WBD593 - Mark Moss: What Bitcoin Did

Mark Moss: I'm in SoCal, so then it was more of the rap, hip-hop, ska kind of thing that took off.

Peter McCormack: Well, Rage Against The Machine, I mean they're a little bit commi now!

Mark Moss: Well, they were always commi, looking backwards. Now you look backwards, right, but they were always commi, but yeah, way commi now.

Peter McCormack: Well, interesting. So, we had this conversation this morning when we were talking about this show, talking about we believe that there are certain things that Marxists and bitcoiners will agree on, one thing specifically which we'll come to, which is they recognise there's a problem. It's their ideas to solve it which is wrong. I think that's why maybe you and I, Rage appealed to us, because they recognised there's a problem in the system, and I was too young to recognise the naivety of their solutions. I still find it hard to not like the band because I just love the songs.

Mark Moss: Still, that first album was so good.

Peter McCormack: Well, every song is good. So, you know my football team?

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, we've started playing songs when the team scores, and we were playing on the weekend and we were playing Know Your Enemy. Fucking love it!

Mark Moss: At my events, I like to play Bombtrack for my walkout song.

Peter McCormack: Love that! I loved Wake Up in The Matrix. Anyway, God, let's do this.

Mark Moss: Let's do this, sorry!

Peter McCormack: By the way, that's part of the show!

Mark Moss: I love hanging out and catching up with you. I don't talk to many people that are --

Peter McCormack: Commis!

Mark Moss: -- as progressive as you.

Peter McCormack: I'm not a progressive.

Mark Moss: And have an open mind about it, right. So, we can talk about these things and joke and have fun with them.

Peter McCormack: Can you get up my pinned tweet? I'm not a progressive.

Mark Moss: You like to push progressive ideas.

Peter McCormack: I like to push freedom ideas.

Mark Moss: I don't know if they're freedom ideas.

Peter McCormack: Some of them are. This to me, this is what my career is.

Danny Knowles: Oh, yeah.

Peter McCormack: And this is absolutely true. I don't think I've ever really changed who I am. I've learnt more things and I think I've got a more nuanced opinion, but bitcoiners definitely see me like that, screaming progressive. When I go home, people think I'm Alex Jones, they absolutely think I'm Alex Jones.

Mark Moss: Really?

Peter McCormack: The point of this is to try and get across to people there's a big difference between Europe and America, and I think sometimes neither truly understands each other, the cultural background of why they are the way they are, and that's a problem because if we're going to live in a world, well maybe not now based on what we're going to talk about, but if we're going to try and cooperate, we're going to have to understand why we're different, why is Europe more to the centre ground, why is America more polarised, and they're really important issues. But I am seen as progressive here, but no way am I seen as progressive in the UK.

Mark Moss: You know I hosted the Alex Jones show?

Peter McCormack: Did you? When?

Mark Moss: Two months again.

Peter McCormack: Did you?

Mark Moss: He got up, he was like, "All right, I'm out of here, you host the desk", and he walked out and I was like, "What? Okay!" and I hosted a whole segment on the show!

Peter McCormack: Are you a fan of him?

Mark Moss: No, not really.

Peter McCormack: Oh, are you not?

Mark Moss: You know, I've never really watched him. I've seen clips here and there, a couple of interviews, so I wouldn't say I'm a fan at all, I don't watch his content. I think he's been right about a lot of things, I think he's very abrasive and over the top on a lot of things. I think he's probably been right on -- I don't know, I'm not a big fan, I haven't absorbed a lot of content. I think there's a lot of things that he is right about. He just recently released a book called The Great Reset; I think it's pretty correct.

Peter McCormack: Do you think saying someone's right about a lot of things is an excuse? Rogan's the one who said that originally. He's been right about so much.

Mark Moss: He has been.

Peter McCormack: But is that not an excuse.

Mark Moss: An excuse for what?

Peter McCormack: For all the things he was wrong about that caused harm?

Mark Moss: Like what?

Peter McCormack: Well, his accusations of what happened.

Mark Moss: So, Sandy Hook?

Peter McCormack: Sandy Hook.

Mark Moss: So, let's take that just as a clip. So, he goes live I think 4 hours a day, 3 hours a day or 4 hours a day every day, so that's 20 hours a week of content times 52 weeks in a year times how many years since Sandy Hook, 5 or 6? So, how many thousands of hours of content? The total amount of time he's talked about Sandy Hook on a show was 24 minutes.

Peter McCormack: What's your point you're making with that.

Mark Moss: So, he's never once mentioned any parents' names, never once mentioned their kids' names. If you remember when Sandy Hook came out, there was all types of information, it was as false flag, and these crisis actors, etc. And so he said, "Hey, maybe we should look at this, maybe we should question it", and I think we should always question everything, we should always look at everything. He never said, "Those parents never lost their kids, they're stupid, it's all --" So, the media's talked about it for thousands of hours.

Peter McCormack: Factchecking this live is going to be difficult, but I'm sure when it -- look, do I think he should --

Mark Moss: Okay, so factcheck. So, he told me that, "I only talked about it for 24 minutes". You could factcheck that. That's what he told me. I think it's a much bigger issue that we can actually talk about. I did an interview with Robert Barnes, who's a constitutional attorney, and we talked about this and we talked about it in light of Tornado Cash, Alex Jones and 6 January and the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents, and all of those are actually attacks on free speech but from different angles.

So, you take something that most people would agree on like, "He said to me things about parents whose kids died", which is super-mean and I wouldn't like that, nobody would like that. Everybody would agree that saying bad things about parents whose kids were killed is bad, we can all agree on that, so you get public support. Then you use that to say, "We should make laws to prevent people from ever saying things like that".

Peter McCormack: No, you see I don't agree with that.

Mark Moss: That's what they're doing.

Peter McCormack: Look, don't get me wrong. For anyone listening, I am in litigation for saying words. I completely disagree with that, and when you go through litigation for saying words, you then become conscious of the words you say and think, "I can't say that now", and that's a problem. We had it yesterday. Me and Danny were talking about something I'd said in a show. It's like, "Should we edit that out; I might face litigation?" That's not a good place to be, because whether you think I'm an entertainer, a journalist or a moron, there are elements of what I do which are journalistic, and now as a journalist you're fearing saying things? That's a problem.

Mark Moss: Sure.

Peter McCormack: So, I don't think Alex Jones should have got a $1 billion fine, or whatever it was. I think the public embarrassment is enough. I just would not consume his content, because I think, "You dick", and I think that is the right result. But let's not get away from what he actually said, because he said some pretty fucking shocking things and that had some serious implications on the parents, who were grieving dead children and then being accused and receiving death threats because they'd been accused of being crisis actors. I prefer journalism with a bit more responsibility; that was irresponsible.

Mark Moss: Part of the problem that we have though is that because the government hides everything, and there's no transparency, it leads to wild speculation. So, over and over and over, if the government would provide that transparency, come out and give answers, school shootings are one, the Las Vegas' situation's one, I mean we could name all these different conspiracy theory-type deals; and without that transparency, we're just left to speculate, and then that runs rampant. We see all the time in relationships, or whatever, imagination gets the best of you.

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I'm with you. You can take that lens for multiple things. I think you can take the exact same lens for what's happened with all the crypto blow-ups this year, because what you have is companies able to get outside of regulation, do whatever the fuck they want, and that causes damage. What's the alternative? Regulate everything for consumer protection and people feel constrained, which nobody likes, and that's the same with journalism. You can have citizen journalism, like Elon Musk wants, when what ends up happening, you don't really get citizen journalism; you get so much noise, you don't know what to decipher as truth.

Mark Moss: Or you start to find out who the people are, the signal, and you follow the signal.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but signal can come from audience capture. We talked about Tim Pool. I don't see Tim Pool as signal because there's too much audience capture in there. There's very few people I trust, like Matthew Taibbi, Bari Weiss, there's a couple of people in the UK. But the point is, I think there's no right answer. You either have anarchism, which is an absolute mess, or you have strict regulation, you don't know who to trust and you feel like you're being conned. I genuinely don't know the answer, it's just a big fucking mess! Did you find anything; were you looking it up?

Danny Knowles: I couldn't find anything about the 24 minutes of him talking about it.

Peter McCormack: Did you find anything about what he actually said.

Danny Knowles: I mean, he called it a hoax, said, "It was a real as a $3 bill", or something.

Mark Moss: He did, and he admits that he said that, and he has publicly apologised multiple times.

Peter McCormack: But that means he's not somebody I can -- you say he's been right on multiple things. He's just not signal for me.

Mark Moss: I'm not saying he's signal, I said I'm not a fan, I don't consume his content. He wanted to talk about the book and I was in Austin, and so I came by to talk about my book, and then he got up and walked out the show and I hosted the show!

Peter McCormack: What was that like?

Mark Moss: It wasn't like this big pre-planned thing where he was like, "Hey, are you a big fan; do you want to come and host my show?" it was like, "Hey, let's talk about your book". I'm trying to talk about my book, The UnCommunist Manifesto, he talks a lot about Marxism and communism and the World Economic Forum so it fits right in, perfect, so I went and talked about it. And then, like I said, he got up and walked out.

Danny Knowles: Why did he leave; what did you say to him?

Mark Moss: I think he's got a pretty bad substance problem, and that's pretty well known.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay.

Mark Moss: I don't know, he seemed like he was a mess, which I think he seems like he's a mess to everybody.

Peter McCormack: Well, he's under a lot of pressure.

Mark Moss: This is right in the middle of the whole lawsuit situation, it was a couple of months ago. And every break, every commercial break, he'd get up and leave the room and then he'd come back in.

Peter McCormack: Have a cigarette?!

Mark Moss: I don't know what he was doing! Then on one of them he was like, "All right, I'm out of here, you just host the next segment!"

Peter McCormack: Well, you're a natural host anyway.

Mark Moss: Yeah, I mean I host my own show, so I was like, "Okay, whatever".

Peter McCormack: I was watching you on YouTube the other day and I was saying to Danny, "Fucking hell, Mark is good, Mark is a natural". I saw Svetski when I was in Lugano.

Mark Moss: He said he gave you a copy of the book.

Peter McCormack: He did and I said, "Send me your Bitcoin address", because I always want to pay for things, I don't want anything for free, and he still hasn't sent me it. So, I've got the book, but I haven't read it.

Mark Moss: So, The UnCommunist Manifesto, we'll plug that.

Peter McCormack: Yes, the book.

Mark Moss: It's on Amazon, we had really good reviews. We got 200-plus five-star reviews, now we've hit bestseller in a couple of categories.

Peter McCormack: Nice!

Mark Moss: I'm really proud of it. Karl Marx was a philosopher and he writes in a philosophical way. Alex Svetski is also a philosopher, he writes that way. I'm more of an analytical thinker. So, he wrote two chapters, I wrote two chapters, then I went back through his chapters, he went through my chapters, and I think it came out really, really well.

Peter McCormack: You've read it, haven't you?

Danny Knowles: I've read some of it.

Peter McCormack: Why did you write the book?

Mark Moss: So, obviously I've been pushing capitalism and free markets, and Bitcoin obviously, the opposite of that being communism or socialism or whatever, and I've studied a lot about that side of politics or economics and I've read a lot about Karl Marx, I've read a lot about the history of the Bolshevik Revolution and all of that. But I've never actually read his own work. I always say all the time, "I take people at their word", so I read Klaus Schwab's books, I read them, I want to read directly from the source and not people's opinions about them. It was when BLM was doing all the rioting, etc, in the United States and the leaders of BLM said, "We are trained Marxists.

Peter McCormack: Are they the people who've got like a $2.4 million mansion?!

Mark Moss: Yeah, the women who were running it, yeah, and they've squandered all the money. So they said, "We are trained Marxists", so I was like, "What does that mean; what is a Marxist really? Well, let's go to the source and let's read Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto".

Peter McCormack: You read it, didn't you?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, well I listened to the audio book.

Mark Moss: So, I went and I got the book and I was shocked. I was like, "I can't believe anybody could actually read this book and actually like it". And it was shortly before, months before I went down to El Salvador, and I went down there with Svetski, and I brought a copy of the book. It's a booklet, it's a 45-minute read. Some of the best books in history, like Rothbard's Anatomy of the State, or Bastiat's The Law, they're just booklets, they don't need a whole novel. So, it's about a 45-minute read and I brought it and I was like, "Have you ever read this book?" and he said the same thing, "No, I haven't". I said, "If people read this book, I can't believe they would like what's in there".

