Thanks so much for tuning in to Reversing Climate Change.
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There's just no way around it. Your choice is basically do you
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Reversing climate change. Thanks so much for what you do.
And now here is the show. Hey, thank you so much for
listening to Reversing Climate Change.
I'm Ross Kenny and I'm the host of the show.
I'm a long time carbon removal entrepreneur.
I'm going to do a quick introduction to the show today.
Get you right to the show. I don't think we need a long one
because we explain what we're talking about in pretty decent
detail here. Today's show is a nice
introduction to regenerative economics.
My guest is Eugene Kerbachev. Eugene started to work on
climate. It is one of the main online
communities for people who are looking to leave their jobs
outside of climate and find a way in, and it's in the middle
of a of a big change right now. Eugene had a post on LinkedIn
that caught my attention and we had to do a show.
I think this is a great place to start if you'd like to learn a
little bit about regenerative economics, what all that means?
Is that possible? I detail some of the common
criticisms that I hear. I would like to see a world that
felt more regenerative. I would like to see a world that
felt more cooperative. I would like to see a lot of the
arms race dynamics that we and what has become a running joke
on the show of the non rival Risk game theoretic
environments. Which I can't believe I didn't
say this on the show because I'm pretty sure I got that from
Daniel Schmuckenberger years and years ago.
And Eugene is on the show talking about how much Daniel
Schmuckenberger has influenced him.
In any case, I'll just let you get into it.
And since I have you here, before I start the show, can you
please open up your podcast app really quickly?
Give the show 5 stars on Spotify or an Apple podcast if you're
also on Apple Podcast. A quick review would also be
great. Something as simple as I really
love this show that would be much appreciated.
There's also an option to give $5 a month and become a paid
subscriber and gets rid of all the ads that I don't read
myself. And I think that's enough for
now. Here's the show with Eugene.
Thanks for being here, Eugene. Thanks for having me, Ross.
I really liked your post talking about some of the emotional
content of working on climate, watching the world move away
from climate, and what it might take for us to collectively
figure out what the hell we're all doing here.
And I've been grappling with similar things.
Friend of the show Dave Addison sent me your post and was like
you should have Eugene on. I take Dave's recommendations
pretty seriously. Lo and behold, we are here.
So I'm hoping for some spiritual coaching right now.
Eugene, can you lay out kind of your your theory of what's
happening and what is giving you hope to continue working in
climate at this moment? Yeah, Dave is a friend as well.
I have a lot of respect to him and I know I imagine that he
would resonate with what that boss says.
Yeah, funny that you say spiritual coaching because I
think that the biggest unlock for me and being able to make
sense of what is going on has been meditation.
So I went on a 10 day silently passing the meditation course.
It's one of those pretty hardcore ones where you can't
like, really, you can't write, you can't talk to anyone or
communicate in any way. Like, really, I was going there
because I felt that I'm burning out and I thought, you know, let
me know, relax and recharge and reset.
And it turned out to be a completely different thing.
Like the difference between data or system meditation most people
think about is like the difference between chamomile tea
and an acid trip. Sorry.
It was like, it's really a boot camp for nervous system is what
it is. And you come out of it with a
nervous system upgrade. The main gist of the upgrade is
that you develop a much, much higher tolerance for
uncomfortable feelings and emotions.
For example, where previously, like my ability to think would
stop somewhere in the territory of, Oh my God, we're all going
to die, now I can think, you know, and what, then what after
that or like, and So what? It also is useful in many other
contexts just for making better decisions at work, for better
regulating myself in life and so on.
But it was definitely the unlock that enabled me to confront what
we're actually dealing with in terms of our public crisis and
the breakdown of all the systems that our civilization depends
on. So, Ross, sounds like you want
to say something. It sounds like one of the core
lessons that you had here was that second part of and and So
what? And then what that kind of
response to uncomfortable feelings.
It wasn't just a a dwelling and it was just a a piece of things
are going to happen in a way that are unexpected and just
noting them and let letting them pass on.
Is is the common advice for meditating having intrusive
catastrophic thinking or even just any thinking at all?
Is it kind of like that or am I misunderstanding?
Kind of. So let me try to, I guess,
narrate what actually happened. Yeah, tell me.
What happened next? So about maybe a year and a half
ago, I came across this podcast by Danielle Schmuckenberger.
It was a podcast about the Poly crisis.
Yeah, I think he has a record. I met him at a conference years
ago and ended up hanging out with him for a couple days.
Very interesting guy. Freaked me out as well.
I understand. Yeah, yeah.
So I was listening to the podcast and before that I didn't
know what the Poly crisis was or I thought that this is something
that, you know, particularly weird people think about, but we
practical people, we build climate solutions.
That's what I thought. And so he starts talking about
it and says that the Poly crisis is basically the combination of
the crisis we're dealing with, the climate crisis, biodiversity
loss, inequality rising to a level that normally causes civil
wars, breakdown of global collaboration, AI risks, nuclear
risks. And The thing is that we're not
nearly on track to solve any one of these things.
And any one of them can end civilization in the current
form. And so like, what the hell do
you do? Obviously, we don't have a hope
of addressing all of them one by one if we can't even address one
of them 1 by 1. And so that's the bad news.
The good news, he further goes, is that this is the same crisis,
that this is all one crisis of our lack of ability, that
basically a crisis of the fact that our economy and society
lack of the fundamental ability to keep themselves healthy and
they suffer from what's called tragedies of the Commons.
