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now is Nate Fisher. He is a CEO of a new founding and this
is bringing together people who are entrepreneurs, people who are venture capitalists to fund
this. But he's got some very interesting ideas about setting up a parallel society.
How do we take back our society. We've had all of our institutions
taken over, and when we look at it from a business standpoint or educational
standpoint, we all understand the institutions have been taken over, used against us.
So how do we build a society when we have nowhere else to go?
Right? We can't immigrate to another place, so we build it parallel
here. So joining us now is Nate Fisher. Thank you for joining us,
sir, Thanks for having me. Good to be here. It's great
to talk about this subject. And you know, when we look at this,
as many people pointed out, the Marxists decided that they were going to
market to the institutions. They've pretty much done that, and they've pretty much
taken over everything. And we have a situation now where we're being canceled left
and right. What do we do about this? What are you setting up
here to help people essentially transcend? What is set up here? In other
words, you're kind of oriented more. I think when I look at your
site, you're more oriented towards solutions that are going to come up with something
new that's going to transcend it, rather than going back and trying to desperately
take back these institutions that have been taken over. We create our own new
institutions that are going to transcend it. Am I correct about that? That
is that gets to the core, And I'll what I'll say is to me
and I use the parallel economy language at times I think is helpful to what
a lot of people understand. Ultimately, I think necessarily can do is for
us to have institutions that aren't captured by the left. A winning condition,
a desirable one, is for us to actually gain the power to take back
these institutions. But my view is we're not going to do that. It's
just it is an absolute grind to do that in spaces where everything is an
uphill battle. I mean, you're playing by their rules. The entire design
of bureaucracy is something that reflects the rules of the left. It is a
managerial approach to organizations. So my approach is, either way, we should
be doing this there's huge opportunities through the business sector and particularly through disruptive technology.
So high level, if our enemies control every segment of society, every
institution, which to a large extent they do, then rather than playing on
a playing field that they control, the place that we should be focused more
than anything else is the place where there's the leverage if you succeed reshuffle the
deck in important ways. I mean, think of it, if we were
able to get if we were able to build the next Google, or even
better, not just the next Google, but something that is to Google as
much bigger than Google is than Google was than some of the predecessors that it
displaced. And you look at the way technology evolves and there is likely to
be a disruptor that is that significant in the future and then not to just
in future, in the coming decade. So if we were able to get
control of things at that scale, then that lets us not only create entire
ways of navigating the world that are not under that thumb, but also also
really platforms that offer us the leverage to potentially puts on the same pressure on
those institutions that the Left was able to put on them when they capture them
and of course, you know, when we look at that, first thing
that comes to my mind is artificial intelligence. Is people are looking at this
and saying, well, is this a Google killer? There's going to be
something If it's not that, there's going to be something that has the potential
to do that, even though they have a great deal of money. And
so when you're looking at this and you're coming at it, I should have
said from the very beginning, coming at this from a Christian perspective, not
just a politically conservative perspective. You talk about how do we catechize the bots?
You know, how do we get they are setting up artificial intelligence,
they're training it as you would train up a child, but it's going to
be a monster once it grows up. How do we take over that?
And how do we leverage, let's say, for example, artificial intelligence,
you know, how do we use that to bolster ourselves rather than become a
victim to it. So I think you hit on a very interesting point that
I'll elaborate on, which is Christian not just conservative. And I think a
challenge that conservatives have faced, and it's really impeded our ability to deal with
technology, is in some sense conservatism conservatism sidesteps some of the fundamental questions of
where we should go and folk design. It allows us to avoid some of
what are really pretty serious debates and divides within the movement. Are things that
need to be hatched out, and it sticks to conserving good things of the
past, things we can all agree are good. The problem with that is
that side that gives us a very little vision about what we should be aiming
for, and it leads to conservatives being naturally negatively disposed toward technology. So,
if you think about it, if your goal is to preserve good things
in the past, technology is inherently your enemy. Technology guarantees that those there
is going to be an erosion, a creative destruction of many of the good
traditions, good norms that we all agree are good. That's happened throughout history,
and so there's sort of a natural suspicion of technology among conservatives. But
what it also leads to is also leads to our just our failure to play
in that space, our failure to come up with a vision for what.
So technology is going to continue to evolved, There is going to be innovation.
The question I would say is what should that be used for what should
be the vision that we try to create with that technology, And if we're
not in that playing field at all, the left is the only one defining
that. So it's no surprise that they so surprised that a lot of new
technology is built and sort of the left fills that void. They're the only
ones even trying to catechize to bots, and they end up taking over the
domains disrupted by technology even more than the past ones. But as a Christian
we don't have to be a limited to that. As a Christian, we
I do have fundamental answers to this. I believe that we have a very
clear dominion mandate. What does dominion look like God calls us to that.
We have a very clear understanding of the person. What is the right vision
of technology that complements the person. The creation of technology is one of the
most fundamentally human processes that in many ways sort of parallels God's creation of the
world. It is a creating something out of nothing, and I think we
can embrace that. And if we embrace that, suddenly we can realize that
technology is something that we don't to be afraid of, something that we actually
have. We can develop a positive vision for what we should be aiming for,
and it's one of the most powerful levers we have available to to change,
reshuffle kind of a world that right now seems stacked against us, to
disrupt our opponents in many ways. So is AI a component of that.
I think AI could be a component of that. I'm probably a little more
of an AI I won't say I'm an AI customist. I'm not worried about
AI the way some of these people are. I don't think AI is going
to be as as transformative as some people assume, Like I don't believe that
AGI is going to is going to come and displace sort of totally replace humans.