So I thought if we could shine a light on it, kind of what -- you mentioned Libs of TikTok; what Libs of TikTok does, it just holds a mirror up. All they're doing is reposting what people are putting on.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's not exactly true. They do add commentary.

Mark Moss: Sometimes. Most of the time, I've seen they're just reposting stuff, which as a social media user, one of the key metrics I look for is people that share my stuff. I say all the time, "Sharing my stuff is great, it's a compliment". So, they're reposting people's stuff and they're not happy about it.

Peter McCormack: Look, don't get me wrong, the stuff I've seen with teachers crying because they can't talk to 4-year-olds about their gender, don't get me wrong, I've been to school, we never had any teachers talking about gender or sexuality, any of that stuff. I send my kid to school and I want them to learn about maths and dinosaurs. I don't want them to learn about this, I don't even want them being taught gender and stuff in the school. There's certain things I think should be taught at home, and I see that and I think it's fucking mental.

But I have heard people say, "Libs of TikTok just reposts content". They do repost content and that's fine, but they don't just repost content, they add commentary at times. And I'm only saying that just to be honest. And some of the commentary is hilarious, but I don't think they get it right every time. I think 95% of the time, but they don't get it right every time.

Mark Moss: Okay, so kind of the same way though, if we could shine a light on what the Communist Manifesto is, so people could actually understand it, they think -- there was a survey done by Yale a couple of weeks ago, and they asked students what their preferred economic situation would be, capitalism or socialism, and 60% chose socialism.

Peter McCormack: What age?

Mark Moss: It was called "the students".

Peter McCormack: Okay. And are these people who understand?

Mark Moss: They don't understand, which is exactly why I want to shine the light on it so they can see what it is.

Peter McCormack: No, I think you're missing my point. It's not whether they understand the negative effects of true socialism, like communism; it is, are these people who think socialism is like the UK offering the NHS, or it is communism? Like I say, I think the term "socialism" is now widely used as things that the government provide, which is welfare support, Medicaid, whether it's here, social security; I think most people consider those socialist policies, but it's not socialism.

Mark Moss: They think of all the good, they don't think about the bad, they don't think about the consequences.

Peter McCormack: No, what I'm saying is, it's just not socialism. Socialism is the workers owning the means of production. Is it the workers owning the means of production? Yeah.

Mark Moss: Or the state, the state controlling the means of production.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, sorry, the state controlling the means of production, and there's no property rights. I don't think they think that. I think they can have a home, but if they fall on bad times, they'll get social support. I think that's what people think socialism is now. I think if you ask ten people what socialism is, I think you'll be lucky to get one who will actually describe --

Mark Moss: I agree completely with you.

Peter McCormack: So, that question when they're saying they want socialism, I don't think they're asking for communism.

Mark Moss: Which is exactly why I want to highlight the book that lays it all out, so they really know what this is about, from his own words, laid out specifically. So when they say, "I'm a trained Marxist", well, what did Marx teach? So, let's go back to the source.

Peter McCormack: What did you get from the book?

Danny Knowles: I read his actual work first. I went to it to basically be, "I'm going to dunk on this, this will be funny", and like you, I don't know how people are into that. But what happened was, I then went back and listened to -- there was a big prelude in the book that explained the state of society at that time in Europe, and it definitely made me understand it more, once I understood what society was going through at the time and the lack of social mobility, all that kind of stuff. It made me understand why people believed in it then; but in hindsight, clearly it's mad.

Peter McCormack: So, I've not read it and my opinions of Marx were based on things I've read or seen where people have said, "Marxism's responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people", that kind of thing. There's a guy I had on the podcast once, called Steve Keen, he does a different kind of economics, interesting guy. He said something about Marx, maybe it was to do with his birthday or something, and I said, "Fuck this guy, he's responsible for the deaths of 100 million people" and he said, "No he's not, it's the people who implemented their views on Marxism". He said, "You can be critical of Marx, but his observations were correct".

Mark Moss: His observations were completely incorrect.

Peter McCormack: I know, but I'm just telling you, what I'm saying is this is what this guy said to me, "He had observations which were correct". And it was when Danny came to me and said, "If you read this, Marxists sometimes see the similar problems to bitcoiners". Now, I see some doubt with you with that.

Mark Moss: Well, yeah, let's talk about that. But first, you haven't read his work, so we have to go back and read the original text.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, tell me, educate me.

Mark Moss: So, you asked why I wanted to read it. So, one, when I read it I was shocked and I thought, if people actually read this, to your point the college students, if they actually knew what it was, they probably wouldn't like it. So I thought, if we could actually highlight that and show what it is, people probably wouldn't like it, they wouldn't call themselves Marxists. And, two, then maybe we should write a reversal of that book and show that there's a better way.

Mark Moss: Now, I have a problem and that is that we all have biases as humans, and I have an optimism bias, I typically believe people are good.

Peter McCormack: Great, I think they are though.

Mark Moss: Not everybody, right.

Peter McCormack: But generally.

Mark Moss: So, I typically would try to give people the benefit of the doubt. So, giving Marx the benefit of the doubt, we can look back to what Danny said, which is what was happening at the time when he wrote it and how was the world in transition, and all of these things. But anyway, that was the reason why I wrote the book. When I read it, I was shocked, I wanted to highlight it, I wanted to set the record straight, so that's what we did.

Danny Knowles: Do you think it's fair to hold that to modern-day account?

Mark Moss: No, we should always be able to change our minds. Knowing what I now know, so when information changes, we change our mind. So, he wrote that at the time, and maybe he thought that was a good idea at the time. But now, we have the benefit of hindsight and we know those ideas don't work. And, that's why history's so important, and one side of the aisle wants to get rid of history or change history, but history's important, whether it's good or bad, because we need to learn from history.

We can really see, during the French Revolution, that was part of the problem; they got rid of all the history and they had to start from scratch versus the American Revolution took the lessons of the past and rebuilt off of that. So, whether history is good or bad, whether it was horrific or great, we still need it because that's how we continue to build.

Peter McCormack: Completely agree. Okay, so talk me through The Communist Manifesto.

Mark Moss: So, I think the first thing with The Communist Manifesto, the first part that really stuck out to me was he says, "To summarise communism in one statement is, 'The abolition of private property'". So to your point, these kids in college, they don't realise it's like, "I don't own anything". And so, that right there, we could sit there and unpack just that piece, but it's like what is private property; why is private property important; how does private property help people and humanities, etc. So, the abolition of it, just get rid of it altogether. So, I think there's a big misunderstanding of even what that means.

For example, I believe that my body is my private property. You can't make me move my arm, only I can. And so then, if I had a rare form of diabetes where I can't store fat on my body, then I'd have to eat 24/7. But if I can store a little bit of fat, that's like a battery, and so then I don't have to eat for the next couple of days, I could burn off my fat. When I'm expending energy, thinking, working, digging holes, whatever, I'm expending my life's energy, my battery. And let's say that I dig for four hours a day and I earn enough to provide for my needs for that day, so every day I have to work for four hours to get enough food or shelter to live.

Let's say that I decided to work an extra four hours, where do I store that? That's my energy I expended, I need to store that, so money could be like this storage of energy which then allows me to not work tomorrow, so it's a battery, it's where I store my wealth. Well, that's my life I've given up. And then, if I work long enough, I could buy a cow and now that cow allows me to live longer, this house provides me shelter, and that's my battery, that's what allows for self-preservation. And then it allows me to start thinking long term.

So, if you strip away all private property, where does that leave society? Of course, as bitcoiners, we talk about this long time perspective all the time, so I think that was the first statement that shocked me, which was abolition of private property.

Peter McCormack: So, giving him the benefit of the doubt, why did he want to get rid of private property?

Mark Moss: Well, what happened is, if you understand the way the world developed through lots of systems, but specifically he wrote this just after the Industrial Revolution started. Previous to the Industrial Revolution, there were no machines, so the whole world operated on farms. People are going to have this Game of Thrones vision of the world, and they don't realise that's not really how it was, because it was very difficult to even have food back then, so they had to grind wheat and it could take thousands of people just to grind enough wheat for people to live. So, just to stay alive was very difficult.

But machines enabled them to move past that. So, all of a sudden the Industrial Revolution gave them a machine that could do the work of 5,000 men, which then freed up work, which then they could focus on technology and science and medicine and things like that. So, that's where he wrote it. So, everybody basically lived on the farm, where I had to make my own clothes and make my own food and all these things; there was no specialisation of labour yet.

What happened is, we went from this feudal society, where people had money, and then we go into this industrial society, where then the rich people started building up factories and stuff like that. Now, I would imagine you had in a farm -- my father grew up on a farm in Iowa and it's a tough life. My father would basically get loaned out to other farmers to help them bring their crops in; everybody, all hands on deck. The kids worked in the fields or worked in the kitchen with their mum, and so I would imagine that families moved from the farms directly into the factories; that's just what they did.

I would also imagine that factories were probably pretty unsafe at the time. They'd just invented machines, they probably broke down all the time, there were probably lots of accidents happening, so I would imagine all those things were happening. So, he pitted two groups, the rich and the poor, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and he said that the poor, the proletariat, "Have nothing to offer but their labour. And their labour will never equate to capital". So, no matter what the poor do, they're never going to have any capital, and the rich people to have the capital are always going to be oppressing and holding them down. And I believe that's just false.

Maybe it was also indicative of the time. So we didn't have specialisation of labour, so today we have intellectual capital, we have ideas, we have more than just our labour. He was mad at the world that he couldn't provide for his family writing philosophy. So, if you know about him, he came from a very wealthy family, his parents were attorneys, his wife's family was very well-to-do as well. He had, I believe, eight kids, and he didn't want to be an attorney, he wanted to just write philosophy, but the world didn't value that and so he couldn't provide for his family, he was a horrible father. I believe four of his eight kids died, malnutrition, disease, etc.

But think about the irony here. It's actually capitalism that's allowed for the specialisation of labour that actually values philosophy today.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean he was just a victim of time, he just wasn't born at the right time. But again, I'm not a communist, just to be clear, but do you not think, if you're being charitable at the time, maybe his observations were correct in that today, it's easy for anyone to make it. Most people have got a phone these days, they can create content, they can get a job, they can create something for themselves. Back then, I can imagine it's a lot harder to break free of --

Mark Moss: We can dig deeper into his ideas and then we could say it now.

Peter McCormack: No, I'm just saying I'm not agreeing with him, I'm just saying his observation. Back then, how does somebody go from a factory worker to a factory owner; how do you get the capital to start a factory?

Danny Knowles: I think that's a good point because I think his observation was that if you worked in a factory, you worked in a factory for life, there was no social mobility. That was one of his big observations.

Peter McCormack: And look, it's an observation, and if the observation's true, it's fair, and you could see why maybe somebody thinks, "Well, that's not fair in the world". But look, life isn't fair, it just isn't.

Mark Moss: So, let's talk about that.

Mark Moss: So, he says that, to your point, there was no social mobility back then, there was no social ladder to climb. We literally lived on farms; that was it. Where were you going to climb to? Now, there were factories, so we started to form some classes and some mobility where people could make money, so it was just being formed. But there were never any social classes for people to climb.

Peter McCormack: Is that really true? Did you not have kings?

Mark Moss: You did, but that was long before this system.

Mark Moss: So, that was the feudal system, and then this was more the farm and the cottage industry system that we went into.

Peter McCormack: So you're saying, from feudal to the farming, we lost class structure?

Mark Moss: Yeah, all that broke down with the Gunpowder Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the 1500s, and so all that broke down. The churches then disbanded and opened all that back up, decentralised the land, and that was part of this 250-year pendulum swing of centralisation and decentralisation that we have.

Peter McCormack: My man has receipts!

Mark Moss: So in 1500, we swung back to decentralisation, and then 1770, or at the start of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 1700s, is when we started going back to centralisation, because now everybody moved from the farms into the cities and the factories and started this massive centralisation push.

But back to Marx, so his ideas weren't right. So, maybe that observation was a little bit right, but what he really believed is that if he pitted two arbitrary classes of people together, so poor versus the rich, where are people poor and rich; what's the dividing line? If you make a little bit more money, are you automatically rich and then you're automatically and oppressor as well? So, there's this artificial kind of class structure that he has. But ultimately, why does he want the class structure? So, you have to understand what socialism and communism is.