Or another name for this is prisoners dilemmas or arms
races. Daniel calls it multi polar
traps. So all of them, all of the
components of the Poly crisis have this to them, like the
pivot of open AI and others from, you know, make the best AI
for humanity to make the biggest AI possible in the fastest time
is an an instance of this. The fact that no organization or
no nation wants to be the first one to actually give up fossil
fuel. This also an instance of this,
like what if you give up and the other guy doesn't and now you're
the sucker. So all of these crisis look like
that. And so as I was listening to
this, I was like, oh shit, the guy has a point, while
previously I think that the gravity of the point would
probably have prevented me from acknowledging that he's making a
good point. Like I think for many people
when they start thinking about something this bad, they're they
either it goes in one air and while and out the other because
it's just too like too tragic to think about, too complex, or
maybe they start actively like denying it.
No, you know, technology is totally going to save us like
what you're talking about or like some other form of
deflection. But I think with a certain level
of either self regulation or being used to it, you are able
to say like, yes, this is actually the case.
And the implications of this are that there probably will be a
complete collapse before things get better.
So it took me a while to accept that implication.
And so for some time I was just freaking out.
And like, I got, I got far enough to accept that the
problem is this big and this complex and that it roots like
this deep. But I didn't know how to make
sense of that yet. So at that point, all I knew is
that my organization needs to be doing something different or I
need to be running a different organization because so my
nonprofit work on climate we had, we have a reputation for
helping people find climate jobs and helping people find climate
jobs isn't going to do anything about this.
Like you can't really solve this type of problem, this gravity of
problem by like getting people into existing job openings.
That's just the wrong tool. Like an analogy I like to give
is that like you, you know, you can't make a rabbit fly by
throwing it into the air. It's possible to overcome
gravity, but like you can't overcome gravity by throwing a
rabbit into the air. Maybe if you have helped the
rabbit grow wings. Yes, but you're an engineer.
Just figure it out, man. Yeah, just yeah.
It can be figured out, but you got to be figuring the right
thing out. You can't just be figuring out
how do I throw the rabbit harder.
So what's gonna happen? With work on climate is that is
that changing right now? It's such a huge institution in
in climate tech. It's.
It's definitely changing. So what happened next was I
shared my concerns with my colleagues and my board and
they're like, Oh yeah, it is actually, it is actually quite
bad. And indeed, the concerns that we
can't go far enough by getting people into jobs are very valid.
Let's figure it out. So then I think first of all, we
realize that if we're, if we want to create systemic change,
and it was obvious that the only way out of this is systemic
change. It's not acceleration of
implementation, it is systemic change.
What I mean by systemic change is changing the dynamics of the
system, like what causes what and what happens as a result,
rather than just specific technologies.
So if we're going to create systemic change, you can't
create it by getting people into jobs, but you can create it by
having people become leaders. So by having people create
change where they are and having people do that in coordination,
If you take any book about how to actually do systemic change
in practice, there are very few such books, but they exist.
Like 1 is called impact Networks, but David Ehrlichman
and other is called systemic something Systems Thinking for
Social change by a different David, David Petterstrom and all
of these books. To like where people always say
to start with to the thinking and systems.
You read that? You yeah, thinking in systems is
a great start for understanding that systemic change is needed
and like what it actually is and what are systems.
Yeah. So all of those books say that
if you want to create systemic change, you need to like get
some people together who care about the issue you're looking
at and identify what are some high leverage points where you
can push and then start pushing and keep pushing.
So push at all leverage points at the same time.
So that's that's requires leadership rather than getting
people into jobs. So that prompted the reframe of
organ climate from helping people find climate jobs to
helping people develop into climate leaders.
And then once we help people develop into climate leaders,
and I know the kind that change practices at their organization,
get involved in policy making efforts in their sector, you
know, go and start climate tracks at industry conferences
in their sector, convene and mobilize their peers who have
more power to do the things that only their peers are capable of
and so on. So that's leadership now.
That's what we're now aspired to do.
And then once you do that, you can have people act in
coordination. For example, if you get a bunch
of, let's say that you want to do something about the food
waste problem. So it's one thing if you just
like get this person and that person to change something,
change some practices at their workplace to waste less food.
And it's a completely different matter if you get together a
group of people who, let's say, work at food processors and
growers, packagers, marketers, regulators, distributors and so
on, and have them like align on the shared vision of a zero
waste to generate the food system.
And then you help them keep pushing, keep moving their
organizations in the direction and collaborating in ways that
would not have been possible individually.
So that's how you can create systemic change.
And so that's the next stage for work on climate is having people
engage in coordinated action, but I digress.
So that was 1 reframe. That was reframe from finding
climate jobs to using your power as a professional, like your
skills, your influence, your understanding of the industry.
The second reframe was when I around the time I came across
the concept of regenerative economics.
And it was actually very funny. We were finalizing our rewritten
mission statement at work on climate.
And then my board, it was talking about solving climate
change still and about like mobilizing professionals to use
their power for it. And then my board chair, Jeremy
says, like, I like it, but like, what about biodiversity?
What about conservation? They seem really interconnected.
And I was, I thought, oh, Jeremy, like always has
something to say. But you have a point.
And I thought, I wonder if this is what he's talking about.
