In this episode we discuss:

(00:00) intro

(02:17) Cardinal Pell

(12:24) 21st Birthday Nazi

(16:41) Pokies

(29:30) Stamp Duty and Land Tax

(33:58) Exploding Heads on Inequality

(35:14) Book Club

(37:04) Sunak

(39:26) Prince Harry

(49:36) Indigenous People Are Not That Different

(55:17) The Right To Strike

(57:49) The Biggest Obstacle To Real Freedom

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We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Well, hello there.

Dear listener.

You're actually interrupting a conversation.

Joe and I were having, this is the only podcast, dear listener.

We had 100% of the co-hosts suffer from Crohn's Disease as well as operator

podcast, and we were having our little society meeting about our symptoms,

treatments, and all the rest of it.

So, We'll put that on pause Joan, and talk about it another time.

How are you, Joan?

That's fine.

I'm girding you.

Oh, not too bad.

Had my MRI yesterday and some magnetic thing spun around me for a while and I'll

find out from the gastro how I'm going.

So we'll find out.

I think I'm okay.

It's just double checking on things.

Now you glow the dark.

Mm, that's right.

So, yes, a podcast.

Dear listener, news, politics, sex and Religion.

If you join us in the chat room, please say hello and look

what are we gonna talk about?

Well, if you've got a podcast app that shows chapters, you could just

look at the chapters in your podcast app and you'll see the headings for

the things we're gonna talk about.

And if there's a topic you don't like to look of, you can just skip past it.

Or if there's one you wanna listen to twice, that'll make it easy.

But we're gonna be talking about new South Wales to kick off with Dominic

Par with his 21st birthday Nazi costume.

And pokies and gambling in New South Wales.

Bit on the wonderful world of stamp duty and land tax.

And we'll cross over to the uk, the Prime Minister over there, prince Harry.

A little bit about indigenous stuff.

We'll just wet your appetite for the arguments that will be

coming down the track this year.

And I think that's oh, a couple of other things that we've got

there, but we'll, we'll get those.

So, right.

Well the first news though, Joe, is I promise not to talk about crazy

Christians and goddamn Cardinal Pell decides to kick the bucket.

Kick the bucket.

Yeah.

I wouldn't put him though in the crazy Christian category when

I think of crazy Christians.

I think Pentecostals I guess New Age muscular sort of Pentecostals.

I think Cardinal, Pell, I don't think crazy.

I think calculating schemes.

Yes.

Very smart guy.

I was listening to a podcast that had David Maher talking about him.

And essentially PE was just the ultimate manager.

He was a good administrator and he knew how to turn businesses around, protect

businesses from, if not reputational damage, then at least financial damage.

Yes.

And really in another life, the guy should have been a CEO of, of a major company

where he could have used his talents.

Well, yeah, maybe he was in the right spot.

You know, if, if you're gonna be scheming and using that sort of

managerial talent as an authoritarian.

I, I read a, an article by who was the guy who got used for the defense?

The law in New South Wales where you couldn't sue the Catholic Church?

Ellis Defense.

Sorry.

The Ellis Defense.

Yeah.

So I, I read an article where Ellis either wrote it or was interviewed mm-hmm.

, and he said, I, I don't think he lacked empathy.

He obviously empathized with me, but then I saw him make a decision

to protect the church and bug.

Yeah.

And, you know, tough luck to the victims.

Mm-hmm.

And he said when he delivered an apology to me, he wouldn't

even let me in the eyes.

Yeah.

He said he thinks he had a conscience and it weighed on him.

But he was all about protecting the church and, you know,

everyone else was second place.

His priority was the church and in particular his role and job.

and his career in the church.

Mm-hmm.

. Because when all that stuff was happening in oh, what's that funny

little town in Vic Ballarat was it?

It was Ballarat and really everybody knew what was going on.

Pel knew what was going on.

He did nothing about it.

He failed to protect the children and, you know, so, the, yeah, I mean there

was a number of people going, well, I dunno what you are all on about.

He, he was found not guilty by the Court of appeal.

And it was like, but the Royal Commission found that he knew

and did nothing about and worse.

That he was complicit.

Yes.

And that he was shifting people around.

Exactly, yes.

So it was just damning the Royal Commission and Absolutely.

So it's, it's not, you just can't say, oh, he was, you know, not found guilty

and therefore stop all you're complaining, but, , if you were reading the news

court papers and also reading commentary from liberal national party politicians,

you would think the guy was a saint.

You would think none of that happened or what did happened.

And these allegations were some crazy obscure leftish sort of allegation

unfounded that was besmirching the reputation of a fine man.

