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Preparing for AI: The AI Podcast for Everybody
Welcome to Preparing for AI. The AI podcast for everybody. We explore the human and social impacts of AI, diving deep into how AI now intersects with everything from Politics to Relgion and Economics to Health.
In series 1 we looked at the impact of AI on specific industries, sustainability and the latest developments of Large Lanaguage Models.
In series 2 we delved more into the importance of AI safety and the potentially catastrophic future we are headed to. We explored AI in China, the latest news and developments and our predictions for the future.
In series 3 we are diving deep into wider society, themese like economics, religions and healthcare. How do these interest with AI and how are they going to shape our future? We also do a monthly news update looking at the AI stories we've been interested in that might not have been picked up in mainstream media.
Preparing for AI: The AI Podcast for Everybody
THE GREAT ECONOMIC ILLUSION: Where are we heading and where does AI fit it?
Preparing for AI is back with the first epsiode of Series 3!
The gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else isn't just growing—it's accelerating at an alarming rate and we need to talk about it. In this thought-provoking episode, we tackle the uncomfortable truth that wealth inequality underpins virtually every major social problem we're facing today.
Drawing inspiration from economist Gary Stevenson's work, we explore how our obsession with GDP growth has created an economic illusion that ignores human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. The "trickle-down" promise has proven hollow, with wealth consistently moving upward rather than downward. Meanwhile, property and assets become increasingly concentrated among a tiny percentage of the population, leaving younger generations with diminishing prospects.
But what happens when we add AI to this already precarious equation? Technology has historically enabled continued growth by finding more efficient ways to use resources, but AI represents something fundamentally different. It threatens to make large portions of the workforce economically irrelevant, potentially creating what we describe as "techno-feudalism" – a society where a tiny elite owns everything while most humans subsist on universal basic income.
Yet AI might also be our salvation. Sufficiently advanced systems could help design economic frameworks that balance human needs with planetary boundaries, similar to Kate Raworth's "Donut Economics" model. The challenge lies in convincing those with power to implement changes that benefit everyone, not just themselves.
Have we reached a breaking point where our economic system must evolve or collapse? And what would you personally be willing to give up for a more equitable society? Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments.
Welcome to Preparing for AI the AI podcast for everybody. The podcast that explores the human and social impact of AI, Exploring where AI intersects with economics, healthcare, religion, politics and everything in between.
Matt Cartwright:I've had enough of scheming and messing around with jerks. My car is parked outside. I'm afraid it doesn't work. I'm looking for a partner, someone who gets things fixed.
Jimmy Rhodes:Ask yourself this question Do you want to be rich? Welcome to Preparing for AI with me, gary Stevenson and me, gary Baldy. Gary Baldy, the biscuit the biscuit, yeah, the biscuit. Well, that's an excellent start to season three.
Matt Cartwright:I can't believe we've made it this far. In fact, I can't believe, if you're listening, that you've made it this far. But thank you, uh, this is season three where we take things up to another level. We have sexed up our logo. Um, we haven't sexed ourselves up. We're just as middle-aged average middle-aged as ever, yeah, um, but we promise that, like, uh, like steven bartley says on the diary of a ceo ceo. If you keep listening, uh, then you know we'll keep having better and better guests on oh yeah, those guests are just me and jimmy.
Jimmy Rhodes:And also we've noticed that, uh, we've looked at the algorithm and 63 of you haven't subscribed, so you know you've. You've just got to do it for the sake of the channel. If you do, we'll have better guests on.
Matt Cartwright:At the moment we have no guests, so you know anyone?
Matt Cartwright:We are at some point going to get Jimmy's mom on, so that will be one guest and that means that's considering we don't have any at the moment. That will be better. So, yeah, press that button and then we can look at the back end and we can see that you're subscribing. You can look at the back end of your. Anyway, what a great start. So this is the first episode in our kind of newly imagined format. Uh, we're going to talk about a kind of broader topic and, as we said, we're going to link it in with ai. So we're going to talk about economics this week, because it's something that we talk about, um, pretty much every time we meet up. So, uh, jimmy, as you will probably tell, is a big fan of economics. Gary, or gary stevens we should probably get.
Jimmy Rhodes:I like him. I can't remember his name, gary. I think it's gary stevens, right we like him so much.
Matt Cartwright:I mean, we don't know anyone's name, it's gary from gary's economics.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, I mean we should probably get him on. Get him on because he actually knows what he's talking about. We're going to just rub it on about economics for you know opinions Well. I think they are his opinions. They're his opinions Mostly.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, so anyway, yeah, let's, let's start off. I'm going to talk about the first section. I'm going to call it the great economic illusion, cause the reason I kind of economic collapse. I'm not sure how big it will be. If it has to be six months ago, I'd say the whole thing's going to come crumbling down. I'm not quite sure, but I think it's kind of clear that we've got a number of things like we've got this sort of gdp growth obsession which ignores inequality, which I think we're going to talk about this quite a lot. But inequality, I think we both agreed is like, is fundamentally what underlines, like every single problem at the moment at the moment.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, and so, like you know, growth in the current context doesn't really look at human well-being. It doesn't, you know?
Matt Cartwright:it doesn't consider anything other than, like, growing is just getting better and better um, there's this kind of paradox around infinite growth, which, you know, exponential growth on a finite planet is just impossible, um, and it's kind of catastrophic. There's often a reference to like cancer cells and how like cancer cells are the example of why. You know, infinite growth is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, you need to have stability, you need to have that kind of um, equilibrium, um, and in a, in a way that kind of reflects this, this growth model we've had for sort of 40 plus years you could argue longer than that.
Matt Cartwright:You've had this kind of hollow promise of neoliberalism, which basically is you know, we've all been told how trickle-down economics is going to make everybody richer and pull up all boats, but actually what we've just seen is a concentration of wealth exactly, and and what we're seeing now and I think this is where ai will kind of come into this later as well is the kind of hollowing out of the middle class yeah, the problem with this is like it's a lie, isn't it?
Jimmy Rhodes:like? Like it's a? It's a? It's trickle-down economics, essentially like, looking back on it now and if you want to look like, if you listen to what gary talks about and you can see what it clearly is happening which you're about to talk about with hollowing out the middle class, but like it's clearly just a lie because it doesn't actually happen. It's trickle up economics of anything like like the wealthier getting richer and richer, whilst, well, there's only one place that money comes from, or that there's that wealth comes from really, which is everybody else. Yeah.
Matt Cartwright:And I would come into it. There's one. One thing I want to talk about is like Mo Mo Gordot, which a lot of you will know very, very clever, really, really kind of spiritually like he's just a great guy, he's just very spiritually on it. He very spiritually on it. He kind of totally gets with AI. And I saw something he and it was obviously a kind of quote taken from one of his podcasts, but he said you know, where we're headed is the middle class. You don't just not have a middle class, you've basically got 0.5% of people and then you've got peasants.
Matt Cartwright:And I think that you know, I do think that we'll talk about AI later but it's the danger of this kind of centralization of power. We're already seeing wealth move upwards. We saw with the pandemic, we saw the biggest kind of transfer of wealth in certainly a generation. And you know that I think like, maybe not directly, but that's what's kind of shone a light on this, because we're talking about this, we're definitely. This is not something revolutionary that me and you have said we need to talk about this because no one's talking about it. I think we've talked about it because everyone's talking about it. But you know, we wanted to have our our chance to talk about it here and also, like we said, to link it back. I mean, like, let's talk about gary a little bit. So he was kind of the inspiration, in a way, for this episode. But what is it about? About sort of his views, or what is it that's got you kind of really passionate about this?