I wonder if that is what is called that regenerative
economy. So I looked up the paper about
regenerative economics by John Fullerton and was like, that's
it. That's what I'm going to be
doing for the rest of my life. And like, yes, it is a little
bit woo woo. People who talk about it
sometimes talk in very like in language that practical people
don't normally don't talk in. And it seems strange, but the
core of it is so right that I'm going to dedicate the rest of my
life to figure out how to put it into practice and, like, get rid
of the woo woo and make it actually work.
So it was a very profound and spiritual experience for me.
Yes. Go ahead, dress.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm so happy to hear all
of that. I think it's OK to be a little
woo. No, like I've also come from a
very practical background in lots of ways and been like, Oh
no, climate requires everything to be profitable and we can't
have any green premiums and all these things that are very hard
nosed to like microeconomic thinking that I I think it's OK.
I think trying to cut all the woo out of this has made it so
that it's basically only people in suits who make press releases
who are able to do anything in climate to some extent.
And I don't think it's going to work to do the system change
necessary that is likely just needed at this point.
I'm sorry to report. We probably need some woo in
there. So I'm giving you permission to
keep some amount of woo. We we need it.
Thanks. Ross, I appreciate the
permission. And I think overall, like one of
the principles of regenerative economics is it's called
abundance of the edges. It is recognizing that
innovation and you know, progress and something really
new happens at the intersection between two very different
ecosystems or groups. And I think in this case it
means that the the suits need to hang with the woo people and
neither of them can do it on their own.
Where did that happen? Are you trying to get this to
happen in the right kind of way? Because they could also drive
each other absolutely nuts. And also both groups of those
people have driven me nuts at various times in my career as
well. Sometimes when I'm around the
suits, I represent a little more woo.
When I'm with the woo, sometimes I'm a little more suit.
But I feel like too much of that can.
Also, it isn't always a productive friction.
How do you make that a productive friction?
Yeah, very good question. So I'm talking both about like
the idea of getting people with different mindsets in the same
room, but also about the idea of outsiders.
So like woo people. So some some of my favorite
people in the regenerative economic space are people who
used to be suits. But John Fullerton, for
instance. John Fullerton.
Yeah, John Fullerton is a great example.
Or, you know, Samantha Power, She was, she had a long career
in International Development finance, like doing it the
conventional way at the World Bank.
And then I was like, this doesn't work at all.
It doesn't do anything. This is completely the wrong way
to distribute funding and heal communities.
And now she is heading the Bio Fi project and developing
regenerative financial vehicles that can allow money to flow in
a community. Not in a top down way, but like
in the way that nutrients flow in an in an Amazon rainforest or
the way that blood flows in our body and carries nutrients to
everywhere they're needed and maintaining the system's health.
So a a lot of people like that. Wow, OK, what a beautiful
vision. So fascinating to see work on
climate change. I also, correct me if I'm wrong,
work on climate grew out of COVID.
People are at home. They're on their computers a
lot. You know, climate is in a hype
cycle. That's very nice during this
time. It's a good time to be working
in climate. People want to pivot.
It no longer feels that way basically at all.
I think we're all watching the way the world is changing with
some amount of horror and trepidation about how bad it's
likely to get. It doesn't seem like it's going
well. Work on climate is now changing
though, because it came out of that moment no longer fits the
purpose. And also the problem that you
thought you were solving was just too small.
It actually needs to be a much bigger mission.
But this is also the problem with holistic thinking too.
The common criticism of systems thinking people is that they
just say everything is contextual and you never
actually have to have a finite point that can be testable.
It's kind of like so holistic that it's not reproducible in
any way. It's very flim flam.
Work on climate could face organizationally a similar kind
of problem Here too. We're trying to tackle the Poly
crisis, and the Poly crisis is nearly everything.
How do you have an organization that's effective that the
mission is literally that big? Yeah, very good question, which
I think goes to the conversation about a world theory of change.
Like how do we get from this economic system to a completely
different economic system? So I think it is useful to
remind ourselves what regenerative economics actually
is, and that's going to give us some clues about how to get
there. So I like framing it in one of
three ways. One way to frame it, which
resonates with particularly hard nosed practical people, is that
it's an economy that doesn't have tragedies of the Commons.
Like everyone can see that we have tragedies of the Commons.
Even the, you know, the biggest, most obtuse technocrat will say
that they exist and they will all say that would be nicer if
they didn't. It just so happens that in order
to not have tragedies of the Commons, you need to build a
regenerative economic system, which is completely different.
But anyway, that's the framing. The second framing is that it's
an economy where all activity strengthens the health of the
systems that it depends on. For example, you know, the
business activities of a company strengthen the well-being of the
people that the company needs to to operate.
And the people that the company needs to be its customers
strengthens the natural ecosystems and supply chains
that it needs in order to do it's thing.
And as a government, you know, operates, it strengthens the
health of the nation and so on. So this is a rather vague
framing, but I think it portrays an inspiring vision.
Like imagine if we weren't confined to simply hoping to
destroy our foundations a little bit less.
And if instead the economy was actually positive.
Like the more the economy does, the healthier everything gets.
Wouldn't that be nice? Yes, I agree that sounds.
That sounds delightful. Yeah, it it really would.
Be nice. But this begs the question like,
how the hell do you do it? Is it even possible?
So the third framing shows that it is possible.
The third framing calls upon us to realize that all the living
systems around us are actually economies, and they have a lot
to teach us about how to do it. So, for example, the cells in my
body exchange resources with each other and exchange signals
with each other. That's an economy, right?
