In this episode, we chat with Michael Gibson about problems with our governance, tech stagnation, and potential paths forward from here. Michael is a principal and co-founder at the Venture Capital firm 1517 Fund.
Show Notes
The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson
Nonzero by Robert Wright
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Will Jarvis: Hey folks I’m will Jarvis along with my dad, Dr. David Jarvis, I host the podcast. Narratives. Narratives is a project exploring the ways in which the world is better than it has been. The ways it is worse in the past. We’re making a better, more definite future. I hope you enjoy it.So, Hey, Michael, how are you doing today?
Michael Gibson: Good. How are you doing great.
Will Jarvis: So, Michael, can you go ahead and give us kind of a short bio and some of the things you’re interested in
Michael Gibson: ? Yeah, sure. I’m Michael Gibson, I’m co-founder and general partner at 1517 fund. We are a early stage fund that backs outsiders. So people, uh, who are doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the eyes of some authority.
And most of the time, that means, you know, our founders, we [00:01:00] back, they don’t have degrees, uh, or, you know, maybe they’re pursuing some line of scientific research that, you know, the normal grantmaking academic institutions might not want to, uh, want to back that early. So early stage. Early stage tech companies, um, you know, my, myself and, uh, I’m doing something I should not be doing.
I’m not trained in finance. Um, my background goes back. I thought I’d become a professor of philosophy. Um, and then I, uh, I dropped out of that PhD program and, and, uh, it was a journalist for a short time, uh, through a series of unlikely events. I wound up in Silicon Valley and 2015, Danielle Strachman my co-founder and I, we launched 1517.
Will Jarvis: Well, it seems like you’ve made a really good, you know, it’s quite a left turn to go from academia to VC, but I think you’ve made, I think you’ll make a much bigger
Michael Gibson: impact
Will Jarvis: now that you keep, not that you couldn’t make an
Michael Gibson: impact and [00:02:00] philosophy, but it seems like it’s quite a. I think of a hypothetical, uh, like what does it counterfactual where let’s say I did become a professor and in the best case scenario, let’s say I was a professor at Harvard over, I dunno, 20, 30 year career.
I could advise undergraduates on their senior thesis. I might advise a few grad students under dissertations. And if I add up that pile of scholarship, And then I compare it to, you know, the, the eccentrics and I work with kids and the younger people, I think, yeah, what they’ve done on this side is quite compelling.
Uh, and, and, you know, maybe the scholarship would have, it’d be collecting dust in some way. Tell me that too harsh. So in a sense, I’m still somewhat professorial. It’s interesting. It’s like, uh, because I work with a lot of university age entrepreneurs, [00:03:00] um, and Danielle and I run a tutorial style meetings.
It, it feels a lot like we’re, uh, we’re running like the school for the X-Men where we go out and we’d find the mutants out there. And, uh, you know, I still have my hair. I’m not bald like professor X, but he went to Oxford and I did too. So I love that. We’ve got that in common. That is a great framing. I love that.
Will Jarvis: Um, so my first
question, uh, on some level, you know, the world is getting better. There’s like the enlightenment. Now we have less infant mortality, you know, there’s less extreme poverty, but on another level, you know, I go out into, you know, out of the Metro poles and I drive out into the country and it’s like bombed out buildings and bombed out people.
And, and so I, and I started to question that narrative, right? Like not everything is getting better. And, um, you know, what do you think about that? Uh, where do you think we are right now? And, you know, are these some of these problems
Michael Gibson: fixable. [00:04:00] It’s a great point. Um, I mean, it’s something to keep in mind is that, you know, there’s a rate to progress and the rate could be faster and slower.
So, um, and then we’re thinking, if you look over like a century’s worth of time, then you start to see differences. So I don’t want to deny that we’ve made progress since 1971 or so, but I think it’s come much more slowly in sectors of the economy outside of communications and it so sure. Yes, we’re talking on zoom.
Uh, people just associate the word tech and technology with things they can do with their smartphone, but in a, in an earlier era technology just applied to anything, you know, doing anything better, faster, cheaper. Higher quality. Um, you know, you name it along those dimensions in any industry. Um, so where have we not seen progress?
Well, I mean, [00:05:00] Look at things like education, uh, we’ve been spending more and more dollars per student per year, and we seem to be getting the same or less for it. So, and by that, I mean, as you look at college, it’s gone up something like four to five X in real terms since, uh, late seventies. If I take an English seminar and discuss poetry at some, you call it liberal arts school in new England.
I can’t say that’s much better in terms of quality than it used to be. Let’s say in 1975, that discussion is probably, you know, it’s rich, maybe even profound, but not like four times profound. Exactly the right. So, so we’re not making progress there. And then if you look at the, you break down the demographics and geographical locations that you referred to, and it looks like, sure enough, yes, some populations are not thriving, not making improvements as, as they were in the past.
Um, you know, median wages. Uh, have stagnated, especially for men, uh, you [00:06:00] know, people with only college, I sorry with high school degrees, meaning, you know, maybe lower, skilled labor. They’ve had a really hard time, uh, in the last 40 years and we can debate the causes of that. It could be globalization opening up, uh, you know, the, the, the us economy to, uh, Japanese cars to now Chinese manufacturing and so on.
And then it could also be some automation. Um, but yeah, there are regions of America that have suffered the rust belt and Appalachia and places like that. They have not seen, they have not shared in the gains that other areas have. Uh, so, so that’s concerning. You know, I, there’s a great website out there called, uh, I think it’s just WTF happened in 1971 and it’s a fantastic, uh, repository of data on all these kinds of, uh, different cuts on this question because something happened in the early seventies where, [00:07:00] uh, These numbers started changing the median wages, the explosion in costs in healthcare, in higher education.
Um, the lower life expectancy for S for some populations as, as the opioid crisis swept through, uh, in the last, you know, 15, 20 years. So if anyone’s listening, go to, you know, WTF happened 71 and you’ll get a lot of data. Um, so it’s interesting for, I, I think to think about, yeah, what happened and what can we do differently?
It is remarkable to me. My, uh, my mom was raised by her grandmother. And if I think about her life, my grandma might she’d be my great grandmother, her life. She was born. I think it, yeah, it was the 1880s in Texas. She lived in a copper mining town in Arizona. So she was born in an era. Where there was no radio.
