, she has this farm and she has the chickens and she's an educator. So what was the point of that

Jim:
Right,

Lionel:
whole?

Jim:
her main job is not farming, I guess is my main point. The people have moved into these farms and they've made them, maybe they've kept, they're still chickens, but it's not a farm anymore. A lot

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim:
of this land has been lost, a lot of that, I mean, all of it really has been lost to big agro, which is why we eat now.

Lionel:
It's why we eat for the amount of money that we pay,

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
but who knows what we pay. If let's not get down that route,

Jim:
Yep.

Lionel:
but back to me.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
So when the jobs gone, so when the jobs gone, because the job is going. How are we going to decide who gets what?

Jim:
Are we going to decide? You know, I mean,

Lionel:
What

Jim:
do

Lionel:
if

Jim:
we

Lionel:
I want

Jim:
do we?

Lionel:
your stuff? What if I want your apartment?

Jim:
Right. Well, very good. Yeah, very good. So it's it's that's up to maintaining an actual work in government so that we can have laws so that there's some kind of consequence for coming and taking my stuff. Good

Lionel:
See.

Jim:
question. Of course, governments need taxes and taxes require people who work who earn money. So

Lionel:
If they need taxes,

Jim:
that's problematic.

Lionel:
from the person who just said a few minutes ago that money is not really the important thing. Yeah, I mean, there's theft. And how do you deal with theft? And how do you get people to protect against theft when there's no money? I don't know. And I'm sure both of our listeners are like, I can't

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
believe these idiots are

Jim:
Ha ha ha ha.

Lionel:
flogging this horse again,

Jim:
Again, this

Lionel:
which

Jim:
is part

Lionel:
died,

Jim:
three.

Lionel:
this is part 357.

Jim:
Gern.

Lionel:
But I think it's gonna, all in all, going to be very interesting. Because I think change, as was Bob Dylan's song, change it is a coming.

Jim:
it's a hard rain gonna come.

Lionel:
A hard rain is gonna fall.

Jim:
The times they are changing

Lionel:
The times they are changing

Jim:
and

Lionel:
and a hard rain is gonna fall and I think the job is gone. Except for a few people like what I advise, what my brother advised me a long time ago, what he's advising his children, journeyman's plumber's license.

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
is plumbers do great. He said if you can deal with feces, you can deal with like climbing underneath crap.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Plumber, no robot is going to take over that job anytime soon. And AI is not going to deal with it. He says you basically make your own hours and stuff like that. But all that joking aside, yeah, there's some, but the vast majority of stuff. But it gets to a deeper point, which I was thinking about today, which is I really think that of the day is kind of meaningless.

Jim:
Mm.

Lionel:
I probably have mentioned this before, and I really do have to reread it again, which is the Alexander Solzhenitsyn novella. It's a very short book called A Day in the Life of Ivan Danisevich. It's a great, great book.

Jim:
Okay?

Lionel:
And it takes place in a gulag camp, a

Jim:
Hmm.

Lionel:
labor camp, where all these political dissidents live out their lives and die there. And it's all about the life of the camp and how they get together and how they all everybody interacts and how it's a community and they live and they make do and they get through each day. And there's and I remember and I probably remember completely wrong but what I remember about it is that this is one day where all of a sudden they get this what they're supposed to be doing is building these buildings they're supposed to be building dormitories for more prisoners and you know building structures to live in. And all of a sudden one day they get like this big load of materials. They usually don't get enough materials, or they get the wrong

Jim:
Hmm.

Lionel:
materials, or bad materials, but also one day they get great materials. And Ivan Danisevich and all of his co-workers, they're just, they're like rocking it. They're crushing it. They're, they're, they're mortaring the bricks and they're doing this, they're doing that. And then all of a sudden he comes to the realization that this is just meaningless.

Jim:
Uh-uh.

Lionel:
You know, it's sort of like Bridge Over the see that movie?

Jim:
a long time ago.

Lionel:
Yeah, and so David Niven and his intrepid British prisoners of war, they show the Japanese up, and they build the best bridge over the River Kwai.