Jimmy Rhodes:um, I think it's that like, there's no denying what he talks about and I think what does he talk about? So he talks about wealth inequality and the fact that, effectively, we have a limited amount of resources on the planet and a limited amount of resources. He talks about the uk a lot because he's from the uk. Um, I mean, I'm not going to give a massive background on gary from gary's economics, because you can go and listen to his channel. He does. He does a little background on himself in almost every single episode because that's his kind of thing. He's like basically repeating the drumbeat of this message about wealth inequality and getting a bit of a following so that he can I he's moved now from actually having a relatively small following on YouTube to actually having a big enough following that he's trying to influence politics and thinking about next steps in that respect. So he's doing some really positive stuff as opposed to just talking about it.
Jimmy Rhodes:But effectively it's the idea that uh government debts going up, individual debts going up, and who pay, who like who, who debts going up, individual debts going up, and who pay, who like who, who owns that debt. Uh is basically the wealthy and the rich and he talks about, uh rebalancing that by putting a tax on wealth. Um, so, not a tax on people who earn like quarter of a million pounds, or even like even people who earn a lot of money, but actually putting a tax on wealth which is something that we don't have, um to read this to genuinely redistribute some of that wealth, because most of the wealthy, wealthiest people in the world don't earn money by going to work and like trading their labor for work there, that's, you know, even the richest people, the ceos that are, um, earning tons of money, uh, by going to work every day. That, like, they're not necessarily the sort of people he's talking about. He's talking about people who are literally sitting on billions, like hundreds of millions, billions of uh dollars, pounds, whatever currency it is and own everything. Essentially like, own everything, they own you, they own the house you live in, they own your wealth and that's and the point is that that's increasingly increasing.
Jimmy Rhodes:Right, and he says it much better than I do, like, I'm not going to spend too much time on trying to repeat his messaging, but effectively, what he's saying is, if you look at all the charts, if you look at what's going on covid's a good example where, like, the government pumped tons of money in the economy and it all basically went to these wealthy people, because effectively it went to ordinary people who then gave it to these wealthy people, but because they they continued.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, exactly, it gave it to them to continue spending money on the things they spent money on the first place, which went to the same people.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, anyway yeah, and and in terms of the reason why that's so, the government, basically.
Jimmy Rhodes:So what we're saying with that is basically the government gave the money just through you yeah, exactly, and and the reason for that is like, if you again, without getting into too much detail is because, um, the way the government deals with, uh, any kind of crises, any kind of like situation like this, is they well, what? They either print money and that money goes to the wealthy, ultimately, like through various means, but it goes to the wealthy, or they increase taxes, but they increase taxes on working people, yeah, and those. They don't ever put a tax on wealth, um, and they've, and it's like it's this intangible thing where it's like really hard to tax money that's in the stock market, wealth, intergenerational wealth, all this kind of stuff. It's too hard to do it. Um, or governments say that it's too hard to do. Now, not all governments do that. There are examples, like like Norway, where they've actually gone and done it and it's been very successful, but the arguments against it are usually things like oh well, they'll just go, like everyone's mobile nowadays, so they'll just go and live somewhere else, they'll just go and take their wealth somewhere else.
Jimmy Rhodes:Uh, again, there's loads of good arguments against that which Gary uh, um, very eloquently puts on his own podcast. But, to be honest, when you listen to it like as a sort of ordinary working person myself. Like, when you listen to it, it all makes a lot of sense, like it's quite, it's quite hard to deny it and, to be honest, like he's got all the numbers and figures behind it and all of what he's saying is happening and one of the things I mean. Again, he talks about the uk, but he talks about why just to sort of quickly finish up on gary but like he talks about why labor basically the conservatives failed. Labor's going to fail.
Jimmy Rhodes:On economic policy, the conservatives failed. Labor's going to fail. Um, and ultimately, probably what's going to happen is the voting is going to get more and more extremely the direction probably, like very possibly, people are going to vote reform or go for the right wing in the uk. They're going to fail to deal with it because their policies are all about you know, they're basically saying that immigration is the problem and that they're stealing our money and stealing our jobs and all the rest of it, when that isn't really the problem. The problem is that the incredibly wealthy and the incredible rich, the incredibly wealthy dominate, and they dominate economic policy as well. So basically, they're the ones that have the influence, they're the ones that are influencing governments and, just as an example, you can see it with Trump, where lots of ordinary working class people voted for him and thought he was going to help them out and actually he's got in power and hasn't helped them out at all.
Matt Cartwright:He's reduced benefits and things like that that help ordinary people and actually reduced taxes on the extremely wealthy and made them richer as well so I know we said we're not necessarily like going to just address gary's views on this, because this is not a gary tribute act to this episode but, I mean, it's like I think his, his views and his, the way he's kind of put this message forward, has definitely been sort of a catalyst, I think, for for this discussion.
Matt Cartwright:But I think, like you know you just said, the argument against this quite often is well, it's just too difficult to do this, you can't tax it. And and then the big one for me is that, like, everyone will leave, because this is the thing in the uk at the moment that we that we do hear a lot specific to the uk I'm not saying doesn't happen elsewhere, but specific to the uk at the moment is that all of these millionaires, billionaires, blah, blah, are all leaving the country. So, like, on the basic, let's assume that that is true, um, there is some dispute of how many it is and you know whether, well, that will happen. I mean, there's also stuff that has the uk has the most unicorns outside of, you know, I think, china and the us, and and therefore, like, well, there's lots of people who are building wealth in the uk. But if we assume that that is true, well, isn't, isn't that the problem with doing this?
Jimmy Rhodes:then that everyone will just leave so again on this, like if the problem is if, if they've got their wealth in the UK, what? Why does it matter where they move? Like you were talking about people who own land in the UK, own businesses in the UK, own all this stuff. It's not like it's straightforward for them to probably go and live somewhere else. Can't they just register the business somewhere else? Well, potentially.
Jimmy Rhodes:But, like if you're talking a lot of the, there are ways of the effectively, there are ways of taking back some of this stuff. Right, so you can. You can find a way of taxing investments. You can find a way of taxing wealth in terms of land that people own, um, and a lot of the. A lot of this is tied up. It's stuff that's tied up in the uk and it's not easily. Some of it maybe, some of it maybe, but it's not all stuff that's tied up in the UK and it's not easily. Some of it may be, some of it may be, but it's not all stuff that can easily be disentangled from the UK. And also, it's not necessarily talking about taxing businesses. It's talking about taxing. A lot of this is talking about taxing the personal wealth of individuals, not necessarily like taxing a business so they might own a business and that business pays whatever business tax they pay. That's not necessarily the problem. The problem is people sitting on piles and piles and piles of cash and never having to ever.
Matt Cartwright:Actually, I think it's not piles of cash, it's assets, sorry, assets.
Jimmy Rhodes:Piles and piles of assets that you can't get at and you can't tax because the tax system doesn't allow you to do that. That could be changed, and there are examples where it's been done in other countries as well.
Matt Cartwright:I agree with you. I think one thing I think this is something that is like obviously we're both rigid from the uk. I do wonder whether it's something that is not exclusive to the uk but is particularly an issue in the uk is like a lot of the wealth in the uk is locked up in land and is locked up in property. You know, if you take a country like china, where we now like, it's slightly different because land, you never own the land, the land belongs to the country and so there's and there's a different way in which wealth is distributed. So like trying to solve the problem for different countries is different.
Matt Cartwright:I think with Gary is talking about the UK and I think where we're just for the moment just focusing here I think this is the point that we're trying to make here is that wealth. You know all of the the focus has been on taxing income and continues to be in the uk and you know anytime people try and do stuff with. You know inheritance, etc. You know there's a big scandal about it and if you look at the way that you're, the triple lock on pensions to me is an absolute scandal because you've got this lock on pensions for the people that, and there are lots of pensioners who are, you know, know, on the line of poverty. So I'm not talking on an individual basis, but in a kind of society level basis.