There were no cars. [00:08:00] Uh, there were no airplanes, no jets, no television, no skyscrapers at first. Oh man. Um, and then she died in 1980. And if you think about the amount that happened in that time and like should look to see someone on the moon. Yeah. So if you think of that as a, as a lifetime, and then you look at the other data points about median wages and stuff, and you see that, that they would typically quadruple.
In, in that amount of time so that, you know, the average worker with not much, many skills was making four times what they were a hundred years earlier with all these other quality of life improvements. And that is staggering. Um, and that’s a real shift in, in terms of progress. One of the economist favorite statistics on, on progress, technological progress is something called total, total factor productivity, you know, based on these inputs, how, how, how much more of an output do [00:09:00] you get?
Uh, it’s tough, rough measure. Um, but yeah, if you look from like 1900 1970, you’re seeing this steady up into the right increase and then something happens and it’s still increasing, but now we’re near at the same clip, something like 20% compared to like the Forex. Um, so something happened. I’ve been thinking a lot about how, how to, how to change that.
I mean, what you can talk about. Certain institutions like higher education that can be reformed. We can talk law and policy about regulations and how we might free people up in a lot of different ways to address it. But it’s a big problem.
Will Jarvis: Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s a huge problem. Like you said, it seems like a central goods have just been getting more and more expensive.
Wages have been fairly stagnant. So I remember early on in the pandemic, I was playing this, you know, I never really played video games that much, but I had some time cause you know, we’re all locked inside. Can’t go out and I’m playing this new video games, like red, dead redemption. And it’s amazing. It’s like, you [00:10:00] know, I love westerns.
It’s like the real, this is the, it’s the most amazing experience you’ve ever seen. And then, then I got like a open, some mail
right after I’d finished it. And I had done
a virtual primary care visit with a, with a physician’s
assistant and it costs,
um, it was $500 and I have pretty good insurance and it was 500 bucks, you know?
And I was like, wait, this was a 30 minute visit. With someone, you know, it’s not even a physician. And I was like, man, this is so wild. Right. You know, you’re sitting here this game, it’s amazing. These screens, they’re so great. You know, and we’ve had technological progress, but this office visit, it costs so much in real terms, more than it used to do.
Um, it it’s gotten, it seems like a very real problem. This is why people, I think they feel worse off because you know, essential goods cost.
Michael Gibson: Yep. Um, yeah, that’s a great contrast. Um, the, uh, Bureau of labor statistics puts out a report of, uh, you know, inflation and tracking these types of goods. [00:11:00] And there was some graphs out there, um, where.
The, the, the ones where the cost has been skyrocketing or things like healthcare, uh, education, um, the things where it’s, you’ve seen deflationary forces, so they’re getting cheaper and better, or the things that government doesn’t touch at all. So that’s one of the things I’ll note about these things is like anything where the cost is going up into the right, uh, tend to be heavily regulated, subsidized, you know, complicated economic business model, right.
Where, you know, you have different payers for different things. And then the things that are getting cheaper, better, faster, lighter, uh, are the types of things. Yeah. That private companies are able to, to, to compete against each other and improve performance on. So, um, I, yeah, I, I it’s, it’s. It’s again, touching on it.
It’s like the, what, which is yeah. There’s stagnation and different sectors of the society, but then there’s the [00:12:00] why. And I, yeah, my, my inclinations are like, Oh, let’s look at the regulations or, you know what what’s different about the time era’s. And maybe if we look at the institutions, how they used to be, um, maybe we can make some progress, but, but maybe that’s debatable.
I don’t know. But yeah. Interesting. Definitely.
Will Jarvis: Is it something like I’ve got this thought that maybe so we had these new deal, this entire government infrastructure was built during the new deal and all the smartest people went to Washington and, you know, they founded these new institutions and it’s just been this long run trend where there it’s just in Tropic and it’s getting worse and worse and worse.
And in 1971, maybe most of the original people are completely gone. And it just, I don’t know if this general validation.
Michael Gibson: I think, I think that’s right. There’s something, uh, you know, was it Ronald Reagan who said like the government is always the enemy or, you know, never call the [00:13:00] government. I forget he has some phrase in it and I think that’s the typical sort of libertarian reflex.
Um, but what I think is probably more true with a little more nuance is that every institution, whether it’s a private company or a nonprofit or a government body, they tend to have a life cycle. And when things start out, there’s a little more energy, there’s more degrees of freedom for creativity. But over time, the people within those institutions need the rules get set in place, the vested interests, uh, you know, their, their hold on the power cements.
And, uh, and, and then therefore by the end, it’s not nearly as productive as it used to be. And I think, and I think that’s true of government. Programs. So if you look at NASA, I think is a good one where, you know, the excitement of the space race drew a lot of the great minds of the era, you know, from engineers, pilots, and so [00:14:00] on to, to work on that.
Um, but by the mid seventies, when, when the cold war or fight over space was over, um, you know, the, the, the bureaucratic sclerosis had set in, in, in NASA started to maybe their budget was tightened some, but it was also the case that yet now these people who were established higher up in the hierarchy, uh, originally they had been hard for competence, but now they’re just there because they’re in power and you get all these, you know, things are done because it pleases the chain of command rather than.
Because it’s good or, or, you know, all these sorts of problems that creep into bureaucracies. So that, that happens in, in, in government programs. And so if, if, you know, I bet if we started something today and dumped a bunch of money into it, maybe it it’d be pretty, pretty good and competent for the first 10 years, but then that corruption would sort of bacon.
And then that life cycle from birth to flowering [00:15:00] to old age, um, I think it happens faster in, in government bodies and then they become zombies that just live forever. Um, whereas private companies that happens and then they go out of business, uh, because someone, someone else replaces them. Uh, so I think that lingering zombie period is, is problematic.
Will Jarvis: Definitely. And you wrote something recently. I thought this was, this is perfect. And I’m just going to repeat it. The pandemic blew through our ImageNow line and has exposed the feeble state of our science. We don’t have testing at scale, the FDA, the CDC, and the who are bureaucratic feckless and unreliable.
And we lack the treatments and vaccines. And you go on, um, I think this is a perfect summation of what it was clear. It was clear to me at least that things weren’t working very well, but yeah. No one there’s no illusion anymore. Um, there’s a recent 60 minutes segment where they had brought in a plane load of cruise ship
Michael Gibson: passengers.
