Hello and welcome
everyone to the very first video podcast
of the Hodges Foundation for
Philosophical
Orientation. We're starting this video
podcast,
this series of video podcasts to start a
conversation
about the most challenging
reorientations of
our time, of the 21st century. For this
reason
I have today Mike Hodges to talk about
the
crucial reorientations connected with the
Coronavirus pandemic.
And it could be that this Coronavirus
pandemic might be
one of the major turning points in
history in the
21st century. Mike Hodges is not
only a very successful entrepreneur,
businessman
and investor involved in multiple
companies but he's also a family man
and the name giver and the founder of
the Hodges Foundation for Philosophical
Orientation. Welcome Mike! How are you?
Great to see you Reinhard, although
digitally.
It's that era where
everything is done digitally
unfortunately, but it's good to see you.
Good to see you too! It's great,
I'm very excited about this conversation
today
and i'm excited to to get started.
So the question is if this pandemic
is gonna be
one of these major turning points in
history like
we have seen before, such those as after world war
I,
after world war II, after the Cold War in
the 1990s.
There were major tectonic shifts
happening in the world
and politically something changed
economically something changed
and our everyday life changed as well.
But before we delve into that topic
I wanted to ask you if you could just
briefly
talk about your personal background and
about your path
to philosophy. So what brought you
personally to philosophy? Was there
something that sparked your interest?
Because it's not normal that a
businessman is so interested in
philosophy.
Yeah well the leadoff: it's interesting,
it's something that you and I have
bounced around this idea of
the pandemic and this disruption that is
occurring,
that is this rip in
the fabric of what is
it certainly changed
everything
suddenly and now we're in a lull period
and some people are starting to
speculate you know
what's on the horizon and we will delve
into that so i'm looking forward to it
it's
certainly something that you and I have
shared in many articles and just
pondering this
and conjecture or speculative what's
farther out on the horizon so we'll try
to figure that out so
i'm looking forward to that. So how did I
get to philosophy:
You know i i told this story once
i'm terribly telling stories twice
with any consistency, as
i'm an entrepreneur and you know
entrepreneurs are always
retelling and the story's always
changing when you're an entrepreneur
because
life is always changing, so let me see if
I can do it again.
I got to philosophy you know I've always
enjoyed
ideas, stories, narratives as a kid
i read the classics and
lots of
philosophical concepts I
wouldn't say I went to the main sources
but I enjoyed mythologies and
and
enjoyed the Bible and
these are often foundations from which
people kind of argue
philosophical ideas.
If you have a background in that, then
you
have an idea from which to kind of argue
the world.
So I always enjoyed ideas,
I like to tell stories, I've
always had this little
personal aphorism that stories are just
about all we have:
It's the stories we tell
ourself inside that you tell
yourself,
the stories you tell others, and then
there's the stories which you
value the world by.  And those
stories shift from time to time.
They can shift depending
on your psychological mood,
circumstances, those types of things.
So
that's how I kind of approached
the world I was kind of wired that way.
But I really got into philosophy in detail
by way of therapy
I'm wired
to run pretty hot. I like to
do, I'm an aggressive person by nature
meaning aggressive physically, but
more aggressive
in my approach to: I like
life out on the margins. I think
that that's where the interesting things
are
I think that that's where there's
risk,
there's reward, that's where
the
treasure is at
and whether that's physically
economically, philosophically, spiritually,
emotionally, the kind of things that have
been picked over in the middle
I'm 48 years old, and
five, six, seven, eight years ago now,
my wife was like: hey look you need to
go
talk to someone; your behavior is not
conducive
to
a wife and three kids living in suburbia.
So
I looked around and came
across a guy named Dr. Jannasch
and I went to him reluctantly. I didn't
want to go to a doctor. I thought
my life was going just splendidly
and it was the other folks that were
having the problems.
So i was really reluctant and I went
to this guy
and he
sits down and talks to people and I was
like okay we can and he said
if you want to talk to me why don't we
start reading some books together
and I think the very
first book we
read was Alasdair MacIntyre,
"After Virtue" and there was,
It was an introduction to some,
I think we just jumped right into a very
deep philosophical book
i don't know why he thought that might
interest me but
that's kind of what took me off into
thinking about philosophy.
it's a book about comparing Aristotle
and Nietzsche
so to speak and their two
approaches
and
MacIntyre came out on the side of
Aristotle but i thought he made a more
compelling argument about Nietzsche's
ideas. I had known around the fringes
about Nietzsche.
So from there we kind of dug into
Nietzsche a little bit more and
his ideas that he was laying out were
kind of the way that I was wired
temperamentally
and I was like: Is this stuff is in
colleges?
These are dynamic ideas
I really thought:
Do people even know what's inside these
books? These are really
exciting and electric ideas.
So we started reading a lot of
books, I mean we sat down and read
through
a lot of
books and we were basically talking
about them once a week, twice a
week and
on the phone and through WhatsApp, in all
kinds of ways so that's how I kind of
got into it.
And then you discovered the philosophy of
orientation right?
So now I would be interested and I'm sure
the audience would be very interested to
know:
What is it about the philosophy of
orientation that
sparked your interest so much that you
got so involved in it?
It was interesting, you know, we read Rorty and
lots of I guess Continental - you know I'm
not a philosopher,
I am a layman and I'm a doer right?
So
Ii really enjoyed these
philosophical concepts because
you know they were giving me new lenses
and ways to view the world and ways
to think about myself and the ways that
other folks
were wrestling with -
 just being in the world,
you know,
and concepts and ideas and structures. As a guy who didn't
graduate college and I didn't take, I wasn't a philosophy major.
These were all new and exciting concepts
to me
and so I was looking for other
folks that might share these ideas
and my wife and I, I
dragged her over to Vanderbilt which is
over here and we sat in on a couple of
classes on Nietzsche.