I, I just find it, you know, Dutton, who proclaims, he was on the drug

squad and the, the child protection squad and how he's after all these

criminals and there he is, yapping it up about how great Pel was.

Yes.

These conservatives are the ones who on any other issue of child abuse mm-hmm.

are, are rabid, you know, they're already defined child abuse gangs in pizza,

shop basements, you know, with Hillary and all, all sorts of crazy notions.

But when their, when their own people are associated with this,

they just give 'em a pass mark.

They let it go.

You know, ordinarily coppers a Queensland copper in a, just the idea

that he would be defending somebody who's enabled so much child abuse Yeah.

Is just antithetical to what the typical idea of a Queensland

or any copper would be.

So, it's just interesting that there's this perception that he was part of

the conservative side and they're in with the conservative side, and

therefore they're not gonna criticize him and Yeah, and hold him up.

It's, it's terrible.

So, in the chat room, Tom, the warehouse guy, good on you.

Tom says, evening all one can never forget the Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Pell.

. Hell showed he was intelligent but got destroyed that night was the first time

I suspected child abuse from him too.

There we go.

I dunno.

I've seen that one.

I have years ago, but Right on some sort of q and a or something like that.

Yeah.

I just wonder.

Yeah.

Right.

There was also hitchins with, oh God, who's the guy from the project?

The, these W Ali?

No.

W Ali.

And might have been Powell as well.

Right.

And was Allie defending Powell or No, no, no.

This was Hitchins was calling Wally Ali out for refusing to condemn right.

Islam.

Right.

Okay.

He's going.

You, you may think that it's fine to be homosexual, but your own

Holy book says it's bad and you, you refuse to disagree with it.

You refuse to say it's wrong.

Yes.

would've known the Holy Book better than Waard Ali.

Almost certainly.

Yeah.

Actually I'm thinking it might've been Lawrence Krausen Powell as well.

Actually, Don TV says Charlie Pickering, but doesn't sound right.

Anyway but interesting.

Tom, the warehouse guy used the word PE got destroyed that night.

And, you know, you often see on YouTube a debate.

So and so gets destroyed.

Jordan Peterson destroys somebody, or this person destroys somebody.

It's a favorite word destroy.

But when it comes to Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or those characters,

they, they did their fair bit of destroying of their opponents in debates.

That's true.

So, so yeah.

Hugh Remington did a post, which was by my count seven articles over

five pages in today's Australian lauding, the late Cardinal Pell Like

tell himself not much evidence of reflection or of room for other views.

I feel like I'm back in church as a school boy with grim men laying down the truth.

That's true.

I've canceled my Australian subscription, but they're still

letting me read it at this point.

Yeah.

Okay.

Even though it's gone over now a few weeks and it was full of

stuff, most of it, quite positive.

If there was anything negative, it was quite subdued.

And went on to sort of praise him as being a once in a generation sort

of leader in child rape Catholic.

Yeah.

, no.

Leader of the Catholic church.

Yeah.

And, you know, anybody who was angry about him was just woke.

Yeah.

So, oh yeah, Taylor, the Daily Telegraph had a heading.

Why The Woke loved to hate George Pell.

and Peter Murphy said, when did being angry about child

sexual abuse become woke?

I saw a picture.

One of the pictures showed the icor judges filing out of a church and shaking

hands with Cardinal Pell on the way out.

That would've been one of the law masses high court that found him not guilty.

Mm-hmm.

Different members.

And you know what?

Legally speaking, probably, you know, a correct decision at the end of the day,

probably with that, like, I can't fault the high court on that, but it's not a

good look judges when you kick off the law year with a, a mass held by these

guys who there's a one in 15 chance that you're gonna be trying them over.

It's child abuse case.

Cuz that was the figure up from the Royal Commission was one in

15 Catholic priests was Yeah.

In the St.

John of God order.

It was one in two.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean just, there's that old saying that was it the law must be seen not, not

only to be a beyond reproach, but must be also be seen to be beyond reproach.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So apparently the guy who lost that, that case against pe mm-hmm.

gave a very gracious statement, more or less understanding the

high court decision in the case.

So, it would've been a very interesting testimony to hear that

guy in Missouri, the parents of the one who ended up committing suicide.

Apparently I'm going ahead with the civil case against his estate and the church.

Right.

Okay, here we go.

So, what other comments have we got here?

Yeah, so that was the main thing with Pell.

What can you say?

Except, you know, it's the company institution, lapel.

The thing about the Catholic church is that it's got such a grip on our

institutions in our society now.

Mm-hmm.

so many schools.

So many hospitals.

Yep.