What he believed and what Marxists and communists believe, Marxists believe, is that you have capitalism and then it kind of runs out, and you need socialism which is the system that kind of tears this down. And then you could eventually go to have this utopian communism.

Peter McCormack: I mean, was his belief that if the factory owners owned the factory, it would raise everyone up, without realising the issues that that would cause?

Mark Moss: No, he believed that we needed to take all of that away from them. The whole book is a book of struggle, so we want to always be in struggle. And the big fallacy he has in the book is he believes that if we could take away the human desire to strive, to want more, for ingenuity, then everyone could be happy.

Peter McCormack: I mean, yeah, that's just bollocks!

Mark Moss: I believe, and we wrote in the book, that it's humans' ingenuity, it's humans' drive, it's humans' drive for more efficiency, for using our scarce resources better that leads to innovations, that leads to all of this progress. But he thinks that we could take that out of humans. And if we could take away that drive, then everyone could just be happy, which is why he says, "Each according to their ability, each according to their need", which everybody loves. So basically, "I'll just do whatever I can do, and I'm just going to have everything that I want".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you see I think that these college students that you're talking about, where they've said they believe socialism is the best form, are not believing in this, I just don't think they are.

Mark Moss: I agree, yeah, which is why I want to shine the light on this.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but there's two things there. There is educating the actual Marxists, what is wrong with Marxism; and then there's educating the socialists, so those who think they want socialism, what socialism really is. There's two different groups there.

Mark Moss: Well, it's one, educating them on what it really is; and then, two, why do you want that; why do you think it's good; what's good and bad about it?

Peter McCormack: And, are you aware of the consequences?

Mark Moss: And are you aware of where will the consequences lead?

Peter McCormack: But interestingly, I do think this is where the UBI people are potentially communists, because the way I've heard it explained is that there won't be enough jobs any more, because they will be farmed out to AI and robots and we'll have self-driving lorries, etc.

Mark Moss: Which I think is ridiculous.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, humans will just find new jobs and new services and new things. But the idea that if you give this person a base layer of money, then they can focus on what they want to do, I think is just absolute bullshit.

Mark Moss: I agree.

Peter McCormack: Basically, as you were saying that, all I was thinking is, "UBI, UBI".

Mark Moss: That's a bet on lack of ingenuity.

Peter McCormack: Yeah. And if you have a base amount of money and you can feed yourself and you can just focus on what you want to do to be happy, that's just bullshit.

Mark Moss: Yeah, it's complete. And so, I think that. And then, he also really talks about breaking down the family unit, which I think is wrong, and this is the part that I thought would be really shocking for feminists if they read the book, and he says, "Women are only for the means of production and families are for only economic gain", which at the time, I guess, in a farm industry, you have a bunch of kids and the kids help you on the farm.

But I think he hated his family. We know that because of the way he deserted his family for long periods of time. He would go travel, he left them in neglect, they died of disease and malnutrition, so he looked at his family as a burden, he hated his family, and I think he projected that onto a whole group of people he doesn't know and said, "The rich, the bourgeoisie, they just have these families, it's only pure economic, they look at their women as community property, so we should just look at women as community property". I'm like, "Do women know about that? I don't know if they would like that either".

So, I think there was a lot wrong there. But ultimately, I think he got wrong the human drive and the human strive for more, and that's capitalism.

Peter McCormack: Did he get anything right; is there anything you went, "Huh!"

Danny Knowles: What do you think about the separation of church and state, that stuff?

Mark Moss: There was no talk of the separation of church and state in The Communist Manifesto.

Danny Knowles: Interesting; did he not write about that?

Peter McCormack: There's another book though, isn't there?

Mark Moss: I mean, there's a bunch of his writings that came out. A lot of his writings didn't come out until the early 1900s, as a matter of fact, some stuff that wasn't published. So, there's a lot of stuff that he's written and I haven't really read everything.

Peter McCormack: So, I've got a Marx book at home that I haven't read yet. So when you said, "It's a short book, 45 pages", I was like, "No, this book I've got is not a 45-page book".

Mark Moss: Well, there's Das Kapital, which is the big one.

Peter McCormack: Yes, that's the one I've got, yeah.

Mark Moss: So, he didn't talk about that in the book. But I think the one thing, and I know you're trying to look for a parallel, the one thing I would say is that he saw that there was a struggle, he recognised a struggle.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think from the understanding I've been given, he felt like there was something unfair in society, and maybe that comes from his personally, but he felt like it was unfair. And I think bitcoiners think there are things that are unfair. Maybe they're different things.

Mark Moss: I don't think he viewed it as unfair; he recognised a struggle. He recognised that he couldn't have all he wanted without struggling, without fighting, without working to achieve it.

Peter McCormack: Tough life, motherfucker!

Mark Moss: Yeah, so he said that the struggle was between the rich and the poor; the poor were held down by the rich. The reality is, and Jordan Peterson frames this up very well, the reality is we all struggle against the world.

Peter McCormack: Well, would you not say, if you would extrapolate that to the modern society, would you not say the politicians, essentially the elites, are holding us back and making us poor?

Mark Moss: Of course.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so that's where I think there are some similarities with recognising there's something wrong between bitcoiners, is there's this elite that are holding people back.

Mark Moss: Sure, we can say that.

Peter McCormack: Okay, you fucking communist!

Mark Moss: So, let's talk about that, I think we can quantify that. So, when we say a communist or not, how do we break opinion from actual data? And, there's a way, because in The Communist Manifesto, he lays out ten points of communism. So, in order to have a communist society, it must have these ten things, so let's look at those.

Peter McCormack: Okay, let's go for it.

Mark Moss: How many does the United States have; how many does the UK have? One: abolition of private property. Okay, so we don't really have that yet, we still have private property rights. Specifically in the US, we have the strongest private property rights in the world.

Peter McCormack: We have pretty good private property rights in the UK. Now look, we do, but they can go to your bank account and take your money, but we know that can happen anywhere.

Mark Moss: Right. They can tell you what to do with your business.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

Mark Moss: They can tell you what to do with your body.

Peter McCormack: No, not as such. We didn't have forced vaccinations, we had mandates on certain jobs, I think it was health workers.

Danny Knowles: There's creep on that though, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think the nuance is going to always be important, because I think the word "commi" is used loosely sometimes. I think you just have to look at the nuance. I'm not agreeing with it, despite being someone --

Mark Moss: I mean, I'm saying I believe the US has the strongest private property rights, however they still can tell you what to do with your business, they can still take your money out of your bank account, they did still force people to take vaccines.

Peter McCormack: Did they force people to take vaccines, or did they coerce them?

Mark Moss: They coerced.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's different.

Mark Moss: You're right. So, let's say we're not sold on one. What about two: a heavy progressive or graduated income tax. In the US we do. The more you make, the more you pay.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I agree with that, and we have that in the UK.

Mark Moss: So we have that. Three: abolish the right of inheritance. Now, in the US we haven't abolished it, but what we do is estates over $1 million get taxed at 50%.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we have it at 40% over I think £240,000. Yeah.

Mark Moss: And what happens is, let's say in the farm industry, this land has been passed down from generation after generation. Today, now they're putting all these different solar panels and stuff on the land, which gives the land a higher value, so now someone inherits the farmland, the farmers are broke, right, but now the land's worth $5 million, $10 million, and now they've got to put up 50% of the tax. They don't have that money.

Peter McCormack: Oh no, listen, I get it.

Mark Moss: They haven't abolished it, but it's creeping there.

Peter McCormack: No, look, I see it. And you plan for inheritance. But the way I look at that is, governments will tax anything they can to get as much money as they can. They tax the food, well not always food; yeah, they actually tax some of the food, they tax our income, they tax our fuel, they tax our inheritance, any place they feel --

Mark Moss: And is that communist?

Peter McCormack: No.

Mark Moss: It's point two of The Communist Manifesto.

Peter McCormack: I think if they took all of your inheritance, I could say it was communist. I just think it's part of the tax system. I don't like it by the way.

Mark Moss: Well, that's number two. Two is heavy progressive and graduated income tax. So, two. And then three is abolish right of inheritance. So, we haven't abolished all right of inheritance, but the walls are closing in. 20 years ago, we didn't have these laws; today we do.

Mark Moss: Number four: confiscate property owned by immigrants and rebels.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, what does that mean. So, immigrants, we don't do that in the UK, we don't confiscate their property.

Mark Moss: Yeah, I mean immigrants don't really come in with property.

Peter McCormack: But what about rebels, what does that mean?

Mark Moss: So, someone who rebels against the system.

Peter McCormack: Is this like forfeiture?

Mark Moss: Forfeiture, asset forfeiture.

Peter McCormack: But then what's a rebel? We have forfeiture from acts of crime. If you're a drug dealer in the UK and you're prosecuted for dealing drugs, they will take --

Mark Moss: I would say four doesn't really fit; I would say that. So, four doesn't really fit. Number five: establish a national bank, a central, by the means of a central bank and monopoly.

Peter McCormack: By the way, are these ten points literally listed in the book word for word?

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Okay, yeah, central bank, of course.

Mark Moss: So, number two and number five were established the same time in the US in 1913, creation of the IRS and creation of the Federal Reserve. So, a central bank is communist.

Peter McCormack: A central bank is a component of a communist system. Is a central bank communist?

Mark Moss: It's a component of a communist system.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay, fine.

Mark Moss: Number six: nationally controlled communications and transportation. Of course, in the US, sure.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so nationally controlled --

Mark Moss: We the FCC, which controls all radio waves, all of that. So, all of that's controlled.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so we have licences handed out.

Mark Moss: By the government.

Peter McCormack: By the government.

Danny Knowles: That's one of the few that maybe the UK is -- all of these seem like we're moving towards this communist world, but that's the one where the UK may be moving away from that.

Peter McCormack: They've kind of deregulated it all.

Danny Knowles: They're deregulating some stuff and denationalising --

Mark Moss: Deregulated, meaning that they've broken some of the monopolies down, but they probably still hand down the licences to the individual companies to have.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, for a couple of reasons. One, they make a fuck load of money off them.

Mark Moss: It doesn't matter the reason. The point is, it's nationally controlled communication and transportation. So in the US, we have the Department of Highways, Department of Transportation. We have all these agencies that control all transportation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't mind the government controlling the roads; sorry, Erik Voorhees!

Danny Knowles: But on that, is the M6 Toll not the best motorway in the UK; the one private road?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and why is that? Because you can pay and not be in traffic.

Danny Knowles: But it's the best road in the UK.

Peter McCormack: But is it the best because it's private, or is it the best because you can get round that traffic?

Mark Moss: We don't need to debate every one of these. The point is that we have that, okay. Number seven: government ownership of means of production, land and natural resources. So, Biden says we're not going to give out any more drilling, access to land. So, the US controls all of that; I'm guessing the UK does as well. Liz Truss wanted to open up fracking, now it's shut back down. We have that.

Mark Moss: Number eight: industrial --

Peter McCormack: Hold on, I just want to make sure when we go through each point, I'm fully thinking about it. Say that one again and then I want to try and justify it on behalf of the government.

Mark Moss: Well, it's not about justifying it; it's quantifiable.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but to me, if we're trying to allude that we're heading towards communism, is there a conscious choice of trying to be communist, or is it a scope creep into communist ideas; but are there rational reasons for some of these decisions? Can you still be capitalist; can you still have a functioning society with a government --

Mark Moss: No you can't, and the reason why, let's just clarify this point real quick. So, in the book, we really defend this piece; back to definitions. So, what is capitalism, if we want to define that for just a second?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but can I go back one step? Are you therefore calling for anarcho-capitalism, no borders, no government, complete and absolute freedom?

Mark Moss: No. That's probably the one point that we concede and agree with The Communist Manifesto on the border situation, probably the one point out of the book.

Peter McCormack: So, who manages the borders? It's important for me to establish where you're coming from.

Mark Moss: I look at it more of a system almost like the United States was formed on, with independent states, and so small, independent regions where I live in a gated community and my gated community had a homeowners association that I paid every month, $450 a month, and they had a gate and they had a security guard sitting there and I had a sticker on my car and they would allow me in and out of the gate, and I got provided all the services they provided. So, like that. So, we pay a fee, a tax, whatever you want to call it.

Mark Moss: A tax, I would associate more with theft because it's forced; whereas, a fee is something that I'm agreeing to pay in exchange for services provided. So, in my homeowners association, I paid the $450 a month, but I got all the service they provided.

Peter McCormack: I've got important questions here. So, do you believe all 52 states then should have borders that are controlled?