That's an economy. Likewise A rainforest, You know,
the animals and bacteria and plants and so on also exchange
resources and signals with each other.
That's also an economy. And these economies have been
extraordinarily successful at persisting for a long time and
getting better over time. Like there are 50 million year
old rainforests out there to my knowledge.
So I, I don't think that even Elon Musk can say that our
civilization will have that kind of track record of health over
the long time. Right.
So the, the suggestion here is to be like, hi, I wonder how
they do that? Like, I wonder what are the
principles that allow natural systems to be like that, like
allow them to operate in a way where like everyone's needs are,
you know, met in a way that strengthens the health of the
whole. How do they do that?
And then can we borrow some of those principles and incorporate
them into the way that we run the economy?
I want to be very clear that the proposal is not to destroy our
economy and go back to nature. That is a completely different
proposal. The proposal is to observe,
like, I wonder how they do that and is there something we can
learn from that? Is there something we can
transfer into the way that our economy runs so that the
regenerative economy is the idea of borrowing enough of those
principles to make our economy regenerative and make it so that
all the cool stuff that we have here, like all our, you know, AI
and genetic engineering and infrastructure and Internet and
so on. So that all of that stuff
actually causes the economy to make everything healthier over
time. So that's the, that's the idea.
Wow. It's.
Interesting to me that people associate regenerative economics
with the sort of back to the land, small is beautiful
aesthetic because I think of bio mimicry, but I also think of
increasing complexity of our social lives that are
intertwined, not a reduction of complexity where we're we're
treating the smaller communities.
I don't think of regenerative economics as necessarily a, a
going back in time back to the land kind of movement.
Do people often levy that criticism against it because it
sounds like they haven't read it very closely?
If so, that seems like a pork criticism.
Yeah, I think. That indeed, a lot of people
perceive it that way. I think a lot of people perceive
it as something too obstructive and know what the hell it is
about. I think that's a more serious
risk. For the paradigm than anything
with a serious. Risk.
Yeah. But this is the vision that that
is alive in my head. And like, I haven't really met a
lot of people who say like, no, that's the wrong vision.
We must go back to the land and like not have anything else.
I think there are some people who say that, but when you talk
to them, you know, actually they're like, oh, it's a broader
vision is nice too. I also think of someone like.
Charles Eisenstein. I imagine you probably like his
work too, right? We don't know him.
Oh, you don't? OK, He.
Wrote a book called The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know
as Possible, which is a very Wu name for a book about societal
transformation. But I kind of love it.
Like, it's one of those things where in the same way, in your
own heart, when you were hearing about these ideas about the Poly
crisis, they were overwhelming and you wanted to just reject it
or say, I'm just focused on my own lane and climate.
And then opening yourself up to it really is this big, It really
is this threatening? What do I do about it?
I think even saying the name of that book out loud, my heart,
like, does call out for it. Like, yeah, the world does not
have to be lived at everyone else's expense.
It does not have to be cruel by design.
We do not have to have people dying of preventable illnesses.
We do not need to be at each other's throats fighting over
resources. Like we don't actually have to
be living this way. It's, it's a terrible thing.
And it's, it's scary to say that out loud because it sounds very
naive. But also, we don't have to
behave this way like that. We can change systems and we
don't have to live immiserating one another.
Yeah. My my response to that is, well,
first of all, hell yes. Second of all, I so I see myself
as a very cynical and no bullshit person.
I'm like, I'm really allergic to actual woo woo that doesn't have
substance behind it. I'm really allergic to naivete.
I'm allergic to like when I see that somebody is proposing
something that cannot possibly work but it feels good so they
propose it. Or like their paycheck depends
on it so they propose it. Like I hate that shit.
And that is the very reason why I am putting my life to putting
regenerative economics into being because everything else,
it can't, it can't possibly work.
I just can't say with a straight face that a different approach
can work. And this is because this concept
of regenerative economics, it is, it is not like a specific
vision. Like here's how you're on the
economy. It is a property that the
economy must have. It is a property that it
increases the health of its systems.
And like if you don't have that property, by definition, you
degrade the health of your system.
So one day they're going to collapse and you don't have an
economy. There is simply no alternative.
So it is kind of obviously the right vision.
The question is, how do you do that?
And like, what does it look like and how do you get there?
Which brings me to go back to our conversation about how do
you get there and what's that got to do with work and climate.
So let's ask ourselves, how did natural systems get here?
There was a time when we didn't have the Amazon rainforest, and
it hasn't been around for 50 million years.
And there was a time when we didn't even have animals.
So all we had was a soup of chemicals.
And then we eventually had the soup of amino acids.
And then we had a soup of like RNA chains.
And then we had the soup of single cells, which turned out
to be very successful because they knew how to self replicate.
And so we had bacteria and stuff and then, you know, obviously we
didn't get to the Amazon rainforest by some bacteria out
competing others and like becoming the biggest, baddest
bacteria like the elephant. It's not a really big bacteria.
It's an entirely different category of thing.
So we got from street letters. By the way, I.
Don't think that sense has ever been said before, but OK.
Well, I hope it's vivid enough to to.
Stay in people's minds. So the way it actually happened
was after single celled organisms appeared and then it
turned out that when they collaborate and start forming
multi cell organisms, that's even better.
And when those form animals, that's also even better and form
humans. And now we know humans have
formed our own ecosystem, the economy.