They’re [00:16:00] all elderly, all had COVID they’re all like falling over. They had,
Will Jarvis: COVID where they’re about to die. And this was early on in the pandemic and the CDC let them walk into the Atlanta airport, which is the largest airport and just walk straight up and you know, all these elderly people like, man, I don’t think it’s a good idea.
You know, this nurse
Michael Gibson: is like, wow, maybe we
Will Jarvis: shouldn’t be doing this, but they let us through. And they’re the experts. Um, what’s to be done. I mean like the level
Michael Gibson: of incompetence, you know, a lot of people complained about Trump’s
Will Jarvis: response, but I mean, it’s every level of the government.
Michael Gibson: We failed. God, you go back to the news stories in January and February last year, where you could pull up 50 to a hundred news stories from different.
Yeah, outlets, prestigious, not prestigious where there, the headline is, don’t worry, it’s the flu or wear a mask. Don’t wear a mask. You had, you had government officials lying directly through us. It was so absurd. Uh, and so therefore I think that we’ve [00:17:00] lost a lot of trust in these institutions, which is sad and, and it’s tied to that level of competence.
Um, For me, I, I I’ve been in some debates even with my mom on this, because there are some miraculous things that we should be grateful for, but I’ve, I I’m. So, uh, I I’m grateful, but on the other hand, I, I still feel frustrated. So take, for example, Madrona, uh, and the, the miraculous thing is that the lead researcher on the vaccine received by email the genomic sequence of the virus.
Um, and then based on that within three days, he had devised the vaccine. That’s incredible. He didn’t even have a copy. He didn’t even have a, uh, the virus present. He just had the information about the biasing and based on that, he was able to devise a vaccine. And then, uh, you know, Trump, I think to his credit, uh, worked with the FDA to loosen up the rules, operation warp speed, poured a ton of money into [00:18:00] this.
Uh, and then if not operation work speed, even the promise that the government would buy billions of dollars worth was certainly incentive enough. And, and so it took about a year, um, even, you know, 10 months, 11 months, and then now those vaccines are out. So I want to acknowledge that. Okay. That’s pretty good.
Compare it, especially relative to the past where you might look at other vaccines and it took sometimes seven to 10 years to, to bring them to market. But I still get frustrated because I go back to the guy getting the, uh, the blueprint for the vaccine in three days and take the FDA and, and the rest of academia in any authority.
The gold standard in testing now is the double blind, randomized controlled trial. Um, you know, this is where you take two groups. Uh, some people don’t know they’re receiving the treatment. Uh, other people received the treatment. [00:19:00] You pay attention to them over some period of time. Uh, you’re looking for efficacy, you’re looking for safety.
Uh, and these things take time and that’s the gold standard for figuring out whether or not a, a therapeutic works or a vaccine, but, uh, an alternative that other people have, you know, many people economists and, uh, and even, uh, people in healthcare have thought about is something called the human challenge trial.
And what that is is you directly expose someone to the, the, uh, the harm after receiving the treatment. So, and then in the case of COVID-19, it would be, uh, you know, w day four after this guy and immense modernity, someone takes the vaccine and then, you know, they deliberately expose that person to COVID-19 and we’d know pretty quickly if it worked for that person right.
Quick. And if it works, then you try it on the next person. And then, you know, you could get [00:20:00] volunteers, people could, uh, you know, consenting adults could say, okay, we don’t know how dangerous this vaccine is, but you know what, I’m willing to try it out. And so we could have been getting results as early, as, as last February and March.
Um, and based on those initial results, you can expand from there. I’d like to compare it to it’s like, if you were testing a parachute, you don’t give it to someone and then let them walk around the city and do whatever they do. And then, you know, if they happen to jump out of an airplane, then we know if it works out the plane.
Yeah. There’s only it’s, you know, it’s, it’s all, it’s gotta be tested in those conditions. Right. And because humans, I mean, I think adults. Have the power to consent to do these things. I, I, I give the benefit of the doubt for those people to make those decisions for themselves. We could have obtained that information even faster.
So, uh, as, as miraculous as it is that it took a year, I think it’d be, it would have been fascinating to see how much faster it could have [00:21:00] been with those human challenge trials. It looks like England is starting to experiment with the human challenge trials. Uh, so that’ll be an interesting thing to pay attention to.
But, uh, but yeah, so th that’s just another example. And then, and the responses, I mean, as good as, and, and the development of the vaccines were by private companies funded by the government, uh, in this one-time push. Um, but anything that was just solely the government was, it was horrendous. Yeah. The CDC.
Well the who, the international body, I don’t know if you ever saw that video of way back of the official, he would, uh, he would not acknowledge that Taiwan was country. So he was clearly in the pocket of the Chinese member. Yes. I remember that number. That was great country.
Will Jarvis: You’re saying it’s doing so good with COVID.
I had never heard of them. I don’t think they exist.
Michael Gibson: Um, the CDC, the [00:22:00] FDA was, it was off on, on the testing in the beginning. The testing was so bad because the FDA required that only one test could be used people weren’t free to devise their own. Um, so yeah, the response could have just been, we could have adapted much more rapidly had not these, um, these bureaucratic institution slowed us down and it’s sad cause it costs lives.
Will Jarvis: Definitely it, it seems, yeah, it, it, it, it’s something, it makes me really mad at the end of the day, but, um, so potential paths forward. Um, one solution I’ve thought about, and I don’t know if you have any in North Carolina, this is actually accidental how this happened, but in my hometown, it’s about 90 miles East to the Capitol and, you know, they wanted new jobs.
And so this state Senator, he goes up, he lobbies and he moves the DMV from Raleigh to Rocky Mount, like essentially most of the bureaucrats quit and you can actually refound the institution. And [00:23:00] so we’ve got like
Michael Gibson: app based.
Will Jarvis: You can like update your driver’s license and do all this stuff. It’s all right.
It’s pretty awesome. Is that like a feasible approach? Do you have any ideas how to improve these like massive bureaucracies? You’re just don’t
Michael Gibson: work anymore? Well, that, that. That touches on a good way to do it, which is you need to start over sometimes. Uh, the there’s an old economist main carols and who his specialty was collective action problems, political economy.
He wrote a book called the rise and decline of nations. And what he looked at was how he war had decimated Japan and Germany, world war II, uh, to the point where they have to start over. And so when the, after the, after the dust had settled and the us had decided to, to keep the peace, uh, the German economy and the Japanese economy just did phenomenally well, they grew like weeds, uh, from [00:24:00] 1950 to call it 1970.