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
And then at the last minute, he realizes, I'm building this great bridge for my enemies. What have I done?

Jim:
Right?

Lionel:
What am I thinking here? And what are we really doing here? I mean, yes, there's pride taken in a job well done. Like we like, you like to do good things, I like to do good things. I think everybody listening, both of them, they like to do good things in their work. But honestly, I look at the work that I do on a day-to-day basis and I look at the work that a lot of other people do on a day-to-day basis. It's very satisfying to me. I like, it's like doing a crossword puzzle.

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
You like it when you finish it. And you like if you finish it in a pretty fast time. And you like it if you, you know, you do.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
But how much is it really helping society? And how much of it is literally that, just something to keep us busy so we're not out there throwing rocks through people's windows?

Jim:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Lionel:
It's easy to laugh at that and I laugh at it too, but I really, really, really, really, I mean, yeah, okay, surgeons,

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
people who can stop paying and stuff like that, they get a lot of respect in the society. I think it's due to that because they really can make people's lives measurably better.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
But there's a lot of jobs out there which really, honestly, are close to phony baloney jobs. And I think, you know, a consensual hallucination or money be sort of this thing that we all agree that exists, even though it doesn't. I think many times jobs are like that way too. I think

Jim:
Mmm.

Lionel:
there's a lot of inertia and there's a lot of things that are done. Banks pay money to people because they tell good stories and I get a good paycheck because I tell a good story. Some people

Jim:
But...

Lionel:
are truly talented, some people are truly valuable, but...

Jim:
Yeah, so therein lies the hope, I think, is that, you know, that a good story is something we actually do value. Now, can we I mean, I think the really dark side of this is will we keep telling good stories or will we only consume them? You know, automated stories, stories made up by a robot. Will that do it, you know, ultimately for us? Will those

Lionel:
Well, to

Jim:
stories

Lionel:
tell a story,

Jim:
be good enough?

Lionel:
well, good question. So is a story experience or is a story inventiveness? Well, it's not really an or, it's just I picked those two things out of the air. But to tell a good story, a good story, it helps if you have experiences. Otherwise you may tell a story that's completely random nonsense.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
You have

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
to have

Jim:
yeah.

Lionel:
a sense of what's possible and what's good. You know, a story involves inventiveness and it involves, I think, authenticity a little bit.

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
But if we're not doing anything, I mean, what are we going to do?

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
Well we're not shown up to, I mean, again, this whole thing was thrown into relief for me by the pandemic, which is okay, I spent two hours every day driving. That's gone. What happens when

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
it's all gone?

Jim:
Well, yeah, and then the question comes down to, do people choose to help each other out

Lionel:
No.

Jim:
or do people just turn on each other?

Lionel:
Have you actually like, have you actually like talked to other people?

Jim:
No, I don't talk to anybody.

Lionel:
It's a really scary, it's a really off-putting experience, let me tell you.

Jim:
I know that in many disasters, people actually surprise us and turn around and they help each other.

Lionel:
Of course.

Jim:
And this could be a disaster. This could be like a long-term disaster.

Lionel:
I don't think it's a long-term disaster. I think it's a complete upending of everything that we've worked on, that we've lived under for thousands of years.

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
I mean,

Jim:
that's

Lionel:
for thousands,

Jim:
not a disaster.

Lionel:
for thousands of, well,

Jim:
That's nothing.

Lionel:
you say tomato, I say tomato. For thousands of years, we, well, for millions of years, we roamed the plains and were chased by large-toothed felines. For thousands of years, we

Jim:
Ha!

Lionel:
worked on farms Because

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
you had to work really hard. They didn't have pesticides and

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
columbines. That's why when you're talking about your friend in Vermont with the chicken farm, I'm like, a farm is really hard. It's a lot of work. You

Jim:
Oh

Lionel:
got

Jim:
yeah,

Lionel:
to

Jim:
yeah.

Lionel:
move shit all day. But the whole point is that we spent thousands of years on the farm. And then the gray thing, and we had that, that constrained us. That constrained us, you know, the resource allocation constrained us because we couldn't all just like flee the farm and kill somebody. Although we sometimes did that every now and then and got into

Jim:
Mm.