Matt Cartwright:That generation is not where the concern is right. That generation there are a lot of rich people, most of the rich people and most of the like, comfortably well-off people with a big property with no mortgage, are of that generation, whereas younger generations and again with gary, this is who he cares about here is younger people. They don't have those assets and they're going to get handed down and so a subset of people are going to be okay, while all the others, you know, are not going to be okay, and you get more and more of that property. Therefore, that goes to those rich people and you get more and more of that kind of funneling up of the wealth. It's like the problem is going to get worse. That's the thing under the current model. It's not going to stay the same or get better, it's going to get worse.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, like on an individual level house prices keep going up. Wage prices aren't going up as much. Like, who's buying up all these houses, like their assets that are available to buy? The wealthier getting wealthier. It's wealthy people like tons and tons and tons of real estate in the uk is owned by these kinds of people that, like you know, they've basically I mean, you can't even blame them like they're, they've, they've, they've accumulated all this wealth. They're making even more money all the time. They've got a choice of like, probably, you know, pay some form of tax on it, or buy property and buy assets and actually be able to tuck it away there and, and well, not even necessarily they would pay tax on it if they had it in cash, but like the only choice, like they're going to be getting financial advice and the advice is go and buy this.
Matt Cartwright:Your point as well here is that those investments for those people, even if they find out that well, actually, you know, I, if I, you know, if I leave the uk and go and become a tax resident somewhere else, that will be beneficial for me, for certain parts of my wealth, actually those properties are in the uk, are going to continue to get taxed in the uk. And I can tell you, as someone who lives outside the uk but has a property in the uk, like I pay tax on that property in the uk. It doesn't matter if I move out. I pay tax the same as if I'd be in that country. So I'm classed as a non-resident landlord but I still pay the same tax. So those people we're talking about, if they own all these properties, if they leave the country, they still pay tax on that. So them, them leaving the country, doesn't? They're not going to take those properties with them, no right, and they can't take the assets.
Matt Cartwright:I think the other point here is that, like those kind of people and by the way I'm not, you know, I have one very small property.
Matt Cartwright:Um, I'm not considering myself to be sort of like one of the wealthy sort of elite, but but I am lucky enough to be able to to do that and I think it's only right to be honest that I am taxed on that income. But actually, like, even someone like me and someone who owns two or three properties, or you know, a landlord who's able to make an income that maybe doesn't need to work on four or five properties actually those are still not the people we're talking about. Like, most of the land in the uk is owned by a very, very small number of people. A lot of it actually is by sort of the royal family and the kind of wider royal family and there's a that's a bit more difficult to deal with. But there are a lot of sort of families who for generations have loaned huge amounts of land. Yeah, that's where you know that wealth is not being taxed at all. Maybe their rental income is being taxed, but the value of that land is just locked in, or your, yeah, or your mortgages.
Jimmy Rhodes:I mean, he talks about this like, like you're, you know, effectively, your mortgage is owned probably by I mean not directly, but it'll be owned by wealthy people who have investments and assets that they can put into the bank so that you can get lent, lent so that some of the bank can lend you money. Yeah, that's the way that all works. The government debt, like it's the same thing. Um, it's all owned by somebody somewhere in a lot of ways.
Matt Cartwright:I think even the government's debt is is with these yeah, over rich, over wealthy.
Jimmy Rhodes:So where do we go from here?
Matt Cartwright:I mean, there's just a couple of comments I wanted to talk about. It's like I just wondered, like what your thought on this, about how, like the whole idea of leaving everything to the market, about how much that has also kind of contributed to this problem, like we, basically, you know, we've got, we've given everything to the market and that has allowed, like if you take, for example, so after.
Jimmy Rhodes:We don't do this anyway, do we? We do it until we have to bail all the banks. Why was it?
Matt Cartwright:say, after the pandemic.
Matt Cartwright:If you look at, if you look at kind of what happened after the pandemic, like the economy's got worse since the pandemic, but since the pandemic, the same properties I was talking about to you, which is, you know, it's a small property but it's like a reason, like it's reasonably high quality um, the rent on that has gone up every year.
Matt Cartwright:Right now my mortgage, admittedly, has gone up by far more than the rent, but the rent has gone up every year even though people have less money to be able to afford that. So by allowing the market to dictate that, we have a situation where, you know, even when people can afford less and when the cost of everything else is going up, the cost of those assets. So the people who own those assets okay, maybe they're not, if they have mortgages, it's affecting them, but the people we're talking about don't have mortgages, so they're not, they're not having any of the issues, but they're getting all of the gains of that additional income. So you've seen the market funnel even more people. You also see, like you know, so many bubbles, crashes, you know, non-corrections of the market and yet still this kind of religious idea that like we have to leave everything to the you know, to the silent hand.
Matt Cartwright:It's, it's, it's bizarre I think it's only because everyone's got too much skin in the game, and that that's sort of like. One of the key points I want to bring into. This is, like we all know, I think that the system isn't working. Everybody knows it, everybody apart from a very few small amount of people who are benefiting from it. But the problem is we're all invested in it. I think I've got a slightly more cynical view. I've got a slightly more cynical view.
Jimmy Rhodes:Well, no, so like it's the most of the people who like actually have a say in this, uh, already in that like very wealthy class in the elite in the elite. Like you, you're your top your top economists that like at the top universities you know, not even the top universities but like your top economists that actually get to influence these things like to get to that position. Most of it it's like a um, what's the word? It's like a closed environment.
Matt Cartwright:It's a closed system, but it's also a revolving door in and out of institutions, private industry it's the same people it's like I talk about big pharma, isn't it in a sense? It's it's, you're part of that system and even even if you try and take a more um a more generous view and say you know it's not intentional. But then the problem is those people are existing within a world that is very different from the world in which normal people are existing in and are not able to understand classical economic economists like they've been educated in the same way for a long time and
Matt Cartwright:it hasn't changed. I mean, I I studied as part of my master's we'll talk about this in a bit but studied contemporary economics and there were like a few um donut economics is one example. Um we'll talk about in a little bit. Um ecological economics, but like all of we'll talk about in a little bit um ecological economics, but like all of these environmental economics, which is a little bit older, but all these kind of ideas and I was like, wow, this is amazing. Until you realize it's like, just there are all the people invested. Why would they ever want to embrace this new system? Because it's bad for them.
Jimmy Rhodes:It's, it's bad yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Jimmy Rhodes:So I think I that's my slightly more cynical view is that actually, the system feeds itself all the people who actually have a say in it and have any influence or in the system anyway and changing it like saying admitting that it's broken isn't doesn't benefit the, again, the people that actually have influence and have a say in it um, and so I think what you see now, like in democracies this is why it's such a struggle in democracies because you see a situation where, basically, you see a situation where increasingly and increasingly, like the problems aren't going away and like it's the, the anger and rage has been directed at different things and different political parties are like oh, it's all about immigration, it's all about this, it's all about that.
Jimmy Rhodes:No one's fundamentally like the, and again, the reason for that is because the, the elite, effectively the people in power, wouldn't, don't want to like, they either can't see it or don't want to admit to it, or their, their best economic advisors are in this system and so no one's saying actually, the problem is that our fundamental money system is broken and inequality is getting worse and worse and worse, and it's going to keep getting worse and worse and worse unless we do, unless we fix it. Basically, I don't know whether the fix is taxing wealth or some other mechanism, but it means what it means is that, like from now on, like in democracies, we're going to see increasingly wild swings where people are disillusioned with the current government. I mean, you've seen it with labor, like they've. They've gone from having like the second or third best result for labor in the uk um to like having the worst, I think. I think kirsten armer now has like one of lowest popularity ratings.