Mark Moss: I mean, they do, they already do.

Peter McCormack: But that are controlled and managed.

Mark Moss: Meaning that they actually have gates and let people in and out?

Mark Moss: I mean, I think each state could be -- I don't know the best way. We'll find out what's the best way to do that.

Peter McCormack: Because what if Southern California opens up its border to Mexico and lets people in and you don't have a border with --

Mark Moss: We already let 5 million people in the US this year.

Peter McCormack: I know, but that's different.

Mark Moss: It's not hypothetical, it's real.

Peter McCormack: No, but I'm asking in your scenario, what if that state opens up its border and then people start drifting across from California into Arizona; how do we stop that? It's really important to establish this, because if you're saying that you should have 52 states that all manage their borders --

Mark Moss: Well, I think it would be much smaller than that. I think it will break down into a county and even a city level.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so even at the city level --

Mark Moss: And a lot of what it has come down to is the services provided by that city. So, you mentioned California, for example; California has now stood up to say, "We are a sanctuary state". So now, any illegal alien who gets smuggled in the country by a coyote, or however they get here, now gets access to every single service that California provides, including driver's licence, including voting, including school, including medical care, including social security.

Peter McCormack: This is a tangent. Going back to your, "Is this communism?" I want to establish and understand your position. You're essentially an anarcho-capitalist but believe in borders; is that what you're saying?

Mark Moss: I'm not saying that, I'm not trying to ascribe myself to any label. You're trying to put a label on me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but if you're worried about this, what is the alternative; what do you want?

Mark Moss: Well, I believe that capitalism is a natural and emergent process that humans go through. So naturally, we already talked about, we're trying to innovate, we're trying to use our scarce resources better. I used to carry one rock at a time, then I created a wheelbarrow that allows me to carry ten rocks at a time. I killed an animal, you had a fire, "Hey, Peter, you've got a fire, can I cook my animal? We'll share, we'll exchange". So, it's private property rights, it's free and voluntary exchange, it's natural emergent. Little kids in school are doing capitalism, they're trading sandwiches for chips. In North Korea, in prison, they're doing capitalism and they're trading cigarettes for onions in the kitchen, or whatever it is. And so, capitalism is a natural, emergent process, where I have my private property and we free and voluntary exchange those goods.

Peter McCormack: But I also believe the state is a natural emergent -- well, it's a natural monopoly.

Mark Moss: Well, it's a monopoly, it's not natural.

Peter McCormack: I think it is. I think you cannot stop it from happening. This is my point. When people are like, "Oh, you're a statist". It's not that I disagree with you. I think when you outline --

Mark Moss: Have you ever read Murray Rothbard's Anatomy of the State?

Peter McCormack: A long time ago. But that's a book, right; I'm just looking at the reality of the world. We have 210 countries, or 205, whatever it is. Why do we have that? I think you're always going to have structures that build. It's not that I agree with it.

Mark Moss: No, I agree, we're always going to have structures.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so what are the structures we're trying to get towards? I think this is a natural process and I think what we emerge with is a natural process. Now, we can disagree in parts and fight against it.

Mark Moss: No, I agree with you. So, back to my homeowners association, for example, someone has to be responsible to hire the landscaping company and make sure they get paid; someone has to be responsible to hire the security company and make sure there's somebody there. So, there's always going to be organising function. We're always going to want to assign that to some group or person, but I think it will be done on a much smaller level.

Peter McCormack: But I always come back to it, how do you establish the rules? What is a crime? And then, how do you punish crime if you don't have an agreed set of rules?

Mark Moss: We do have an agreed set of rules. So for example, if I go to Disney World, I have to pay to gain admission to Disney World and get access to everything that Disney World has. They have their own security, they have their set of rules. If I don't follow those rules at Disney World, they kick me out; they have their own security force, etc. But once I leave, those rules for Disney World don't apply maybe over here, for example.

Peter McCormack: What if I come on to your land and kick you off it, I come with my friends and my guns and kick you off it; what is your recourse?

Mark Moss: Okay, so back to the Anatomy of the State, or Bastiat's The Law, if you read those books, which by the way, I recommend to everybody listening, those are 45-minute books; you should read.

Peter McCormack: I've got Bastiat's The Law.

Mark Moss: So, what happens is, the way they've broken down the book, and I believe, and back to The Communist Manifesto, abolition of private property, we say in The UnCommunist Manifesto, the absolute preservation of private property. So, it's my private property and I should have the right to defend my private property. So, I believe that the only reason why force is valid is in order to defend my private property. And if I believe that, then collectively, you and I could team together if somebody is trying to come steal my property, you and I could work together to defend my property.

Peter McCormack: But what if I beat you and I got your property?

Mark Moss: Okay, so I haven't finished. So the next step is then, collectively, there is no such thing as a state, there's only individuals. But as individuals, we can collectively come together and share interests. So for example, this is what happens. We have a village and the village is teaming together to defend our private property, and then we make a kingdom and a country. And the country was supposed to defend private property rights.

Peter McCormack: But how does the country establish its hierarchy?

Mark Moss: We ascribe the protection of private property to this body, this state. But I believe that the only reason force is valid should be to defend my private property, and therefore the state should only have power to defend private property.

Peter McCormack: Okay, but how do you stop then the scope creep? It's not that I don't agree with you, but then you're going to have new rules, "Oh, this happened so we need another rule". "Okay, how are we going to arbitrate these rules?" "We'll have to have a court". "Who gives the court authority?" And this is the point. I think you can burn down, you can start again; I think you always end up in the same place. But you either end up with a western, liberal democracy, or you end up with a tyrannical government, we end up with warlords.

Mark Moss: We don't always end up in the same place. And the reason why we don't always end up in the same place is because systems change, technologies change and the way that we organise our work changes. So for example, this system that we have today hasn't always been here for thousands of years, and it won't always be here for thousands of years. Part of what's allowed this system that we have to grow to where it is today, which is getting so big and so forth, is for, as I said, after coming out of the Industrial Revolution, it organised everybody into cities. And when all the wealth is concentrated, it's very easy for the state to grow really big around that to protect that organisation.

But as that now is shifting back to decentralisation, so instead of giant factories being built in Detroit, now we have thousands of small internet businesses that are all around the world, for example. So now, this wealth, these businesses are starting to spread out, and that will break down the state's concentration of power. And then ultimately, we get back to the money side, which of course we'll get to, which is it's the fiat money system that allows the state to get so big to fight these endless wars and so forth. And without that, going back to like a gold standard, you would have much smaller governments, much smaller structures, that wouldn't go to war with each other, because they go broke and it gets disbanded.

So, both through technology, the way that we re-organise, and through the changes in the monetary system, it will break down to a much smaller, much more decentralised world, I believe.

Peter McCormack: Maybe. Okay, fine.

Mark Moss: But it's emergent, it's evolutionary, right. So again, the conditions allowed for this government that we have today to grow, but it hasn't always been this way. And as the conditions change, the type of government that we have will change as well. Now, I agree with you, we're always going to need some type of a government or governance, so some group of people will always be elected to run things, back to the homeowners association or Disney World example, I just think on a much smaller scale.

Peter McCormack: Okay, all right.

Mark Moss: And if we have enough time, we're going to get to where I think the world breaks down.

Peter McCormack: No, but that helps me establish where you're coming from. It's not so much your end goal, it's the trajectory of where we're going as we swing back to decentralisation, that we're going to retest all these structures and we may have new structures. That helps me understand it.

Mark Moss: And I think it would be better for all the structures to be much smaller and be able to compete against each other. And so that way, we can find which ideas work better, it gives people options of what trade-offs they're willing to make. So, you want to live in a land that celebrates transexual children and switching, so you go over there; I want to celebrate --

Peter McCormack: That's not what I want.

Mark Moss: I'm not saying you, but I'm saying some people want those things; I want to celebrate eating steak and owning guns and natural marriage, or whatever, and so I go over here, and then we can just see how it plays out over a decade or a century, or whatever.

Peter McCormack: But what about if someone wants to establish an area that agrees with slavery?

Mark Moss: You want to tackle slavery? We still have slavery all over the world.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, what if the place next door establishes slavery?

Mark Moss: So, I believe in the absolute preservation of private property, and I believe that your human body is your human body. That definitely goes against private property rights.

Peter McCormack: No, but that's you and that's in your territory. Our territory, we say slavery's fine.

Mark Moss: So, what should we do? Should we go to war against them?

Peter McCormack: Should we go and fuck those motherfuckers up?

Mark Moss: Should we go free the Uyghurs from China?

Peter McCormack: Yeah. I mean, it's not going to happen!

Mark Moss: Should we? You want to go to World War III to free the Uyghurs?

Peter McCormack: No, I don't. But at the same time, that is what's happening. So, the point I'm trying to get to is that I think often, we can look at the negatives of the world. And I think as a bitcoiner, sometimes we do do that; we focus on all the fucking negativity of what the government does bad. Sometimes we don't focus on what's been good, like the establishment of base human rights, the establishments of equality in certain regions. The progressives have done a lot as well and we've established, in large parts of the world, this set of basic humane rules. You wouldn't get Uyghurs now in the United States; that wouldn't happen.

So, if we're going to break everything down, let's also recognise we're not just breaking down bad stuff, we might be breaking down good stuff, we might re-establish old trends that are terrible.

Mark Moss: I think history proves otherwise. So, you could say that, but I think history shows otherwise. So for example, as the United States was formed and we found capitalism and this natural emergent order, slavery was abolished. And part of the reason why slavery was abolished, and people don't really understand this point, is that became a poor economic model. So, in the South, they were still using slaves in a couple of states at the time, but they were going bankrupt. It was way too expensive to run the slaves when you could just have machines do the work.

So, capitalism actually bankrupted the slavery model and left to its own, it probably would have been gone rather than when it was.

Peter McCormack: Modern slavery is a thing, it exists.

Mark Moss: But hang on, where does it exist? It exists in countries, Third World countries mostly that are very poor, that still require lots of manual labour. In a very wealthy capitalist society like the United States, it wouldn't make any sense.

Peter McCormack: Okay, Mark, in the UK, we've had cases where they've had people prosecuted for modern slavery.

Mark Moss: Like child sex slaves.

Peter McCormack: No, they've found houses with immigrants, where there'll be ten people sleeping in a room and they're working the farm. So, people will use slaves if they can, it does happen. Now my point is, I don't think we go back to mass slavery, it's the wider point. What happens in that region that does establish slavery?

Mark Moss: Well, you need to stop it. We have to protect private property rights, and slavery goes against private property rights, and so those elected bodies that enforce regulations and laws would obviously stop that from happening.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I think you've missed my point. It's that if you break all these structures down, you might create new areas and new structures which have got certain different standards they want, and it goes back to negative things.

Mark Moss: Not if the society that we move towards is trying to preserve absolute private property rights, so you should be able to do what you want --

Peter McCormack: If everyone cares about that.

Mark Moss: But I think we should, and I think we should work to protect that.

Peter McCormack: Of course we should, but you're missing the point. What if one of these zones doesn't want absolute private property rights?

Mark Moss: Like all these zones today that don't want private property rights?

Peter McCormack: Yeah. But this is my point I'm trying to say. It might not be what you think it is. This stuff might break down and it might not be net positive. It might be, I just don't know, and I think there needs to be a recognition of the fact that there have been good things that have come from centralisation, there are good things; not everything and I'm a bitcoiner, I want separation of money and state. But I do recognise there have been good things that have been established.

One of the great things, well not perfect at the moment, is the UK does support immigrants coming in from war zones and refugees. We house them and support them and try and allow them to build a life; that's a good thing.

Mark Moss: There's been some good and a lot of bad.

Peter McCormack: All right, let's go back to the list.

Mark Moss: Yeah, we can go round and round on this. Okay, we said industrial and agricultural armies, that's number eight, which in the United States, we subsidise the entire farming industry, we've forced them to start growing corn for ethanol so we can supplement our gas that goes to agricultural armies.

Nine: redistribute population. This one, not so much. What they want to do is redistribute the population, which eliminates the sovereignty of state and town. Now, some of this is done in the United States through the HUD, Housing Urban Development. So under Obama, he changed the HUD guidelines, where he wanted to eliminate what this says here, the sovereignty of state and town. So, they would change the urban planning, where they didn't want to have -- because right now, you have single family homes here, you have multi-family homes here, you have apartments here, you have retail here, so there's like a zoning plan.

