'Our Democracy is Dead' Breakdown of Markets and Culture (Daniel Schmachtenberger & Bret Weinstein)

Breakdown in markets, democracy and culture is discussed in this clip with Daniel Schmachtenberger and Bret Weinstein.

Full podcast:

The first DarkHorse podcast with Daniel Schmachtenberger.
From his website: "Daniel Schmachtenberger’s central interest is long term civilization design: developing better collective capacities for sense-making and meaning-making, to inform higher quality choice-making…towards a world commensurate with our higher values and potentials."

Bret Weinstein has a PhD in Biology and is the host of the DarkHorse podcast.
Find Bret on Twitter: @BretWeinstein

Theme Music: Thank you to Martin Molin of Wintergatan for providing us the rights to use their excellent music.

[needparalegal]

They didn't "Unregulate" shit. They regulated COMPETITION out of existence.

[Lina-Bauer]

*No 1: Don't Only Hope On Government's Responds On security Matter's And Economy growth, *

*No 2: As An Individual You Should Be Safeguarded And Also Look For Different Self Business And Trade Not Only Waiting on Betterment of Stock market activities, *

*No 3: Most Important Always Save The Little You Can And Think Of What To Do With It When It Become Good For Capital, *

*Because Government Have Failed Us In Aspect Of Security, Economics Activities And Other Trading Systems.*

[stevefambro]

Daniel has synthesized perfectly the perils of ‘democracy’ as described by Plato and Socrates and applied to today’s epoch.

[RurouniTenShins]

Damn. This is one of the best articulizations of the needed balance between the left and right that I’ve ever heard.

[RetailMyDinosaur]

He has verbalized what I've been thinking for awhile. China has just enough capitalism and U.S. has just enough socialism that they are becoming more identical to each other.

[jessebruning]

Jfc. This is solid gold. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? And where can I find more?

[labellavita]

The people were not educated up to par on purpose... why is it that two of the most important things that govern our lives, government and economics, are given little fluff overviews in high school? We are not meant to understand all of this. On purpose. In the book, "The Graves of Academe" by Richard Mitchell (book is online for free, he wanted to get his message out) he discusses this very thing and quotes from Thomas Jefferson, how Jefferson wanted an educated constituency with informed discretion, because an educated constituency with informed discretion is not swayed by slogans (where have we seen that before) and they keep the government under control. Most people nowadays are tuned out, they don't understand what was bequeathed to them so they don't protect it, and slimeballs have taken advantage of that and twist and stomp on our Constitution. And that was by design.

"And to what end were the people to exercise the power of their informed discretion? The answer, of course, shouldn’t be surprising, but, because we have been taught to confuse government and its institutions with civilization in general, it often is. Jefferson saw the informed discretion of the people as one of those checks and balances for which our constitutional democracy is justly famous, for it was only with such a power that the people could defend themselves against government, and its institutions. "The functionaries of every government, " wrote Jefferson, although the italics are mine, "have propensities to command at will the liberty and the property of their constituents." Jefferson knew – isn’t this the unique genius of American constitutionalism? – that government was a dangerous master and a treacherous servant and that the first concern of free people was to keep their government on a leash, a pretty short one at that."


"Which would you prefer, educated constituents or ignorant ones?" … "Which would you rather face, even considering your own conviction that the cause in which you want to command liberty and property is just – citizens with or without power of informed discretion? Citizens having that power will require of you a laborious and detailed justification of your intentions and expectations and may, even having that, adduce other information and exercise further discretion to the contrary of your propensities. On the other hand, the ill-informed and undiscriminating can easily be persuaded by the recitation of popular slogans and the appeal to self interest, however spurious. It is only informed discretion that can detect such maneuvers."

[kronk]

Ive said it before, and I'll say it again: citizens united was the beginning of the end.

[boundless]

There's one question I feel that is missing from this conversation:


What is the overall vision of society? Or to put it another way, what are we creating/working towards?

It is the VISION that binds the people together and empowers them to bind the state and the degree to which the people are enrolled in the vision determines the strength with which they enforce that power. It is the VISION that creates and empowers the Citizen Class.

In the U.S. it was the American dream up until right before the Vietnam war but that didn’t hold sway after enough people achieved it nor was it meaningful enough to a large enough group of people to prevent asymmetric growth of both corporations and government. It has been my observation that if the goal of a given society does not provide a meaningful existence that society will crumble.

[timbervanlom]

Binding the strong man is nearly impossible when the standard has been removed. The standard in this case was education system which has actively "dumbed down" the population to the point where they are easily manipulated in their beliefs. I am constantly amazed at how fast the consensus of the population can be changed. Thank you both for expanding my ability to communicate the things I see!

[ccdavis]

No matter how you structure institutions they are still staffed by people. Those people rapidly substitute their personal interests for the theoretical interests of the institution. There is no "system" for avoiding trade-offs. Maybe the best way of controlling this is continuous turbulence in the institutions.

[tomski]

Two factors that most contributed to concentration of power of the corporates is offshoring and Quantitative Easing. The latter also being a consequence of the former.

[gacku]

This is why we restricted voting to land owners signed up for the draft. People who had a lot to lose if a bad administration got into power. As soon as the proles were able to vote, it gave politicians the power to just win on promising free shit.

[theragingmoderate]

I'm on my 3rd listen already, might do it 4 times.

[osiris]

First time I have ever heard Daniel Schmachtenberger speak, and I am seriously impressed!

[michaelregan]

"failing toward chaos". No, this is being pushed.

[calvin]

I think this might be my favorite guest he’s had on so far. Definitely the smartest

[jeremiahmacclure]

The insurance industry doesn't make sense in a market context? Really? Citation needed, to say the least. There is a market for anything that members want to exchange among one another. Risk is something that people want to exchange. There will always be a market for risk transfer as long as there is excess risk.

[chaechong]

Yes = Jimmy Carter: U.S. is an ‘Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery’ the ‘Citizens United’ ruling ‘violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system’ = yes, you are correct sir!

[ricknightengale]

Any conversation about the relationship between government and business as it relates to cronyism must consider the affect of regulation on business and how that creates the incentive for cronyism. During the Obamacare debate there was a story of a company that looked at the business effects of that law and determined that even though it would hurt them financially, they would support the law because it would give them a competitive edge.

Additionally you have what is called the Law of Three’s, saying that an industry will eventually be controlled by 3 large competitors as smaller one are swallowed up or bought out as the only real way to survive our highly regulated economy is to be large enough to survive. “To big to fail”

Think, google, Facebook, Twitter;
GM, Ford, Chevy;
Apple, Android;
Verizon, AT&T

If you want government and business to not be corrupt you have to remove the incentive for corruption. Specifically stop government from being the gatekeepers to business success. Additionally you have to create an economic space for strong healthy competition which gives consumers more choice and maybe even local control over their spending decisions which would break up the power of large corporations and give individuals more power in their local communities.

Or maybe it’s all pie in the sky