I was looking for the this Uebermensch
kind of person you know that Nietzsche
was talking about, the overman. I was like:
surely if folks are studying about
this guy, he's,
it's got to be something that's kind of
interesting to those folks, you know,
the concept of becoming what one is and
ever becoming/
But that wasn't really what I
found; it was more folks that were
debating
where the commas in Nietzsche's text
probably should have been.
I'm being facetious here, but
then i was going to attend some
conferences and so I joined the
Nietzsche,
the Nietzsche society and
the very first journal that I got,
I received and the very first
article I opened, there was Dr. Stegmaier's
"Nietzsche's Orientation toward the
Future" and
it's in there laid out uh a lot of
i would call i wouldn't call it a
redescription but in some ways it was
redescribing some of nietzsche's
concepts in a
new language that was more to me
everyday language that described some
things that made
uh um how you might
uh think about uh the way we interact in
the world
in a more easily understandable way and
so
that's how that's the first way i came
across of it across that article
um and you were the uh translator of
that
uh article and so we reached out we were
looking to
try to find some more works around this
because it was the first i'd come across
it i thought it was very
interesting uh and i wanted uh
to understand a little bit more so he
reached out uh and
found you down down in texas after
calling around looking for these types
of works
so that's how we that's how we're
sitting here together and all this has
kind of
come together yeah yeah that's great and
i mean
it's been so great too that i was that
we were able to start this this whole
foundation because of this
huge coincidence um and now
what i what i think is also would be
really interesting to hear from you is
what what's precisely about this
philosophy right so how maybe
what does this philosophy offer what
like nietzsche doesn't offer or what
other philosophies
so what was it that you were like wow
this is really something like
what kind of ideas were in there yeah
well i mean one of the
the catch phrases for me is orientation
is
you know trying to find your way
successfully in new situations and
most situations are going to be new
right i mean life is in flux and it's
fluid
uh you know and yeah uh so
as a human being right that is
intersecting the world in lots of places
as a father
as a business guy as a friend as a
family member
itunes trying to you know find my way
successfully in new situations so
that just you know catch of let's what
we're trying to do
kind of describe things as they are
pretty well right and
most things are trying to do that from
you know plant life
on up to all of us are trying to do that
in one way or the other
some of us are doing it more
i don't know if aggressive is the right
word but some are trying to master some
are trying to cope and that was also
some language games that dr stegemeyer
had introduced in that first
um article about nietzsche in the future
which was a to me softer way of
describing a will to power
right rather than saying life is will to
power it was
we're all trying to cope or master new
situations right we're either trying to
stay where
we are or we're trying to move ahead and
those
that really struck me and so the the
philosophy through a lot of its
language and descriptions of how we're
interacting in the world
kind of laid out the rules of the road
and if you know
the rules of the road well then you have
a um
or the the yeah the rules of the game or
how it's
operating then then you can uh
think about how you might want to uh
maneuver it doesn't it's it's it's not
value based
philosophy but it's more of a
descriptive you know i can add my own
values into this
and then it also allows for lots of
values that could you know it's it's not
it's not
it's not reordering values the way some
moralistic
philosophies would do it's just saying
hey this is how we probably operate and
it made sense to me and
and the guy with the limited education
it was also easy to understand so
uh it it it really uh fit well for me
it's fascinating especially for for
somebody like me coming from academia
to hear this uh i guess business
standpoint or somebody who's involved in
very many different orientation worlds
and tries to cope and master
different situations to to see how this
is applicable in a non-academic
environment right so i wonder if you and
i don't know if there is a good example
but but something concretely
in a way of maybe it was there something
it actually helped you
better or is that is that so simple or
did it like in some way kind of help you
to
cope more successfully with certain
challenges well
what it did it you know it it put a uh
it helped put a language around
what i one way i'm temperamentally wired
to be and because the way i'm
temporarily wired to be this way i've
always observed that things are in flux
that they're
fluid uh you know as as a kid
you know i told this you know i grew up
in a you know broken home i was a
latchkey kid
uh you know i my early
you know days i i you know i was a
gambler i'm a gambler by nature
i like chance
and as a gambler you are
always experiencing that
um the turn of the card or you know in
high
transition transactions or high tr if
you're a trader or a st
you know that things are constantly
changing right that
that every situation is new and
um and that um
um that if you can
think of it in that way you don't get so
attached to any one movement in the
any any any change or any reorientation
it's just
the way things are right and uh
you know i i think it was a tool
right a way to to view the way things
are
that um that i think if you can put a
language around what's going on i think
it
we as humans that's one of the things
that we tried to do right to make an
understanding out of something and by
putting these these uh
very navigational i would call it uh
language uh
game the tool uh games on the it's easy
for folks to
kind of uh understand what's going on
like
footholds right and everyone understands
that you have a foothold you know where
you are that could change when you're
disoriented right you feel the
that you like if a tragedy has hit you
you don't know where you are
you're lost in you know this kind of
disoriented you've lost a foothold
you're looking to grab onto something
uh and you're going to feel disoriented
until you can
uh you know have new routines
to then get those footholds so it was
uh it has been helpful and it has helped
me to to organize the way that
that i see my life and i think most
people lives are organized
so that's how it's been helpful that's
interesting for um to to see how this
philosophy in the end
can be i guess applied or can can be
very useful and i
that's something that always struck me
as something that this philosophy is
it's so um useful in all these different
contexts
there's all these various different
orientation worlds uh societal
orientation world political
economic and all these words and it
addresses all of them and addresses how
we
reorient ourselves with each of them in
different ways
right so that's that's very fascinating
i guess this brings us to our next topic
of the so the the coronavirus pandemic
violence
where this is something that's very uh
it might
bring about as we said in the beginning
this tectonic shift in the world at
least there will be
a lot of reorientations happening and
and now the question is can we can we
um frame this also with these with this
philosophical approach
right so right now we already see and we
can
start like in a more local uh
perspective and
would be very interesting to to hear
your perspective as
somebody who's in the economic
orientation world an expert