Um, and so the question was what manuals and looked into it. He, he, he was wondering why was that the case? And, and his theory was something like you described with the DMV, which was that all the accumulating ventures, dusted interests who had blocked innovation or anything, new, new entry, uh, after the war, they were all gone.
And so, uh, the in effect, they got to reboot and some of these in some of these new companies and institutions, they have a, uh, energy and life force to them at the beginning that as I said, fades with time. And so I, you know, his theory was that that’s what, what, uh, accelerated their growth. And then the life cycle continued to the point where you started to get the sclerosis and, and, uh, and that set in.
So yeah. What do you do well, I think if you think of government like a, like an industry similar to any other, you can say, okay, well what drives innovation in it in any [00:25:00] industry? And there are two main elements, possibly three, but the two would be, you need, you need new entry. Meaning someone can try to offer the same service for a different way or cheaper, better.
Um, and then you need, uh, you need experimentation. So, I mean, maybe experimentation comes first, you experiment and you try it. And then, you know, the new firm launches a new product. Um, but without that, you’re not going to see many improvements because it’s going to have to depend on people within the organization, uh, making complaints and then making adjustments.
And it’s just think about how hard it would have been for Sergey Brin and Larry Page to persuade the people at Microsoft to adopt their search engine. Right. I mean, sort of what they were hired as, as you know, entry-level engineers and they had this wonderful idea at night. Now they’ve got to pitch it to their boss who pitches it to his boss and pitches it to that guy’s boss and finally gets to Gates.
And Gates is like, ah, [00:26:00] you know, that’s, that’s, that might drive some change, but it’s just really hard. Whereas if you can leave exit and start your own thing, experiment, try it out, uh, that, that drives innovation forward. Um, and so when it comes to government, If there, I mean, it’s hard. Some things just require a monopoly based on the provision of that public.
Good. It could be, you know, law enforcement, um, it makes it hard to have new entries. So, so how do you try to find competitive pressures to improve these services? It’s hard to say. I would, I, you know, the DMV is a good example where it, is that something that could be privatized, I
Will Jarvis: wonder. Right.
Michael Gibson: Does that look like charter city seasteading, uh, scale, right.
Uh, I think, I think the fact there’s this frontier thesis in history that, um, [00:27:00] in, in order to try new forms of government, you need to, you need new entry and you need experimentation. But in the, yeah, in the past, there were places you could do that you could go West, you can go West young man and try something out.
And the Mormons did and the gold miners did. And so on down the line. Um, but, but nowadays all the land is gone. I think if, if we do, I think we need to find a way to experiment and try new things. Charter cities, to me represents a great way to do it. So you, you can’t, it’s like the, the, the complaining to your boss who wants to complain the, his boss, you know, making change that way is very difficult.
So if you could find a plot of land, uh, to set up your new rules and institutions, uh, then that. Then you get to try them out and it would be opt in. So you’re not, you’re not taking anything away from [00:28:00] the old system. Some people who like being in that system can stay there. You’re not trying to coerce them.
Uh, and the, and then the people who want to come, they’re doing so based on their consent. So in a sense, it’s, it’s almost more democratic to me than just voting in elections because, uh, if democracy is based on the consent of the governed, then what is the richest form of consent, but immigration into some region, uh, you know, it’s like America is a nation of immigrants and by, you know, people coming here that they’re, they’re willfully consenting to the constitution, um, in a much richer way than like me just being born here.
I never, I never looked at the constitution, said, Oh yeah, you know, this is a contract sign. And so I think we can’t, you know, one of the great movements and political philosophy could be to abandon this idea of the social contract. Which that goes back to Locke and [00:29:00] Hobbs, um, which was always a, uh, a hypothetical thought experiment.
You know, what will people agree to if they lived in the state of nature and they wanted to form some bonds of cooperation, right. Well, this is a, not a hypothetical social contract. It would be a real one and people would enter a charter city. And, and, and the point for me that the great thing about that wouldn’t necessarily be any particular trait, our city’s rule set or her constitution.
It would be the fact that they’re competing now with, with the old systems and, and therefore they’d have to improve in order to get people to stay. Uh, you’d start to see some competitive forces at work, and maybe that would improve the quality of the services in both nations or, you know, both city States in a way that, that we don’t see now.
So, yeah, I’m a big proponent of charter city idea. There are some other ideas in poetry, Friedman, old friend of mine. I think he coined [00:30:00] this phrase just competitive governances and seasteading is something that he was pursuing for a time. That’s, you know, that’s the wild idea that, okay. We have no more land.
For to try these new ideas out. So then we find a way to try it, try them out at sea. Uh, that seemed wild and controversial in a way that I don’t really understand, because then we have Elon Musk saying, Hey, let’s go to Mars and essentially do the same thing. So why is this? People are like, Oh, the sea is weird, but the moon Mars is the maze.
Um, but that would be great too, if we could get, you know, we could, if we get to Mars, uh, and then eventually develop it to some extent in the wildest, uh, science fiction dreams, Terraform it, then that would be a new frontier. Definitely and, and by doing so I think they would be able to improve our institutions here.
Will Jarvis: Definitely. Do you think there’s a, there’s a trade off between having like a hedge Amman and [00:31:00] having, um, a bunch of smaller competing States in terms of just like aggregate violence? Like maybe it’s or, or is it just something like, well, we’ve had this kind of peace for awhile because we burned so hot in world war one and world war II.
And that’s why things have been, do you think there’s a trade off there? It used to be like in Europe, you know, they’d have these small Wars all the time.
Michael Gibson: Yeah, I, yeah, that’s a great question. And I’m not quite sure how to answer it other than to say my reflex is to say multiple competing nations, city States, and so on is, is better.
Even if they’re are small skirmishes. Uh, and then the risk of global catastrophe or, or, or a totalitarian one state hoarder. Right. That makes sense. One of the it’s fascinating to me that, that the, that the new Testament touches on this. Oh yeah, really? Yeah. So I’m, I am by no means a biblical [00:32:00] scholar. Uh, but I am a fan of and in the brothers Karamazov in the famous chapter about the grand inquisitor, there’s this discussion about the time Jesus spent in the wild, in the wilderness.
Sometimes it’s described as the desert and my kin King James Bible, it’s the wilderness. And so Jesus is tempted three times by the devil. Um, essentially the devil is like, Hey, you know, you’re, you’re God, or, you know, you’re part of God and powerful. Why don’t you just do these three things. And make it easy for men.