So many employment agencies, so many nursing homes, retirement villages,

like they've just got a grip of so many institutions that even when they have

these appalling characters, they the grip holds on because they've just got so much.

institutional power.

What can you do?

Well, we were saying more so in Ireland.

I mean, here is bad, but Ireland was worse.

And they're slowly prying the, the claws off the levers of power.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yep.

In the chat room.

Good on you for joining in there.

Don Toy's there.

Tom, the warehouse guy, and James has just joined us.

Good on you, James.

I'm gonna be in Sydney next month.

James, I'll send you guys some details.

Dominic per, he's been in the news.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, Joe, who hasn't at their 21st birthday party, if not a Nazi outfit,

maybe a chairman now, or a she, or, I don't know, like some crazy outfit.

We've all done stupid things as young people Yes.

That we regret.

Yeah.

So he's got, he's been hauled over the coals because.

It hasn't come out yet, but he was warned that there was a photo about of

him at his 21st, you know, Nazi uniform and that it was going to be publicized.

So he kind of had to come out and beat the publication and say, I

believe there is this photograph.

Yes, I did do that at my 21st, where a Nazi outfit and of course terribly

ashamed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So a bit torn about this one, Joe.

I mean, it is odd.

Well, you know, people do do stupid things even at 21, and I dunno, I, I guess

I'm leaning on the side where I'm a bit sympathetic for what people do at 21.

You're still really stupid and let's face it.

What was his upbringing at that point?

What was his life experience?

Fairly cloistered in conservative circles.

You know what's important is what he's doing now and whether he regrets it.

Yeah.

Yes.

And is he showing Nazi tendencies now?

And you know, what is the guy must be in his forties, I guess I'm talking 20 years

ago if everybody, he gets hauled over the coals for something they did 20 years ago.

I mean, you know, it wasn't like he raped somebody or sexually assaulted

somebody, put on a stupid outfit and yeah.

Yeah, I'm kind of a bit sympathetic to that.

So, in terms of some of the things I saw on Twitter got a lady vaccine said I

thought PER was a normal anti-abortion, non-voluntary assisted dying.

Ex young liberals president raised in the ultra conservative, historically

fascist op Oprah's Day faith.

and now we find out he was doing weird Nazi shit at uni.

Frankly, I'm shook to the very, cause this is true.

That's the stuff to focus on, that he was anti well, that he is anti-abortion,

anti involuntary assisted dying ultraconservative, APUS Day Bay member.

That's, and, and something about the Catholic funeral, Catholic burial

grounds or something wasn't there?

Yeah, there was all sorts of funny stuff with financing of

cemeteries and stuff going on.

So that's the stuff to, to haul him over the coals for some other comments I saw.

One was from black and black saying I'm a Jew.

I think what Dominic per did in dressing as a Nazi was poor taste, and

he showed a serious lack of judgment.

But does that in and of itself make him a Nazi sympathizer?

That's an awfully long stretch of the bow.

Let's not forget Prince Harry also dressed up as a Nazi.

It's true.

Yeah.

I remember the scandal.

Mm-hmm.

And Ross said, I dislike Dominic Peri, I just stay in the ideologies.

He espouses, I detest the way he treats the poorest and most

vulnerable people in our society.

And also don't think it's right that a stupid mistake as a

young man is such a big deal.

So, and just one other one was Daniel Andrews got more negative

media coverage for falling down steps and breaking his back than

Pero did for wearing a Nazi uniform.

I guess that's true because the Nazi, while he did get some negative

press, it was all over and done with in sort of 24, 48 hours.

Chris Daniel Andrews falling down a set of stairs has been going on

for years, although Par has been referred off to the police for

some reason not to do with that.

Surely.

Yeah.

What?

Yeah, I saw something about he's been referred off.

I, I've no idea what, I didn't know it was even a criminal offense.

Goodness me.

Goodness me.

Yeah.

So, there we go.

What else have we got?

Had to get rid of somebody who had a advertising in the chat room.

You've got Yeah.

Handled that person.

Definitely.

Well done Joe.

So one of the theories going on, Joe, is that is actually seemingly quite keen

to take on the poker machine industry.

And there was sort of whisperings.

People felt that this was a movement by the poker machine industry

releasing this stuff, damaging Perone as a warning to back off.

Well, I've just seen mm-hmm.

, it's the shooters, fishes, and farmer's party.

Is arguing that he potentially broke the oaths act when he signed a, a

liberal party pre-selection document, declared that he had nothing to disclose

that could could embarrass the party.

That's right.

Yes.

So it's not over the wearing of the uniform, it's whether

he lied on that form.