Lionel:
the history books as a peasant rebellion. But the key thing is that when the farm declined, the job arrived just in time. And the

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
job became this huge thing that sucked up all of our time and sucked up all of our efforts and gave us meaning and gave us pride. But we're now a gastroenterologist. We're no longer, you know, we're no longer, you know, farmers, something of this land where my father worked, you know, and my children will grow up here. We became, you know, a computer programmer.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
But that's all coming to an end.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
and what's gonna take its place. And do we want anything to take its place? What do we do all day? What do we do?

Jim:
Well, okay,

Lionel:
And that's where

Jim:
we-

Lionel:
I think meditation comes in. That's why I think your experience with meditation is very interesting, because what do we do when there isn't the noise of, I gotta get this job done, I gotta do this thing, I gotta bring the plow in, I gotta figure out the chickens ran away, I gotta figure out if that code updated overnight. What if that's all gone? What

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
if you blow

Jim:
but we also have

Lionel:
that

Jim:
to

Lionel:
away?

Jim:
assume that what doesn't replace it is mass starvation, right? Let's just say somehow we get around that. Yes,

Lionel:
The only reason

Jim:
we...

Lionel:
why there'd be mass starvation is there's a huge increase in global population. But

Jim:
But

Lionel:
actually

Jim:
no, but I mean the mass starvation because there's no monetary structure to pay for goods and services.

Lionel:
I

Jim:
So

Lionel:
think the government,

Jim:
the trucks don't roll in.

Lionel:
no, I think honestly, the trucks don't need drivers anymore. The harvesters don't need people. It can all be automated. Then the

Jim:
But

Lionel:
question

Jim:
for whom?

Lionel:
becomes, like how do you determine how much Jim gets? And

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
how

Jim:
that's

Lionel:
much does

Jim:
it. I mean,

Lionel:
Lionel

Jim:
yeah.

Lionel:
get? Because Jim's no longer a web designer and Lionel's no longer a DevOps director and

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
blah, blah, blah is no longer this. So how do I decide how much you get versus what Lionel gets? Because they don't have jobs anymore. And the great thing about the job that it was this conduit, it was this third party mechanism that determined how many resources people, you had this whole distributed

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
structure of supervisors making decisions based on phony baloney resumes, you know, and all this. But it's great, because everybody played along because it was the best thing you had and everybody was involved in it. It was a big, it was like fucking Burning Man, except it involved your life and your career and your resume and stuff like that. It was all made up and we all know, it's not completely made up, A lot of it is bullshit. It really is. There's lots of talented people who have very short resumes and there's lots of very untalented people who have very long resumes. But at least it was a play that we all had the script to.

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
And everybody could perform. And if we take all that away. How do we determine how much everybody gets? They can't have everything. And the big problems land because you can't you can make more food you can make more radios DVDs and all that kind of crap. Which can make more land so if everybody wants to live in Malibu by the beach that's gonna be problematic

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
that's the problem

Jim:
no,

Lionel:
that's the problematic part.

Jim:
the problem with the problem with communism is like who gets the seaside

Lionel:
Right,

Jim:
real estate.

Lionel:
and what

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
happens when we whack enough species that there's serious disruptions to the biosphere such that even the automated farms can't keep up anymore? And you're

Jim:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
right, and then there's starvation. And so who's watching after that? And that leads to my thing, which is that the only job, I'm sorry, the only job in the future is planetary manager.

Jim:
Mmm. Mmm.

Lionel:
Our jobs, but I'm sorry,

Jim:
No,

Lionel:
go

Jim:
that's

Lionel:
ahead.

Jim:
brilliant. I love

Lionel:
I've been

Jim:
that.

Lionel:
sucking the oxygen out of this conference.

Jim:
That's all right. I started with a long-winded speech, but I love that because that is not limited to a few people. That's actually a job that

Lionel:
Well, farmers

Jim:
everyone can

Lionel:
are planetary

Jim:
do.