And one of them, the most famous temptation is, you know, turn this stone into bread because what the world is full of suffering and hunger, how can you stand by and watch these people suffer and die of famine when you could turn this stone into bread. And that’s a, that’s a wonderful challenge to any religion, right?
And the famous response is, man does not live by bread alone. [00:33:00] Right. Um, so essentially that’s the first temptation. The, I forget which order they’re in, whether it’s the second or third, but one of them is related to this question, which is that the devil Satan says, why don’t you unite all the world in one peaceful government?
And Jesus decline and I forget his exact words, but it’s something like that won’t work. Um, so it’s interesting to me that, um, in essence, the project of, of Satan is to establish one world government
Will Jarvis: and
Michael Gibson: response, uh, wary of that, I dunno, fascinating, uh, to ponder, but, uh, but there is something to be said in the historical record where, uh, you look at large names.
I think China, I forget the name of the dynasty, but they were at their technological peak, [00:34:00] uh, probably around 1500. Um, they had these, they had the printer that they could. Print on paper gunpowder. They had these large ocean going vessels that can travel from China to Africa. And, uh, and then I forgot which emperor died and something happened and, and, and the next guy was just a Luddite and banned all new technology and the use of these things.
And, and because the country was so large and the rules, so expansive, those prohibitions just flattened out. Everything in progress died in Asia. Um, whereas by contrast in Europe, uh, all these multiple competing kingdoms at war with each other, uh, if something was invented in Italy, uh, you know, and then, and then banned.
Uh, but you know, there was some use to it. Maybe the King of France sponsors that person to come. And this happened with DaVinci. For example, that guy was like this mercenary who was hired by different Kings to do different things. [00:35:00] Um, but that’s real progress for a long time. So I think there is something to be said for these multiple competing jurisdictions and, and kingdoms and nations that helps, uh, drive progress through, through some kind of competitive nature.
I think that it’s a great question though, is like, Uh, you know, the one worlders, if you’re like, for example, RA what’s his name? Robert Wright, Robert Wright, a book he wrote called nonzero, which is this take on history about how we, you know, the past zero sum, uh, the future is positive sum and that was the lesson learned over time.
Uh, he makes an argument, a chapter for one world government and his, his arguments are probably familiar. It’s something like, Hey, with a pandemic or with threat of nuclear war or environmental catastrophe, global warming. It seems to be the case that just as. In tribes and, and, uh, [00:36:00] cities and nations, we figured out ways of cooperating with each other to solve these problems.
It seems as though now we’re at the precipice of global cooperation. And so we should just accept a one world order. Um, but I’m afraid my D my reflex is sort of say, uh, that’s so dangerous. You know, maybe it’s good for 10 years, but eventually the, uh, some of those forces that we described earlier, the sclerosis, the bureaucracy, that’s one part of it, but then there’s the worst part, which would be totalitarian domination.
Right.
Will Jarvis: There’s no exit. And that
Michael Gibson: could prove very, that that’s almost an existential threat, I think, on, on par with, you know, volcanic eruptions and asteroid hits. Right? Exactly.
Will Jarvis: Yeah. There’s a great Bertrand Russell essay where he talks about the future and he’s like, well, by 2000, you know, we’ve got like three options.
It’s like, we’re going to be extinct. It’s going to be one world governance. Or like, we’re all going to be at [00:37:00] war all the time. I’m just
Michael Gibson: like this just
Will Jarvis: doesn’t intuitively make sense to me that that’s, it’s stable to have this one huge world government. Yeah.
Michael Gibson: Right. That the three, the three nations were at war pretend we’re a war.
I can’t remember the plot. I should reread that. But, um, yeah, I, I think there’s something on, you know, separate from just like science and tech. I think Indiana it’s even tied to the arts and literature and, and it’s, you, you need a Galapagos like effect where. You’re isolated enough that you’re able to experiment and try out different things.
Uh, but not so cutoff that you don’t, you’re not aware of some improvements in other places. So you look at the development, the discovery and development, quantum mechanics, I think is interesting because it was like all these different European guys and yet they all had a different flavor and style to their thoughts.
So like fair me as an Italian was a different type of thinker from [00:38:00] a Von who from Hungary. Right. And then that’s interesting to me is even in the hardest sciences, uh, you get a little bit of different style and flavor and approach based on having been grown up in a different place. Right. Um, so yeah, I think there’s a good reason for, for our differences and maybe nations.
Uh, are a good way to preserve
Will Jarvis: that. It does seem like things have shifted the, like, since, you know, you’re talking about these physicists, having these different outlets, things have, seemed to have gotten much more universalized across countries. I remember going to London a couple of years ago and I’m like, man, this is what it has much more in common with the Metro pools here.
Like even in Durham, North Carolina has a lot more comma with
Michael Gibson: London than with like my hometown. Like there’s
Will Jarvis: part of their culture will divide. Even in Shanghai. I felt this, like, I don’t know.
Michael Gibson: That’s a great observation. I’d thought that yeah, I have friends in London or Paris. Who feel closer to me [00:39:00] in terms of just the novels you read, the movies you see in quote, the, uh, the sorts of concerns in your life about career, the organizations you work for and so on.
It’s just so similar, so much so that, yeah, it feels like when you meet someone who lives in rural America somewhere, it’s almost like a different country.
Will Jarvis: It it’s, it’s very bizarre. Uh, another quote here, I think is a good point. So surveying our system of higher education as an antagonist. I’ve come to see that even though there are some 5,000 university and colleges in the U S there’s only one point of view on every campus and as a single standard for right and wrong gushes out like an oil spill with every graduating class, the careers of the elite McKinsey or Goldman Sachs and their expensive playgrounds, San Francisco or New York has swelled with risk clothing, conformance.
I, I really enjoyed this. I wrote this a very short essay for my
Michael Gibson: university and they actually, they edited out McKinsey [00:40:00] and like changed it to something like VR, because they were afraid
Will Jarvis: that the recruiters would go away and wouldn’t come because I was mad. I was mad that all our talented people were going to work in management consulting and finance and not building things.
Um, but what do you think about this? Like what’s to be done? Like how do you inspire people to, to drop out and pursue
Michael Gibson: and actually build something? Yeah. I, I don’t know the causes of that issue. Is it the case that because all these industries were banned that, uh, you know, people can no longer work in them.