So, he broke that down. What Obama is, "What we want to do is put all this low-income housing in the single family home area. And any state or county that doesn't go along with this plan won't get funding from HUD". Trump rolled that back and said, "Whoa, we're not doing that"; Biden of course pushed this right back in.

Peter McCormack: Is it the same thing as what --

Mark Moss: Well, it's "redistribute population", I'm reading it directly.

Peter McCormack: Well, is there commentary that comes with "redistribute population" and what Marx wanted with that?

Mark Moss: The world was so different when Marx wrote this, I don't think there's any more commentary that would come with it, and this is directly from the book, so he didn't write a chapter on this point necessarily.

Peter McCormack: All right, okay.

Mark Moss: And then finally, point number ten, free and public education, which of course is communist. So, if we quantify that, I think we could easily say six of the ten are there.

Peter McCormack: I would say without going back through those six, I would say there's elements of the six. Give me the six that you say are there.

Mark Moss: Well, have you progressive, graduated income tax?

Peter McCormack: Yes, I agree that's there.

Mark Moss: We have established a national bank.

Mark Moss: National control of communications and transport.

Peter McCormack: Not necessarily in the UK, but yes, I understand.

Mark Moss: I'm talking about the US. Government owns a means of production of land and natural resources, agricultural armies and free and public education.

Peter McCormack: What's agricultural armies?

Mark Moss: Well like I said, in the United States, we subsidise all the farmers, we pay them to grow ethanol, so it's like industrial and agricultural armies. So, 50% of the workforce works for the government now.

Peter McCormack: Okay. So the central bank one's an easy one. We have elements there that are within The Communist Manifesto. So, what is your point therefore?

Mark Moss: My point is just when people say -- I mean, I think there's just a way we can quantify Marxism or communism in a society. So, in order to have a communist or Marxist society, you need to have these ten; I think we have six of the ten. Now, each one of these you could say is a spectrum.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I think you definitely can. And I think also, you can definitely justify, if you are somebody who believes in the state, you think we should have state and government, or we will have state and government, as nation states, not as local, more city states, I think some of these you naturally will have or need to have. Now, I don't agree with all of it, but I think you would naturally have those as part of it. Owning things like licences is just a revenue opportunity for the government, that's what it is.

Mark Moss: It doesn't matter.

Peter McCormack: But what's the point we're heading towards? Are we saying therefore that we're trending towards Marxism?

Mark Moss: Well, I think we're already more than 50% of the way there. I would say we're 70% there. And so, when people say today that, "Look at America, look how it's failed, look at what capitalism has done", this isn't capitalism, this is 70% communism.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you see I don't agree with 70% communism.

Mark Moss: Well, we have ten points. So then you can divide, okay, each point, what percentage of each point. So it's a little bit subjective, I suppose.

Peter McCormack: But does 60% communist mean it's communist; or does it mean that there's elements of communist ideas that have leaked into this?

Mark Moss: Well, more than not, more than 50%.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what is the weight and what is the negative impact? I think nuance in this is important in this because otherwise people will go, "Well, America's communist". America's not communist; I don't think it's the free country people say it is.

Mark Moss: Well, how would you define it? We have ten points.

Peter McCormack: How would I define what?

Mark Moss: You said it's not communist.

Peter McCormack: I just don't think America's a communist country.

Mark Moss: Okay, but we can use a ten-point scale that Karl Marx gave us.

Peter McCormack: I don't think that works for scoring whether a country's communist or not.

Danny Knowles: Do you think America's communist?

Mark Moss: No, I think it's a spectrum. So, back to slavery. If I take 100% of your money and your labour, you're a slave. If I take zero, you're a free man. What if I take 50%?

Peter McCormack: I'm still a free man, I just have to pay 50% tax.

Mark Moss: You're not a 50% slave?

Peter McCormack: No.

Mark Moss: So, at what point; at 70%? At what point do you become a slave?

Peter McCormack: Define slave then.

Mark Moss: Well I said, if I take 100% of your labour and money, are you a slave?

Mark Moss: Okay, so if I take 50%, you're not?

Peter McCormack: No, I'm not a slave.

Mark Moss: 60%? 70%? At what point? Only at 100%? What about 90%?

Danny Knowles: But does it not rely on the ability to not work for you, to move elsewhere?

Peter McCormack: I think slavery is a trap where you're trapped. I think of the history of slavery, again it depends on definitions and definitions are important. When I think of a slave, I think of somebody who's trapped working for somebody and they cannot escape that scenario.

Mark Moss: That's imprisoned.

Peter McCormack: Yes, they cannot escape that scenario.

Mark Moss: So, held there beyond their will?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, held beyond their will, forced to work, maybe get fed at the end of the day, live in the barn, whatever that kind of --

Mark Moss: So, you know America is the only country in the world that no matter where I live for the rest of my life, I have to pay 50% of my income to taxes?

Peter McCormack: I think it is actually two countries.

Mark Moss: So, what about that? Well, there's two. There's one other country, it's some small --

Peter McCormack: Is it Eritrea, or something weird?

Mark Moss: Something like that, yeah, some small, obscure country. So you're right, there are two.

Peter McCormack: And also, that's not strictly true. You can leave.

Mark Moss: I can renounce my citizenship, I can wait in line for five years, I have to pay an exit tax, I can never come back to the United States.

Peter McCormack: By the way, I think that is a horrible tax system, I completely disagree with it, but I don't think it's slavery. And I understand why some people would say it. To them, you can feel 50% a slave and that's you. I don't feel like I'm a slave.

Mark Moss: Yeah, so all of these are spectrums as well.

Peter McCormack: But Mark, you've got to understand where I come from. I don't object to tax. I think tax is way too high, but I'm happy to pay tax towards a functioning society that redistributes and makes society better.

Mark Moss: Sure, just like I was happy to live in the gated community and pay $450 a month for the services provided there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but if you say, if I pay 50% tax do I feel 50% slave? No, I feel 0% slave.

Mark Moss: Why? Because you can opt out?

Peter McCormack: Because I have a lot of freedom.

Mark Moss: So, if you paid 100% of your money, you would be a slave, you said; but you wouldn't be a slave if you could leave that place?

Peter McCormack: If I pay 100%, I am a slave, because --

Mark Moss: So, what about 90%?

Danny Knowles: Is it not missing the free will element though?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's a very hard thing to try and quantify.

Mark Moss: All of these are. This is why I said it's a spectrum.

Peter McCormack: I know, but it's a hard thing to quantify. Because, if I paid 90% tax, but I earned £100 million a year, I don't want to pay 90% tax, I don't agree with 90% tax, but I still have £10 million a year. I can still buy my house, go on holiday. I'm still living a good life, right. So I think you always have to have nuance in these things.

Mark Moss: Okay, so you like number two?

Peter McCormack: What's that?

Mark Moss: Progressive and graduated income tax.

Peter McCormack: Explain exactly what that is.

Mark Moss: Well, progressive, so the more you make, the more you pay. So, if you make £10 million a year, you pay 90% tax, but if you make £10,000 a year, you pay no tax, so progressive.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I agree with progressive tax.

Mark Moss: Yeah, of course you do!

Peter McCormack: No, but I do, because recently when Liz Truss announced there was going to be a drop in the high rate of tax of 45% to 40% at a time when the country is struggling, I was like, "I don't need a tax cut, I'm the last person that needs a tax cut, I'm okay".

Mark Moss: Man, we're going down so many rabbit holes.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's why I love talking to you!

Mark Moss: I want to get into what the world looks like on the other side of the blowoff top. But in regards to this, there's so much to unpack there. But for example, you know that we have creators and consumers. You create wealth, you hire people, you build things, companies pay you, you return capital back to them, you hire people, you create wealth. If I gave you $1 million, do you think you'd turn that into $2 million or $3 million?

Peter McCormack: Easily.

Mark Moss: Okay, most people can't. So, when I take your wealth away from you, as a wealth creator, who could easily go create more wealth and more jobs and create more money, and I give it to a consumer who's only going to waste and spend that money, that is not a net gain for society, that is a net loss. So, wealth, unfortunately resources aren't distributed evenly. Some people are smarter, some people are better looking, some people are faster, some people are whatever.

Peter McCormack: So, do you think tax should be flat?

Mark Moss: I think a flat tax would be much more reasonable, much more fair, because back to Disneyland, for example, it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or you're poor, you're going to pay the same entry fee into Disneyland because you're going to receive the same services back.

Peter McCormack: No, if you're a billionaire, you're going to pay to do the jump queue thing!

Mark Moss: Yeah, okay, whatever! But you know what I'm saying.

Peter McCormack: And you're going to stay in the nice hotel in the penthouse and maybe even get a private tour.

Mark Moss: Yeah, you could shut the whole park down, right, and then rent it out.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Wally World!

Mark Moss: Yeah, Wally World, another good movie! So I think there's a whole bunch to unpack there, but I think the point that I just made, if I gave you $1 million, you could easily make $2 million or $3 million back and you could probably hire more people and you could create more wealth with that. But you give it to the people on welfare, they're just going to go spend it, they're going to blow it. Now, does it give more money to the cigarette and alcohol companies? I guess, and the drug dealers on the street? Sure, I guess, but that's not really wealth creation.

Peter McCormack: No, but I've always got to admit the things I don't know. I can't tell you now whether a progressive tax or a flat tax is better; I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that politically, a flat tax will never be popular.

Mark Moss: Of course, because the government's always going to want more money.

Peter McCormack: Well, no, politically with voters it's not going to be popular. So, that's where politics influences policy, and I may be wrong.

Mark Moss: So, do you know in the United States, the top 10% of earners pay 70% of all the taxes.

Peter McCormack: Is that true?

Mark Moss: Factcheck it, Danny. Yeah, it's true. So, the top 10% of earners pay 70% of all income taxes. Is that fair? When Biden says we should pay our fair share, what is "fair share"?

Peter McCormack: It's an arbitrary thing, but I'm on your side. I think we pay too much tax. I believe in a smaller state and I believe in less tax. By the way, there are people who will point to Norway and Sweden who have much higher tax rates and say, "Look at society here". So, the top 10%... yeah.

Mark Moss: Top 5% pay 60%.

Peter McCormack: That's interesting.

Mark Moss: Top 1% pay 40%.

Peter McCormack: That's incredible.

Mark Moss: So, they don't pay their fair share, they're paying 40% of the entire taxes.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but look, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm not one of those people who's against billionaires.

Mark Moss: I know, but the part I just wanted to hit was back to the heavy progressive tax, because I would rather keep money in the hands of wealth creators that would hire more people, create more jobs, create more technologies; I'd rather keep money there than give it to people who are just going to squander it.

Peter McCormack: I'm with you.

Mark Moss: We're giving higher taxes to, and this is a whole other rabbit hole, we're giving our taxes to the government and now they're funnelling how many billions to Ukraine, and where's that money going? There's all types of places that it goes and I think ultimately, giving it to the people, and I know you already said you were against UBI, but you start giving it to people who are not wealth creators, who are wealth destroyers, and I think that's a net loss for society.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I'm going to be very clear, I am with you. I think taxes are way too high. I've spent a lot of time with Dominic Frisby. Do you know Dominic Frisby?

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Have you had him on your show?

Mark Moss: No, I haven't.

Peter McCormack: Oh, you would love him.

Mark Moss: Yeah, maybe I should.

Peter McCormack: Now, he wrote a whole book on tax. He's similar to me. He doesn't mind paying tax, but he thinks it should be a lot lower, like 10%, 15%. I'm with you on this. But if the top 10% are paying 40% of the tax, it's 70% tax rate; if you reduce that down and you try to get the same income from the lower tax payers, they're going to have fuck-all money. So, I just think this is politically easy for them to do. What we really want them to do is actually waste less and become smaller, and become a smaller state. So, I'm with you on that, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to understand how we get there and why we're there. But I agree with you, I'd like to pay a lot less tax!

But going back to the point, I do not feel like a slave, because I would not use the word "slave" lightly. I do not feel like a slave. You might, and that's your life experience.

Mark Moss: Oh no, I don't feel like a slave either.

Peter McCormack: Do you feel 50% a slave?

Mark Moss: No, because I can still somewhat control myself. So, I can somewhat, not 100%, so these are spectrums and I'm all about nuance; I think the biggest problem that we have, and I know you see it as well, the biggest problem that we see, having big social media audiences and seeing this kind of pulse on the society, is people have lost all nuance.

Peter McCormack: Exactly.

Mark Moss: It's horrible.