Matt Cartwright:We're sort of in a world, aren't we, where it's very difficult for any government to kind of have multiple terms now, because people can't solve the problems, and so short-term thinking is well, we need something different. But you choose something that's not that different, and then you're surprised when it doesn't change. I mean, I'm not blaming voters for it, because maybe they don't have those choices, but you are seeing that across the world, where you're seeing these sort of one-term governments more and more.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, and that's my point is you choose something different, but it's something different. That isn't addressing this. What? We're talking about and I think the other reason that I mean I'll be honest I think the reason this doesn't get addressed is partly because it's complicated and difficult and um, and it's easier to go oh it's immigration or oh, it's something else I want to throw one other thing in there because I want to talk a little bit about this idea of ecological economics.
Matt Cartwright:So I think this is slightly different from your point. But another thing that, um, you know, economics has really got wrong if you, if you take, and people will have different views on sort of climate change and and how much humans have caused it, etc. But you know, regardless of whether you think climate change is a result of human activity, you can't escape the fact that there is pollution, you know, and there are social costs to what's happened and and there's this kind of what we call the externality scam. So, um, how kind of mainstream economics is like pollution, climate change, social costs, etc. They're just basically externalities, like they're accounting tricks that corporates are able to kind of you know, use as part of their profits. It kind of doesn't matter.
Matt Cartwright:Ecological economics, um, is different because it looks at the economy as a subset of ecology, not separate from it. Um, and basically there's a few things in there. So one of the big things is about how ecological economics like values the ecosystem itself as being worth like 125 trillion dollars was what I saw quoted whereas mainstream economic space, he says it's free. So, like you know, wetlands, doing flood control, like that has an economic value. Forests, you know, filtering water or filtering air, like it's not just something that happens. Actually, that is part of the economy and you have to include that in it.
Matt Cartwright:So there's someone called herman daily um, and his concept was like a mature economy should focus on qualitative improvement rather than quantitative growth, which you know. This it's radical. It kind of seems like, how can this be radical? But then this idea is like if you take a forest, like when you have a mature forest, you want to maintain it and let it thrive and let the ecosystem carry on and let everything be in balance, not to grow the forest, like you don't need to grow the forest, like when it's just keep it that way.
Matt Cartwright:And I think that is like why it kind of appealed to me is less so about this, this focus on the ecology and more of this idea of like trying to look at it, if you compare everything to the natural world and you use that as a kind of model to base economics on, it's like, well, yeah, that that makes perfect sense. Yeah, and one of the other things you'll be interested in this is it talks about thermodynamics. So the second law of thermodynamics is entropy. Right, and they're basically the argument. This also argues why infinite growth is basically impossible, because every transaction creates disorder and depletes resources. And you know, entropy means that just kind of carries on and eventually the entropy just leads to just a mess, which you could kind of argue where that's? That's kind of where we are yeah, the, the.
Jimmy Rhodes:So there's a bit of a caveat on this, isn't there? Like I think and I'm not saying I subscribe to this at all like assuming the earth's finite, then, like there is like, then, yes, absolutely, you can't have infinite growth, you can't I mean, you can't have literally infinite growth, you can't. You can't have literally infinite growth anyway. You can't have literally infinite growth anyway. But one of the ways we've managed to continue to have growth over the past sort of like 200, 300 years is we keep inventing new technology which allows us to squeeze a bit more out, squeeze a bit more out, squeeze a bit more out. And I wonder whether I mean to bring it to AI, like I wonder whether that's where I mean who knows what, what, what sort of like explosion of um growth ai is going to produce if it sort of like fulfills its, if it fulfills our wildest dreams, shall we say it's got quite a lot of nightmares or nightmares, but like, but it's got, like, it's got quite a lot of potential.
Jimmy Rhodes:Like you know, you might have a lot of new technology might come to the fore, because AI is going to assist us to develop new technology.
Jimmy Rhodes:And then I mean just to give you an example, right, so like batteries have, like, enabled us to have mobile devices and laptops and things that we never would have been able to have before.
Jimmy Rhodes:Maybe they're not the best example in terms of like, having more and more growth, but if we come up with a new battery technology, then all of a sudden that gets a lot cheaper and easier and then you can carry on with the growth in that particular area. And is that going to apply? I don't know, like is, are we going to have ai revolutions in how we grow food, so you can grow more food in a smaller space, or something like that? And so I'm not saying this is a good argument for like, oh yeah, we just keep going with growth and keep going with growth, but that's how we've managed that problem historically and I would imagine it's quite dangerous and like it ultimately is going to sort of fall down at some point like a house of cards, but I do think there is an argument there that like if we can keep coming up with new technologies that keep revolutionizing the way we do things, then you can potentially keep growing well, let's play the music and then talk about ai.
Matt Cartwright:Well, we, we segued into it automatically, but I, I wanted to play the music, just because we hadn't played it yet. Um, but but yeah, let's, let's actually focus in on kind of ai and and I've got on my screen, in front of me, some notes, and I put ai ai, sorry, as an economic district, it's good, let me say let me say that again yeah, well, I'm fine when I'm not reading ai is an economic disruptor and a potential savior, um, so let's, let's dive into, like, how ai kind of plays into this.
Matt Cartwright:I mean, up to this point, is anything that is we were talking about here because of ai at this point? Uh, no, no, no, it's just human greed and we think that technology like what you kind of said before is technology has allowed growth. So in a way technology so far has kind of saved us from collapse.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, in a sense, and has allowed us to keep growing.
Matt Cartwright:But now we're faced with this kind of let's call it what is the kind of job apocalypse which you know, whether it happens to quite the degree that people said and whether there are more jobs created. But you know, automation could know half of jobs within the next decade or two. I mean, who knows, five years, 20 years, I, I feel. I feel for me like the timelines are pushing back a little bit further, but it's going to make a huge difference. That potentially destroys consumer purchasing power. It creates mass, mass unemployment. It crashes demand-driven economies. On the other hand, it gives everyone a ubi, it creates a utopia where we all have enough of everything that we need and so, you know, the economy will be fine, I mean not in the current system, like which is what we talked about exactly like you, but but it's a funny one because actually we need to.
Jimmy Rhodes:the system needs to change anyway. Probably, uh, in terms of like, if we, if we just carry on doing things the way we're doing them now, then wealth inequality is just going to carry on getting worse and worse and worse and, as you say, there'll be like a very like 0.5% of people will be elite and everyone else will be peasants and it'll just get squeezed out. Ai is not going to AI. If we, based on the current system, ai is probably just going to accelerate that, and then you basically have a load of people who are on UBI, who are the peasants, and then the problem with that is you literally have no way out. Well then, you've got the useless eaters.
Matt Cartwright:That's when the useless eaters thing comes in, doesn't it? Because at that point you know you've got that 0.5%, no, 01 percent. I mean it's already 0.5, it's probably then 0.1 and actually what is the point of all of these humans, or certainly what is the point of a lot of them? I mean, that is the conspiracy around kind of the degrowth agenda. I mean it like it's difficult because on the one hand, you've got countries panicking about um not having enough people and low birth rates. On the other hand, you've got the depopulation agenda, but I think the argument is that comes from the global cabal, whereas you know it's governments that want to grow their country. I mean, let's, my point with this here is like whether you believe that this is true or not.
Matt Cartwright:Ai, and we talked about this in an episode where we talked about um kind of tech oligarchs and and, and you know how this techno few I think we called it techno feud feudalism. This is, or could create, an absolutely unprecedented wealth concentration, like you're talking about trillionaires, but a very, very small number of people, very, very small, and you're literally then looking at a neo-feudal society, like where humans are mainly you know, not all, but most humans are economically irrelevant, like that. That is, that's not like something that could happen. That's the default that we're headed to. Like it doesn't mean we have to get there, but that's the default we which we're heading to at the moment yeah, I mean, yeah, it feels.