So, therefore they’re not exciting. So think about, uh, nuclear engineering as, as a career path. Um, hopefully that changes, but the last 20, 30 years it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been slow going just because it’s so hard to build new nuclear plants. Um, it’s a challenge. So, so it could be the case that these, these things were just banned outright and people couldn’t take those jobs.
So the only jobs they took were in the paper-based world [00:41:00] of finance and, uh, and management consulting. But on the other hand, um, I th I think people are risk averse and, and they very much are imitative. And so, because these great fortunes in their eyes were made, maybe not even not so great could just be like a million dollars, which sounds, I mean, that’s a lot of money, but, uh, it’s enough if you’re, you know, 20, 21, you might be impressionable and, uh, and therefore, you know, you take that career path.
Um, and it’s just so visible. So wall Street’s just so visible and it’s gained so much importance in the last 30 years that, that, that is drawing people in. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do about it, uh, outside of like, Hey, maybe what are these industries like, like nuclear power where we, you know, loosen up the regulatory constraints and we get building again.
Um, that could be exciting, but, uh, otherwise it’s just like the money’s too [00:42:00] good. The entry points are too clear. You know, they, they have, like you just mentioned, it’s like the Goldman Sachs and McKinsey have the money to pay career services to host the. The job fair. Um, there’s an application process that resembles college it’s competitive.
And then from the student’s point of view or the new hire, these jobs seem to maintain optionality for people they get to, they get to keep alive the sense that life is full of, of possibilities in the future. I’m not quite sure what it’s going to be, but don’t worry down the road, then I’ll start my company.
Then I’ll write my novel and I’ll sing my song. I don’t know what, but uh, people like preserving that, that feeling that they’ll have the option to do it later. And those careers seem to provide that for people in their twenties. Maybe, maybe it’s just to go on the business school or law school. Right. Um, and because of that, what I think though, the trick is that they, that they think they’re going to get the optionality, but as they get [00:43:00] into their twenties, now they’re making $200,000 a year or more.
They’ve got a spouse, they’ve got a pet, they’ve got a house with a mortgage. And, and then it just becomes too hard to take any risks at all, because you’ve got all these other commitments that you have to give priority to. And, and, and by that time, your twenties are over your, into the thirties. So that, that, that’s something that’s really pernicious and, um, uh, you know, outside of, of.
Trying to show that there are other rewarding and fulfilling careers. I don’t know what to do about it. If you have ideas, I’d love to hear them.
Will Jarvis: It’s it’s really interesting. I
Michael Gibson: heard, uh, through like a acquaintance, like a friend of a friend
Will Jarvis: that one of the things you guys would talk about at the fifth
Michael Gibson: deal fellowship was, um, like they, they bring somebody in and just beat them with, you have to learn how to be happy.
I’m like 50 K
Will Jarvis: a year. Yeah. Just so like, you can maintain that
Michael Gibson: flexibility to actually go out and build something. Because if you get the golden handcuffs
Will Jarvis: you’re attached to two 20 K
Michael Gibson: a year or whatever in the [00:44:00] BMW, I mean, maybe that would be a good piece of advice to people. Like, even if you’re making, if you make 150 K put away 75, K don’t even look at it as your personal and that’ll be your personal runway.
If you add it up after a couple of years, you’ll be, that’s like your own angel round. Right? Exactly.
Will Jarvis: Exactly. You can kind of escape. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a really crazy problem, but it’s so. It it’s difficult to even comprehend what to do about it. Um, another quote, I really liked this to save the West. We must return to its roots.
There’s more to the West than Rome. We must return to London, Athens, and Jerusalem. What do you mean by there’s more to the Westland Rome and what are these, what was we returned to?
Michael Gibson: Yeah, I, I became interested in the West as a concept, uh, just because I started to, I mean, for one thing, it’s always in the, in, in politics, especially, uh, from coming from conservatives, like, Oh, we’re losing our sense of the [00:45:00] West.
And I had taken a vacation to Paris. Um, I think I was standing in line to get into the loop and it just, it occurred to me that a lot of the architecture in France in particular, um, is, is very Roman in its, uh, in its gestures and style, um, in, in, in Napoleon, when you look at it and I saw some paintings inside the loop of Napoleon and he very much adopted the Roman emperor vibe.
So I was like, wow, what is this? Why is it so much Roman influence? And, and, and, and thinking about what Rome meant as empire as securing peace within a territory over a long, long period of time in a long, uh, you know, Geographic dimensions. Um, I thought, well, you know what, that’s, that’s just one part of the story of the West.
Um, you know, there, the West is comprised of [00:46:00] different, different things that make it great. And so that’s, that’s why I started to use these ideas of cities to, to think about it differently. And it just felt like, yeah, whenever people talked about the West, it felt more like this Roman concept of, of, of maintaining a perimeter on an empire and securing peace within.
Uh, but I think other things are important, like the arts or, uh, like science and technology or, uh, or just, you know, the average living standards of. Uh, you know, a man on the street. So, um, that, uh, so I started to dig into that and, and what I thought was interesting is yeah. What, what makes the West grade so London, uh, if you compare compared to the law in, in, in the rest of Europe, the civil code, the common law is just more conducive to, to business.
And, uh, and making agreements, you know, contract towards property. Uh, the common law just handles these things in a [00:47:00] way that, that are better for, for everyone’s wellbeing than even the civil code of France, and which is tied to Roman law. Uh, it goes back that far. And so the common law, and you can do institutional comparative analysis of like, Uh, you know, former colonial possessions and the ones that were under British rule are fairing better than the ones that were under French or Spanish role, uh, North and South America is another example.
And so, you know, as an operating system at, at the foundational level of society, the common law is just very powerful and it is the root of our classical liberalism of, of, you know, adults making agreements with each other, exchanging goods and services. Uh, so I thought we shouldn’t lose FAC, you know, we shouldn’t lose that ideal in the, in the form of a symbol.
And to me that felt like London, Athens, you know, Rome versus, you know, Athens ancient Greece is not ancient Rome. These are two different places and in Greece, uh, [00:48:00] Greece was very innovative. And, uh, and, and it was in part driven by some of the forces we’ve described. They were not a nation in our sense of the term.
They were a loose Confederation of competing city States. And, uh, that competition fell, you know, started to drive these engines of progress in the arts drama. So in ancient Greece, we saw the development of, of tragedy and comedy. We saw the, uh, you know, the first strong development and philosophy. It went from, you know, these bizarre, uh, to the sayings of Hereclitis that I love very enigmatic to these discourses on, on politics and justice and, you know, the good, the true and the beautiful, um, and you saw the development of mathematics.