Peter McCormack: There's no reward for nuance. It's a small reward for nuance, I should say, with a small, loyal audience. But there's Tim Pool. Tim Pool is no longer nuanced. He is dog whistle, big statements, audience capture, and I think that's a real, real problem. I think the nuance is important here. But my point on this is, if I look at the whole world, I feel like I'm probably one of the freest people in this world. I've come from a wealthy country, have a great career, I earn good money, I have total freedom to travel, I have freedom of opinion. I feel like one of the freest people in the world. Yes, we should strive for more and always strive for better, but fuck me, I'm lucky. And I look at the people before me who fought the wars to give me these freedoms. We should strive for better, but I'm never going to say I'm 50% slave when I feel so fucking blessed and lucky to be where I am.

Mark Moss: I agree 100%, I agree with that. I mean, we're just talking about the nuance and trying to talk about the scale of these things. So, even on these ten points we've already discussed, each one of these we could talk about the nuance or the scale within those.

Peter McCormack: I guess, what's the point we're trying to get to with this?

Mark Moss: Well, we're just trying to understand what Marxism is, and then we were going to get to how Marxism really hasn't gone away. So, communism and Marxism probably seems like a really old term, and a lot of people are wondering why the hell we're even talking about this at length; but what we've seen is that it's still here and alive and well today, more maybe than it ever has been. So now, if we transition to where we're at today, which we already laid out the ten points, but look at Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so let me ask you an important question. If the Marxism impact on society is a spectrum, if there's a spectrum of how Marxist a society is, is there therefore a resulting spectrum on the negativity that brings to society?

Mark Moss: That the Marxist ideas bring to society?

Mark Moss: Sure. The more they're tried, the more they're implemented, the worse it becomes.

Peter McCormack: Because there's also a binary on communism. You could literally have a communist country, binary communist, and you would have all the terrible effects of that. But if we're saying there's a spectrum, is there a spectrum of negativity that covers that? The reason I ask that, that's important, because therefore we should eliminate those parts. But at the same time, some of those things within that spectrum, you might go, "Do you know what, actually for a functioning country which is a nation state, which does have borders and a government, maybe some of those things are beneficial to be centralised". We'd have to work through them all.

Mark Moss: I think there's a couple of things that I would unpack in that. So, the first thing I would say is that in the book, we break down politics over here, and within politics there's a spectrum of politics with left and right. So supposedly, fascism is right and communism is left.

Peter McCormack: But that's not true.

Mark Moss: That's what they say. And then you have, whatever, Democrats and Republicans, whatever. So, you have this whole spectrum of politics over here, left and right. But they're all central planners. Then we say, over here is natural emergent capitalism. Capitalism is not a political modality, like people like to say. Capitalism is not a version like socialism or communism or fascism; capitalism is not one of those political models. Capitalism is, "I live in a cave. I created a spear so it's easier for me to kill animals. And you learned how to make fire, and you and I come together and we share our food". That's just natural, it's emergent.

So, the way I look at it is we have humans, who are always trying to do better, always trying to use our scarce resources more efficiently, always trying to get more for less, more efficiency. That's natural and emergent, ingenuity, creativity. And then over here, we have politics, which is something further. There's two ways to get wealth: one, through cooperation and creation; or two, through coercion. That's it, right. So, capitalism is cooperative, collaborative, creative; politics is coercive.

What happens is, you can look at politics almost as a parasite that leaches onto the wealth created by capitalism. And a parasite's goal is not to kill its host. If it kills the host, then the parasite dies as well. And I think probably the first versions of communism --

Peter McCormack: That's a really, really good way of explaining it, because I think of that chart from Greg Foss. Can you grab that chart up? That's a really good way of putting it, because it is parasitic now.

Mark Moss: It's always been parasitic, but how much does it affect the host?

Peter McCormack: Yes, it's always been parasitic but like I say, I think the state is a natural monopoly that will always happen. I think you will always have structures that build -- so the net interest growing on the deficit. As you can see, the total deficit is going to keep growing and keep growing, and it's going to get to the point where it cannot be serviced and the money will die. This is killing its host, this is charting killing the host, and I completely agree with you, this is where it's all gone completely wrong.

Mark Moss: I would also say that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia killed the host.

Mark Moss: I would also say in Germany, it killed the host, in East Germany. I would also say that in China, it almost killed the host, but in the 1980s they opened up some of the freeports and trade and they backed off enough and it brought enough capitalism to then revive the host. And it's almost like this parasite has been constantly try, try, try again. In the US, it was barely on the host and the US flourished, and now it's getting bigger and bigger and it's slowing the US production down. That's the way I look at it, it's like this parasite that sits on top of a natural and emergent process.

Peter McCormack: And do you think all of this is a natural -- with politics in the UK, one of the ways my brother's explained it, he said, "You'll always have the pendulum swing left to right".

Mark Moss: We overdo it and then it goes back the other way.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so we go to the Conservatives, we have lower tax rates, we have more individualism and then we go a bit too far and we swing back to the left and we go to more centralisation. He said it always just swings back and forth. Whether or not we agree or disagree with state or no state, whatever, is this just a natural swing?

Mark Moss: Well, it's not natural, but it is a swing. It's not natural because it's not collaborative, it's not emergent, it's not natural, it's coercive.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, is it always going to happen?

Mark Moss: Yeah, because what happens -- and it's good and bad. Any overdeveloped strength becomes a weakness. So, as humans, we're trying to get more for less, we're trying to invent, we're trying to have new ideas, so carrying one rock, I made the wheelbarrow. So, I want more for less leverage.

Peter McCormack: Jeff Booth.

Mark Moss: Right. But if you take it too far, then I want something for nothing. And so, I believe that communism, Marxism, we started talking about my own biases and emotions, etc, and I believe it appeals to humans' sinful nature: greed, envy and slothfulness, it appeals to those. So, "Hey, you poor people, you're poor, you're never going to get ahead. It's not your fault. These people over here, they oppress you. So, let's come up with justification why you can't get ahead and why we should go get the resources and give them back to you". That's envy, that's greed and it's slothfulness, each according to their abilities, according to their need, "You don't have to work hard, you don't have to try, you don't have to learn new things, just do whatever you can do and we're going to get all that wealth and bring it back to you". It appeals to that sinful nature and people love it, some people.

Peter McCormack: But is any of this a sign of a dignified and civil society that as it grows and establishes, it helps those less fortunate, or who need help in their society? And I know some people will say voluntarism will do this; I'm not convinced it fills the gap, and I've been to countries which don't have social programmes and you have ghettos that bring violence.

Mark Moss: We don't have ghettos, you're in LA right now!

Peter McCormack: Oh no, we do, and under every fucking bridge and I've seen it. And then what you have is the rise up, you have the revolution and the people who feel oppressed, and that brings issues into those who maybe have been successful. So, isn't part of this a part of social cohesion?

Mark Moss: No.

Peter McCormack: No, you don't believe any of that?

Mark Moss: No, I know it's not true, and I know it factually. You donate money, you do charities, right?

Mark Moss: The people who think that we need the government to steal from one group to give to another are the people who don't do that. You do that, so I don't know why you have that viewpoint.

Peter McCormack: I'm a fucking weirdo!

Mark Moss: I donate a lot of money. Now, what did we do before the government? It was the church that took care of people, the churches were the ones that built the hospitals, the churches were the ones that built the universities, the churches were the ones that always give charity. Now, let's flip this up. So historically, we see that there were always people taking care of the less fortunate, all the way back in biblical times. There's always been people that will do that. I do that, I donate my time and I donate. There's an orphanage in Mexico I've been supporting for 13 years now. We raised $450,000 for them in July of this year.

Peter McCormack: Amazing.

Mark Moss: We do this, my friends do this, we do it all the time. I donate my time, I take my family twice a year to Mexico, we serve down there. So, it always happens and it's happened throughout millennia. But then I would also ask you this; you have kids. So, there are some things that your kids really want that you could give them, but you know it would probably be bad for them. Why don't we just give these people money so they can just live?

Peter McCormack: I know what you mean.

Mark Moss: There's times to help people, there's times for charity, for sure. But a lot of charity actually does more harm than good. And here's another piece. In my non-profit, we say the hashtag is, "Happy people help others". So, you have kids. The greatest joy you've probably felt in your life is watching your kids, giving them something they enjoy and them having fun.

Peter McCormack: Absolutely.

Mark Moss: Or, when you help someone else, and you just feel genuine happiness and gratitude by giving to somebody else. So what happens is, the greatest source of joy we can have is helping other people. And then, when you legitimately help somebody who's in a really tough situation, they're super-grateful for that. Now, the state ruins that. The state steals from you, so now you're mad. And now it gives to this person who now feels entitled and angry. And instead of you feeling good for giving that person, instead of this person feeling grateful for getting it, now you're angry because they stole from you and this person is angry because they're entitled, and the whole system is short-circuited and ruined.

Peter McCormack: I find that hard to argue against!

Mark Moss: Because you've lived it.

Peter McCormack: Look, I have lived it and do you know what, I am charitable and I have got this ongoing struggle with my son at the moment. He's off at university, he's trying to be independent. I'm trying to get him a job, I'm giving him money, but I'm trying to wean him off that. But as I do that, I worry about him not having enough and being skint. But them I'm seeing him come back to me and saying he's applying for a job, and it's a real push and pull on your emotions of, you don't want them to go without, but it's like, "You've got to learn to go and earn money", and I've seen it.

Mark Moss: I have the same problem. I have an 18-year-old daughter and I'm fighting it; it's tough.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's tough because you don't want them to go without.

Mark Moss: But that's family, right. So they say, "With your family, you're communist!"

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know, but it's the same really. What you're really saying is exactly the same. It's like, how do we wean society off this expectation. That's why I say the politics is the problem. This flat-rate tax, the problem is it would be politically unpopular, because we've conditioned people to think, "You should pay more because you're successful. You should pay more because you've got more money". We've conditioned people that. We have people, your AOCs and your Bernie Sanders, who have demonised billionaires. But there's no problem with a billionaire; the problem is the destruction of the money and the people at the bottom who are essentially poorer.

Whereas, what we should do, we have a rising tide that lifts everyone. I've got this film coming out probably this week. Dominic Frisby talked about it. We used to be able to have a one-salary family who could afford a home and a car. We now have two-salary families who are sometimes reliant on handouts, and that's why people aren't having children because they can't fucking afford it. So, I'm with you.

Mark Moss: Yeah, so the thing I would say to that, to your point, and I agree, we demonise these rich people, AOCs wearing the dress, "Eat the rich [or] tax the rich", or whatever. So, the Bernie Sanders's want to demonise the rich people because they have more. But nobody demonises LeBron James, because he's the best basketball player and he has more talent and he makes more money than all the other basketball players. Why is that? Here's why I think it is.

Equal rules, fair rules equal unequal outcomes. So, the rules of basketball are the same. I'm not good at basketball; I'm short and white. If I played against LeBron James, he'd eat my lunch, right. But nobody looks at that as being bad because it's fair rules that are applied to us equally. Now, people view the financial system as unfair, and they know that Bezos got government favours and used government regulations to build entrenchment and build a set of rules for himself. Look at what FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried was trying to do. He was using all the money he stole from his customers to go build regulations to entrench his position. So, we look at that rule as unfair and so then there's resentment there. People don't understand it, but they know there's something there and they're angry about it.

So what they want to do, back to basketball, what they do is say, "Well, LeBron James, it's not fair, you're so fast so let's break one of your legs and let's tie one of your arms behind your back, and now you and Mark are more on an evening playing field". So now, they're trying to make unfair rules to have more of an equal outcome, so if he plays with one arm and one leg, me and him are more equal, so we have an equal outcome. Now we have a competitive game, but we have unfair rules. So, I think that is probably that big difference there.

Peter McCormack: I find it hard to disagree or argue against that, I do, and I think this is one of the things where I've always tried to establish, it's not that I disagree; I think the way we establish hierarchies is broken, but I think it's always going to happen. I think we're going to have hierarchies, we're going to have government, and what we should do is fight to make it better because it's always going to happen. Now, you will disagree, you say it's going to swing the other way, which is great.

Mark Moss: I agree, we're always going to have hierarchies.

Peter McCormack: Which is why I was like, and Danny hates me saying this term, I say I'm a reluctant statist because I think it's the best we have. I get to live in the UK, which is pretty fucking great compared to everywhere else, maybe not America, but we should make it better. People aren't fleeing Syria and Eritrea to try and get into China or Indonesia, they're trying to get to the UK or they're trying to get to the US because it's got hope and opportunity. We've built a structure that allows people to thrive. Yes, we should make it better, absolutely we should make it better.