in this in this world um that we see a
lot of reorientations happening right
now
already right there's there's a huge uh
unemployment
uh rates out there they're growing
rapidly
we have global debts that are
skyrocketing as never before is
trillions and trillions of dollars
that are that are growing uh in that
burden globally
and then we see maybe a kind of
a global decline of the economic uh
power all together
so so from your perspective um as as
somebody
who like is involved in multiple
economic uh i guess
areas what what is what do you think
what will be the impact
of the pandemic in the coming like in
the in the closer future so in the next
months maybe and maybe in like the one
or two
coming years what do you see what is
gonna change
yeah these are uh big questions and
they're you know the proverbial
million dollar questions because there's
a lot at stake
um yeah so
you know there's no question that
already um
we can see the impact of the virus
and the public response so there's the
virus the health risk
and there is the public response and
i think we can all agree that there are
so many stories out there
that whichever way i would say your
bread is buttered there is a story to
latch on to
right if you if you want the virus to be
over any day now there's stories out
there for that if you think that the
virus is going to go on for a long time
there's stories out there for that
if you think there's going to be a
vaccine there's stories out there for
that
um if you think that the virus is going
to go
you know run around for a long time
there's also those types
of uh stories
and as first as just a human being and
someone who's trying to navigate his
family's health in this environment
it's kind of a buyer beware uh
environment meaning
depending upon the source of the data
that you're ready
your your your reading you have to
question um what are they selling me
right now
right is this is this a political entity
that wants
me to vote for them or against someone
is it
a is it someone on a financial network
that wants the stock market to go up or
the stock market to go down
is it a private company that's trying to
justify
um laying folks off or hiring people
right
this virus has in a
short period of time has given us the
opportunity to
um especially if you can step back and
view it philosophically right to be
amazed
at uh we really have no very
there is no footholds right now that are
there are no certainties right
everything is up in the air uh we
question
every one of us questions everything
that we're hearing right now right
um and it's uh it's i think for everyone
it's
it's very uh unusual unsettling
uh uh uncertain uh period
so i'll just stop there i mean i know i
didn't answer the economic
question i'll try to come back to that
but i mean i think you're probably
feeling that you know is you've got your
own life with and you're
a new guy in a new town you're trying to
figure those very things out same things
out right now
oh for sure no it's i mean as you said
there's
one thing i guess that we can see now is
all these uncertainties
right that's something where the
philosophy of orientation works so well
that because every orientation is under
the condition of uncertainty
right that's and so all we have are
these footholds and and
there's and even yeah if you listen to
this media you have those footholds if
you listen to other media you have other
footholds and
this creates a different reality right
that you believe in it and yes
you're very right i mean our everyday
life just has shifted so much
right in just the way that we um
just the way we work right i mean it's
very basic things i mean
we already see these shifts you know
work from home
uh seeing student calls everywhere we
you know a year ago we would probably
sit in a recording studio now
instead right so there's these shifts
that are happening everywhere
and i guess maybe come back to the
economic questions i mean you have seen
a lot of shifts
in the in your in your companies you're
involved with
so what what are the things that you
think so of course
this is like a big crisis right now but
yes what is going to survive long term
right
work from home is like one of these
obvious one digital
technologies what else do you think is
going to change in our everyday lives
it's interesting because we start out
asking how big will this be
right is this a you know as some people
are speculating
is this a you know a world war you know
as
as you and i were talking about the the
four horsemen concept that you have
state collapse in a revolution
uh you have pandemics and wars right
and so three of those are most of the
time the regional
war state collapse revolution but you
get a something that's brought on by
nature and that becomes global like
we're all
going through this at the same time
there's a rip in the fabric
we don't know how big the rip in the
fabric of what is
and it's being debated right and i've
i'm wondering right now
in past pandemics during world war ii or
world war one
were people also um uncertain
about where it was going and when you
read something you know
uh read some of the what
the stories of what people were telling
each other back then yeah it was debated
like world war one thought it was going
to be over
you know in a few weeks the civil war
thought it was going to end
you know in a battle right they called
world war one the banker's
war and people took it very cavalier and
next thing you know the entire world
is um is uh involved and everything
you know changed and then changed again
right it was
uh it brought on world war ii i mean
arguably and
um the question is
there's uncertainty around this pandemic
there's a group of folks that are like
this is a big deal
and it's going to change everything i
think there's another group of folks
that are like hey we're at the end of
this
and any day now right we're going to be
back
to normal uh and because as you and i
have talked about
for many people this has been a news
event because it hasn't hit their
hometown
and they think it's a lot you know it's
it's much to do about nothing
so i mean we're living through
that being worked out i mean time you
know uh
time will tell um and um we all have our
um instincts of where that's going it's
interesting to me um why
people's instincts lead them to believe
one thing or another right and it's
typically
uh because we're everything is driven by
the dollar it's
how you know uh what is your economic
interest or political interest
it's power related uh issues that it's
which way you think things are going to
go so
are you standing are you rather on the
side of who thinks it
changes or not i i don't know but it's
it's it's a big event
right if someone told me there were
lions loose in the neighborhood
you know i'm going to be cautious until
i know and right so i'm
i continue to be in the trying to take
in as much
data as i possibly can trying to keep my
family
folks that i work with safe and um
and trying to understand uh
what is actually going to come of this
from a health
related um and to understand which way
the policymakers are going to go
right at first it was you know um this
is not a big deal
to okay this is a big deal back in you
know
late march early april uh everyone go to
their cave roll the rock in front of the
cave
and then you know the numbers kind of
spiked
and uh especially in the northeast
and then the numbers dropped just a
little bit so everybody
you know the policy makers were like
we've got to come out of our caves
because
we're going to uh the economy is going
to collapse
and uh now the numbers have uh are
etching back up
nothing has really changed in nature
nature being the virus
it's just our psychological outlook from
some on the
virus and um and so now that
the virus is etching back up and um