So that's actually has been pretty cool for a while the way
that we have run the economy. So The thing is that this was a
sequence of increasingly complex high level organization into
networks. There was competition, yes, but
the really big like phase changes happened when the level
of organization increased and the same thing.
So our economy is today, today is more like that primordial
super bacteria. And we have a bunch of like
neoliberal spokespeople saying that to the next step is bigger
bacteria, but the next step is not bigger bacteria.
The next step is the elephant. So the next step is more high
level organization of entities, people and organizations and the
resources and the economy into higher level entities.
And this probably sounds very abstract.
So what I mean by that these things already exist.
Like the C corporation is an example of that organization.
The nation state is another example.
They're just not very healthy yet.
They're not nearly as healthy as an elephant or as a natural
ecosystem like the rainforest. But I am talking about things
like forms of ownership, forms of governance, forms of
incorporation, forms of collaboration and so on and so
on. So types of financing stacks,
types of legal agreements. So like the glue, the types of
structures that hold the economy together and cause parts to
behave as a larger whole. That's all it is.
And there is many forms of that in the economy, but we need
better forms, better and healthier and higher level
forms. So basically, I think that the
path from here to there lies in innovation on that innovation on
technologies is basically like innovation on bigger and better
bacteria. And like it's, it's not bad.
We do need to develop new types of cells.
Like for example, in order to create a human at some point to
the brain cell needed to evolve at some point, like the cells of
my eye needed to evolve. So we there is a role for change
at the level of, you know, cell capabilities, but what's really
needed is change at the level of how the economy is glued
together and wired together. So that means innovation on what
I call either network vehicles or you can call it economic
architecture patterns. So innovation on that.
And the connection to work on climate is I see it like this.
I see it as, so we were facing the task of making each sector
of the economy regenerative and it's actually bigger than making
each sector regenerative. But for the sake of the argument
and then I think that as we form networks of professionals who
want to make their sector regenerative, first they act
individually as leaders. Second, they act in coordination
and learn to to create change together at all.
And then these networks that we form them, they can become, you
know, the hardware or the substrate for people to do this
kind of innovative ways of organizing together.
So, for example, if you have a network of people in the Bay
Area food system who really want to be regenerative, at some
point this may be the right network on which to build a new
governance body for California's water resources.
Or at some point this may be the right network on which to build,
you know, a really large demand for commitment for regenerative
agriculture or something else of that sort or like a new
ownership model for, you know, farm equipment needed to the
regenerative agriculture and so on.
So this is this is what I'm talking about.
So the path is individual leadership, collective
leadership, and then regenerative collective
leadership. I am on some level talking out
of my behind because we're a few years away from even trying
that. But whenever the efforts I see
that I think are actually making the biggest difference towards
the regenerative economic system today, our efforts that develop
that kind of stuff, it's the likes of the Biofi project,
which is developing those financial vehicles and like
TIPS, transformational investment and food systems.
And like the Bloom Network, which is a community of practice
for communities everywhere that are attempting to implement
regenerative economies where they are and the Terra Nova
Foundation and so on. So they all are developing like
new structures, new forms of ownership, new forms of
collaboration, new types of learning communities that kind
of spread the DNA of what works regeneratively in one place to
another place and so on, so many different things.
To ask about, one thing I was thinking about, and I was
actually just talking to Dave about this, is that I remember
reading John Stuart Mill years and years ago, and he spends a
fair amount of time in On Liberty talking about
cooperatives. Cooperatives are going to be a
main economic institution of the future.
And as you noted earlier, it's like mostly C corps LLCS and C
corps everywhere. Like why are cooperatives not
more popular? You would think that worker
ownership would be a model that would be beloved by all.
I could see both right and left finding their own reasons for
enjoying such a thing. They're pretty rare though.
Like there are big ones like Mondragon and in Spain is really
big. There's various agricultural
ones, but overall it's like pretty small.
And then even where they do exist, like Seattle where I am,
PCC is a big cooperative grocery chain.
But it. Chronically has issues.
Where it just like does not function as neatly as Kroger or
the conventional corporate approach to Agri business and
food systems, despite people really wanting it to.
It's more expensive and yet it's pretty crowded whenever I get in
there. And so people are there because
they care about it and yet it's chronically in trouble.
Why is it that models like cooperatives cannot just get
ahead? Like what's wrong with them
that's preventing them from being more dominant than more
profit seeking top down types of structures?
I don't know. But I think the the task ahead
of us is to make them better. So it just so happens that
indeed, right now the likes of the traditional C corporation
and like private equity forms and firms and the Exons and the
buyers and Monsantos of the world are currently more
revolutionarily fit. And yes, they're, they're
winning in some sense temporarily.
They're winning in the same sense that the cancer is winning
as it takes over the body. So yes, they are, they're
successful at killing the other stuff, but unfortunately they
are not successful at keeping the foundations that they depend
on healthy. So sooner or later they will
collapse. This is simply inevitable, which
I guess brings us back to one of the points we were making
earlier. So I want to make several points
from here. So one point is that I think it
means that as we figure out how do we create new regenerative
structures in the economy, it is incredibly important, like
vitally important that we don't just ask ourselves like, what is
good? Like, how do I run a good
cooperative? But we ask ourselves a different
question. How do I run a good cooperative
that wins in the fight to death with an extractive cooperative?