That comes back to my view of sort of the special nature of people,
as as people made an image of God, not just as sort of
the material being. So I think that I think an understanding of AI and
understanding of human nature actually will allow us to develop AI that is actually complementary
to humans, which is ultimately going to be a more effective use of the
technology than if you believe it's going to just totally replace humans, which is
going to lead to all sorts of I think, confusion about what it can
be and probably unfulfilled promises, just like driverless cars remain an unfulfilled, unfulfilled
promise at a large scale. So I think a proper understanding it of technology,
well, what it does is absolutely these algorithms do play an enormous role
in helping us navigate the world. Whether it's sort of what are seen as
AI algorithms today or other curation algorithms, whether it's the Google algorithm, whether
it's sort of yelped setting where you eat dinner or whatever, they play a
role in navigating the world, and we do need to catechize them with our
values, like our positive vision should be baked into into the value system that
these algorithms help scale. I agree when we look at it fundamentally, technology
as a tool, and it can be good or evil. And I think
one of the things that I've noticed, because I come from this from an
engineering background, and it always concerned me an engineering because it was so secular.
I would see so many engineers who would just simply see it as a
puzzle to be solved, and they didn't really care how it was going to
be used, who was going to use it, or for what purpose.
And I always had a problem with that and I guess it kind of came
to a head when I talked to Hugo Degaris, who was a developer of
artificial intelligence early on. I think he's retired now, but he said he
would pose the question to his scientific audiences and say he was not a believer,
and so he said, well, I think that we're going to create
something that is a godlike intelligence and it may wind up killing us. Would
you do that? And he would ask his audience, it would be scientists
and engineers, and they would always the majority of vast majority of them would
say yes. He did that at a Christian conference that I was speaking at,
and he said this was the first time that people said no. And
so I think when Christians look at a tool like this, or a technology
or a group of companies and you see where these people are coming from,
your reaction is to push back away from it, rather than to say,
maybe there's a tool that we could use to transcend this and to instill our
values, which is what I think you're talking about. Well, and I
think you can go back to Genesis and you can see that God called us
to dominion over the earth. We are called to a great deal of transformation
and impact. I think it comes down to the intent. Would you create
a godlike intelligence A that's not possible. You're gonna fail. God has more
power. What they're doing is they're paralleling what was done at the Tower of
Babble. They're trying to create something they can raise them to the heavens.
And it was very obvious that God thoroughly frustrated their plans. They have they
have no understanding of the power that they're they're up against. It's a feudal
task. They failed. But at the same time, that is that has
been an impulse of man since the dawn of time. That's right. And
yet you know when we look at this, if we looked at the Tower
of Babbel, for example, and say, well, your purpose is evil
and I don't want to be involved in that venture. But we can look
at this and say, but I like the way that you braced this.
You know, you've got to do construction technique that I've not seen here before.
I think I can use that to build something good that is not in
rebellion to God. And so I think that's really where we need to be.
And I think, you know, when Reagan talked about the evil empire.
He would say, well, we're going to transcend them. And I
think that needs to be our attitude, that we're going to build something that
is better, that we can build something that is better and rather than just
you know, I understand people looking at this kind of arrogant attitude as you
talk about, kind of a tower Babbel attitude, this pride, this godlessness
that is out there, and our first instinct, is Christians, is to
just totally reject it and walk away, rather than looking at this and saying,
well, this could be dangerous to us, this is a tool that
could be used against us. There are things here that we could use that
would be good to good and you know, they may have meant it for
evil, but let's see what we can do to use this for good.
And that's a tricky thing to do, but I think that what you're trying
to do is apply Christian principles in that space to do something like that.
Is that correct, absolutely, And I think I think there's sort of there's
a several folds. So one of the one of the projects that I found
it is called American Reformer, and it's a nonprofit focused on restoring and revitalizing
Protestant thinking and traditional Protestant thought, which has a rich tradition of addressing a
lot of these questions. I mean, the Protestant Reformation really built on the
printing press, very new technology, very very early, is a great deal
of leverage. So it's certainly a tradition that understands how to use technology.
But it's I think a lot of that thought, a lot of the deeper
thought there has been lost in the Evangelical Church today and really just a sort
of culture that hasn't emphasized. It's it's part of our tradition, just as
Catholics have a lot of thinking in that space, and so part of it.
And then the goal is to revitalize revitalized Christian institutions. Part of the
goal is can we revitalize a church that can lead the way and provide the
thought that can help shape and anchor any vision. And then I see venture
and a venture firm as a really great platform for sort of articulating this vision
or at least taking sort of the first stabs of what a positive vision of
technology should look like, which includes our focus is particularly on those where there's
going to be sort of a meaningful political difference. Typically, think of something
where that the early adopters would be Christians, Conservatives, what have you.
And there's a lot of cases where that's actually likely to be the case.
We are the ones who are the most dissatisfied with the status. Quote.
If you think of previous sort of movements where people have exited in mass,
which is what you need to get early adopters for a new technology, who
are the first communities to come to America really as coherent communities, and you
could say gain a network effect. Here it was deeply religious, profoundly dissatisfied
munities. I mean, you had this sort of got a few people who
are economically motivated and such, but a lot of those the Puritans, the
Quakers likewise, early adopters of the homeschool movement were Christian. I think there's
a lot of situations where if you have something new, there's a very reasonable
chance that the most natural users of it. Again, it'll depend a little
bit on the design. Is it built to centrally control or is it built
too is it is it built to be a tower of baffle? In that
case, that case we wouldn't be. But it is actually technology that offers
things that we value greater decentralization that makes it harder for us to be censored.
Is the technology that that includes encryption or whatever. Things that things that
sort of a dissonent minority can be naturally expected to value were the natural early
adopters, and as a result, companies that know how to reach that market
will have an edge in the competition. If that is the technology that becomes
the Google disruptor, let's say, we may have an edge in that competition
because we can get the early adopters first. So going back to what we're
doing for Venture, my interest is is businesses where there's a very specific thesis
around reaching people like that with a product. It's fine if it's just a
product that's always going to be a sort of niche serving our customer base.