Jimmy Rhodes:It certainly feels like it, I think, I think, and that's why I say you need this concentration of wealth thing. That needs to get sorted out with irrespective of ai, and it probably just means that, like, most people will have enough to get by, as opposed to we're all going to be really rich and we're all going to be really wealthy.
Matt Cartwright:Um, but we could all be all be. We could all be very comfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, we could all be very comfortable. You can't be economically all wealthy, because wealth is it's it's not absolute, it's relative, right yeah? And so, therefore, you can't be. You can, you can have what you need and you can have abundance in a society, but you can't have wealth distribution in that sense. No, so you can have wealth distribution, but you can't have everyone being wealthy.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, but I guess what I mean is, if you take away the money aspect, it doesn't mean we're all going to be able to drive around in a Ferrari, like abundance probably means nobody's really poor. It doesn't mean we all have whatever we want whenever we want it lowers the floor. Yeah, sorry, it raises the floor. It lowers the ceiling. It lowers the ceiling, yeah.
Matt Cartwright:Which creates a happier society but means that people who expected to get more and more don't get more and more, and it's a big mindset change. But the inequality, inequality I mean, let's like we're talking about kind of ai here, so I'm we've come on to it and then we're kind of moving off it a little bit. But let's just talk about the this point, about um, inequality. Because before this episode, like when we thought, had this idea, I think the driving thing was that both of us, at pretty much the same time, were like the. The fundamental problem at the moment, underpinning everything, is this inequality. Right, yeah, it's, it's. It's everything that you look at.
Matt Cartwright:If you look at health, if you look at um, you know the social problems in the world. If you look at the reason for potential wars and conflicts, it's all about that. It's all about you have countries with you know abundant resources, but yet are incredibly poor or incredibly corrupt. Corruption is essentially inequality. Um, you have this problem like why the us is in the problem that it's in the uk, why it's in the problem that's in immigration, why immigration happens in the way it does, is because of inequality.
Matt Cartwright:All of these problems are are underpinned by inequality, and I don't think we're ever suggesting you get to a world in which there's no inequality. But it's got to a point and it and this, the ai kind of tech thing potentially drives it to a point that is like that is just unsustainable society. We're already at that point where inequality is so you know, it's so obvious. Now you walk down a street, you know even people only go to certain areas. You know you've got ghettoization in a way that like I don't remember this, even when I was a child, like it, it it feels like even in our lifetimes it's changed yeah, I mean certainly in the west.
Jimmy Rhodes:I think, if you're, if you're talking about globally, it's a bit more complicated because a lot of countries are actually like in a very different position, where this is, this is the thing, isn't it? You get blinkered because we've, we're in a position where, being from the west, it's like oh well, I'm not sure there are any.
Matt Cartwright:I mean, you can look at like china's a great example of where the lifting up appeal out of poverty in china like has never happened anywhere in the world and people who who are kind of critical of china and the regime, etc.
Matt Cartwright:Should. There's one thing that they should remember is that, like what they did to move, you know, to pull those people out of poverty is like is unseen in history. It's absolutely incredible, um, but I would actually sort of question like, is there any country in the world that, in the last 30 years, has become more equal because china, while it's become richer, and lifted those people out of poverty? I don't. I would actually sort of question like, is there any country in the world that, in the last 30 years, has become more equal Because China, while it's become richer, and lifted those people out of poverty? I don't think China has become more equal. I think China has become more unequal at the same time, like people have got rich, the people at the bottom, their, their floor has been raised, but then the people at the top, their ceiling has been raised far more.
Jimmy Rhodes:Probably true. Probably true, I don't actually know. I don't have the figures behind it for every country, I think. I just think, I just think this will. What we're talking about is we are I think we are sort of focusing quite a lot on the west. Yeah, um, there are countries that are still um going through these kinds of booms where, like vietnam is a good example right now.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, um, yeah, country like indonesia I guess you like malaysia, for example, like is is in an infinitely better position than it would have been yeah, yeah, 50 years ago they might be listening to this podcast actually things are getting much better here.
Jimmy Rhodes:Right now is all I'm saying, I suppose I just said eastern european countries.
Matt Cartwright:I'm not sure eastern european countries have got richer, but you could possibly argue under communism they were more equal. Like again, a lower floor.
Jimmy Rhodes:But if we're talking about absolute, like inequality, yeah, and, to be fair, I don't think everyone has to be equal. I don't really care if there's some um really really wealthy people. I think that you just need to keep it in check.
Matt Cartwright:Basically, they shouldn't literally own everything and we end up being um well, like you say, in techno feudalism, where we're all just serfs can I can ai be part of a solution, though, like it kind of has to be right if we're saying AI is linked into everything. If there is a way out of this, ai has to be part of it, right? So in a sense it's not a big part of the solution how you use AI actually.
Jimmy Rhodes:I think that AI has the potential to be a massive part of the solution, because as it becomes smarter and smarter and if we ever get to AGI and AS and asi, like super intelligence and stuff like that, it will probably see all this stuff and think it's obvious and and and if we put our trust in it to sort of like help us if some, if a society, because there will be some like really smart societies that are like I'm gonna you know, maybe this sounds absolutely bonkers, but yeah, scandinavian countries.
Jimmy Rhodes:Maybe this sounds bonkers, but they're going to be like oh, we'll hand over a certain amount of decision making power to this, like you know, ai, that can look after us. This is assuming benevolent and all the rest of benevolent, ai and all the rest of it. But I can see a world where, or even if you're still in control, you sort of like allow it to what you, allow it to really guide your decision.
Matt Cartwright:I was just saying. I tell you what. What it replaces essentially is like think tanks, because what a lot of people who don't sort of have that insight understand is that a lot of countries, like think tanks are basically doing all the like independent thinking that feeds into governments and feeds into civil services. And you have them they're called different things, like in china, a lot of you know the communist party has a lot of those kind of think tanks that um are, you know, funded, but they do a lot of the thinking that the the party knows that it can't do it within its system, so it funds them to do it.
Matt Cartwright:You know the uk has many, many think tanks like europe. Europe has think tanks, the us has think tanks they're called different things, but they are outsourced to do all that kind of research and to give all the new ideas. I think you could very, very easily see a world in which, like, at least all that thinking is outsourced and maybe you've got you know you've still got people who are making decisions how you put it in place. But that for me is like that kind of level of thinking, once ai is on a higher level, like how would you, how, how would you not?
Jimmy Rhodes:outsource, that I'd be surprised I mean, maybe I should have done this before the podcast, but I'd be surprised even now if you couldn't do a deep research project and of course, parameters, yeah, and it would still be basing it on.
Matt Cartwright:Like previous thought, I don't think it because this one thing we said, it doesn't have its own original thought yet it doesn't, but there have been experiments already with ubi.
Jimmy Rhodes:There have been experiments in norway, like there are countries, nordic countries, where they have um nordic, does that mean scandinavian anyway? Um, there have been. There are scandinavian countries that have they are nordic countries, aren't they?
Jimmy Rhodes:uh, maybe it's the same thing, I don't know. They've introduced, yeah, but I think scandinavian is the right word. Um, anyway, they've. They've introduced wealth taxes. It's not like there aren't examples of this that are already out in the wild, like people like to pretend they aren't when they're making arguments against it, but, um, like, the experiments like this have been done and they've and they've not only been done, they've usually been demonstrated to make people happier and more equal and, yeah, all the rest of it have more free time, start businesses, all sorts of stuff. Like it's. Like the idea that this hasn't been done in democracies as well, like not in communist countries, or not like cause everyone is really against as soon as you start to go socialist, communist, so, to use those kinds of words, that really puts a lot of people off. Again, scandinavian countries are just sort of like quite liberal and have some quite forward thinking ideas, have tried out a lot of these things already and proven that they work.