Lionel:
manager. A farmer is a person who has to interact with nature on a direct and personal level.

Jim:
Yep.

Lionel:
And they have a fundamental sense of what's going on because. Everything else can, but even planetary manager could probably be done with AI and robots. So what, I don't know, man. I think it's, I'm not sure there's a real good answer to this one. I really don't. I

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
think,

Jim:
no, I

Lionel:
I think it

Jim:
ins...

Lionel:
might be a comet killer. be the comet that

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
knocks us out.

Jim:
possibly. Well, the incentive, I think the incentive

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
is destructive, the incentive being profit and the incentive being, you know, what we have are two things that are killing each other off in a sense. So we have a profit motive, capitalism and AI, and AI is going to make it so efficient that it breaks. Unfortunately, I think both break down. If you have, if basically there's a world where people who no longer use money, then there's not a lot of incentive for these super efficient machines to figure everything out. And if they're, and if the super efficient machines make profit with no labor possible, meaning profit at lowest possible cost to, in terms of production, that means you basically kill all the people who keep money in circulation. You kill off all the jobs. off all of the engine that keeps the money moving.

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
The consumer worker, right? The consumer worker, that's like a unit. That's what we are. Like

Lionel:
Because

Jim:
you

Lionel:
they're

Jim:
were saying

Lionel:
involved,

Jim:
before.

Lionel:
they're in the game.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And the whole point is you're in the game and you're incentivized to make decisions, to acquire things. Hey, that looks

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
interesting. Hey,

Jim:
I like

Lionel:
that...

Jim:
Ford, not Chevy. Right. And then

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim:
you, and then you buy a Ford or a Chevy, right? You're not rich, right? But you're buying things

Lionel:
Where

Jim:
that

Lionel:
you want

Jim:
are being

Lionel:
a little

Jim:
produced.

Lionel:
nicer you want

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
something a little nicer you know hey

Jim:
So if you

Lionel:
be

Jim:
eliminate

Lionel:
really.

Jim:
all jobs and then the cost of production goes to zero, there's nobody to buy the things is what I'm saying.

Lionel:
Well, the whole point is that you are incentivized to strive harder because there's this idea that if I work harder or I get a promotion or I get a new job that pays more, I can get nicer stuff, which is not entirely untrue. I mean, you get more money. So that's what motivates a lot of people is that if I do, I'm doing this, it's costing me too much money, so I'm gonna do this to make more money

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
because it's really annoying. is is if you if the jobs are gone

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
then there's

Jim:
if you

Lionel:
no

Jim:
can never

Lionel:
incentive

Jim:
do it better

Lionel:
to do

Jim:
than

Lionel:
anything.

Jim:
a robot, yeah.

Lionel:
There's no incentive because you have no job and so the whole point is that the mechanism before there is this mechanism that said you'll get more money if you do if you follow this rule set. There's the work world and if you go and get a degree you'll get a higher pay. If you take some

Jim:
Alright?

Lionel:
money you invest it you get an If you go and you get the certification, then you'll become a developer through, you'll move from developer two to a developer three and you get

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
more money. Or if you stay long time at the job, you'll get more money. And so there's all incentive. And so if there's no job. I mean, it's very easy to determine mechanism for giving resources to people. We just give everybody a flat basic income, which

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
is already being done.

Jim:
Yeah. Yeah.

Lionel:
So you get 2000 or you get 4,000, you get 8,000. The problem with that is like, I can be doing more. I don't want to sit around with my ass all day and pull $4,000 a month or $8,000 a month. I want to go do something. Well, sorry. Like Walla Voodoo says, the greens are overgrown. You know, It's been rained out. The game's been rained out. And so,

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
what are those people going to do? And the problem is you don't want a large number of people sitting around all day, not doing anything, who are used to doing things, who are unhappy that they're not doing things. Because that leads to very, very troublesome outcomes.

Jim:
Yes. Yes.

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
I don't have an answer. I think it is, what's deeply

Lionel:
Thanks for watching!