I mean, we've invested in a pro life health insurance company that's it's not
necessarily a second where there's going to be mass disruption. They do have a
superior product in many ways. It has a lot of regulatory reasons that they're
able to they're aiming to make it cheaper than many of the other ones there.
But it's fine if it's just an available product that provides cost effective insurance
that fits your values, includes access to a network of doctors who aren't going
to force the facts on you or don't try to trans your kids. That's
fine, but there's other cases where there's actually going to be a next generation
technology that is maybe it's initially serving our needs, but it has the potential
to move on and disrupt the disrupt the incumbent players. So that's really our
focus. I see venture as the place where we can be ourselves articulating,
taking some stabs at some of the ideas we see as potentially transformative, and
then working with entrepreneurs who are really drawn to that, and working experts in
a particular domain and working out an actual business to realize that. Yeah,
and I think you know, when we've looked at this, we've seen a
great deal of change in the homeschooling movement and educational stuff because we understand how
corrupted and controlled the schools are as institutions and how they become antithetical to education.
But you know, we now see over the last three years, it
seems to me like there'd be a lot of opportunity within the medical area.
As you pointed out just now, because you've got a lot of people who
are very dissatisfied with this corrupt medical institution that's run on a very different It
seems to me like the is an opportunity and some people are starting to take
advantage of this, have a completely different pair nine towards healthcare, and there's
a big desire for people to be able to get out of this dangerous,
controlled, in many cases, kidnapping type of medical feel that's there. It's
overpriced, and it is very authoritarian and centrally controlled and pushing products that many
people do not regard as safe or effective. And so it seems to me
like there's a real desperation out there for things to be restructured, as well
as a lot of people who refuse to take the vaccine mandate who are trained
medical professionals and would like to be a part of that on the service side.
So I imagine there's some opportunities in that as well. Now you put
together tell us little bit about how your company operates before we get into some
of the other ideas that you have about parallel society. You have opportunities for
people to invest into the venture capital funding. Is that correct? As well
as you know, investing in companies who have ideas tell us a little bit
about that. Yes, so we really have The fundamental theme is ventured,
and in some ways the fundamental theme is we fly the flag. We're willing
to be very public about a vision that in the private sector a lot of
people are drawn to, but far few are a public about their beliefs.
Sign I mean, there's many, many people in elite levels of the private
sector companies who recognize the problems, They recognize something needs to be done,
but they're not going to fly that flag very publicly at this point until the
right opportunity comes along. And sometimes that right opportunity is they need to meet
someone else, let's say it a potential business partner or potential potential employer,
and so by flying that flag we end up just being We get a lot
of people coming to us, a lot of private dms on Twitter, a
lot of messages LinkedIn Twitter forms, on our website or whatever coming to us,
some of whom are people who are are not public yet but will tell
us a lot about themselves, a lot about their interests, a lot about
their desires. And then fundamentally a lot of this comes down to just putting
together the matches, figure out what this person has to offer it's often incredibly
valuable, and what they need and can we offer that. And so the
way we've sort of organized this into a few business lines. First, we
have a fund. We've launched a venture fund on angel List, which is
a platform that is become very popular in Silicon Valley for early stage funds.
Fairly libertarian, its culture too, so it's one that it's one that is
not likely to censor us. They were happy with the very explicitly political vision
that we put out there. And it's a it's called a rolling fund where
people can come in on a quoter by quarter basis and it's accessible to basically
high net worth accredited but not I don't need to be institutional skill investors and
raise from that and then invest that into early stage companies with a conventional venture
model. But we're going to provide really probably a degree more value at than
a lot of investors because we because we have this network. So we invested
in this probaly Felt insurance company where we led their preceed round. We'll probably
be investing in another company very soon again leading their preceed round. And in
both cases we're able to really do a lot in terms of introducing them to
potential partners, advise them on how to reach potential customers in a space where
it's just not well. You can't go to a marketing firm and say,
hey, I want to I want to market to Christians and conservatives. I
mean, most mainstream marketing firms don't even know how to think about that,
or if they do, they'll have a very sort of simplistic view about that.
And it's not easy, partially because the commercial intermediaries have actually blocked it.