there's still so much uncertainty right
with how could we know things
i was just listening to a a a doctor
that
the coronavirus has only been known
since 1930 in the animals
kingdom and since the 1960s in humans
but we do know that since 2003 there's
been five new coronaviruses that have
have come out right and that means it's
been escalating
and they've kind of anticipated a corona
type
pandemic or worried about it i mean and
this one kind of strikes us
where it's highly contagious and we're
all uncertain about
what it will do to us right that's a
hotly debated like
how bad is it and when you're not sure
like how bad it is and you've got you
know one tv channel telling you one
thing and another another
thing you're we as humans are going to
be like
i don't know right but i do know that
i'm going broke i'm not
me but i mean us as a as a country i've
lost my job those things we do know
and so that kind of like there's lots of
mass uncertain there's a disorientation
that's
that continues to go on that we are
going to have to figure out
right and it's not so easy because it's
political it's social
it's it cuts to our philosophy of who we
are especially in america
like wear a mask i'm not wearing a mask
i'm i'm going to live free or die
right i mean so this is a very deceptive
nature is very deceptive and it's very
ruthless and i would say this virus hits
right at the heart of both of those i
don't mean those as value statements
deceptive and ruthless i mean like you
know a lion
doesn't just come straight at you right
it's it's very sneaky and it but it
wants to get what it wants and so are
viruses
so this one is uh especially so
so i'm trying to figure it out just like
everybody else and i'm trying to use
some of the language games through
orientation to try to
you know help me think through uh where
i
am in this and right now like a lot of
people i continue to be disoriented
looking for new footholds every day
that's fascinating how it could impact
just all these different
uh areas and and since you just
mentioned the um
the huge unemployment right maybe come
back before we jump into like the more
political aspects
uh but it was um trying to ask you
uh what do you think so right now we we
do know
about the the major impact it had on the
economy already
to some extent right so we can see some
numbers we know
some of the things where it's headed
there's different experts who are saying
different things called
raul paul but it says there's like a
major crisis coming in august
so i wanted to ask you as somebody in in
the economic orientation world what you
think about
is that are we going to head into
inflation deflation and stagflation
what do we do with all the debt burden
what are your thoughts about these
things i know these are big topics yeah
these are these are great big topics
when people
even with phds are trying to work
through so yeah we
as a guy who's just on the ground and i
can only speak from i'll speak from
my uh observation as a business owner
and someone who's in you know
involved in really fun businesses like
restaurants that have just gotten
destroyed
um what i can what we know is is that
social distancing
right that very word and language game
uh
uh it flies right in the face
of modern economic you know our
the way we have set our systems up you
know
most of things that we do especially the
things that we like to do
right how we enjoy being human beings
social distancing just doesn't work well
right and so as long as there's social
distancing going on
you're going to have a a big
hurtful harmful impact on the economy
and
so you know when the when the virus
finally i would say not the var
when it psychologically hit us in march
um when we were like oh my goodness this
is something big
right the stock market crashed the
federal government and the
the fed the central bank and congress
through this
you know stimulus stepped in and they
staved off
a market crash by pumping liquidity and
stimulus
to try to um to uh buoy the
uh the markets right and so it did that
and if you were just to measure that by
one barometer which is the stock market
it's done that
quite successfully in that it's almost
retraced 80 percent of its drop
right so it but we are more than a stock
market right and so
but if you look at uh jobs and
unemployment
you know these these numbers that come
out that unemployment
you know i think in june got a little
bit better
but of course i mean nothing falls
straight down you you fall
and you're when you open back up you're
going to have
um you know people being rehired back
the restaurants i'm involved with they
hired people back
but also the restaurants that hired
people back can only have 50
capacity right um or seating
well restaurants are are marginally
profitable to begin with your favorite
eateries and water bars and restaurants
right
these guys are you know they make
it's it's a living it's not filthy rich
so to speak right they're not high
margin businesses
and so if you're asking these folks to
reopen with only
50 of their
customers to come back well they still
have the same amount of rent
right employees expect to be paid the
same amount food and food
i mean it it it's really hard to do
and so the reason why we haven't had
such a
major impact i would say in may and june
is because there's been liquidity in the
system that the government has has
pushed out to um uh america in america
i'm speaking
uh um that's kept this thing elevated
but at some point and that's what the
government can do
it can it can produce liquidity and
liquidity is
money into the system and it does that
through lowering rates and pushing it
through the banking system
uh and that money has to go somewhere
right now it's gone through
asset price uh uh it's raised the asset
price
of stocks but what it hasn't done to
those stocks
is brought back customers right
airlines no one's flying no one's on
cruise ships
restaurants are down retailers are
bankrupting
and right and so the ends are not
meeting and so
uh what a lot of macroeconomic guys are
saying is that
you're unless something changes and
there needs to be a a health there needs
to be a health solution to this
if something doesn't change then the
ends aren't going to meet and you're
going to have a solvency issue
what that basically means is you're
going to have
solvency means there aren't enough
customers to generate enough revenue
to um pay or meet
the commercial agreements that were made
pre-covered so before covid
you know we were everybody was selling
10 widgets a day
and everything was priced perfectly in a
system to
to sell 10 widgets a day and then you
have code would come along and now
you're only selling
you went to selling like one widget a
day during the shutdown but now we've
opened back up and you're selling five
or six
widgets a day well there's still a gap
of
four widgets but you have commercial
agreements with people you have
employees who want to be paid you have
leases that need to be paid you may have
borrowed money
right and so at some point if those
if you don't get back to 10 widgets a
day you're gonna there's going to be a
whole lot of reorganization going on
either privately like one-on-one me
coming to you and saying reinhardt i
need you to take a pay cut
you going to your landlord and saying i
can't pay this rent
right and the landlord going to his
bankers saying
right i can't pay this debt note and so
there's going to
if if we don't get a if we don't have a
return back
to normalcy uh i have i have a hard time
seeing how we're going to get through
all this without there being a
a major reorganization through either
uh you know privately with each each
other or through the bankruptcy court
and you're seeing quite a bit of that i
hate to be
you know i'm an optimistic person but
that's just how i see