Matt Cartwright:But we're talking about AI finding a way, because the barrier to this, from what we're saying, though, is, like you somehow need to find a way that you it kind of convinces the people who are in positions of power that actually they also stand to benefit from this.
Matt Cartwright:So, so my, my wife's job without going into too much detail, sort of you know, it's sort of linked into um, how, how investment and money goes towards um, I would say like, preventing climate change, but, but basically, like, the ultimate goal is well, this is about making sort of the planet sustainable, and I don't necessarily just mean in an ecological way, I mean in sustainable in a more kind of wholesome way.
Matt Cartwright:But the idea is, well, rather than trying to tell everyone, you know you need to stop using plastic straws, et cetera, you actually explain to businesses well, if this carries on like this, you know your buildings are going to be at risk because of fires, and your infrastructure is going to be at risk because of floods, etc.
Matt Cartwright:Etc. And so it may not be the sort of like the ideal moral intention, but what you're trying to do is actually sell it in a way that works for them, like maybe what AI could do is sell solutions that work for the majority in a way that you know if we're talking about the sort of evil elite that actually they're like. Oh actually. No, I won't lose out from this, because I think that for me, is if we know that these things already exist. The barrier, surely, is that the people who have the power a lot of the time stand to lose and so they're not willing, not necessarily because they're necessarily evil, but just because human nature is well. Why would I want to lose what I've got, whether that's power or money?
Jimmy Rhodes:yeah, I think it's, I think exactly, it's exactly that. Like that's why I mean ai just takes out all of the powerful people and gives the world to the well, no, that's.
Jimmy Rhodes:But that's exactly why I'm so what I'm typing right now and I'll get it to do a deep research project. Maybe we can report on that in the next episode. But I'm saying, like, come up with a system that will address increasing wealth inequality over the next 15 years and will be palatable to um, like the incumbent government or something like that, and we can use the uk as an example or something like that but something that there's got to be a way and there's got to be something that a really smart ai can come up with that can actually sort of solve all of these things and make complete the whole puzzle. Because you're right, like it has to be something that almost sort of like makes everybody happy in the short term but then actually results in the desired outcome in the long term.
Matt Cartwright:There's a really cool I just want to recommend at this point. There's a really cool thing. It's called donut economics. It's by someone called Kate Raworth who is a British university of Oxford economic professor I'm not sure if she's still there now, but she certainly was.
Matt Cartwright:And donut economics is basically, you, like, it's taped like a donut. This is basically like a circle with a hole in the middle of it and basically what you've got is you've got um sort of human needs, so outside of it is kind of poverty. And you know you, if you, if you drop outside of the donut, you drop into a world in which, like we can't meet human basic needs basically. And on the other side of it is the planetary boundary. And the idea is, if you go too far the one way you know too much growth you go over these planetary boundaries and we can't live because of that. If you go too far the other way, then you go to a point where humans don't have their basic needs and we can't live. And so you've got this donut, that within the donut, like that's the area in which you can live and thrive because you're not pushing out too far over those boundaries but you're still meeting the needs like it is, like it's not an anti-growth or, sorry, it's not a de-growth agenda, but it's, on this idea again about kind of thriving and not looking to keep growing, but to find like the perfect balance in between the two, like, if people are interested, like, have a look at it.
Matt Cartwright:I, I, I was really into it when I first heard about it. Then I was like, oh, am I? Like a kind of you know, high school economic student who gets carried away in these ideas? And then like, welcome to the real world. They don't work. I think to some degree that is the case, um, but it's, you know, reasonably kind of well, reasonably mainstream. It's something that is certainly, you know, being adopted. It's taught in a lot of kind of courses now. Um, yeah, it's maybe, maybe something to have a look at for people who are interested. So now I just want to ask you, uh, straight out are we going to have a massive economic collapse? Yes, okay, and next week on, prepare, no, seriously.
Jimmy Rhodes:What does that mean? So, massive economic collapse? I don't think so. My concern actually here I don't think we're going to have a massive economic collapse. I think it's more going to be a social collapse.
Matt Cartwright:So you don't think the fiat currency system is doomed, because I, I do I do.
Jimmy Rhodes:I think the currency system is doomed, do I so?
Matt Cartwright:I think capitalism is doomed because and I think it's because of ai, but I think I think capitalism's doing, I think, the fiat currency systems.
Jimmy Rhodes:So I think the fiat currency system is broken, I think that it will get replaced by something else. Whether it gets replaced by something else, what's the word prophylactically Like?
Matt Cartwright:a condom.
Jimmy Rhodes:Or well, no, it means like in advance.
Matt Cartwright:No, I know what it means. Yeah, so I always think of condoms, but it's also, yeah, anything you can take prophylactically.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, whether it's that way or whether it's because, effectively, this inequality problem just becomes an increasing, increasing problem, and then you end up having mass social unrest and then you end up with some kind of revolution. There's some kind of break in the system that out of the other side of it. Then you have all these new ideas and someone goes, oh, the fiat currency system was a load of bollocks and we need I mean, it is a system like it is, it is.
Matt Cartwright:For me, the biggest nonsense of all of this is the the fact that we invented a system where you can basically just say that there's money and therefore there is money like money.
Jimmy Rhodes:Money doesn't exist, but it's only okay. I sort of agree, like. I also think that like could the fiat currency system, if used, if used responsibly, could it work?
Matt Cartwright:I don't know I, I don't, I think not, but I mean, that's why is it not?
Jimmy Rhodes:unfortunately, we're not.
Matt Cartwright:We're not sponsored by a physical gold company because, again, you know, I would then promote physical gold. We should be, because all the good conspiracy podcasts are sponsored by a physical gold company it's already done, this research project, so we can have, I can have. I can read some of this quickly at the end I basically I I own lots of physical gold, so like you own lots of physical gold I own quite a lot of physical gold. Yeah, where is it, uh in storage in the uk.
Jimmy Rhodes:Fair enough, like in one of those like big, big yellow storage.
Matt Cartwright:No, it's, it's in it's in a secure place where they store gold, but but, yeah, but I mean like, so I'm bought into the fact that I think it will or at least at least I'm hedging on the fact that there is a good chance of collapse, because I think it just doesn't make sense, but it's.
Matt Cartwright:It's a pyramid scheme. The only thing that I would say in favor of it, of keeping up, is like, like a lot of this stuff, like the whole world, to be honest, is like held together by elastic bands and fingers and holes right, but the point is like it doesn't really I know you didn't mean that it doesn't really help it doesn't really help anybody, or it doesn't help many people, in the short term at least. If it collapses, right, that's the problem is we're all sort of invested.
Jimmy Rhodes:No, we need to put more fingers in holes.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, first, these holes I see are like the hole in the dam.
Jimmy Rhodes:You know that I know he put his finger in I don't know what you're thinking no, I'm gonna, but it's definitely not what I'm thinking boat holes, fingers in boat holes or dams boat, boat holes yeah, I know what you said.
Matt Cartwright:Oh, okay, I was.
Matt Cartwright:I was thinking of a dam, okay anyway, yeah but but I, I, yeah, I like neither of us are experts. So the fact that jimmy says no and I say yes, or I say yes, jimmy says no, I mean it's sort of meaningless because it's just our personal you know views on this. But I think, like I have thought about this a lot, to the point where I've, you know, made investment decisions accordingly and I said like I haven't put all my money in gold because it's a hedge for me. But I just think like there are a lot of people who have reasons to keep the current system cropped up.