So in many cases there's not established ad net like you can't use established
ad networks, you can't there's no network to reach. To reach most of
these people, it ends up being a lot of independent I mean, understanding
how to reach different independent podcast advertisers, influencers, other partnerships, often creative
or earned media efforts. So we're really we'll be able to work with these
people that understand their audience. You mentioned the trends in medicine where people are
moving away from away from sort of the current medical system, and it's not
just about it's not just about sort of explicitly things that would be seen as
sort of traditionally like liberal values. It's a lot of is people recoon that's
sort of the corruption of the whole system, and there's some trends that reshaping
how they think about it. We understand those kind of things. So basically,
for involvement, people can invest in the fund. We turn around and
invest the money in companies in this space, and we've really become the go
to desired partner for companies that fit this profile. Then we do a few
more things. So we do we do what we call venture studio where we're
actually participants in the founding of the company. So you can make a venture
fund, like we write a check to the company our fund to get some
ownership state we end up splitting. We end up giving majority of that money
back to the investors. We take a split of that venture studio, We
as new founding will actually be effectively a co founder of the company. And
that's going to be done in a few cases where we have real strategic value
to add. Maybe it's not it's maybe it's not a company that requires the
same level as the capital intensity, but it's much more about the connections and
much more about some of the business acumen and we'll we'll jump in there and
we'll actually help help launch it. Then we have advisory where we'll work with
can think of the sort of investment banking advisory or fractional CFO. We actually
just helped advise on a deal that closed where it was a seven million dollar
acquisition by some people we've been working with previously in other capacities and they had
this opportunity to buy this company, and we representative them on the Trends action
and have investment bankers who have been through that process before, and we're able
to provide just significant advice and execution throughout the process. And then finally we'll
do we'll do talent placements. We have this broader network and part of that
is our talent network where people can come to us, they can sign up
for our network, and we talk to companies that are looking for they're looking
for good people who are going to be values aligned, and we can serve
them, we can help fill their roles. So it's really it's ultimately as
you can see all of them, there's a lot of making matches and there's
a lot of providing that business and strategic advisory services to companies and really across
the board trying to just accelerate the growth of this sector. Well, I
think that's very important because you know, when we look at where we are
right now, as you were saying, when you're describing this, there's a
lot of people whose values are aligned with ours, but they're afraid to speak
out. You know, this is you know, the danger of how extensive
the takeover has been of our institutions and everything else in terms of the cancel
culture and censorship and that type of thing. And so it's important to have
some kind of a clearinghouse in a sense what you're doing. You've already got
kind of a parallel structure here, but it's also kind of you know,
even though they're nothing criminal about it, it is still kind of has to
be kind of underground in order to get past the censorship and the canceling that
is there. It truly is amazing to see how rapidly this has been put
in and how it's going to accelerate. I think, so, how do
you see the future of business and a digital age like this where there is
a lot of centralized control. You know, when I first started looking,
we look at the internet initially, the rise of the personal computer. I'm
old enough that I began when it was mainframe computers, and I thought,
what an amazing liberation now that we have personal computers. And it worked that
way for a while, but then through the social media networks and other things
like that, they were able to establish search engines, they were able to
re establish the centralized control. Again, what do we do to get away
from this centralizing trend? Very good question, And I think it's hard to
know exactly how any disruptive technology plays at That's sort of the nature of it.
There's dynamics that are there's dynamics that make it very hard to predict precisely.
So what I tend to look at is I tend to look at,
sort of at the macro level, what are the sort of trends, what
are the factors that are likely to shape outcomes? And what I would say
is, yes, certainly, the web two point zero the social media was
a sharp divergence from what was seen as the early promise of the Internet,
which was all about liberation and really freeing people to have access to information.
I think there's an extent to which that did play out, right. I
think that what Facebook Facebook in particular did during the trumpot during twenty sixteen,
in playing a role in the election of Trump, was shocking to a lot
of people in Silicon Valley because it showed that this technology was not invariably going
to lead in a progressive direction the way they imagined it. I mean,
Facebook's mission was to make the world a more open and connected place, and
lo and behold, what does that do It It opens up channels for a
large, very frustrated group in the country that had really been shut out of
whose messages have been shut out of mainstream media, and combined with someone who
knew how to play that media very well, Trump, it actually allowed this
movement to grow rapidly, just like you saw that with Brexit, and so
in many ways, even the sort of even the centralized technologies did actually open
things up. What you saw was a sharp reaction where they realized we're a
very political group, realized they needed to get control of these and they needed
to impose censorship. But then you've had fighting back. I mean, Elon
buying Twitter has certainly been a I think a major blow to the censorship regime.
I don't know that. I don't know how long Twitter is going to
remain open. I don't know exactly how it plays out. I think there's
very good reasons why. I think there's very good reasons why Elon One will
have to and I believe he realizes this. He will have to go to
war with the regime fundamentally, or he will never achieve his goals if he
has to impose, if he has to impose dei HR policies, he's never
going to get to Mars. And he knows that. So I think there's
a reason that there's a reason for optimism. Whether or not sort of his
vision would fully align with minus another question. But there's going to be people
who are going to recognize that they need to push back and effectively control of
one of these digital platforms is almost sort of monarchical in position. I mean,
he is acting as a sort of monarch of Twitter. He took control
of what was essentially a digital government and meaningfully changed its policy. Now what
is going to change the direction of things. Here's sort of the fundamental resource
that I see when I look at it is we are becoming a low trust
society in many ways. I mean, you look at the trend, spent
a long time outside I spent a year visiting sixty five countries around the world
in twenty fifteen, talking to had hundreds of meetings, really trying to get
a sense of global patterns, global trends. And what I saw was really,
more than anything, sort of what the dynamics you see in low trust
societies were. And the distressing thing is you're seeing trends in America that are
in the same direction. So in a world like that, people no longer
trust institutions increasingly, that means they don't trust the truth that comes out of
universities. It'll be I think, a slower process, but they won't trust
the credentials of those universities. Print they certainly don't trust government arders of truth.
Increasingly, they honestly even trust the big centralized platforms. And there's also
sort of the collapse of trust at the basic level, like just less confidence
that some sort of stranger you do business with is going to follow through,
is going to be competent. So what does that mean. It means that
trust is going to be scarce. And so the way I look at it
is we Christian conservatives particularly have communities often organized around churches. Church communities there
remain sort of distinct higher trust communities where they have a different set of norms,
they reject some of the dynamics that are driving this job. In many
cases, they just continue to they continue to build relationships and community in a
way that is increasingly scarce in an atomized world. And so these communities now
have something that is going to become scarcer and scarcer and more valuable in society.
And that is how exactly things play out is harder to predict, but
that is an asset that we can recognize is going to become more and more
strategically valuable. It's going to become more and more valuable for ourselves. Meaning
the more we're able to fork away from these mainstream trends, the more we
will be able to continue to do business as you would in a high trust
society. Right, let's say, in a low trust society, could never
call a contractor and just kount of getting the job done. For most of
the world, you wouldn't dream of putting down a twenty thousand dollars deposit for
one hundred thousand dollars job before the work's been done. I mean, the
assumption is you'd never see the guy again. But if you're able to get
a recommendation through your church and you know that person as a member in good
standing, they value that membership could be very different. That person now has
a lot more incentives to maintain a different set of norms. They have an
ethical foundation that's no longer common in society to maintain it. So it lets
us preserve our way of life sort of in parallel in these parlel networks.