things working out right now uh
in the economic system if that makes
sense
oh yeah yeah that's that's great and i
guess the
so right now we already see a couple
banks of this happening
right so there's these every day every
day just about yes
it's record numbers that are happening
every day
right especially impacted our airlines
restaurants
department stores and all these i guess
face-to-face
uh sales sales uh conditions or
situations
another question on the one hand of
course we have this the solvency crisis
which
hits everyone more or less right it's
going to be an overall
economic impact but the question is is
maybe
are we going to see any any winners so
there's going to be a lot of losers
is there going to be any winner for now
we see right amazon has hired a lot of
new people is there
is are they going to be winners do you
see anybody else
it's such a tough question you know i we
always view things through just pure
economics because that's what we are
on you know modern man is
if we're nothing it's economic you know
everything is is seen through
utilitarian tool driven time is money
can we make a dollar but
the real question there when i hear that
it's like do we want to live in a world
where amazon and uh
i'm not knocking amazon i buy a lot of
things on amazon it's
you know figured out a great way to be
but and through facebook and
netflix right i mean do we want to live
in a world where you don't
have um
um so overall no there's not a winner in
that right i mean
what i'm thinking is is broadly speaking
like yes they're
those companies where you just sit on
your phone and you buy something and
something shows up to your mailbox
if we're all going to be forced to be
live inside of our cave for
for some time you know metaphorically
speaking here
yeah but are we winning
at i mean do we feel i i think for a lot
of people the answer is
no we're gonna have to figure out a
different under the old paradigm
right yeah are there going to be winners
we're all going to have to figure out a
new way to reorient ourselves right
we're going to figure out how to be
better with less
and i don't mean like me the business
person i'm talking about me
all of us the human beings like are we
going to continue
to get our satisfaction through
consumption right
and i think a lot of people are
answering that no maybe not
and you see that because there's the the
the spit
the savings rate have gone through the
roof one that's because there's nothing
to spend on or spend less
to go out and spend your money on and
there's a lot of us that are like
saying for the first time like wait whoa
what happened here right
i'm worried that i'm gonna have a job
that my company's going to stay in
business and so people have pulled back
but i think that just like the great
depression had had a lasting impact on
people
and how they viewed uh
what they're going to do with their time
and what they're going to do with their
money i think that this could be another
one of those
major uh impacts of people it is for me
personally
and i'm extrapolating i know other
people who are finding
other ways to go about being and doing
things that don't cost any money being
outside right
uh walking in nature doing those types
of things that
uh and so that's great except it's
terrible for the economy
right our business the economy needs
people to spend money
right so we're in this catch 22
situation
great that people are saving more money
except they're not spending the money so
all
your favorite retailer shops like you
know
whoever that you read every day that's
going out of business
is because they got no there's no one
buying uh anything from their stores
so it's the creative destruction that
uh that uh philosophers have talked
about that religions you know have
celebrated and their gods like shiva or
you know i mean but when it comes to
real life and you hear these things
happening to you right it's not so great
great when it's creative destruction and
you're brooks brothers and you're
following bankruptcy or
you know the the any numerable other
ones that are filing bankruptcies or
reorganizing right now so
it's uh it it all depends but i think
that
like we're all going to have to figure
out a new way
of i mean it's like we said it's a
re-evaluation of values that are going
on here
right both economic i mean this virus
could be simply triggering that
you know when things are going up and to
the right no one questions anything
the politics work the economics work
your religions work
right your values work right that's what
when things go backwards when when
things start to fall that's when you're
like hey
i don't know if i want this uh political
regime right here i don't
i don't know if uh right you have big
social unrest movements like we're
seeing right i mean that zeitgeist has
been going on for a few years
um religions get thrown out you know if
you look at other pandemics
like you know they they gave up on
apollo uh
back uh in the athenian wars we and
because he wasn't listening to them when
and uh
um i mean pandemics have played such a
major
impact and it's been the yawner of it
like we're all getting excited about the
wars and the revolutions and the
state failures and you read about and
know about pandemics
and you're like oh yeah that's that's
boring that's a virus and no one cares
but
hey these things uh seem to be a
catalyst for change
and that's certainly what's uh we'll
find out in time how big that change is
going to be i suspect it could be
uh pretty large but we'll find out yeah
that's very that's interesting that's
another question i wanted to ask you and
it comes back to that the point of what
you were saying earlier
about that you're always interested in
stories right where
humans are storytellers so there's uh
richard rorty talks about it that
all we have are stories and we we
reorient these stories we we tell them
narratives we have vocabularies
and then we renew our vocabularies to
understand the world that we're
currently in
and uh also yuval noah harari picks it
up in his homo deals by example and says
where
for storytellers and uh the stories we
live in today
there are something like like capitalism
right or like uh western values
something like democracy and uh the
success story of the west also right of
the of the enlightenment
of of um the law system of equality of
liberty and all these values that we
hold so dearly
and i guess the question is now
from what we see how how will this
overall
have an impact on these things so for
example there was this uh historian at
edward a frank's noted not edward's
known frank's morning
in epidemics and society he writes for
example that
the black death in the 14th century
which was so
horribly terrible and
horribly deathly to so many people so
many millions of people
died back then um that it undermined
the faith of the catholic church back
then and then in the 1500s
we had these protestant movements coming
so in what sense and i know that it's
very close off your question but in what
sense can we see something
of these stories being undermined
perhaps do we've seen undermining of the
success of western capitalism
and if yes are we moving to towards
china perhaps if they're gonna handle
the crisis more
more uh more successfully you know these
are
these are really hard to answer
questions because
it's a which you know in stone's book
you know a lot of these
cataclysmic changes or pandemics also uh
were the tipping points
of change that were occurring or
already right it was the tipping point
it was a straw in the camel's back and
you
like to follow the roman empire or the
we know the athens
spartan war and you know the outcome
victor but you don't
you forget that there was you know a
plague that happened in the middle of it
and like