Because the extractive cooperative, like it's on a
mission to kill you. It's it's on a mission to take
market share. And like, people there are
thinking, how do we kill this corporate if and take its market
share? That's literally what they're
thinking. They're maybe phrasing it in
corporate words, but that's what they're thinking and they're
very good at it. And so we must ask this
question, how do we win in a fight to death with the
incumbent system? And we must also ask ourselves
the question, how do we not become what we seek to defeat?
So there are there is no shortage of examples of, for
example, climate start-ups that are then, you know, some kind of
carbon removal start up that then Shell buys it and now use
its its carbon removal to extract more fossil fuels by
injecting carbon into fossil fuel reservoirs, right?
Or maybe some regenerative agriculture start up that gets
an offer that it cannot refuse from Monsanto.
And now it's now it's doing the thing that Monsanto wants it to
do. So we must build structures that
are resistant to corruption and Co option as well.
And these are very hard problems and we haven't solved them,
which is like, which is why, which is why we don't yet have
cooperatives taking over everything.
We simply haven't evolved far enough.
But we need to evolve further. Otherwise we're going to we're
going to collapse. And honestly, I think we are
going to collapse. Well, hopefully we're going to
collapse once and not ten times. So on that point, back to our
conversation about like what gives me hope and when we're
facing all of this collapse. Another thing that I think how I
can increase degree of self regulation and acceptance and
equanimity has helped me accept is that I don't think that there
is a way to, I don't think that we will like solve all of these
crises before the big one hits in some sense.
Like I think that something truly catastrophic is going to
happen to the economy, let's say in the next 50 years.
And I think that is going to take a lot longer than that to
develop a full regenerative economy just because of the time
that cycles of change take. Maybe I'm wrong, I would love to
be wrong, but we can't count on that.
So the question is then like, if I believe that, how do I, what
is my hope in and how do I stay grounded?
So like, honestly, this isn't the, the first time in the
history of life or even the in the history of humanity when
something collapsed. Like it's us kind of privileged
white communities who are not used to that.
But lots of Indigenous nations have been almost completely
obliterated. And then, you know, they came
back from that. Maybe that happened many times.
Maybe they're still not in a great state, but like it's
pretty normal. Many species of animals, many
natural ecosystems have been destroyed.
And then, you know, life goes on.
So the vision in my head is that, yes, it's going to
collapse and then something healthy will grow from the
ashes. Maybe something unhealthy will
grow and it will collapse again. And then the third thing will
grow. So sooner or later, by
definition, sooner or later we are going to have a regenerative
economy because it's the only thing that's going to be stable.
But I personally would like it, AI would like it to happen
sooner, which we have the power to make it happen sooner because
unlike natural evolution, we don't just have to rely on
selection and things failing. We can direct it intentionally
so we can make it happen sooner, even if I'm not confident that
we can make it happen before the 1st collapse.
So that's, that's kind of my take on this.
Wow. They're kind of deep time
perspective. It's not quite deep time.
It's somewhere before that, but it's it's not far off is.
Pacifying to me I. Feel calm as a result of
thinking like OK it may not be this current incarnation of
humans, but potentially we reduced to a lower level of
complexity and then learn better of past mistakes and figure it
out. Alternatively, though, we have
plenty of of culture that has players in video games that are
in the midst of cultures that once rise and fall, and now
we're in their ruins. We don't really understand why
they passed away. Like The Elder Scrolls mythology
is very much of this ilk. You're like, what happened to
the dwarves? I don't know.
They were technologically very advanced.
Something really bad happened to them.
We'll figure it out later. I feel like that kind of
mythological message is very present in our culture.
I suspect it would probably continue.
It's also like A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Have you ever read that? I have not read.
That one, No. Yeah, very.
Similar to of humans living in the the shell of the former
civilization and also just Western civilization for a long
time was that with Rome, like once Rome was gone, it reduced
to a much lower level of complexity.
And that is something that we are used to doing and things
will get better. Now this is more like what was
that great die off that happened where all humans are descended
from like 100 humans that somehow survived the disaster in
Africa like millions of years ago that we passed through an
evolutionary gate. And it's like this narrow and
like humans almost, it's like we're all descended from not
even that many of like, proto humans.
So whatever, we'll probably figure it out and it will be OK.
And that's relaxing to me. But crap, I'm thinking about a
lot about my own life. And pretty much all you can
control, as far as I can tell, is your own behavior, your own
reactions, how you treat one another.
And I remember talking to Daniel Schmachenberger about this.
We had this like, weird. We were at a castle in France
and for like a couple days and I got to spend a lot of time
hanging out with him. Very obsessed with the
prisoner's dilemma. Very obsessed with what do we do
given that defection is so likely for so many people?
Like it's always easier to cheat and then take the thing for
yourself. We're in an arms race dynamic
too. We're like, OK, if if Sam Altman
decides that AGI is not really the thing that they care about
anymore, there's probably 20 other organizations that are
racing for AGI. Like someone is going to do it.
So like, then what? Then what do we do?
Like with with Daniel, the only thing that I could kind of come
to was a sort of thorough going Christian, pacifistic, turn the
other cheek. Like we need people who are
spiritually evolved enough to be thoroughly nonviolent,
thoroughly humane, and to be that even at great personal
cost. Because we need to change that
prisoner's dilemma dynamic and try to find ways to do that.
And I can't remember if he liked that idea.
I suspect he probably thought that we needed something that
had a tighter like logic to it, a tighter economic logic to make
sure it wasn't just dependent upon great spiritual strength.