But even more that now serves as the foundation for something that others in society
are going to value more and more. So example I give is back in
the seventeenth century, the Quakers were famously high trust in England in a world
that was lower trust, so many many people wanted to do business with them
as intermediaries. If you're doing a high transaction that requires a lot of trust,
you want to do it through people you know can be trusted to follow
through on their work. And if it's complex transaction, you really need sort
of multiples of those people involved. And our communities can serve as repositories of
trust that that I think will increasingly be sought out for these high trust intermediary
roles as that becomes scarcer elsewhere. So if I'm thinking of the nature of
any sort of disruptive platform that that is a Google buster, it is something
or I won't call it a Google buster. I'll say it's something as to
Google what Google might have been to the more powerful companies in the past.
It's sort of a new platform that becomes even more powerful, even if it's
in a different domain. That's going to be what it builds out. It's
going to be building on communities like that. It's going to be leveraging that
trust, and it's going to be providing them the tools to really leverage that
trust to play a broader role in society as as more and more people seek
them out. Yeah, that's very important. I think if they anomize us
to it seems like if we look at their strategy to control people, it
is to isolate each and every one of us so that we are only connected
to them and to keep us from making connections to each other. So it
seems to me like that kind of community, that kind of trust, those
kind of interpersonal relationships, anything that can facilitate that is anesthetical to what they're
trying to do in terms of centralized control. Right absolutely, And I think
the centralized thing is the centralized thing is a key question. If it's highly
centralized, then you essentially rely on algorithmic mediation. So it's actually interesting even
if Facebook has changed the new speed algorithm, so the new speed algorithm looks
more like the TikTok algorithm, which is less of a communal social algorithm and
is much more of a sort of individualized entertainment feed. And I think that's
for any platform that breaks down those communities or doesn't really build on those communities,
that's the invariable trend, is that they're going to move in the direction
of really that computer being your counter party, being intermediary. Whereas if it's
technology, and it can often be simpler technology in some ways that facilitates that
serves these people as communities, then you're strengthening you're strengthening that community engagement and
the nodes, the centers of power are no longer one giant centralized algorithm,
but they're really the distributed communities that exist, and then you facilitate the sort
of the connections needed for them to engage in larger scale or more sophisticated transactions
that necessarily go beyond beyond that community level, but it's sort of as necessary
rather than sort of attempting to pull them as quickly as possible into that broad
ether, so to speak. Yeah, when we look at this, we
need to understand and we should not be disheartened by the fact that the institutions
are controlled by people whose values are anesthetical to ours, because their values are
inherently self destructive. When you look at E. S. G and D
I, those are things that don't lead to excellence, They cannot sustain themselves.
They're you know, they're they're going to be those are going to be
the seeds of their destruction. And even those types of things, even if
we don't pay attention to the fact that as Christians, we've got God on
our side who can do anything that he wants to do. That's that's the
key thing. But even when we look at at their values and how they
have essentially placed on a pedestal or an altar or made a god out of
DE I and E. S. G and things like that, that is
really should be heartening to us that that we can take this back, and
we can if we strive for excellence and if we work for that, and
if we have commonality with that, it's a very hopeful situation. We've always
had in the past Christian organizations that would you know, Christians would come together
and community and they would you build hospitals and build schools and things like that.
Alexis Deetofol when he came, he said that this is the thing about
America that's very different. They don't wait for the government to do an approach.
They get together, they see a need, they get together in the
community, and they build it. And that's really the kind of mindset that
we need to inculcate now, isn't it. Absolutely? And I think ultimately
we should be hopeful. I mean, in many ways, I think the
regime is fragile. The regime is far more fragile than people assume. Yes
they are. They have embraced suicidal ideologies. That is limiting their that is
limiting their competence, it's limiting their effectiveness. I also, I mean,
this is sort of another way of looking at it, coming from more of
a financial angle. But you look at the Arrest of Trump and you look
at other movies like that, and a lot of people would say that's a
that is a show of force, that is a that is a a regime
that is confident enough it can crack down on his enemies. It's desperation,
isn't it I would say, I would say it's much more like desperation.
I think that if you think about it almost from a financial perspective, it's
a bigger departure from the past. It's sort of an increase in volatility.
So you think of sort of a change from norms. I mean, they've
had a they had what was seen as sort of a steady progressive trend in
history sharply interrupted by things like Trump. You could think of that as sort
of a higher volatility in politics, a much broader range of sort of possible
outcomes. And there, certainly, in many ways, they seem in control
of many things right now, and they're more and more sharply departing from norms.