Jim:
disturbing here is that the whole engine of this economy, for lack of a better word, has been running on people learning new things and developing their skills and doing better and being incentivized to do better and developing more skills. But if we have these

Lionel:
but basically developing more skills with an eye towards getting more money.

Jim:
Yeah, incentives, yeah, yeah,

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim:
exactly, yeah. And if we have these entities coexisting here with us that learn everything we can learn in five years in half a second,

Lionel:
Yeah!

Jim:
then why am I getting an education? What

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
am I gonna do with it?

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
And what am I gonna do when I'm done with that?

Lionel:
See, what I thought was always the stupidest thing, I mean, there's many things, can you hear that, the dog

Jim:
I,

Lionel:
barking away?

Jim:
yeah, yeah, it's charming. I think

Lionel:
Sorry,

Jim:
it's charming.

Lionel:
I'm gonna shoot the dog.

Jim:
Don't shoot

Lionel:
One

Jim:
the

Lionel:
of

Jim:
dog.

Lionel:
the, okay, one of the things that really annoyed me about Frank Herbert's oeuvre

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
was the whole idea that Butlerian G had. I'm like, that's

Jim:
Really?

Lionel:
so stupid.

Jim:
I loved

Lionel:
Why would

Jim:
it.

Lionel:
you kill all the thinking machines? And now I'm like, you know, he might've had

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
a point.

Jim:
in the 1960s, and he kind of,

Lionel:
He might have had a point.

Jim:
thou shalt not create a machine in the in the nature of a human mind.

Lionel:
Yeah, and it may be, I don't know, man. It doesn't sound so fantastical to me anymore.

Jim:
No.

Lionel:
It really don't,

Jim:
No.

Lionel:
I'm not advocating it, but I think there's gonna be a big hole.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
There's gonna be a huge hole. The problem was, you know, are we all gonna go back to farming? I sense,

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
maybe,

Jim:
is there enough manual labor for all of us?

Lionel:
is there enough land?

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Is there enough land? I mean, there's land is one thing you can't create. Well, you can, I guess you can do vertical farming and all that kind of nonsense.

Jim:
Yeah, yeah, you can do vertical farming. There can be

Lionel:
But how many

Jim:
new

Lionel:
people want

Jim:
developments.

Lionel:
to do that? I mean, how many people want to be farmers? I mean, for God's sakes.

Jim:
But the thing is actually the vertical farms, it's much more efficient if robots do it because then

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim:
you can, then

Lionel:
screwed

Jim:
each level

Lionel:
again!

Jim:
of the, each level of the farm can be just the height of the crop. It doesn't need to be human height.

Lionel:
also gonna hit me with that again.

Jim:
So if you have a vertical farm

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim:
and you're growing cranberries on one level and you're growing wheat on another level and you're growing tomatoes on another level, well, the tomato level only needs to be the height of the growth, the optimal growth of the tomato plant.

Lionel:
How's the light getting?

Jim:
Uh, you, there would have to be artificially lit, right.

Lionel:
Okay. Okay. Fine.

Jim:
But if you have to have people coming through there, then you have to have a path, and you have to have, it has to be

Lionel:
As we seven

Jim:
six feet

Lionel:
feet

Jim:
tall,

Lionel:
tall. Yeah,

Jim:
yeah,

Lionel:
six

Jim:
seven feet

Lionel:
or seven

Jim:
tall,

Lionel:
feet

Jim:
whatever

Lionel:
tall.

Jim:
the

Lionel:
Yeah

Jim:
guidelines are for safety. If robots need to go through, then they can just be the height of the

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim:
plant

Lionel:
it can be this big. It can

Jim:
or

Lionel:
be

Jim:
less.

Lionel:
the size of mice.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Okay, so forget that. Okay,

Jim:
So

Lionel:
so.

Jim:
farming is probably out.

Lionel:
So what do we do?

Jim:
What do we do?

Lionel:
Bonne nuit!

Jim:
I think we bring each other lattes just for friendliness.

Lionel:
Well, I mean, I go back to the week for Wanderer because that is, I mean, I think this is sort of part and parcel what you're like wrestling with.