how did that weigh on the the winner or
the loser and was it
was it the catalyst for the change
was it was was it the zeitgeist that was
going on
like did it conjure this up you know
right it's just
uh like a lot of the institutions and
the way that
a lot of things were wobbly to put it in
in nietzsche's turns like
there's a lot of wobbly things that were
already going on right
uh we've had movement after movement you
had you know
um in especially united states in the
last
you know 12 years specifically from the
last financial crisis
you had president obama you had the tea
party movement
right that was a counter to that you had
you had president trump who's another
movement you've had
um uh you've had the me too movement
you've you know you've had the black
lives matter you've had
lots of uh there there's been lots of
a lot of it's populist driven right
that's like
tugging back and forth against a lot of
the systems
and institutions that we've had in place
since world war ii
right i mean president trump ran on a
lot of campaign like part of his
campaign was like hey
let's tear let's break up some of these
institutions
um that have been in place uh like nato
since world war ii that had a lot of you
know
my friends in europe you know scared to
death because it's like wait what
you know everything's worked since world
war ii uh you know the
you turn on the lights the light comes
on you flush the toilet
right it works right the lights work and
so
over the past since my lifetime and most
everyone that's been alive right now
things more or less has worked
seamlessly with a few blips in there
right we had the
gulf war right that lasted a day right
i'm being facetious here but i mean even
our
worst things have moved on
i wouldn't say quickly but they have
almost been forgotten in our collective
psyche because something
unlike a world war right or a civil
war or these types of things and
the question is you know um is a
pandemic
and these national the these movements
that are happening worldwide even before
the virus there was like 20 cities
around the world that had
movements going on people in the streets
hong kong
tehran right i mean you're like what's
going on there's an
unrest there's like a there's a bubbling
up that's occurring
right and then you have a pandemic that
comes about it
and we don't know where we're at in this
right the best case scenario
is it's almost over and we'll be for
some and we'll be right back to normal
there's others that are like i'm never
going back to normal no matter what that
is i've
now have a new way of being i mean the
jury is still out on which way are we
going to go
uh through all of this right and
and if you don't know do you have the
tools
psychologically because that's where the
real battles are always right that's
that's where the real uh wild places are
is between our own
head in our own time and space we we
have to navigate this world
i mean do you have what it takes to
find some solid ground for yourself as
you move forward
through these plate tectonic shifts
right i think we're all kind of looking
for that
right and and everyone's given a
different answer
alcoholic cells were up at the very
beginning right
right so was peloton uh membership right
which is a home bicycling app right
where you can get healthy like my wife
is
doing jazz you know she's she's getting
healthier right i mean
some people are drinking more right i
mean everyone's trying to to cope or
master this situation
in different ways so uh i too am
in that boat uh we are all uh
you know uh can't escape uh the times
so it's it's it's
certainly philosophically interesting
but it has to be live
pragmatically and i'm and we're all uh
searching for our own answers
one one thing that we're also seeing i
guess that the
pandemic has been responded to in the
world in different ways right so there's
and in china was this really intense
lockdown which
until now it seems successful so far
right and then in europe they took like
this middle route
which was in the beginning it was
difficult now it seems okay
and and then so uk and us they were the
ones who kind of take it a bit
uh like easy easygoing not about two
strict measures
laissez faire lazy that's right
it's a liberal it's a tradition of
liberty right liberty is very important
to especially these countries
to the uk and to the us so and and
my question would be like moving forward
you mentioned earlier how
um social distancing is going to have an
impact on the economy
so is this something that is going to
influence these global systems like the
global economic powers
are we going to see a shift maybe right
to like more state-controlled
governments
and less liberty overall i'm not sure so
let me
so first let's just say that the the
data out of china i hold skeptical
i mean we don't know i mean
yes china through its authoritarian uh
regime and they're very smart people
right
are able to do things that a
not just a democracy like the united
states but a democracy on every level
i mean the united states is a democracy
inside a democracy inside of democracy
right
right there's right you've got local
governments you got city governments you
got city councils you got mayors you got
you got uh counties right you've got
governors right you have uh congress
people
you have the president right i mean in
in america you've got a good you've got
a lot of folks
right there's a lot of democracy going
on right and so compare that
and and so it in china
right they can just they can do one
thing and lock it down
and like and so on a calamity
like a virus
right that hits a country like the
united states
square between the eyes of its
freedoms right in its democracy and its
local rule
and its federalism and its
it showed up in an election year
which makes it tough for politicians
whose job is to be popular to win a vote
well being popular isn't always
doesn't sometimes it's the right thing
and sometimes it may not be the right
thing
especially when it comes to um something
like a pandemic that is porous
it doesn't care about our local
governments our county governments
our state government and our federal
government right and so
a city can uh enact a social distance
ordinance
that the county may not follow that a
neighboring county may not follow that
the state may not follow that the
federal government did not follow
right and so the a virus doesn't care
anything about that so it can seep
through those holes
when you when you get something like a
war
america can be very effective right i
mean we can all come together
you have the federal government that
leads it and it goes and and it and it
and it interacts something that it's
traumatic like that
but something that attacks with inside
and
you're playing off politics against each
other
when you're trying to win votes right it
makes it tough to wrestle
or get to the to the answer
unlike so so like in italy right
uh in in italy when the virus is going
on
right democracy but they were they had a
unified voice right
or germany right the virus is dangerous
do this
right and there's a longer tradition in
some of the european countries i'm just
saying okay i believe the government
they told us to do this
we're gonna do this i mean america was
founded on the
on the premise right of a bunch of
rebels right
of of scallywags or revolutionaries that
you know
live free or die question everything
right and so
so when you have competing stories and
and even the even our
experts can't agree right it's hard to
wrestle down something like that
now does that cause into question the
best way to govern i don't know
i mean it does call call call into
question during an election year
uh can democracies uh
write on a based on a federalist system
that is uh governing one of the most
libertine i mean like like free loving
people that there is