But when volatility increases, it doesn't mean that it just increases in one
direction, Like the range of potential outcomes grows in both directions. And so
I look at I look at things like the arrest of Trump, I look
at other things like that, and that is a that is a bigger and
bigger departure from norms that ultimately just sort of objectively increases the range of possible
outcomes in both directions. And that's not the move of a that's not the
move of a stable, self confident regime. A stable self confident regime is
not They're going to want to sort of slowly and carefully move in their direction
and not do anything that sort of rocks the boat, because if you're in
control, you don't want to rock the boat. No, that is that
is that is people who feel desperation, and it's people who ultimately, I
think are setting the stage for for greater volatility that could very quickly. I
think they know their own weakness in some ways, and they're actually accelerating things
that could lead to their own demise. You know, when you talk about
your on your website, when you say about our firm, you say,
we explicitly oppose DEI e SG and the bureaucratization of American business culture. And
I think again, as we talk about the fact that DEI and ESG is
about denying merit and so as the seeds of its own destruction, the same
thing is true of bureaucracies as well. In central planning. We have always
been able in the past, America has been able to transcend these centrally planned
economies. If we look at North versus South Korea, one country split,
same people, same background, but a different system, one that is tightly
centrally controlled and bureaucratic. The same thing with East and West Germany. And
so we know that having something that has decentralized, something that is based on
merit, not bureaucracy, and that type of thing, we know that that's
a winning position, and so that should be a very hopeful thing. You
say, you promote a culture of entrepreneurship and excellence, betting on great companies
and products and customers disovered by corrosive ideologies. It's a very hopeful strategy,
I think, and talk to us a little bit about what you see in
terms of let's talk about a disruptive technology that is teetering and could go either
way, and that cryptocurrency. You know, we have the CBDC, which
is a big specter of complete and total surveillance and control of everything that we
do, and they have a targeted cryptocurrency for extinction. But then there's other
aspects of the blockchain that perhaps might be used. How do you see that
developing? So it's a good question. I think that is very I'm very
interested in blockchain. I'm probably in some ways I'm probably more interested in it
than AI because I think that it is it is particularly focused on it's particularly
focused on targeting many of the centers of regime control. I mean, you
think a bitcoin and it is directly challenging a control of the currency, which
is ultimately probably the strongest source of present regime power. And it's uh,
I'm optimistic. I think that. I think that bitcoin is an incredibly powerful
technology. Uh. It's it's certainly one that has I think it doesn't just
have the technical promise, and there's obviously always stuff that needs to be worked
out in sort of the technology of any of these things that at an earlier
stage. But it also has a culture that I think aligns with intends to
draw the sort of people who are who are skeptics of the central control.
And it's it's it's by nature international. So the more international something like that
is, the uh, the harder it is for it to be stamped out
in any one location. So I look at that and I see that,
and I think that a lot of the attacks on it are just spurious.
I mean they say that it can be used for criminal activity or whatever.
But it's it's traceable, it's actually I mean, the US bundles of cash
are far more effectively for money wants than bitcoint it. So it's what it
really is is it's not about it's not about secrecy or anything. It's about
uh, it's about not being being something that can be arbitrarily shut down by
financial institutions that are increasingly politicized, not being something that can be sort of
systematically taxed and debased. So I look at that and I see a lot
of potential. I see a lot of excitement in the community. I see
a lot of very serious people, serious thinkers, doing very serious things in
the bitcoin world. And increasingly there's evident political pressure that pushes back against the
really against the regulators who want to shut it down. I mean, people
know that a CBDC is something that can be a powerful tool for essentially just
increasing increasing the totalitarian capability of the current system. That is not something that's
just going to be let in easily given the mood there. So I look
at it, I see obviously it could be used. Some of these things
could be used for they could be us used for harming us. But the
vast majority of the space is really culturally aligned and I think technologically aligned with
directionally where we need to go. That's true. Yeah, yeah, it
does have some issues with privacy that people don't realize, but like you said,
culturally and technically, you know, culturally they're aligned with us in many
ways in terms of decentralization and liberty, and there are some things that we
can use in that space. What would you say to the Christian Right as
a movement what needs to change and the way we approach things in our perspective
in order to win whatever that means when the culture, I think part of
it is actually try. I mean, I think one big problem, so
one big challenge in the Christian Right is they've been politically neutered and in many
ways, I think, accepted theologies that are intentionally politically neutering. So you
look at a lot of and there's a lot of different things you can tie
us to, and I would say a pessimistic eschatology can lead to a mindset
where you just put your head down and kind of expect things are going to
get worse, and it's one that ultimately is very undermining a human agency,
because you don't you do only have the belief in the effectiveness of your actions.
But second of all, even aside from that, I think most Christians
intuitively recognize that there's a problem here, and then they want it to change,
Realize that we can be effective, realize our numbers, realize that that
ultimately this is a war that we're in. I mean, you have a
lot of people who I think would be very patriotic about signing up. Increasingly,
I think that these people have been alienated by the military, but they
wouldn't have hesitated to pick up arms and make great sacrifices to fight for the
defense of the country. But otherwise are fairly uninterested in politics. I mean,
a lot of Christians really may be aside from the exception of abortion,
just really are not very interesting in politics, are not very focused on politics.
You homeschool, let's say, or you go to Christian school, so
you're not really interested in what happens to the school board. Well, you're
paying for it, and it's educating the people who you're who are going to
be co workers or employers or whatever, So we should care about it.
It's going to shape the culture of the town. That someone lives in.
So we should care about all of those things, and we should recognize that
we have we have real numbers here, and we have real eye I think,
a real foundation. This is what American reformers trying to do is sort
of restore the foundation that that makes clear how Christian doctrine speaks to any number
of institutions. It has clear visions not just of abortion, but how you
should think about all sorts of issues around what government should ideally be doing,
and how government should be, how government should be approaching things. So get
political would be one of the top ones. And then second of all,
embrace a positive vision. I think this is a big thing is if we're
a conservative, I mean my view is a conservative impulses ay good impulse.
It's a prudent impulse in a world where we recognize that man's fallen. If
we recognize we're fallen, we're wise not to sort of recklessly go and try
to just constantly change everything from the ground up. Like that should be there,
but we should also have Christians who are part of the vanguard, who
are who are pushing out a positive vision, who are really aspiring for what
we should build it. You actually do see a lot of these people in
the crypto world, and I think that we need a lot more. I
mean, if Christians are some people are I think temperamentally going to be conservative.
They are just naturally they want to focus on that type of thing.
That's great, but that doesn't need to be the defining identity of our movement.
The defining identity of our movement should be a positive vision for how society
should be organized. That is a sharp, very clear, and ultimately I
think much more attractive alternative to what the left puts out there is their vision
or progress, So I progress their way. We should be defining what an
elevated vision of society. I don't I don't know that I would embrace the
word progress. I think that has a particular uh, there's a particular sort
of framework called it. They've kind of stolen that word, just like they
stole the word liberal liberal used to liberated people. It's an open question whether
we whether we believe that, whether it's I don't know that I would think
of it even necessarily in terms of progress, because I don't believe that history
moves in one direction. So much as we certainly have a vision of sort
of what an elevated vision of life looks like. What is a higher what
is a sort of higher vision of society or a lower vision of society at
the very least, and we should be we should be painting pictures of what
the elevated vision looks like and rallying people to uh, to go create that.
