Transcript
Several weeks ago, Mark Cuban, who’s the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he was on the daily show with John Stewart, and I’ve met a few extremely rich people in my life, and I wish more people were like Mark Cuban, honestly. I think if I ever met him, I probably would like him. They both had a very interesting conversation about where we are in this country. And about AI and wealth inequality, playing a vital role going forward. And guys, one thing that you’re gonna learn from me is AI is coming. It’s gonna exacerbate wealth inequality. And we need, guys, we need to transition to what I call a heart based caring economy before it fully takes root. Now, you can’t stop it, you can’t legislate it out of existence, because if we don’t, we’ll mess with AI, then certain bad actors will do that. Happily, i.e. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. So AI is coming. It’s going to displace a lot of jobs, and when I say a lot of jobs, guys, I think people are vastly underestimating. How many jobs we’re talking. We’re talking 30, 40, 50 percent of jobs that people do currently will be done by AI.
Now, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, how do we handle that technology? It’s not a black and white or either or I don’t want you to go into that right now. I know that the change is coming, but we just need to know to what extent do we want that change to happen? And what is it gonna affect?
And if we utilize AI in this totally selfish, let’s make billions of dollars, no matter what the social cost kind of attitude, it’s gonna suck for most of us. And this would bring the country down. It’s not going down because it woke culture or LGBTQ issues or it’s going down because of wealth, income, and opportunity inequality. Okay, that’s why it’s gonna go down. So we have to do something different if we want a different result. And I’m gonna argue that we need to transition to that heart-based carrying economy. Now, of course, the mainstream news networks and even the alternative media is not going to tell you this, they haven’t really been focusing too much on it, because they’d rather tell you something to blame. They’d rather tell you, oh, it’s the illegal immigrants. It’s the woke culture. We gotta ban some books. We need more religion. It’s about capturing people’s attention and thinking deeply about certain issues doesn’t capture people’s attention. A lot of it you’ll notice is on the right wing channels. I’m being objective here. Yeah, there’s some of it on the left wing, but a lot of it is on the right wing. And this is coming from a former Republican. Okay? I’m an Independent now, but I’m telling you, whenever they’re telling you it’s about illegal immigrants and wealth culture, they’re just lying to you, because it’s really about wealth and equality. It’s about wealth and equality full stop.
And the basic premise of our economy up to this point has been, I don’t care about you. I’m Mr. Corporation. You’re just a line item, an expense item on my corporate balance sheet. When it comes down to it, I’m gonna protect the shareholders and I don’t care about you. It doesn’t matter to me if you get kicked out, you’re on the street, you can’t pay your bills. I don’t care.
And social media isn’t helping because the people who created those algorithms are the same heartless bastards who care only about money. And we are highly susceptible to being influenced. We’d like to think, oh, we have our own minds, but we don’t. And we’re easily distracted and they’re willing to distract us.
So let’s talk about a heart based carrying economy for a moment. I don’t want to start with an exercise, but keep an open mind, keep an open heart, and close your eyes for just a moment. I want you to ask yourself, what does it say about our country? About our value system, about our people, that we have allowed one to two percent of the population to own 40 or fifty percent of the wealth? At the same time, 50% of us own less than one percent. What does it say about our country? Where we have 15 million millionaires and 50 million people living below the poverty line? I want you to think about this for a minute. Now, each of you will have a slightly different answer, but it’ll generally fall into two camps. The first camp is, screw those poor people. “It’s their own damn fault, make better choices, make better decisions.” That’s one camp, and the other one is that’s terrible. “These people are human beings after all. And doesn’t make sense. This level of inequity doesn’t make any sense. Something has to change.”
Now, for the first group, I have nothing to say to them. I have no words. Their their minds are closed, their hearts are closed. Their eyes can’t be opened. They can’t even conceive of a carrying economy, okay?
So I’m gonna address the second group. A few years ago, I was on the board of a nonprofit substance abuse treatment facility, IOP and SOP. You can Google it if you want. But we took in a lot of different people, uh some of them came directly from jail because it was court ordered. Uh, some of them came from the hospital because they had overdosed. The one thing that I had picked up on these people, even from the very beginning, was that many of them had lost touch. I mean, they were completely isolated. They had lost touch with their family, it lost touch with their friends, they were completely alone. And my initial reaction was, well, “Just make better choices. That’s your own damn fault.” Until I started talking to them. And learning about their experiences, about how they got there. And I learned very quickly and ain’t black or white. It’s nuanced. It’s pretty damn nuanced. And I would go so far as to say that if you or I were in some of their situations, maybe we’d be locked up as well. We’d be on drugs as well. What I learned is that a lot of these people, not everybody, but a lot of these people have come and dealt with tremendous levels of trauma in their lives. Trauma, that’s what it is, guys. And I know most of us did grow up that way, thankfully, but many of us do. And so far, let’s be honest here, we don’t really care. We don’t care what happens to the other group. A lot of these people are looking for an opportunity, somebody to give them a hand up. They don’t even want a hand out, guys. They just want a hand up. And there’s gonna come a time, guys, where you and I, who have didn’t grow up with that trauma, are gonna have to do something to help out those people who did. Okay? I’m not talking about the incorrigible ones, the narcissist, sociopath psychopaths, whether there was trauma or there wasn’t trauma, they just they’d still be the same, okay? I’m not talking about helping them because they don’t deserve it. But a lot of the other people, a lot of those people in the other camp, they’re just looking for a hand up, looking for an opportunity to get out. And when they don’t get that opportunity, right?
Once they get through the treatment, so a lot of these guys, there were patients in the system, they would go through the IOP or SOP treatment, and then they’re stuck again. Nobody’s willing to give them an opportunity. So, that experience guys, it just cuts the legs from under you. You can’t just say, “Oh, well, look at Ben Carson. Right? He grew up in the hood, he became a neurosurgeon.” Not everybody’s at Ben Carson. He’s special. Most people with average abilities. It would cut people extra under you this kind of experience.
Bringing him back full circle. I was watching Mark Cuban and John Stewart in that interview, and they talked about the people behind AI, the executives and owners behind AI, and how totally heartless so many of them are. Right? I’ve met a few of these people, no soul there, guys, no soul. Brilliant, brilliant people can create amazing mousetraps. But no soul completely disconnected from their hearts, from their humanity. Because they don’t ask the question, “Is this product good for society?” They just ask, “How much money can I make?” Okay, I mean, like almost like a robot, like a machine. So going back to a caring economy, going back to a heart-based economy, we have to determine how AI gets utilized, and if we utilize it through a heart centered approach, or we utilize AI for the benefit of all people, which, by the way, is definitely a possibility. If it gets rid of a lot of the so called jobs, menial tasks, labor intensive tasks, we can actually use that to improve our lives tremendously. That is a possibility. Or we can allow through our ignorance or our lack of decision making to let the corporate oligarchs use AI for their benefit and then continue to exacerbate. The wealth income opportunity inequality. So if we want a different outcome guys, something has to change. And there are some of us who need to bring a new ideas. I hope that I’m one of them. The change won’t come from folks who are not open-minded or open-hearted. The change are gonna come from those caring empathetic people who are creating a new new paradigm. It’s called many different terms, but it’s gonna have to involve the heart.
Anyway, that’s all for now, guys. Thank you so much for listening. The good to another, be kind to another, be authentic, be intentional. I’ll catch all next time.
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