And it sounds like maybe you're heading in that direction too,
where this is not really a spiritual thing for you.
This meditation, there's a spiritual component to it, but
it shouldn't require self sacrifice to the extent that I'm
describing in order to pull this off.
Or we didn't, we didn't figure it out.
Is that correct? Yeah, That's that's.
Correct. So I think one of the indeed,
one of the philosophies that some people hold about how we're
going to get there is like, you ask people like, what is a
plausible path to getting there? And then they answer a different
question is what they would like to happen in order for that to
happen. And they say like, oh, mass
scale cultural transformation is needed.
Like, yes, it's either, but it's not plausible.
So I'm sorry, you're not answering the question.
It's because honestly, most people don't have an answer to
that question. And that's OK.
Like, I have an answer that I think that is credible enough to
me, but it is also not without major gaps.
I think that like culture and economy and policy are mutually
shaping. So none of them is primary the
thing that this primary structure.
So there is an insight by Donnella Meadows that I really
like, which says that the behavior of a complex system is
determined not by its parts, but by how they're connected to each
other. So that is a very crucial
insight. It means really that the thing
that matters is the topology of the system rather than its
technology, so to speak. And what that means in terms of
a path to a regenerative economy, again, I think it
mirrors the path that life took where we we need to develop new
forms of healthy organization, healthy organizations and
collaborations, ownership, financing, tax and so on that,
you know, start small. But they're so good at
replicating and so good at fighting and staying alive that
they basically eat the current systems from within and
successfully survive and not compete them.
Either they actually kill them or maybe the current systems
kill themselves and these things don't die.
Or maybe they, you know, enter a symbiosis with current systems
through which they are transformed.
I don't know exactly what form that may look like.
Like, I suppose I don't know, imagine AI for the sake of the
argument, the AI ecosystem. So I don't think that we're
going to address AI risks by a yelling harder at Sam Altman and
I don't think that we're going to address it by having like
some new ethical AI start up. I would compete open AI either.
But I think what my assistant says instead happened is perhaps
some kind of no new grassroots open source infrastructure for,
you know, managing data that AI is used to train as appears some
kind of collective form of ownership and governance of
that. And for some reason, you know,
for some reasons, maybe similar to the way the reasons why the
open source movement succeeded, it turns out to be so
successful, but basically open eye either has to comply with it
and follow its rules or it gets cut off from a really important
market share, something like that.
So that would be an example of a system growing in power from the
bottom up and forcing an existing system to transform.
And, you know, some systems will rather die than transform, and
that's OK, you know, they die, good riddance.
But maybe not. The point is that the healthy
thing grows big. OK, is the point then that some
of these? Cultural or spiritual changes,
like the example that I gave, are they not relevant?
Or that they're so entwined with politics and other things that
it's possible that they do have some impact?
Or maybe that they encourage some people to make structural
changes about the kinds of companies or organizations that
they start, Something like that. Or is it just a waste of time to
even think about spiritual matters?
No, it's not a waste of time to think about it.
But I basically, I believe that people's spiritual inclinations
are shaped not so much by like somebody trying to teach them a
different spiritual inclination. And they're more shaped to a
larger extent by the systems that they're part of.
Like for example, if you are a big company executives, you're
shaped every day by talking to your board and to your investors
and to your employees who want your stock to grow, otherwise
they're not worthwhile shrink and so on and so on.
So you're shaped by those systems every day and by
watching your peers who behave a certain way succeed and your
peers who behave a certain other way fail.
So the economy is shaping our spiritual faculties, and
likewise our spiritual faculties are also shaping the economy.
And our economy is shaping policy by virtue of the
successful place in the economy buying politicians.
And it happens the other way around as well.
So these things are interconnected.
None of them is primary. Any of them is like a
sufficiently useful lever. But I think structure is an even
more useful lever. But I think, you know, The thing
is that like, as we think about this, we should make sure that
our work is not erased by the forces of the system.
For example, let's say that you, you know, do some kind of
spiritual transformation work with a cohort of Business School
students, and then they go to McKinsey because that's where
the jobs are. And not much is going to be left
of your spiritual transformation work.
By the time they're done, like you, you will be lucky if
something is left. And maybe it's not completely
worthless, but a lot of it will be erased.
And that's because they will be taught to operate in a certain
model. And every day they will be
changed in the direction that's opposite from what you taught
them. So we we should be conscious of
the limits of education. I think the cultural pressures
of 1's. Work discipline are hard to
overstate. They're invisible to most of us
because they just make up the cultural environment in which
you operate on a daily basis. But what was that statement I
said earlier about the the more beautiful world we know in our
hearts as possible or whatever you said.
If you said that kind of McKenzie, I think they would be
like you. You are not a cool person
anymore, like you were in trouble.
You are not reliable. You are not a serious person.
Like just try saying something that is about the Poly crisis in
a meeting where you're like I'm glad your organization was
tolerant of it, but I can also imagine your board member saying
that in some groups just like stay in our lane, like we only
need to do one thing and like why even bring this up?
We can't even solve one problem. Well now we have to solve 3
problems simultaneously. Like some of that stuff just
looks inherently less serious to organizations that are more
conventional. So the amount of cultural
pressure there is to conform to what is deemed to be practical
even in like sustainable ESG oriented fields.
I put out a show recently about what it's like trying to sell to
a mid of companies and having to potentially celebrate their
achievements in public even when they're relatively small and do
not account for all of their emissions and they are still
continuing to do not so nice things.