I agree as one person said, I forget it was that said that
you can't win a culture where if you don't have a culture, and we
have retreated from this. We are shamed of what our beliefs are because we've
been criticized and we have a very compelling vision, and we should be looking
at ways that we can move that forward, that we could project that out,
explain it to people. It is not a threatening vision to people.
It's quite frankly, their centralized control vision is a very threatening thing. And
I think one of the things that we can learn from the left. Get
your opinion on this, seems like the left has a very They've got their
set of values and they don't and their values based really I don't agree with
their values, but they push those values out whereas we say, well,
just don't change anything. I just don't want to see any change here.
And if we have values, we're not trying to advance those values as the
left is, We're just trying to keep things from changing. That's a conservative
perspective, whereas we need to go on the offense and we need to say,
these are a values, these are why these values are good, and
then how are we going to best establish these values? And I think unless
we do that, we're going to lose. And we've been losing because we've
not been doing that. I think we have to have that vision, project
that vision, work on that vision, and try to push that forward,
which is what the left does, but we don't do that as conservatives,
and clearly, you know the conservatives that's really kind of a political position.
That's why I think it's very important for us to look at this from a
Christian position because they have principles we have as Christians, we have principles and
things that we want to advance, and you have to have that. You
have to have some standard that you're going to try to advance. Think of
it as a flag or whatever, you know, that type of standard that's
going to advance what we want to see our culture look like, and work
on that. I think I think that's what you're doing, absolutely, and
it's a self confidence that goes with that. I think that's a huge part
of it. I think the self confidence to know that your values are better
than the other side, that in many cases we know that it is the
truth, we know that we have the truth. And I think education is
a great place to look at this. Look at a lot of Christian colleges
and they have a sort of palpable inferiority complex. They covet the endorsement of
institutions like Harford. Yeah, and you look at institutions like Harvard, and
Harvard does not know. Harvard does not know what truth means. They do
not know what an education means anymore. As an institution, they become so
disconnected. I mean, Yale has a professor like Jason Stanley in their philosophy
department. Totally ridiculous guy, I mean, just comically ignorant by any standard
of history, any sort of standard of education. And he's in a philosophy
to heart it, So why do you want Yale's approval? The right approach
would be it could be a small college, but they could express they should
be expressing contempt for these institutions and really very self confidently saying if no one
else knows how to define truth, we'll define our own standard. We understand
truth better than anyone else out here. We understand what an education means.
So we're going to be our own judge. We're not going to brag go
down graduates we get into Harvard grad programs, or how many sort of prestigious
degrees our faculty have, when when all that means is you're really submitting to
the standards of people who don't even know what an education means. So I
think there's that that self confidence is really a an absolutely crucial position, and
it comes from knowing that our values, knowing that we are right, knowing
that we have the better vision of life, which increasingly all you have to
do is look at the left. I think for a while, for a
long time, the left did seem to have things that were more exciting,
things that were more attractive. In many ways, I think part of that
was sort of an abdication of the part of conservatives. Part of it was
just where they were in their their art. There was sort of some bakeding
values. But really at this point, I mean, you look at what
DEI is putting out and it's literally ugly. And you look at these people.
There's a great deal of hubris that they have, and they act as
if they are one hundred percent right, and yet you know that they know
that they're not right because they won't engage you in debate. As you pointed
out, you know, it's an act of desperation, you know when you
look at politics there and when they try to they don't want to engage in
debate. They want to just shut down and cancel everything. And we see
this whenever you go up and engage them at a protest, you say,
well, what are you protesting? Please? Are you're racist? You know,
they just start throwing fithets at you. They don't want to defend their
position. They don't want to debate what you have to say, which is
really coming from a position of deep insecurity and desperation. And so we need
to understand that even though the facade that they present is one of arrogance and
complete confidence, that on the inside they don't have that at all. And
so there is a vulnerability there and so we need to work on what we
need to understand in terms of our foundation. I think and then once we
have, once we are confident unlike them internally, and once we're confident in
our position with God, then that's a foundation on which we can stand and
conquer. And we should move from that and project those values out to other
people that trying to control them, without making any mandates on them. But
we hold it out there as a standard to be achieved, and that's the
way that Christian society has always advanced in the past, I believe. Yeah.
Well, I will say to some extent, there are areas where there's
no neutrality, and I think that's actually that's an important one too. So
if you ask me what I would say about Christians, we've been conservative,
but we've also sort of, at best thought, bought for a neutral public
square in the We bought into a lot of the assumptions in the twentieth century
of secularism, which are totally out of stuff with American history, where there
was no there was no sense that you'd have a sort of public square square
cleansed of God, for instance. Yeah, And what I think is actually
happening in the digital age, and this is interesting, is you're starting to
see people realize there is no neutrality left realize this ahead of us. So
this goes to going back to the Facebook example. After the face, let's
say the Facebook algorithms played a role in elevating pro Trump content, amplifying pro
Trump content that helped elect Trump. People realize that there's no neutrality. I
mean, you have an algorithm that gives people what they want to see,
this engagement that's not neutral, that is going to advance a certain type of
content. The left certainly wanted to impose their own values. But you particularly
you think of the nature of an algorithmic feed itself, and by its very
nature, its job is to rank and curate things for you. If you
look at Google, go to Google, you type in a search term,
you have a number one search result, you have number two search result,
number ten, et cetera. There must be a value system within Google about
why one is better than two. That cannot be There's no neutrality there.