Matt Cartwright:But what we just talked about, about the wealth inequality, and we talked about more and more money going to a very small number of people, like, if that continues and if the generation coming through now don't have property and don't have pensions and don't have investments in the stock market, etc. There's less people who invested in it, because then more and more of that wealth again is with a small number of people, then less people care about the collapse, and so then you've got this battle of like well, they're useless. Does you know the deep state, the, the global cabal, the people in power, the people of all the money, whatever you want to call them. Do they win out? Or do the people win out? Like is it? Is it about power and wealth or is it about just sheer numbers? And that's where I think like I could genuinely see it, because there are enough people that care about it that just say it doesn't matter to us anymore whether it collapses sorry, I was reading this, oh, I thought I thought you.
Matt Cartwright:I saw your face. You looked incredibly focused. I thought you were going to say I've I've really moved you, and when you're over with that speech?
Jimmy Rhodes:can you say it again? No, you can listen to the podcast. Okay, I?
Matt Cartwright:I think I agree with what you said okay, well, my main point was that we're moving in the direction that, more and more, if you look at the young generation, more people are becoming poor yes, relatively yeah. And the equality sorry, the wealth is being given to an ever smaller amount of people, yeah, and therefore the number of people who have skin in the game and want to keep the system cropped up, yeah, are getting smaller and smaller. Then it's just simply a matter of are the, you know, do the people win out or do the small amount of people in power with power and money went out, and it's just like numbers versus in the short term, it'll be people with power and money in the short term.
Matt Cartwright:But I'm talking about like you get to a point of like a proper revolution.
Jimmy Rhodes:Well, that's where we're headed. Yeah, yeah, like in my opinion so that's no, we're aligned then, that's my answer to the yeah, but I don't. I don't think that's well. I suppose it is economic collapse, but it's social collapse because of the economy yeah is yeah and then, and then out the other side. I mean I hope we don't get there. But that's why I'm saying I don't think there'll be a prophylactic solution, because it's in nobody's no, no, no, it's not reactive absolutely.
Jimmy Rhodes:It's not in the interest of anyone who's actually got the skin in the game, which is actually what you're talking about. The people are making the decisions. Um, do you want to talk about this? Do you want me to talk about this, like proposed? Ai proposed, I think it might be whyT-5.
Matt Cartwright:Well, why not? Because you're more interested in that than what.
Jimmy Rhodes:I say so. It used O3 high. What's that? Well, I didn't use GPT-5 high, I don't know. Higy or HIG8, hig8. I can't spell or speak, so either O3, that is high, or O3, that's high. Reasoning is what it means. Maybe, if you're based on this maybe it is it's come up with the balanced prosperity model Smoked a joint before it.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah Well, maybe.
Jimmy Rhodes:It's come up with the balanced prosperity model for the whole economy framework for the United Kingdom that tackles wealth concentration, precarity I don't know what that means and environmental overshoot as one interconnected problem. I think it's already solved it.
Matt Cartwright:It's already solved it, like it's already there. Um, so are we the? Are we the first people you think there's? There's no one who's thought of using a deep research and actually anyone listens to this podcast in a position of power?
Jimmy Rhodes:do a deep research and fix the economy I'll share this and I'll put on sub stack or something and see what they think.
Matt Cartwright:I'll change a few words.
Jimmy Rhodes:You haven't got any followers on your sub stack well, we'll put on yours then, okay um, I haven't got many so the the core principles ownership diversification via a sovereign wealth fund been done or yeah, in and all the countries.
Jimmy Rhodes:Sovereign wealth funds are doing pretty well, by the way. Yeah, and I didn't mention what we've been talking about on the podcast specifically I just said. Address inequality progressive dual-based taxation. Labor labor income continues to be taxed progressively, but with a wider zero percent allowance and simplified bans parallel. In parallel, a comprehensive net wealth tax above 500k per adult adult with a generous pension and primary home allowance is phased in over five years, replacing stamp duty and inheritance tax.
Jimmy Rhodes:Capital gains attacks on a rolling. It's got a capital gains in there, but it says closed loopholes. Universal basic services 2.0. State guarantees, free or free near access to digital connectivity, local public transport, childcare so basically services that need to be essential services are provided for free. A benefit system effectively, but incorporating more stuff. Ecological guardrails. A descending legally binding carbon tax is auctioned to upstream producers. 90% of auction revenue is returned as a per capita carbon dividend that partially offsets higher relative prices. So basically addressing climate change type stuff, whilst also balancing that with the fact that it's going to make things cost more money. Stakeholder governed firms large companies that wish to list or operate critical infrastructure must allocate a minimum of 20 of board seats.
Matt Cartwright:I said it this is stuff I studied on my masters I mean, this is not.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, this is not that revolutionary it's not revolutionary, but I said specifically for the uk, and one of the problems in the uk right now is we sold, flogged, all of our national services national, yeah, and we didn't do this. So it might not be revolutionary, but like it's all still something we haven't done.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah so it is. Maybe it is revolutionary, but revolution for for one country, and the last one was data dividend and digital comment. Commons, mandatory data trust structures, channel, a share of monetized uk personal data. My point is with this is not, like you said, like can I come up with a solution because it hasn't been thought of yet. It's like most of the stuff that we need to do or could do has been thought of but I'm just not implementing.
Matt Cartwright:But I think, yeah, but what I was gonna say is so what ai has done here is just come like I'm sorry, but too honest is just rehash things that people have thought of before. But that was my point is the answers are already out there? No, but okay. So this is what I think is. The problem is like, what AI needs to solve is not the answers. It needs to be like but how do we make these work? Cause they're all like these are how it should work. Why is it not happening? Then it needs to tell us how to make it happen.
Jimmy Rhodes:It gave me a 15 year plan with year, one year three year, five year, 10 and 10, 15. 15 because I asked her to do that. I'm not going to go into it, because I mean at some point, though you need like a custom model that's going to, you know, go into all that detail.
Matt Cartwright:But but for me it's not like coming up with, because this is what think tanks are already coming up with. It's like how do you solve the problems around? For example, how do you solve the problem that we just talked around around the fact that, well, all the people in power and all the people with wealth that are reading this report actually doing all this stuff? If you know, I'm not saying that like, there are lots of politicians and civil servants who've got the absolute best intentions. What the premise that we're using here is that the people with real power is a very, very small number of people. They're not necessarily a local mp or, you know, a government minister or or whatever. We're talking about people who hold the real power. Um, how do you make it in a way that wins those people over, or make it in such a way that is sort of mandatory that they have no way around it?
Jimmy Rhodes:I think that's the thing. Like how can you win them over? Like how are you going to win people over who are like I'm really wealthy?
Matt Cartwright:so you have to find a way that they, that they, don't have any sort of loss in either lifestyle or power. Like I'm not saying this, I don't know the answer this seems impossible, but we see if ai can't solve this.
Matt Cartwright:Nothing can super intelligence maybe the answer. Super intelligence says well, you know, I don't know. It says there needs to be an uprising. Or it says actually all governments in the world need to stop answering to those people and answer their citizens. I don't know, but presumably if you can't fix this, it can't fix the problem. Says actually all governments in the world need to stop answering to those people and answer their citizens.
Jimmy Rhodes:I don't know but presumably if you can't fix this. You can't fix the problem so we have to head to the revolution.
Matt Cartwright:That's the only answer.
Jimmy Rhodes:Then, well, yeah, I mean, I don't know how you convince someone like jeff bezos, here's a really good option, but it means you have less money.
Matt Cartwright:But you like I don't know, someone like jeff bezos does he? Does he really just not care about humanity? Or does he just need it to be, I don't know?
Jimmy Rhodes:like pitched him in some way that I think the people who are that's difficult I think that I assume that the people who are that wealthy it's just detached from being really wealthy and like the money, and, and they can always think of a reason why yeah, it's better with status and relative.
Matt Cartwright:Yeah, and it's like and it's like oh it's.
Jimmy Rhodes:They come up with answers like, oh, it's actually better if I decide what benevolent fund I donate all my money to. Well, I mean, that's the danger of the AI models is Sam.