But you kind of have to clap for them all the same.
Be like, thank you so much X company for your great
leadership on on carbon removal. Or you're like, but privately
people are like, those companies sucks.
Like we would be better off if this company didn't exist at
all. But you have to say it.
You got to see the thing. Yeah, both can be true.
Like maybe we would be. Happier if this company didn't
exist at all, but it's also good that they made some progress
here. Like, I don't know, no humans
are perfect either. And I think that I, I don't
really know how to say this without sounding like a walking
cliche, but I think that this, this does hold water.
So as long as they're being, you know, authentic, you know, why
not? Why not applaud them if they're
doing it for the right reason rather than for the reason of
just green washing, which it's really hard to know though.
Yeah, I'm sure the people who who work in those.
Departments are there. For the right reasons and and
care about it. But I think the company overall
is like they've determined that this prepares them for a pre
compliance moment that they're going to be ahead of their
competition because they already have all the connections through
all of the relevant companies that will develop projects for
them. It's like there's always a
practical logic to these decisions.
It's never just let's give away our money because it would be
super nice to do. It's like, oh, this would help
us with brand equity. Yeah, though I want to bring up
something. Else I recently read this like
long philosophical essay about the philosophy of the likes of
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and GD Vance and courtesy Irvin and so
on, and the striking thing to me was this so I.
Am used to. Thinking of these people as
simply corrupt and arrogant like that.
They simply want more money and that's why they're in more power
and that's why they're acting the way they do.
I'm not. An expert in their.
Psychology, I'm just conveying like what I get the sense might
actually be the case potentially based on reading that.
So it seems like it might be that they're pursuing, like
honestly pursuing a vision of a better world rooted in a
different understanding of what a better world is, just because
they spent their whole life building machines and companies
that make machines and function like machines.
They think that the better world is a machine.
And that brings them to philosophy of this guy Curtis
Yarwin that basically everything is a corporate state managed by
ACEO. But there are some interesting
parallels there. Like there are some things that
I don't disagree with. So for example, even apparently
the philosophy of this guy Curtis Yarwin is like he
proposes to have a large network of interconnected sovereign
corporate states. Like I'm on board with the
interconnected sovereign part and what's not on board with the
part about corporate states? And like the reason that he is
for corporate states, it's not that he thinks that slavery,
corporate slavery is good and nothing to worry about.
It's more that because he thinks it won't happen.
I think he's mistaken in that. But I guess my point is that
it's there is some ray of hope in the fact that some of the
most powerful people in the world are not actually purely
motivated by money. Like they may actually be
motivated by a perverse vision of what good is.
And by I also find in those philosophies that they actually
do share some of my understanding of the role of
existential risk. That like ultimately it is about
long term survival of the civilization, even if there's
going to be a collapse in the way.
Like, hey, I'm on board to that part too.
I just completely disagree with you about what a long term
thriving civilization looks like and how to get there.
But but like, if we share that goal, like, who knows, maybe one
day you will realize that your way doesn't work and maybe
you'll start building a regenerative economy.
Yeah. I don't know how long, how far I
want to take this line of reasoning.
But I think the core point is that there is maybe some hope
that powerful people could change their mind or could be
allies on some components of what we want to do.
I think it makes sense to treat them as.
Acting in good faith. I think there are some people
who are at the the heights of wealth and corporate success
that care about winning and their ideology is basically just
that they like winning and being the best at things.
But I think for those who are ideologically motivated, I think
there's a there's a concept from from Platonic philosophy called
Acrazia. And Socrates is asking like, how
could anyone choose a bad thing if the good thing is right there
beside it? Everyone would obviously choose
the good thing, right? And obviously the the answer to
this is that they they misjudge or differently judge what is
good. And even like peels Antichrist
lectures that he's been giving recently that identifies Greta
as a great threat and a candidate to be the Christian
Antichrist is there because she prevents the technology from
saving us from our own problems that we've created through
technology and development. It's not just like evil for
evil's sake. It's a different interpretation
of reality that I think is off, but it's not just evil for
evil's sake. And I think sometimes people
forget and even like with Trump, I think Trump likes to win and
still wants to be liked. And even some of the Elon's most
pathetic stuff that is very mockable and sad, like him
playing video games where everyone's like messaging him
about Grimes, like Grimes never loved you or whatever.
You can like see it affecting him like he still has.
He like, wants to be liked by people and thought of as a cool,
smart person. Like, it's a very, very much
like a Star Wars, like Darth Vader still got some good in
him. I think most people even like
people that we have grown to distrust and find out what
they're doing to be quite terrible.
I like to think there is some hope for them.
There's still some heart left in there.
I think we do a disservice when we treat people as choosing evil
for evil's sake. I don't know that that's as
common as we might think. And maybe that's a good place to
to rap and Oh yeah, have the last word on it.
Yeah. And I think like at least.
For myself, I didn't think that they're choosing evil for evil's
sake. I thought they're choosing evil
because it benefits them, like, because they want to feel like a
savior or something like that. But what I didn't realize that
there might be actually a philosophy, even a philosophy I
don't disagree with, I don't agree with.
Behind it. Yeah.
You gotta go read some Renee Gerard and some.
Of the other people that they they like.
And for next time, we'll talk critical theory and all that
stuff. Yeah, Thank you for coming on
the show. I really appreciate your work.
Yeah, Thanks, Russ. This was great.