Um, astronomy. So, so Greece just phenomenal advances in [00:49:00] science or ideas. That theory is a Greek word. This idea that the truth is independent of the human mind. Um, and that, you know, what are the attributes of this truth? It is true for you. It is true for me. It’s universal. Uh, it is true for all time. It’s it?
You know, if we discover something about the universe today and it’s true, it’s true, uh, model of how it works, then that will be true here. It will be true in alpha Centauri and it’ll be true in a billion years. Um, and so that, that sort of understanding of knowledge, uh, comes out of Greece and we shouldn’t forget that, which is not Roman.
Um, and then, and then the last thing, uh, which is interesting to like my, my, my upbringing, because I studied the classics. Um, you know, it’s like my Bible is Homer and I’ve got, uh, you know, I’ve got Homeric. Poetry tattooed on me. So all of which to say is like, my, my emphasis tends to be that way. So I’m not [00:50:00] as, when I’m not as, as knowledgeable about the Judeo Christian influence in the West.
Uh, but, uh, but it’s powerful. And, uh, one of the things that I think comes out in. In those stories is a different notion of the truth that is different from the Greek idea of truth that is universal true for all time. Absolute. And would the, um, the truths of revelation, you know, you look at people from Abraham all the way up to Jesus.
Uh, there are people who had a private truth that was true for them in some very profound and deep way, um, that only they believed in that their conscience adhered to. And, uh, and then they went against the crowd, some fashion. Um, because that was true for them. And with the, the, the story of Jesus’s life, it’s like, time is different as well.
So, you know, the Greeks deal of time was [00:51:00] cyclical, this never ending cycle. Um, but with the advent of Christianity, suddenly you have a definite point of time, you know, this and going back to, uh, Judaism, you have a covenant with God, right? It’s a compact that holds between, uh, a specific group of people in a specific time and place.
Um, so that, that, that, that sort of tension Leo Strauss is the, he famously talked about, he characterized these as city. So he characterized this as like, uh, you know, Jerusalem versus Athens, this, this tension here, but, but you know, the, the truth of the West is that. A lot of the creativity we have as a civilization is, is from the energy generated by these two polarities.
And I’m characterizing it as, as like four. So it’s not that any one of them is true and oftentimes there’s tension and conflict between them, but it’s that tension, I think that can drive creativity and progress. [00:52:00] So I wrote an essay about that. Um, And it was interesting because yeah, I was surprised people actually read it.
Um, but yeah, and I still go back every, every so often because whenever I, whenever you hear a politician talk about the West, uh, I, it immediately comes to mind, uh, Roman empire and now American empire, uh, and what they don’t refer to are some of these other things that are very important.
Will Jarvis: It’s definitely come to dominate.
Um, so that’s a great segue. Are you up for round of overrated and underrated, you know? Okay, cool. So just give me a Senate overrated, underrated, maybe a sentence of, of why. Um, so Straus, overrated, or underrated. You just mentioned them.
Michael Gibson: I think he’s overrated nowadays. My one sentence take on that is, uh, the.
The whole idea of, uh, esoteric writing is kind of fascinating because suddenly you get to look at these old texts and say, well, maybe [00:53:00] there are secrets within here. Play-Doh wasn’t really banished the poets. Did he really mean that? Or was he saying it, it adds a new dimension to interpretation that I think can be valuable, but take into it’s extreme.
Suddenly now we have the careerist mandarins who are afraid to say anything in public. And so everything has to be read between the lines. Uh, so in that sense, um, maybe Strauss is overrated. I also don’t. It’s like not enough. People love to talk about the esoteric writing. But what did, what did Strauss really argue for when it comes to the, you know, adjust political regime?
I don’t know if he has clear enough answers on that. I’m not a scholar, I’m only read some Strauss, but it’s like, what, what is the, the vision of the future that Strauss had? Um, you know, I’d love to learn more about that, but it’s not discussed. So that’s why I say overrated. Got it.
Will Jarvis: Well, but,
Michael Gibson: um, Tom Wolf.
Overrated or underrated,
Will Jarvis: he [00:54:00] wrote some good stuff.
Michael Gibson: Yeah. I think he bought in by way underrated. I mean, as, as seen through the eyes of New York publishers and editors and academics and even, uh, other writers of his era, uh, he was just a Nora. He was just wildly. He was just so funny. He was, he, his style was innovative at the time.
Now every teenager texts the way Tom Wolf writes all exclamation points. But if you, if you go back to when he started out, uh, the dominant influence and voice in American literature were, was Hemingway in terms of style and, and in the Hemingway, Hemingway himself was very innovative and that he developed this really crisp.
Um, lucid clear style that, that you, you recognize immediately and can be parodied, right? It’s like we were walking on the green grass and it was cold and [00:55:00] wet and Pablo was with us, you know, so coming from that, suddenly Wolf went in the other direction and you get these ornate sentences with exclamation points and ellipses and dashes.
And I think he was reacting to what he was coming from. So, uh, I, to me, so he’s a stylistic innovator. Uh, he was a, a innovator of genre. You’ve really developed the, the, you know, non-fiction literary nonfiction fiction books, non-fiction books that read like novels, right. And, uh, and then when you switched to writing novels with the bonfire of the vanities, that’s probably the last great American novel, where, and by that, I mean, it’s a novel that touches on the issues of the day.
Um, it, uh, was something that everyone was widely discussed, you know, not just academics or not just affect some literary group. That seems like [00:56:00] all of America was discussing his novel. And, um, and it really touched people, um, and made them laugh or, you know, made them think about things differently. And so to me, it’s, it’s, I think it only because he was conservative.
No, I, I don’t know who he voted for. He seems to like, he seemed to lean Republican at times, but, uh, I think because of that, he was, uh, never really praised by his peers. And so to me, it’s quite sad that he’d never won the Nobel prize. If you look at a book like the, the, the right stuff, I think this great works at American literature.
It’s really a bummer. Yeah. It’s crazy. So, all right. That’s my deal. No, I
Will Jarvis: love that. I love that he was an inspiration to you too. Isn’t
Michael Gibson: there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, God, you’re so naive when you’re 1819. I, I, I opened up the back page of the bonfire of the vanities and there’s that little picture of the author and paragraph bio, and the fact that it said he had a PhD in [00:57:00] American studies from Yale.