it does call call into question right
and so that's why this virus is punching
america right in the nose it doesn't you
know
every system is going to have an
achilles heel and maybe a pandemic is an
achilles heel to
a democracy does that mean democracies
are bad or the way that we're handling
is bad
everyone has an opinion about that right
i mean i i don't know it's too early to
tell
but yes a a a
a one rule system of a bunch of
technocrat
uh bureaucratic scientific minded high
iq folks like
china can they wrestle down and and lock
people and weld them in their
um homes and and that stamp out a virus
yeah that's probably an effective way to
do it
uh a lot of people would question do
they want to live that way and it'd be
you know it would be hard to do in a
place like america so i did
who knows which way it the other thing
about america
right i mean our socials are
europe has a much uh i wouldn't
their safety net so to speak as people
call that right
the benefits uh to catch those that fall
through the crack
right are probably more tightly woven
and so um
you know it it america right now
has sent out stimulus checks even though
that there's been unemployment
for a lot of folks that have been
unemployed the federal government has
uh there a lot of them have their their
pay has been met
and and for up to about 60 000 has been
exceeded
that is running out right now the
question is what will the government do
if the virus is still rolling on and
businesses aren't able to rehire people
back
are we in a pandemic going to allow
folks
to um be unemployed
and be evicted from their homes
you know the issue with that is
while the stock market is rising right i
mean what type of
public unrest will that will that bring
to bear i mean i i think
you're seeing a lot of the protests it's
of
of uh the the
groups that want uh more justice laid on
top of a pandemic where there is
uh like like not a full
unemployment and there's just overall
dis uh satisfaction
you know what will happen you know the
next couple of months are really crucial
for our uh you know uh just our
overall um
you know social being that how are we
going to interact with each other so
uh the politicians have a lot on their
plate right now
yeah that's uh that's an interesting
point the the question
um of of equality and inequality
right that's like i think an issue which
is done coming up now again so you have
if you look at the the finance the
financial crisis because in 8009
what can happen this liquidity crisis
the money was created
and in the end the the losers were saved
in the end right and the
inequality grew a lot more like
in that time so now you have a similar
situation but the crisis affects
everybody
and now some people are saying we need
something like universal income
you know universal unconditional income
or
um and and to come back to uh
your point you mentioned earlier these
these poor horsemen right of uh
walter scheidel who who like in the
great level he talks about how pandemic
is one of the levelers
it's one of the great levelers between
after
wars revolutions their collapse and
plagues are the one of the things that
they create more equality among people
right so now the question is um uh if if
we look at the the financial systems
what's happening right we also see that
there's
some some people say there's a huge
bubble happening since the financial
crisis right that
even then we had this bubble and it's
growing growing growing growing growing
right now
the stock market is still really really
high although the economy is crashing
is there what are your thoughts about
these things are we gonna see something
like this if if government puts money in
all kind of places
is there gonna be efforts to create more
equality
yeah that's i mean that is the debate i
mean a lot of the money is going into
the stock market and so
there's not a lot of not everyone in
america participates in the stock market
and it is not a barometer of
you know economic health i mean it is
measuring
um asset prices right that can be
they can do a lot of things um and this
has certainly been a magical elevated
period
um and so yes
i mean it if you're going to have asset
prices that just continuously go
up but every other the man on the street
is saying you know i'm unemployed my
employer has cut my wages
he's cut my hours he's cut my salary
right meaning he's saying i want you to
do more
and i'm going to pay you less to do it
and
uh but you're seeing this dislocation in
some of the
the markets where wealth is measured i
mean
the psychological mood i don't that that
is concerning right i don't know how we
fix that
i don't know um you know the our fed
uh you know chairman powell was talking
about the inequalities in market
but the money he's pumping into it is
driving up
just that very thing you mentioned the
great levelers of these
you know pandemics war revolution and
state failure they're levelers and that
they bring everything down
to the level of the ground right i mean
it's not like it's not like a
it's a leveler and like everything goes
up i mean it levels in that like it
it's a destroyer um
and so all of those things
i mean people are going to have to
figure out how to navigate
can we get this thing under control
right will there be a scientific
um uh a biological
fix right are we going to get a therapy
and we're all modern we're all
we're all living in this moment in time
where everything works
the iphone will come out with something
new next week and it's going to be great
right and every you know everything is
new
it goes up it builds on itself and you
know
surely our you know elon musk or someone
smarter will come up with something to
to to fix this uh
virus but what if that doesn't happen
right nature is
right is ruthless i mean and it doesn't
care about
um what we want
but we as humans have always been
at war with mother nature right she
spawned she
she bore us and you know we're her
children
and from the very beginning we have you
know crafted you know we
we uh through prometheus we we hardened
fire and we
built tools and we're artificially
continuously trying to make things
through art right better artificially
right and
and so we assume that we're going to be
able to do that again
and uh and and this virus
right i mean it certainly doesn't care
about any of our
uh our aspirations to equality
right it it and in fact if you read
uh you know it is uh it is
it is attacking the old those with
comorbidities
with health problems right and it's
attacking those that have had
poor uh not health choices but maybe
right access to health or living healthy
right well
i mean those are the very people we as a
society are trying to
uh protect and that's the very thing
that this
this virus is saying that's who i'm that
i'm attacking
it has no value system it's just right
it's looking for a host
and it's looking to to it's adapting
quicker
right that's what this this these
coronaviruses do they
it is trying to figure out a way to uh
spread itself and and to adapt and um
um it is uh
it's a tough thing to for us to to all
wrestle with because there's so many
uncertainties here there's we don't have
the footholds that we need yet
that's a great point um yeah we're we're
our time is is pretty much
up now uh uh maybe maybe as a
last question to come back to the
initial image of like this turning point
in history
right if you had to make a quick uh
choice now and i think it's hard to say
but
if you would have to say is it going to
be turning point and what
yes or no like which direction if you
get like a final kind of thought about
this
my instincts are probably yes we're at
uh i'm a cycles kind of guy
maybe influence maybe it's my ancient
european
barbarian ways of you know the of of
cycles right
that uh but you know i think that time