Mark Moss: But I think making it better is keeping it as it was. This is where the conservatives versus the progressives fall into line. So, the problem that we have, yes, we're always going to have hierarchies, and we're always going to have discrimination because we discriminate against everything. I decided to wear a black shirt instead of a white shirt today; I decided to marry a blonde girl instead of a black-haired girl, or whatever it is. So, we always discriminate. I decided to eat steak instead of chicken last night.

Peter McCormack: I hate Tottenham fans, I fucking hate them!

Mark Moss: Exactly, right! So we're always discriminating against things and there creates these hierarchies. The problem that we have is that again, with capitalism being this natural emergent process, it should also be built off of a meritocracy, or what we call in the book, The UnCommunist Manifesto book, competent individuals. So, the problem is that our system has now grown to a point where there is no longer any consequence or responsibility. So, we want to have a system that allows us to climb up the social ladder, but also a system that should allow people to fall down the social ladder.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and not just at an individual level, at a corporate level. Let those fucking companies fail.

Mark Moss: Even more important. So, I don't believe that capitalism leads to monopolies, it's the captured regulatory system that allows monopolies to operate in the first place. In nature, there's no monopolies. The bigger you get, the slower you are. There's always going to be Instagram that's going to put Kodak out of business, innovation, technology, speed, etc. It's relevant, it's Sam Bankman-Fried trying to use the regulatory body to protect him, it's the Jeff Bezos using regulations that prevent small people from coming up and competing. But in its own, in a natural capitalist system, I don't believe those hierarchies are entrenched in the system. So now, there's room for people to move up and people to move back down.

Peter McCormack: I think there's room for people to move up and down in the system we have right now.

Mark Moss: I mean, not really. I mean, you don't have JP Morgan going out of business when they screwed up in the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.

Peter McCormack: Look, we have certain protections around massive companies.

Mark Moss: You don't have Janet Yellen losing her job when she can't even know there's inflation coming.

Peter McCormack: But that's essentially the current bourgeoisie.

Mark Moss: But that's my point.

Peter McCormack: But I still believe anyone can make it now. In the UK, you can come from the toughest background, you can still make it.

Mark Moss: I do, I believe it.

Peter McCormack: So we have a meritocracy at an individual level.

Mark Moss: It's really that top layer that's been ossified. So, we have a lot of room here, but once you get here --

Peter McCormack: You're protected. But I think that's the point that Danny was making, that I think that's the similarity with Marx, in that he identified that top people are protected and other people can't get there, and I think that's essentially what we're saying. Once you're there, you're protected.

Mark Moss: I can go with that. I can go with that, Danny.

Danny Knowles: There you go.

Peter McCormack: But it's usually within the political class or the companies who have the connections to the political class, it's the oligarchy, right. So, that I think is right and we should let it fail. But look, we have a meritocracy, but an interesting person to talk to is Avik Roy. He talks about, we have a meritocracy, but those at the bottom, they have it harder. We might have a meritocracy, but the meritocracy is influenced by the luck of the draw.

Mark Moss: Sure, and the person with the bad poker hand has it harder, but they still win sometimes.

Peter McCormack: They still win sometimes, but --

Mark Moss: We can't make sure everyone at the poker table gets an even hand.

Peter McCormack: No, we can't. But Avik will talk about, he can statistically prove that if you help some of the people at the bottom in the right way, not the way the government does it, but if you help some of the people at the bottom, you can actually raise up all of society, but that requires thinking. There are thinktanks that help the government make some of the decisions and that's why I will never be one of these people that says, "Everything the government does is bad", I don't, but I do think we should always strive for better.

Mark Moss: I think we should always strive for better too.

Peter McCormack: So, let's talk about where we're going with this, let's talk about the swing back, where you think this is headed now.

Mark Moss: So, you showed a financial chart before about, you know in markets you have blowoff tops, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we talked about this before.

Mark Moss: Yeah, the dotcom boom, you have the 2017 runup of Bitcoin, etc. So what happens is, markets stop going up when there's no more buyers. Markets are actually pretty simple, people make them very complicated. Markets stop going up when there are no more buyers. So you start sucking in more homebuyers, more homebuyers, at some point everyone owns a home and some people own ten homes and there's just no more buyers. Or at some point in 2017, the people that knew about Bitcoin had bought it and then it crashes back down; that's the blowoff top.

So, I think we've seen the same with centralisation, so people are like, "Hey, just take care of my education, just take care of my retirement, just take care of my kids and just take care of my healthcare, and just what else can I give you? You already take 70% of my income, I've already assigned you everything; what more can I give you?" So then, there's this blowoff top. I know we've talked about that before, some of the things that I would point to that show that we are at the top and actually blowing off.

Peter McCormack: Oh, I completely agree. I mean, I had it the other day with Greg Foss and James Lavish when we put that chart up. I'm like, "We're fucked".

Mark Moss: Yeah, but from a social level, we can look at a couple of signs I wrote down. So, one, we've seen massive pushback on the World Economic Forum. So, the Premier at Ottawa came out and said, "Look, here in the government, we want you out. We're not moving forward until we get the World Economic Forum, we need to out these people", massive pushback there; massive pushback on this whole ESG thing. So, in the United States, four different states have pulled all their money from BlackRock --

Peter McCormack: Amazing.

Mark Moss: -- and said specifically, "Because of your ESG". We have 19 Republican states who have now sued the top six banks for ESG mandates.

Peter McCormack: Great.

Mark Moss: Germany decided to keep their nukes on, because Greta Thunberg told them that they could keep their nukes on, not joking; California's keeping their nukes on. So, we're seeing this whole World Economic Forum, BlackRock, ESG thing crumbling right before our very eyes. We have the rise of populism, so Meloni being elected in Italy I think was a big sign; Biden's approval rating at 30%.

Peter McCormack: Well, how do you square the circle of the midterms?

Mark Moss: I'll put midterms in the US in one example.

Peter McCormack: I think it all came down to the abortion.

Mark Moss: No.

Peter McCormack: I think it did.

Mark Moss: Here's what it came down to. All politics in the United States comes down to one race, and that's in Pennsylvania. So, we had a celebrity doctor, who was trusted and loved by the left, he was a liberal TV celebrity doctor, very articulate, very smart, backed by Oprah, everybody loved this guy, Dr Oz. And the Democrats ran a guy who can't even put a sentence together. And, whatever, he had a stroke and I feel sorry for him, but whatever, either way he had a stroke, he can't talk, and he beat a celebrity doctor who's educated and articulate.

Now, was that fraud, or was it that people are so blind ideologically, they're just going to vote, regardless of if the guy can talk or not, it doesn't really matter. But that shows you, I think, everything you need to know about politics.

Peter McCormack: What happened in Arizona?

Mark Moss: I think massive fraud, massive amounts of fraud; we're going to find out.

Mark Moss: I mean, the evidence is just -- and again, this goes back to what we started earlier talking about with the Alex Jones thing. When there's no transparency, speculation runs rampant. So, look, this is an easy, easy solution to fix. If the left didn't want to be accused of manipulation, then provide transparency, that's all. Look, we could literally have a YouTube livestream, we could have a Republican and Democrat in there, and they can sit there and hand-count them, that's it and we would know. We would have a livestream, we'd have people on both sides, and they would count it, that's it; simple.

Peter McCormack: Or, Roe v Wade, potentially.

Mark Moss: Maybe.

Peter McCormack: And, by the way, I'm not somebody who -- it's a complex subject.

Mark Moss: Maybe, and that's fine. The point is that there are serious allegations of misconduct and fraud. In Arizona, the Secretary of State, who is responsible for the vote, was running and is now found to have sent out thousands of ballots that didn't have her opponent's name on there, and she is responsible for it and she's running. So, look, I'm not saying there was misconduct, but it's easy to fix.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I agree it's easy to fix.

Mark Moss: Get somebody from both sides, have a vote and just sit there and count.

Peter McCormack: No, I completely agree with that.

Mark Moss: So, why wouldn't they do that?

Peter McCormack: I don't know and I don't know the details, but I just think it's hard to con a whole country. And every time the Republicans lose now, this starts with this agenda, actually even --

Mark Moss: Well, first of all, there were lots of Democrats that said that they lost the vote because of manipulation, Hillary Clinton lost the vote, so both sides have accused.

Peter McCormack: And it happened with Bush and Gore.

Mark Moss: And it's easy to fix. What I want to know is, why don't they just fix it, because it's so simple? We don't need technology. Literally get a Republican and Democrat in there and just frigging count them; simple.

Peter McCormack: All right, shall we make sure that happens?!

Mark Moss: Simple. So anyway, I think these are signs. I think also, the biggest one is obviously what's happening with Russia/Ukraine, China/Taiwan.

Peter McCormack: Tell me Russia/Ukraine, and why you think?

Mark Moss: Well, because that is breaking the world into a multipolar world. So, we've had a single polar world with the US being a homogeny, with the US dollar as the reserve currency, and now that whole system is crumbling apart.

Peter McCormack: Twelve countries want to join BRICS.

Mark Moss: Well, we have all those nations joining BRICS, so now Saudi Arabia says they're joining BRICS, which is the petrodollar, which backs the US dollar, but we also had Iran, we had Argentina. Now, more than half of the people living in this world today are part of BRICS. They want to create their own currency, rather than live under the US dollar standard; more importantly, gold, which is a relic but it is still money and under the BIS, which is the head of the central banks, still considers gold as an asset under Basel III, central banks are required to hold it. So now, central banks are buying more gold than they've ever bought in history.

The gold is so suppressed, we don't know, but experts say somewhere between 300 up to 1,000 paper ounces for every one real physical ounce.

Peter McCormack: Are you buying gold?

Mark Moss: I own some.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've thought about it.

Mark Moss: I own some, yeah. I speculated some gold miners and stuff like that, I think there's a lot of leverage there, but the price of gold -- so, beside it being speculated on in the paper markets, being manipulated in the paper markets, the price of gold is set by some chaps in the UK, the London Bullion Market Association, the LBMA.

Peter McCormack: You're welcome!

Mark Moss: And they do it on a phone call every day. Six guys get on a phone call in the morning, "What should the price of gold be today?" I mean, it's just insane.

Peter McCormack: Is that really true?

Mark Moss: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: It's not set by the market?

Mark Moss: It's not set by the market. See if the LBMA sets the price of gold.

Peter McCormack: How the fuck do they decide?

Mark Moss: How much gold does the UK produce?

Peter McCormack: I have no idea.

Mark Moss: Zero. How much gold does the BRICS nations produce?

Peter McCormack: I have no idea.

Mark Moss: 60%. So, who should get to set the price of gold?

Peter McCormack: The market should set the price of gold.

Mark Moss: Well, the market should set the price of gold; it shouldn't be the LBMA.

Peter McCormack: No, agreed.

Mark Moss: So, the BRICS nations (1) want to create their own money system, and (2) they're creating a competitor to the LBMA.

Peter McCormack: Have you got it?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Right, "IBA independently administers the price and provides the auction platform on which the LBMA Gold Price is calculated, while LBMA owns the intellectual property rights. The platform is electronic…" it doesn't tell me anything. I don't care, we'll look that up, find out and we'll put it in the show notes. Why don't they just let the market decide?

Mark Moss: Why? Because they don't want people to know what the price of gold is.

Peter McCormack: It would probably be higher than it is now.

Mark Moss: It says, "The internationally recognised benchmark price for gold, set twice daily, at 10:30 and 15:00 London, UK time".

Peter McCormack: Based on what, though? They must have rules on what they set the price up.

Mark Moss: You guys can look it up and put it in the show notes.

Peter McCormack: But why can't people ignore that?

Mark Moss: Well they can, which is why the spot price is way different than the futures price, etc. But I think anyway, these are just signs of this breaking apart. So, the Russia/Ukraine thing. If we want to dig into that, I think really to me, it's a war of globalism. So, Putin doesn't want to go along with the globalist agenda, and so there's a regime change, want to change that. But I think it's really turning into more of a World versus West type situation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I think we're going to see a potential breakup of the EU further than --

Mark Moss: I agree. We'll get to that, but the debt levels are also going to create a breakup of the EU as well.

Peter McCormack: What do you think about Germany being a cause of it because they're fed up of funding everyone else?