Right?

Yes.

Cuz when you sign up you have to say, there's nothing in my history

that's gonna embarrass me or the party that I haven't already told you.

Right.

And I guess he would say, well I forgot about my Nazi outfit.

Not something that first jumps to mind immediately.

Yeah.

And I think he probably surely our police well surely that

won't go any further anyway.

You know, don't like Dominic Peri, but on this one mm-hmm.

, bit of sympathy.

Anybody in the chat room disagree?

Anyone thinks he should be hauled over the coals?

Let us know.

Tom, the warehouse guy, where you think, what do you think?

So yeah, back to the pokies.

New South Wales.

What they're looking at there is is looking at bringing in, well actually

I read this article from Crikey.

This is by Stephen May, who was the founder of Crikey.

Writes the occasional column and he's now a shareholder activist.

And he's actually got shares in that major poker machine, aristocrat, and

he's gonna try and get on the board and try and turn, turn things around.

So, he wrote an article in Crikey saying that the New South Wales labor

leader Chris Mins, has come up with a minimalist package of changes, which

will do little to reduce the record.

7 billion a year, lost.

On the 90,000 plus electronic gaming machines in New South Wales.

90,000 machines in New South Wales, 7 billion a year.

The opposition leader in his pitch for the upcoming election.

His mach his policy is that the v i p lounge signs will disappear from outside

pubs and that they can no longer donate to the Labor Party and that only $500 in

cash can be loaded into a poker machine.

And that's it.

But according to this article, new South Wales will retain its high

intensity, $10 maximum bet machines.

So in Victoria, the maximum is $5 at $10 a bet, Joe, you can crank

through a series amount of money.

I think it's a hundred dollars an hour a hundred dollars a minute.

Would be quite possible with a $10 bid Rumbly.

Mm-hmm.

. So, it, it, it's a logical fall fallacy tax, isn't it?

If you don't understand the fallacy that the house always wins, then yes.

Well, it's working on dopamine levels and these people are, are subjects in

a terrible sort of rat and a laboratory type experiment where they're getting

dopamine hits from a conditioning process that they've undergone.

There.

There was also the whole prepaid card where you would load it up

before you started your session and before the dopamine had kicked in.

Mm-hmm.

And that was all you could gamble for the night.

Yes.

And that's what Perta is introducing.

Right.

Okay.

And labor has not agreed to that.

What is, what sort of labor party is this in New South Wales?

The very people one that doesn't care about the working pool.

That's right.

The very people who are victims of this, of this monstrous

industry are labor party voters.

And so Perise firm commitment is to eliminate cash from the machines.

Whereas Labor's proposing a 12 month trial, Joe in violating just 500

machines, and they're promising that they will compensate the pubs for any

losses suffered as a result of the trial that's gonna be done on 500 machines.

Wouldn't want them to lose any money.

No, absolutely not.

Mm-hmm.

, that's a, a trial of, of no cash where.

Per saying, let's just all of them move to no cash and mm-hmm.

, plenty of studies around the world showing the effectiveness of that.

You don't need another trial like it's been done before.

And you know, may maybe we should fund the tobacco manufacturers for their

losses in people giving up smoking.

Yes.

Let's put, let's put packaging, which shows ugly lesions and cancerous growths,

and let's compensate the tobacco companies for this trial that we are running that's

quite possibly gonna harm their business.

What are the, what, what does men's got into Parliament for?

What did he struggle all those years for?

To get leader of the New South Wales Labor Party, if that's what you're

going to do, honestly So in terms of the Labor Party when they announced the

package, and it's a fair chance that labor will win the next state election.

The aristocrat share price finished higher by 8 cents.

So the stock market looked at the labor policy and thought, Hmm,

that's pretty good for Aristocrat.

Bumped the price up by 8 cents.

Incidentally, aristocrats shares were originally floated at $2 90 a share in

1996, valuing the company at 303 million.

Today it is worth 21.8 billion.

Yeah, that's that in, what did we say that was?

1996.

Mm-hmm.

. So 20 years.

Yeah.

From 300, 3 million to 21.8 billion just by making be worth a couple

billion just on inflation alone.

Yeah.

Just from making a fairly simple machine.

Mm-hmm.

, nothing particularly whizzbang about it.

Well, actually a lot of whizzing and a lot of belling and ringing, but well actually

no, the, the gambling machine industry is the, the electronics is relatively simple.

It's all the compliance that you have to, because they have to state that they will

pay out a minimum of X every so often.

So there, there are some fairly strict rules around how the machines work.

Yeah.

Spend a lot of money on psychologists saying, how do we

road people in more effectively?