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
Is

Jim:
I mean,

Lionel:
what

Jim:
for

Lionel:
do

Jim:
me,

Lionel:
we

Jim:
this

Lionel:
do?

Jim:
started in 2011. I started thinking about this then, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

Lionel:
It's an interesting problem. Like,

Jim:
Which is

Lionel:
you know.

Jim:
really, the books are therapy for me. I'm just like trying to put it all down.

Lionel:
Right, and so therefore, to a certain degree, we can't really talk about it, you and I, or certainly me, because I'm such a creature of the work world. I'm so

Jim:
Yeah,

Lionel:
warped

Jim:
yeah, yeah.

Lionel:
by the work world that's hard for me to envision. I mean, I can't imagine me playing my pan pipe all

Jim:
I'd

Lionel:
day

Jim:
like

Lionel:
long.

Jim:
to see that though. That

Lionel:
Now,

Jim:
would be

Lionel:
I

Jim:
pretty

Lionel:
wouldn't.

Jim:
awesome. That would be great.

Lionel:
Yeah, for a few seconds, and then you'd shoot me. But you know everybody says oh well if I had the time if I didn't have to work here I'd laud the beach and read my books. It's like yeah, you do that for about Max like a week and a half

Jim:
Yeah, your vacation time. You know, by the end of vacation time, you're like, I gotta get back to work.

Lionel:
Well, it's like, right, so it's fascinating. What is, and is that just simply, is that urge simply a, simply a result of a life spent being warped by the Matrix? Do we go back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau that if children grow up without having to work, maybe they'll come with a completely different answer than we do. Maybe they won't, maybe they won't see this as an aberrant or empty existence. I don't know.

Jim:
If I mean whatever generation if it's my daughter's generation or the one after that that has to actually live in this Um, I think it I think it's coming. You know, I don't I can't say it's coming Next year next week or in a decade Because we don't know the limitations right and we don't know how rapidly this will be deployed. But at some point There will be children who need to decide what the culture is and it's the culture ultimately that determines what what they do

Lionel:
We don't think about culture. We don't think of our actions as determining the culture. We just

Jim:
No.

Lionel:
do what we're told.

Jim:
Right, but like you said, and this was really pithy because I grew up in a household, my dad was an advertising guy. And I became really aware of advertising everywhere I went. I saw it everywhere. But also I was aware that that's what he did. That

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
he was making these things and these things were generating need. Mad Men went all through this. And it was really based loosely on my dad's generation of advertising

Lionel:
Was

Jim:
guys.

Lionel:
it

Jim:
maybe

Lionel:
fairly

Jim:
a little bit earlier.

Lionel:
accurate?

Jim:
I thought, I mean, I thought

Lionel:
Of

Jim:
it

Lionel:
course

Jim:
was...

Lionel:
it's overblown, but your father was like an

Jim:
You know

Lionel:
artist.

Jim:
what was weird?

Lionel:
He was a scribbler. He was a drawer.

Jim:
It was all Gentiles though, but I think that there were some, my dad was working, it was very Jewish in his, and I think it was just his agency or it was a lot of agencies in New York, but this was like very waspy, I thought, Mad Men. But I also

Lionel:
Oh.

Jim:
know that there were waspy agencies that were like, that way on purpose. So that did seem to kind of be set up that way, lot of other a lot of other cultural change that was happening in New York at the time. But I was always aware that it's like, okay, we're just meant to be consumers, right? Because this is what this is what the ads are kind of getting us to do. And that's what the companies are paying for is to kind of get us to choose between checks and Rice Krispies.

Lionel:
Right.

Jim:
And that's what we do, right? That's that's our purpose. And a lot of that really inspired me not to not to live

Lionel:
is to

Jim:
like

Lionel:
decide.

Jim:
that.

Lionel:
Our job, you know, one very sort of jaundiced view of what we do is we're just here to choose whether we part our hair on the left or we part our hair on the right. So we decide who the winners are.

Jim:
But that's different actually, parting your hair on the left and the right, not something that I've experienced in a long time, but that idea that we're presenting ourselves to the world is much more cultural,

Lionel:
No,

Jim:
you know?