is
that there's that is uh you know like
spring summer winter fall
uh winter and that
a lot of cycle folks would say we're
about time for
a uh you know something to
uh to to reshape things and so
you know i'm not hoping that
that because you only get
something new and great out of something
going away
so if you're part of the thing that's
going away and you're putting a value on
that
i could be looking at it as a
cold-hearted bastard right because no
one wants to be part of the thing that's
going away
because that's part of the destruction
that creation then the phoenix rises up
out of
but i mean there's a lot of cycles folks
like the fourth turning and there's
there's just a lot of
of that we could be
you know at the beginning of a major
uh change and uh uh
that's probably been going on for about
10 years right i mean i don't mean that
the virus is is happening right now
we're like oh this is
but i would say that probably started
around two thousand eight two thousand
you know
when president obama whenever the
financial collapse i mean this
there's just been one surge after
another
right as the zeitgeist so much so that
we're like
there's all these memes of what's next
in 2020 alien you know are we gonna get
contacted by aliens and it's a joke but
it's it's because
our minds are now opened up to like hey
it's all up for grabs
right even the average guy on the street
right
the the bedrock of of truth you know the
middle class
you know is questioning what can i
believe what can i hold on to
what is solid ground i mean no this guy
in the middle class was never wrestling
with those kinds of things and i think
that we all are right now
and then when you when you have that
type of
where people are like what's happening
next it opens
it up for like literally what's coming
you know you know next it it it gives
the you have the
ingredients for something uh
big to happen and so i would say
uh you know whatever is going to cause
the next leg up to create
more change is probably what we're going
to get
out of this uh and that could be
when it comes to the election that could
be the president gets reelected if
that's going to cause more uh
dislocated change or if the dislocated
change happens because he
uh is removed from office right i'm of
the opinion that
uh we are lurching towards trying to
figure out what's going
where we're on unsettled ground and
we're trying to move towards something
firmer into the future i don't know what
that is i'm not you know
if i knew what that is i'd be out you
know proselytizing it i'm not i'm just
observing and that's my instinct right i
don't
i asked me next week and i completely
could change but right now that's that's
just kind of what i
how i see things i mean maybe a last
question to you as an
economic professional is there gonna be
a bubble bursting soon a financial
bubble bursting soon
yeah again it's hard you know i'm not
just a theoretician right i'm out here
trying to make a living i employ a lot
of people uh and i care about
the communities i live in so just for me
it's not me it's like some stock market
speculator who's like uh
i'm gonna make some bets against her
ford right
you know i have i work i have worked
right alongside of folks my entire life
that i care about
uh and i'm involved with businesses that
of friends who run those businesses that
i care about
and um but it is my opinion that yeah we
we're probably
uh we're coming towards the end of this
sooner or later i mean um either
sometime by the end of the summer or
before the election or after the
election
you know the we should be moving towards
some insolvency phases and some rubber
you know there's going to be have to be
some dramatic things or we're going to
see
a a in the in the near term
more deflationary pressures which means
there's going to be
a debt deleveraging which means
that when debt gets delivered right you
there's reorganizations that have to
occur
that entire time the government's not
just going to stand around with its
hands in its pockets it's going to be
printing money
right it's going to be trying to do
everything it can
to not let this thing unwind disorderly
so you're going to have dollars coming
into it but you're going to have
banks not lending people not spending
right and so obligations not being met
and until it works itself out
and the risk on the other side is do you
get inflation coming up out of that you
know right does our currencies get
debased
right or is there a fiat do we have
inflation or stagflation a couple of
years down the road does the
you know in the short term i would say
the dollar goes up and
but two years from now does the dollar
then fall as the as a reserve currency i
mean these are the things that
these are the big games that that are
being played right now
and it's so surreal because we
um we go on right
we still have to live our lives and
we're right in the middle of these
things where these massive uh bets that
are being made that we
don't know and most people don't care
right i mean i don't mean they don't
care they care
when it when something happens to them
but right now it's like hey give me some
rightly so i need some i need stimulus
money i need unemployment money
and i need whatever you're doing to keep
this thing going to keep going
the question is does the federal
government
and our uh government have the ability
to elevate this thing long enough
uh to keep us
going until we get a biological solution
to this i think that that's what they're
doing they are
trying to just keep pushing this along
until we get
betting on science to give us a cure
right and that's
that's what we're all hoping for uh i
hope for it as well
i have my suspicions because viruses
rarely
uh are cured like the flu there's
vaccines but this one is a particularly
uh deceptive and it's effective
virus in that it spreads quickly and it
has a higher
it's not like it's going to kill
everyone but it kills enough to make it
very disruptive
to modern uh the way we have all set up
our
lives together so it's uh we uh
are going to have to figure out uh some
things and we're all gonna have to get
good at
uh reorienting ourselves and uh coping
and mastering
and you know you can take that
negatively or you can take it positively
right it doesn't have to be negative
right it it's negative uh if you're
clamoring to get back to what was you
may not get there
right if you're if you're dying to get
back to disney world
you know shoulder shoulder with someone
it may not get there right i mean if
you're dying to get back on an airplane
sometime
soon but there's other ways to be as a
human being right and
and i think that we'll just have to
figure those things out and new
and when you asked me before what will
those new great things be
i don't want to think of life only
through economic eyes i want to think of
it through the eyes of me as the human
being just like you are
like how am i going to get along in a
world uh
that where you know things are shifting
right not necessarily economically but
just me getting along with you as my
friend
you as someone that you know we're
trying to do things uh
through the foundation uh me and my wife
my kids my friends these are all things
i'm trying to wrestle with and figuring
out
do i want to live a life on zoom how am
i going to get uh
how am i going to get along so
unanswered questions but certainly
interesting
great closing remarks and uh yeah
thank you so much appreciate it i
enjoyed it like i hope to see you soon
we'll get down to my farm that's great
safe social distancing uh
literally i'll i'll give you a call and
we'll talk about that okay
sounds great yeah thank you so much that
was really
really enlightening very interesting
conversation so thank you
thanks a lot all right thank you mike
all right bye-bye