I I’ve laughed my ass off through that book. And it’s such a wicked satire. I thought to myself, Oh, if I want to write like Tom Wolfe from jail, So, uh, influence on that way practically, but, but also just, I, I love his, uh, foresight in some that he’s almost just too precious. And, and so we’re, we’re still living in the bonfire of the vanities.
Whenever you see these celebrity trials or scandal trials and in the press acting one way and crazy politicians doing something else, you just have to shake your head and say, Holy shit, we’re in a Tom Wolfe novel. That’s
Will Jarvis: great. I love that. Um, Von Neumann, overrated, underrated.
Michael Gibson: Ooh. I think he’s underrated because not everyone knows who he is.
Uh, but you know, among physicists and mathematicians people, uh, in those circles, Von Norman, I think is, is rightly [00:58:00] regarded as one of the grids. But to me, it’s sad that most of America doesn’t know who he is. He was just this extraordinary polymath, uh, made major contributions and invented a whole new fields, like game theory.
Um, Also, uh, impressive impressively practical in his later years from, from helping out with the trigger on the atomic bomb to inventing the, still the, the computer architecture that we use today. I, so he was a, I believe he was the second hire at the Institute for advanced study. Oh, wow. The pinnacle of, of, of kicked him, you know, it was, it was the, the, their first hire was Einstein in, uh, in one woman, it was a member for many years and you get to the second world war and all of a sudden he has this idea.
He says, I’m not thinking about bombs, I’m thinking about computers. And [00:59:00] he had you cross paths with the people working on any act at Penn. And so he won, he had a different architecture in mind. He wanted the bills and I, and he applied for money. And space to do it with Oppenheimer because he was the head of Institute at the Institute at the time.
And it was this huge controversy because there was supposed to be this, this Olympus of theory where no one moved to things. And now you have Von Norman wanting to like build a garage so he can make some new fangled thing called a computer. Uh, they gave him the money and they did it, but it was like such a racket that they had to move out.
I dunno, this great story about practice versus theory to me. Um, but yeah, so I think he’s way underrated, just fascinating mind. And then the other thing that he’s a part of that I wish more people knew about was, uh, he and, uh, a small group of people, uh, from. Know, pretty much the same neighborhood in Budapest.
Yeah. What was it? The
Will Jarvis: water in Budapest in 19?
[01:00:00] Michael Gibson: I don’t know, but this small group of people made incredible advances in science in a short amount of time, just in these very impressive contributions. People like Edward, Edward teller, eventually on the hydrogen bomb. Uh, Vaughn man, I’m going to mix up names, but Leo Schutz, lard who’s uh, another physicist who conceived of a way to split the atom, uh, that they were all known collectively as the Martians because, uh, they had these thick Hungarian accents and yeah, people like bond, Neumann, multiplies, something like seven digit numbers in his head and second.And so people thought, no, the only way these people, the Martians are here and there they’re actually from Hungary. Um, so I’d love. Yeah. I’d love to know what was in the water. And in that time, why, how did these people learn? How did they come to, to think how to think? Uh, because they were just so creative in a short period of time.
[01:01:00] Uh, and maybe there’s some lessons we can learn from that, that we haven’t really drawn yet because no, one’s really done a good study of thatWill Jarvis: definitely worth checking into. So one more present age by Kierkegaard overrated under age.
Michael Gibson: Uh, underwriting. It’s gotta be a, uh, I should have no time to think. You just got to spit it out.
Um, I think, uh, I think that book is underrated because it’s short, it’s crisp. It’s a little, it’s, it’s much clearer than character guards, other writings. So it’s a great entryway into his, his way of thinking. And, uh, and it’s underrated because it hits on some of these themes. We’ve been talking about, um, character guard on, I believe on his gravestone.
It says something like here lies an individual and the emphasis is on individual because, uh, In, in the present age, he [01:02:00] talks about this leveling phenomenon leveling to him meant, you know, eliminating all the differences between ourselves so that we were all the same. Um, and he was so sensitive to that issue in, in such a painful way at times.
Um, but I think we’re all rewarded by, by what he went through to pursue his life as an individual. Um, I, I’d also recommend the book, fear and trembling, um, which is a just astonishing, wonderful book about the Abraham story, you know, and, and, and it goes back to Plato as well. So you have the famous Euthyphro dialogue.
You know, the question at hand is, is something good because God loves it or does God love it because it’s good. Um, and, and character guard takes his crack at it. And in that book and, and very much comes down on the side of it’s good because God commands it. Nice. That’s not a [01:03:00] view you’re going to hear today too often.
Nope. But it ties to, I think that’s related to being an individual because it goes back to that idea that in your conscience, maybe you have some calling something you can’t explain and intuitive awareness that it’s unintelligible to others. You can’t give reasons to explain it, why you’re doing it, but because you have some interfaith about what you’re doing, you pursue it.
And that I think is something we should all try to inculcate to some degree in ourselves.
Will Jarvis: Well, put Michael, uh, work. Can people find you? And do you have any parting thoughts?
Michael Gibson: Uh, you can find me at William Blake on Twitter at William underscore Blake. Uh, I, I was a tech journalist, as I mentioned, and I guess this was 2006 or seven and, and Twitter had just formed, uh, and maybe a month later we were covering it.
And, uh, so I signed up [01:04:00] to the service and I thought, what is this? Like something for haikus? Uh, so I, I, my username was that of a poet. I love William Blake. Um, definitely check out his book, the marriage of heaven and hell. Um, but yeah, so that’s my Twitter handle. It’s not because I’m a weird pseudonym. I just kept it.
Um, you can find me at my fund’s website. We have a form. Anyone can fill out if you’re interested in pursuing ideas, uh, that that might make for good companies. Uh, we work with a lot of makers, hackers, and builders. So if you’re looking to, you know, find like-minded people to work on things, definitely reach out over our contact form.
And then, uh, I’m just out and about in the world and large. So, uh, You know, check me out. Uh, sometimes I write stories for city journal national review, some, you know, maybe you’ll see me there.
Will Jarvis:. Awesome.
Michael Gibson: Thanks, Michael. Okay. Thanks for having me so much. Take care.
[01:05:00] Will Jarvis: Well, that’s our show for today. I’m Will Jarvis. Join us next week for more narratives.
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