I mean you go to type in the search term is Jesus God, and
ultimately a search engine condenses things. The top result either says yes or no.
There's no there's no possibility in the sort of greatest summarized version of it
for neutrality there. And I think as people realize, as the Left realizes
that, they realize you have to catechize the body, becomes a religious war
to catechise the body. So in many cases, I think of the digital
algorithms as equivalent to the sort of norms in society where we may have had
a strong tradition of toleration. I think the angle of world has had a
very strong tradition of religious toleration, but there's still the sort of norms and
customs shrore a society that nudge you in certain directions, that normalize certain beliefs
as the sort of default or expected belief. And I think the algorithm,
in many ways, the algorithmic curation that is going to shape just all aspects
of society fits in that and either those norms, those norms cannot be neutral
either they either they reflect Christian truth or they reflect some other set of values.
So I think I think it'll be helpful actually for Christians to move beyond
simply fighting for neutrality and actually realize that in many of these domains we should
be fighting for the truth. We should have confidence in the truth well enough
to fight for it, and there isn't going to be neutral. So if
we try to leave it neutral, it's just gonna be filled by It's gonna
be filled by an ideology that is not ours, and it is invariably going
to be hostile to us. I agree, Yeah, I think neutrality is
alive when you're talking about education, when we're talking about journalism and that type
of thing beyond Google. They take a look at Matt Drudge. He is
aggregating the news. And I've said this from the beginning, the whole idea
that they keep trying to sell people. It's like, oh, we're completely
neutral. Well, if you believe that in terms of being a journalist,
then you're either incredibly naive and ignorant yourself unaware of your biases and prejudice,
or you're lying to somebody because you really do have those biases and prejudices and
we can see it. And Matt Drudge, he went from presenting the select
He doesn't write any thing, but he's got what he selects to show to
you is either from a conservative bent or now from a leftist bent. And
this has always been the case, is also the case when you look at
religion in the public square. They said we're going to be neutral by purging
religion out of the neutral out of the public square. Well, that's not
neutrality. What you're now doing is you're pushing a religion of secular humanism.
But I think that you know, when we when we look at this,
as you point out, Christianity has had a history of being tolerant of differences
but still having very strongly held values that we hold deer and I think that's
one of the key things. I think we have gotten to the point where,
you know, tolerance of different opinions is really not the value that's holding
forth. What we're really putting out is the fact that we're apathetic, we
don't really care, and so it isn't that we're tolerant. We just don't
care anymore about these fundamental values. And so we have to reclaim those things
on a personal basis. And then once we reclaim the those things, we
will have a very firm foundation. Doesn't necessarily mean we're going to ram those
things down somebody's throat. Now, if you have a situation like for example,
abortion, there is going to be a conflict there, and you know,
people who believe that that is murder, as I do, are going
to do everything they can to stop that. But in most cases it's going
to be a you know, this is our positivision of the world, and
if you don't want to join us, you don't have to join us.
But we're going to do this. And I think that's a key part of
what you're trying to do with the Venture Fund is to transcend this kind of
decaying society that is there. It really is to me. I look at
our society right now, looks like a very big tree that you may not
realize it, but the entire insides have been eaten out by a bug and
it's just waiting for a breeze to come along and blow the whole thing over
on your house. That's kind of where I think with society right now.
I agree. I think that I think that what's interesting is more and more
is going to be that soft nudging is me n edging in one direction and
going back to Google, my favorite, my favorite example, ranked search terms.
That's not coercive in the legal sense, but it certainly nudges you toward
a particular uh one result is ranked higher than the other one, and people
go there for a reason. Because going to the idea of Matt Drudge it
can't be neutral. Neutral. Neutral in the age of the Internet is entirely
spam. I mean, you're going to be totally inundated by spam, So
you're looking for someone to judge by some standard. This is worth my reading,
This is worth my seeing. What is that standards that standard of the
truth? Is that standard a particular ideology? Is that standard something purely sort
of reflexive, like engagement, like the more time you spend on it,
the better it must be, which I think is that's sort of thing engineers
like because it allows them to sort of sidestep the questions they really don't know
how to answer. But that points to the vulnerability of these companies. I
mean, you go to Google, and Google you go there to see them
rank rank websites, presumably looking for truth or looking for for something good or
useful. I would argue Google lacks the foundation, They lack the epistemological foundation
to actually know how to answer those questions. They really don't know how to
distinguish spam from non spam. Ultimately, if you don't, if you don't
know how to define what is good, then then then what is that is
what distinguishes spam from non spam ultimately, and people just spammers just get really
good at sort of playing to the algorithm. If you don't have an objective
standard, if it just becomes sort of a reflexive one. So I think
a big vulnerability is they lack the they lack the ability to actually discriminate in
ways that people are looking for. And so increasingly, as as we have
a breakdown of any sort of norms and standards in society, you're just going
to see you're going to see a degradation of quality in all sorts of space,
and that includes a degradation in the quality of the goodness of information out
there. The truth value, that the moral value according to even people who
might not see themselves as Christian, they're looking for that. They still are
looking for something that they sort of intuitively recognize is good in many cases.
Obviously some are not. Some are truly looking for evil, and platforms that
don't know how to provide that are not going to be able to get people
what they look what they want, and increasingly they're going to be they're going
to produce dissatisfaction. And that is an opportunity for us to capitalize on and
for us to show them a better vision, show them better alternatives. Absolutely,
New Founding is about building the future, about responding to market signals from
a Christian and conservative perspective, about getting around the cancel culture and promoting a
culture of excellence and merit. And I think that we need to understand that
we are really in a position than many of us think because of those values
that we hold. The question is how do we implement those values into new
businesses, into new systems, into new institutions. And I think New Founding
has an important role to play in that. Thank you so much for joining
us, Nate. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Nate Fisher,
thank you, thank you for having me. David, thank you.
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