Lionel:
I was wrong. I shouldn't have said that. I really think that a lot of what our value is, again, in my most cynical moments, it's that a lot of work that's done is completely meaningless, and a lot of things are meaningless, and that what we have is we have, that our fundamental value is to decide who the winners and the losers are of the products in the marketplace.

Jim:
Mm.

Lionel:
You know, is it Subaru or is it Chevy? Oh, wow, these people voted, you, you know, voted more for Subaru than Chevy. And it's just like, not, that's, that's

Jim:
We're

Lionel:
the

Jim:
consumers,

Lionel:
only thing we can still do.

Jim:
we're consumers.

Lionel:
We're, we're deciders.

Jim:
Well,

Lionel:
We're

Jim:
consumers,

Lionel:
just deciders.

Jim:
we consume and that brings

Lionel:
Right. And that's

Jim:
competition

Lionel:
it.

Jim:
to the marketplace and that's what makes the market generate better and better stuff. I mean, that we've been the engine of progress in terms of our consumption choices.

Lionel:
It's like in the great movie, the fabulous movie, THX 1138 by

Jim:
Oh

Lionel:
George

Jim:
yeah, yeah.

Lionel:
Lucas. The, the, the guy's walking home and there's like, there's like a stack of green cubes, this stack of white cubes. And he looks between them and he

Jim:
Yep.

Lionel:
picks the green cube. And then when he gets home, he just throws it out.

Jim:
Yeah

Lionel:
Because the only thing that really mattered was that he chose the green cube versus

Jim:
Right.

Lionel:
the white cube. I'm probably completely munching this. It was probably red cubes and black

Jim:
I

Lionel:
cubes.

Jim:
just.

Lionel:
I don't know who knows, but it's just, it's a very, very, again, back to the fundamental thing, which is that what are we going to do? And what's the meaning of our lives? What's our purpose?

Jim:
Well, if it goes this way and it essentially evaporates money because the work evaporates and then basically the current of currency dissipates, then we will not be choosing between red and green cubes. We will need to figure out how we can work with each other

Lionel:
Ugh.

Jim:
or we're in trouble.

Lionel:
Yeah, I'm glad I'm really old.

Jim:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Because if I had to deal with all these assholes, it would not go well. No, all joking aside, yeah. Well, anyway, I think we're at our time limit. Thank god.

Jim:
Yeah, you're welcome.

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim:
Um.

Lionel:
What are we going to talk about next time? And we got to come, we got to come

Jim:
I don't know.

Lionel:
up with something new. This is

Jim:
We need

Lionel:
just

Jim:
to find

Lionel:
like,

Jim:
somebody to talk to us.

Lionel:
we got to find some poor schlub who's going to come on here and be abused

Jim:
Oh,

Lionel:
by us.

Jim:
and I'm also looking, if anybody out there, I would pay a moderate sum if someone would like to help with the references page on the podcast. I actually know somebody I might be able to ask, but if you're a fan of the podcast and you want admin privileges to the website and you wanna add references to our conversations, I just simply cannot do it in terms of my time. So reach out to me, jimatbigego.com, and that'd be great. Because

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim:
those references are actually kind of cool. Somebody came to me, oh, who was it that said, might've been one of our guests, was like, I didn't realize you had these references and I've been like digging into them. So they're really cool, but they take a while, take a long time

Lionel:
References

Jim:
to, yeah.

Lionel:
are great. I mean that guy foyer telling who I've talked about a million times

Jim:
Oh yeah.

Lionel:
Colt art. I mean his references page is Magnificent. I mean

Jim:
He's

Lionel:
it

Jim:
up

Lionel:
tick.

Jim:
there.

Lionel:
Well, he just takes you on he you know, my right our references page is probably like Probably digging some pretty deep ruts in the ground, but his reference pair I mean you'll go to some places you never imagined in all your life

Jim:
Fantastic.

Lionel:
some great worlds, so

Jim:
I haven't seen it yet.

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim:
Alright Lionel, take care man.

Lionel:
You too. Bye.