Mark Moss: Well, the EU is a bunch of countries cobbled together, which is a problem, and the problem is that they're all different countries. So, Germany is like the economic engine of Europe, so they're the manufacturing hub, they make cars and heavy equipment, machinery, etc. Whereas you have the PIGS nations down below, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, etc and they're lazy and they like to lay in the sun and drink wine and they don't produce anything. And so you have this economic engine that basically drives all the tax revenue, no offence! I know, you're not from there. So, the engine, right.

The problem is now (1) they don't like that, (2) it's not fair for them, (3) they went from an exporter to an importer now. And so now, if they're the engine, well who's going to drive the model any more? And really, if you look at this geopolitical picture, which I don't know if we'll have time to get to now, but I think the geopolitical game has always been, "Keep Germany away from Russia", because Germany's the manufacturing hub. And if they can get access to cheap inputs from Russia, that's all they need, now you have manufacturing and inputs. So, the game has always been to try and keep those two people apart, which is very weird how the Nord Stream pipeline broke!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, what's your theory on that?

Mark Moss: Well, I think the theory is to keep those two countries apart, it always has been. Where do the pipelines run? It went from Russia to Germany. So, would it have been either one of them? I mean, we've watched enough crime mysteries to know, you just look for motive and things like that. So, why would Russia blow up their own pipeline, which is their whole leverage?

Peter McCormack: It cost $16 billion to build, or whatever.

Mark Moss: Yeah, it's their whole leverage. They want to sell gas to Germany, so of course they wouldn't do that.

Peter McCormack: Why would Germany when they really do want to buy it from them?

Mark Moss: Why would Germany do it? And the goal is to keep Germany away from Russia, so somebody did it to prevent those two from coming back together. Now, who would have done that? It would have been NATO, and I don't believe any country in NATO could do something without the US approving of it; that would be my guess.

Peter McCormack: So, this is all breaking apart.

Mark Moss: This is all breaking apart.

Peter McCormack: Which by the way, I'm not a globalist, I like domestic manufacturing, I like domestic culture, I like individual ideas.

Mark Moss: But most people haven't really thought through what that means, so we can talk about that.

Peter McCormack: Yes. But where do we end, because I'm conscious of time; the trilogy now will become a quadrilogy, or whatever it is!

Mark Moss: So, what does that mean when we go back to this isolated world, where we're more local cultures, local foods, etc? Most people haven't really thought through that. We're already starting to see that. So in Europe, Norway's banned export of electricity; Bulgaria's banned exporting of firewood; India's banned exporting of rice; the US is now competing for oil and natural gas from Europe, so the US is running through a diesel shortage. There was a shipment of diesel going to the UK, and the US traders outbid it and diverted the shipment back to the US.

Peter McCormack: And Venezuela is now potentially an ally.

Mark Moss: Venezuela is so far gone, I don't think Venezuela --

Peter McCormack: Was it John Carey who was with Maduro?

Mark Moss: Yes.

Peter McCormack: There's a lot of oil there that the Venezuelans cannot afford to mine.

Mark Moss: I just did a show with Josh Young from Bison Interests, he's a big energy guy, and we went through each country's oil and what that looks like, and Venezuela's has gone. Maybe in a decade. Oil takes a long time to come online, it takes seven to ten years. So maybe in a decade, but most likely not.

Peter McCormack: Well, I just thought it was interesting that John Carey was shaking hands with Maduro.

Mark Moss: Yeah. So then we have OPEC potentially with OPEC fighting against the Fed. So, the Fed sees that there's inflation caused by energy, and there's two ways to cure high prices: (1) bring on more supply, or (2) crush demand. So the Fed says, "We'll crush demand". So then OPEC's like, "Well then, we'll just pump less oil. We can play this game longer than you can", so we have that situation. And of course, if OPEC and Saudi Arabia goes with the BRICS nations, which it looks like they're going to, then the whole world breaks apart.

We have the whole Iran/Argentina situation going with them as well, and then we have the sovereign debt bubbles bursting. So, in Japan, the UK, all these countries, because energy prices have got so high now, they're being forced to sell Treasuries in order to buy and important oil and energy. And so, all of this basically leads -- and the EU has this anti-fragmentation tool they're doing now, which is basically, "Let's just take from the rich countries and give to the poor countries", which is going to make this problem worse. So, all of that leads to the whole world breaking down.

Peter McCormack: Sovereign communism.

Mark Moss: Yeah, the whole world leads to a blowing off. I think there are three main trends that I'm tracking. And I think if you look back in markets, you have secular markets, long-term secular markets, and within a long-term secular, I think the Dow or the S&P 500 from 2008 to 2022, a long-term secular trend. And then you have cyclical downturns within a long-term secular trend. So, if you look at the long-term secular trend, there's been three trends: (1) has been globalisation, so we've increased peace, we've increased global trade; also (2) we've increased the population; and (3) we've increased the money supply.

Peter McCormack: And all three are reversing.

Mark Moss: All three are reversing. So, if you double the population and 80X the money supply and increase the global cooperation and trade, what happens? Massive progress, massive deflation; we took $100,000 jobs, we send them to India for $8,000; $100 parts, get them in Asia for $8; massive deflation which allows for massive monetary increase. But when you have population decline and you have deglobalisation, how do the central banks create money in an inflationary environment? The answer is, they don't. So, when you decrease the population and you decrease the money supply, then you decrease global trade --

Peter McCormack: Progress will slow.

Mark Moss: -- progress will slow; so, what does that look like? I don't know if we have time to dig through all that now!

Peter McCormack: I mean, let's have a go.

Mark Moss: We can run through it really quickly. So, you said that you're kind of a fan of thinking about smaller nation states and cultures within that, and that sounds great, and I am too. That's a populist thing, or whatever, and that's great and I love cultures and I love to go to different places and see different cultures. But what does that really mean? So, we haven't really thought through that.

For example, I have my iPhone right here. In order to make this thing, we need parts from six different continents. So, if we can't have peace and global trade between the six continents, then how do we get an iPhone? Ford cars are made in 60 countries; there's 4,400 manufacturing sites over 60 countries to make a car. How does that work? People haven't really thought through what this means, I don't think.

Peter McCormack: Well, somebody also did say on the show recently that, "Nations that trade with each other don't go to war with each other".

Mark Moss: Usually because there's two ways to get wealth: cooperation; or theft and coercion. So, if we're cooperating together, we have a good relationship, why would we go to war with each other? So, what's happened is, in order to get our cars, in order to get our iPhones, we have this global cooperation, and what's happened is -- and then we can even get into food. Food is probably the biggest problem that we have because what's happened is, all these nations that have been coming online, most of Asia, it was China but now it's Thailand and Indonesia and Bali, etc; any nation that had a port could instantly take their poor population and start manufacturing wire harnesses, basic components, and start exporting them, and they can automatically create wealth.

Then also, countries that could produce wheat, wheat was the staple that kept people alive for millennia, it's not the highest and best use of their land. So now, Holland could be the dairy capital, as could New Zealand. So, that's their highest and best use. So, they'll export what is the highest and best use and they'll import what they need. Well, what happens when they can't import what they need any more?

Peter McCormack: Stop exporting.

Mark Moss: Stop exporting. Now they have to grow, instead of their highest and best use, they have to grow wheat again. So, how does that change the situation? So I think the biggest things, I think, if we look at that, I took some notes just on the food aspect of it, so a couple of problems. One, if we look at agriculture. So, if you go to a grocery store, most of their food isn't grown in your local area, or even your country. It's grown in all these other countries that are specialising in them. But what about the agriculture equipment required to even grow that food? We're talking about massive tractors and earthmovers. Those can't be shipped, those have to be manufactured in-country.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so when you talk about deglobalisation, are we talking about this is going to be the impact of deglobalisation; or, can deglobalisation work if we maintain cooperation? But are you fearing that there won't be cooperation and therefore we're going to see a breakdown of all this?

Mark Moss: I'm fearing there's not going to be a cooperation and we're going to see a breakdown of it. And we're already seeing it, right, where India's already banned exports of rice, Bulgaria's already banned exports, Sweden's already banned exports, we're already seeing it. The US just outcompeted Europe for diesel, and so I think we're going to continue to see less cooperation and more competition.

Peter McCormack: And is that market dependent? So, it makes sense in energy and food, but in manufacturing, industrial manufacturing, would you have the same protectionism?

Mark Moss: Do you think the US is going to go back and do business with Russia right now?

Peter McCormack: Not at the moment.

Mark Moss: Not at the moment. What about the CHIPS Act, or the bill that the Biden Administration just put on China, where we just shut down their entire hi-tech industry; do you know about that?

Peter McCormack: Is that where a bunch of people basically just quit?

Mark Moss: Yeah, but do you know why they quit? So, there's basically three levels of microchips, so there's lo-tech, mid-tech and hi-tech.

Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah, they took out all the --

Mark Moss: Second- and third-tier microchips out of China.

Peter McCormack: They took up the expertise.

Mark Moss: They did three things: (1) China's not allowed to have chips any more at all, period; (2) China's not allowed to have any people that know how to work on chips, which is why they resigned; and (3) China's not even allowed to have any equipment.

Peter McCormack: Why is this a policy?

Mark Moss: Why?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, why?

Mark Moss: I mean, to handicap, to knock them at their knees, to take them out, to send them back to the dark ages, obviously.

Peter McCormack: But doesn't that increase the risk of them invading Taiwan who manufactures chips?

Mark Moss: Well, it doesn't really. So, back to this global cooperation. So, Taiwan makes the chips, but where do they actually get the equipment from; where do they get the designs from; where do they get the supplies from? So, the silica sand that makes up the chips, 85% of it comes from North Carolina.

Peter McCormack: Hold on, so how are the chips that Tesla require from their Gigafactory in China, where do they get those from?

Mark Moss: Well, they're not going to get them any more.

Peter McCormack: Can we look this one up?

Mark Moss: So, if you think about it, remember the whole world is connected. People haven't really thought through how big this connects things.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think they did, ie COVID, when all the supply chains broke down.

Mark Moss: I know, but to build a Tesla car, you need a microchip. So, the microchip comes from Taiwan. But where do the parts come for the microchip?

Peter McCormack: Okay, "The US has taken unprecedented steps to limit the sale of advanced computer chips to China, escalating efforts to contain Beijing's tech and military ambitions. The moves are designed to cut off supplies of critical technology to China that may be used across sectors including advanced computing and weapons manufacture". Keep going. "China consumes more than three-quarters of the semiconductors sold globally, but produces only 15%", so it can still produce.

This is -- so, "The China Semiconductor Industry Association said in a statement that it hoped the US Government would reverse its decision and return to international trade negotiation", okay and we've just had Biden meet Xi Jinping.

Mark Moss: So, my guess is it's like, "Hey, Xi Jinping, you're not helping us with Russia. We've sanctioned them, but you're buying all of their exports. So, you want chips back? How about you jump onboard with us with Russia?"

Peter McCormack: Okay, which they might do.

Mark Moss: So, I'm guessing it's a bargaining chip.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's what it feels like, yeah.

Mark Moss: But as of right now, they're dead in the water. Now that article, your two seconds of reading didn't really catch up on the whole situation. There's three levels of microchip. So, China is able to make tier one microchips, which are made for like alarm clocks. No tier two or no tier three, no thermostats, no computers, certainly no iPhones, they can't make any of that.

Peter McCormack: I mean, they've wagged their ankles with a sledgehammer?

Mark Moss: With a sledgehammer. So, it's probably a bargaining chip. But what if China says, "No, we're going to continue to be with the BRICS and we're going to continue to get food and energy with them".

Peter McCormack: So these are just basically power games?

Mark Moss: It's power games. And I believe it's only going to escalate and we're going to continue to see a breakdown of that. Now, what does that mean?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, where does this lead? Please don't say war.

Mark Moss: China has to import 70% of their oil; 85% of all their energy is imported. China has no arable land, most of China's a desert. They can't grow their food, they don't have their own energy, they don't have water because it's a desert. Any water they do have has been completely contaminated, and they're manufacturing but they can't buy their own products.

Peter McCormack: And the population's shrinking?

Mark Moss: Well, then there's the demographics, we can get to that as well.

Peter McCormack: China sounds fucked!

Mark Moss: They are. So, within 25 years, half of their population will be gone.

Peter McCormack: Have you seen the footage that's come out recently of protests against the COVID restrictions and barriers? Basically they've been trampling down --

Mark Moss: Oh, in China?