Matt Cartwright:Altman thinks well, yeah, super-terrors might kill everyone, but it's better for me to be in charge of it. And anthropics say we need to of it because we'll do it slightly safer. And you know, elon musk says only I can like it's all this hubris and bravado that only I'm the one, yeah. And sense of exceptionalism, like in a sense you don't get to that level, you don't be those people if you don't have that thought right?
Matt Cartwright:I don't think so, no so so the answer at the end of this is that we're all fucked um short of a revolution no, I agree with you, is coming.
Jimmy Rhodes:I think we find another really nice planet for all these really super rich to go and live on, uh, a bit like elysium or something like that. Maybe they can just live on an orbiting space station and we can just crack on anyway maybe not like elysium, because that was literally like the dystopian. Yeah, that's probably not the best example of this I wanted to ask you like so.
Matt Cartwright:So we talked, talked about having skin in the game. So if you want this, you want this a more equal society right? What are you willing to give up? Are you willing to basically only have enough food, basic food, to eat and to go to the same public hospital? I'm sort of talking about you know, I'm talking about a sort of 1960s communism here, but are you willing to give up having all these nice to have for more equal society me, what are you willing to?
Jimmy Rhodes:personally, yeah, uh, like if I so, what am I willing to give? So I don't think I have that extravagant lifestyle now.
Matt Cartwright:No, you don't Like I but you're in, but globally sort of not. Not wealth wise, I don't know about wealth wise. Income wise, probably. Wealth wise. You're probably in the top like 20%, 25% globally, maybe.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, I mean probably globally, if you're talking globally. So so I mean, what do I do now? Like, what do I do now that like, is that extravagant? Like I go okay, I go on holiday. So like, probably probably the most extravagant thing that I do is I travel quite a lot. I go on, I travel, I get to travel on a plane and go to different places and go to exotic countries or places. Um, I play.
Jimmy Rhodes:I like the UK I do like the UK I do. I I play sport, I have some hobbies, I have a, you know, do some sim racing and I've got all my gear for doing that, but I don't feel like I don't have a car, for example um, which a lot of people will have, cars and you know, like physical assets like that. I don't have a particularly big house like I have a hundred square meters between two of us or something which has, but which I don't know if that makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, but compared to, like, a house in the uk, it's quite comparatively small. You've got a podcast studio in your house now.
Matt Cartwright:Uh, yeah, yeah, the spare room has a table in it yeah um, so I don't.
Jimmy Rhodes:Whilst I might have a lot compared to some people, I don't feel like I live a particularly extravagant lifestyle, so you asked me what I would give up.
Jimmy Rhodes:You asked me what I would give up. I'll be specific. So I would say, if you said you need you have, like you just can't take as many flights as you do every year and you have to go on holiday closer to home, you have to go on trade on the train every time you go on holiday, um, you know, except maybe going back and visiting my family in the uk. I'd say okay if it means that somebody else can have more. Is that? Is that not enough? I don't know. What do I need to?
Matt Cartwright:I don't think it is not enough, because my, my, my argument about this is slightly different argument, but I had this conversation with the podcast biggest fan, my dad um, recently. We're talking about, like you know, whether the world it's this age old problem is the world over popular? And I said, yeah, I actually buy into the fact I don't think the world is over popular. Like ideally we wouldn't have 10 billion people. I think it is sort of too many in inverted commas, but I don't actually think like the planet can support that many people right at the moment the well it can. Maybe there's enough food in the world, there's enough resource in the world. The problem is the equality of the way that they are shared around.
Jimmy Rhodes:So I think, like yeah, I don't think it's got enough, like over a longer time frame, though we're gonna if it continues to increase. If we're gonna pull all the oil out of the ground, we're gonna cover, cover the earth's surface in microplastics, like all that kind of stuff.
Matt Cartwright:But that's not yeah, but that's not about not having enough resources like I'm talking.
Matt Cartwright:When I'm talking resource, I'm talking about, like you know, we're in a water crisis. We don't have enough water, but we do have enough water. Like it's just the water's in the wrong place, you know. And there comes a point. There comes a point. I've got a friend who works in this industry who said, like desalination of water, like it doesn't happen at the moment because it's too expensive, but within 20, 30 years it will happen. And the reason is not because it's necessarily becoming that much cheaper, because the cost of all the other water is getting to a point where desalinating water is going to become as cheap and then slightly cheaper. So, weirdly, like we've got it, it, but we can't afford to do it.
Matt Cartwright:If you take food, for example, like there's enough food, but it is definitely the equality of food. Now, climate change may change that, but you could actually just stick up loads of you know indoor places to create food. We could just eat different food. Like you can do it. You can do it so with the number of people. So I think this idea of like the resources that are in the world, like what I would have to give up, is I'd have to give up the sort of amount of and the choice of food that I've got. I think I'm fine with that. I'd actually now give up the amount of food and the choice of food. I had to just have stuff that's good quality, like if I could eat a much more limited diet, but I knew it was not full of chemicals and it was you know, grass-fed and had the right nutrients, I'd give that up anyway, but I think that is the main thing for a more equal society.
Matt Cartwright:that people would need to give up is like the stuff that they don't need. You need to give up having, like you know, a plastic toy every week for your kids which, like you know, I hate to be a sort of like when I was a kid but the amount of stuff that kids just get now cause it's just like really cheap to make, so there's just loads of it. Yeah, it's insane. Like that's the stuff.
Jimmy Rhodes:It's like this consumerism, consumerism, stuff. I would. Okay, that's a good answer. You'd give that up. I know you'd give that up cause you don't you don't buy a lot of electronic gadgets and things like that. If, like you know, if you said to me, could I live without some of the electronic gadgets that I've got.
Jimmy Rhodes:I'd say, yes, yeah, so I quite often and I'd probably be happier yeah, well, like there are things that it's all the things that you sometimes buy and then you're like maybe I shouldn't have really done that and it's like, well, yeah, if you think that then it's probably something you didn't need and maybe you shouldn't have done it. Um, I think we just we're just over an hour and I just I really like the bit, the like bit at the bottom, because I think we achieved that. If that's the aim for today, it says um total runtime, about 60 minutes. Tone provocative, yet solutions focused, challenging assumptions while offering hope through radical alternatives. You can let us know what you think that was the plan.
Matt Cartwright:There's a sort of skeleton plan for the episode that we've completely gone off from, but yeah, I don't know.
Matt Cartwright:I mean, I think we did that though this is obviously the first time we've we've done this, like I think we've we've talked to reasonable about, about ai, like we're not experts in this area, but I think you know we wanted to talk about it and it would be really useful to get kind of feedback on it, um, and whether this kind of format works for people. Um, but, yeah, thanks for listening. I think we'll probably leave it at that, but, um, like, do leave comments. If nothing else, it helps, boost us in the algorithm and uh, yeah, definitely let us know what you think about this. Are we going to still do a song?
Jimmy Rhodes:yeah, uh, that's a good question. Um, I mean, why not Maybe?
Matt Cartwright:That's the least committal answer ever. Why not Maybe? Well, it's a bit of an effort.
Jimmy Rhodes:I'm on Burgundy. Does anyone listen to the song? Tell you what if you listen to the song, songs, songs and you want us to do more songs in season three. We're not going to do one for this one, but let us know.
Matt Cartwright:We might do one for this one, but let us know we might do one for this, we might do one for this one. So listen and see whether we've done one and we'll know whether you comment, whether you listened and found out, whether we did one or not.
Jimmy Rhodes:Yeah, if you never listen to the songs, let us know because we can. It's a bit of an effort, to be honest happy days.
Matt Cartwright:Have a great week. See you next time. I wasn't a real song, that was just something I found on the internet. So bit of psytrans for old time's sake.