So, oh no, you just do AB testing.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

So, so you try your new firmware out on machines or whatever

it is, on half the machines.

Yes.

And the ones that Make more money you keep.

Yes.

And the other ones you convert to whatever you've done.

Yes.

So, Tom, the warehouse guy said, I can't stand per Nazi uniform or not.

That said he did know about it and didn't disclose it or make an apology.

That's all he can be criticized for.

Right.

Still on this topic from Tim Costello writing in The Guardian, I think

Tim Costello is the brother of Peter Castello and different character.

So Gambling does the most harm to people of New South Wales and

Labor's the, the very people at Labor is supposed to represent.

So there's about New South Wales.

The state has half of the nation's pokies and incredibly New South

Wales has 35% of the world's poker machines in its clubs and pubs.

In New South Wales alone, what an amazing statistic.

35% of the world's pokies are in New South Wales.

So Australia has the greatest gambling losses in the world.

40% greater than the nation that comes second.

And the turnover in New South Wales each year, $95 billion.

Holy, these smokes.

These are big numbers.

Hmm.

How much of that goes to the state government?

Tiny little percentage, but yeah.

On the surface, some of Labor's policies seem to have merited but dig deeper and

you realize they lack real substance.

That's because they don't commit to the reform that matters most.

And which Dominic per has already proposed.

And that is the introduction of universal cashless gambling card that requires

pre-commitment to a spending limit.

Honestly, labor.

How hard can it be?

A guy who wore a Nazi outfit on his 21st birthday is

showing you what compassion is.

I guess he's also showing what leadership is.

Joe, I, I'm guessing that Hitler also banned gambling.

I tell you what, he wouldn't have been afraid of the fight.

He would've looked at the, yeah, looked at the gambling industry.

Anyway.

A loss limit capped at $1,500 a day is hardly an infringement on civil liberties.

So why don't labor support this and this?

Costello says the answer is politicians remain beholden to the gambling industry.

Trials have been held.

I was gonna say, with that amount of money floating around, it wouldn't surprise me.

Mm-hmm.

. Trials have already been held in New South Wales and there's overwhelming

evidence from overseas that mandatory pre-commitment of losses before

gambling reduces gambling harm.

You know, Joe, the, it's not just the people, the families of these people, I

feel so sorry for them with their partner heads off gambling and then the family's

got nothing left for the rest of the week.

Who's doing it right?

Funnily enough, Norway is the gold standard since it began its reforms

in 2007 by banning slot machines.

It's possible for a government just to ban a slot machine and introduced machines

which could unplayed with cashless cards.

Oh, here we go.

Had a mandatory limit on the amount players could gamble.

Mandatory Blake breaks in play, lower bets, lower prizes,

and player exclusion options.

That's Norway Gold Standard.

A link to that in the show notes.

Apparently all pokies in Australian casinos will now have a cashless card

as a result of the shocking crime and predatory revelations in various

royal commissions that's in casinos.

Tasmania is gonna have cashless cards on a bipartisan basis.

Obviously, mins in the Labor Party in New South Wales is just kicking

the issue into the long grass.

The spin rate on machines should also be slowed and losses disguised

as winds should be banned.

That's when a machine dings as if you have won, but you've actually lost, and it is

one of the most addictive design features.

I mean, they would've had to give a guy a bonus at Aristocrat.

Mm-hmm.

whoever was the character and said, you know how we make these

machines ding when people win.

And that encourages 'em.

Why don't we just throw in a few deans when people lose.

Yeah, it's brilliant, God, what's it called now?

A love's dog or No, no, no.

There's ba basically if you don't reward somebody every

time, but only intermittently.

Yes.

They can't predict when they're gonna win.

And that actually makes it even more addictive.

Correct?

Yes.

So, it concludes the article by saying it's astonishing that Australia's blind

spot is gambling just as the USAs is guns.

The rest of the world is in disbelief how one industry could pull us off.

Good point.

Yes.

Our blind spot gambling and schools, religious private schools.

Private schools.

Yes.

That's our, our version of gun control.

Right.

Scroll through there.

Stamp duty.

And land tax.

Joe, we have previously talked about this and discussed last week.

Hmm.

We mentioned this.

Did we do this article last week?

No.

No, no, no.

So nearly all economists and most politicians agree that stamp

duty is a bad tax, but nearly all state and territory governments

rely on it to keep the lights on.

So it's a bad tax because it taxes homeowners every time they move,

merely because they've moved.

Mm-hmm.

doesn't really make sense, does it?

It's not, isn't a great cost to the government, the fact that

somebody's moved, moved a house?

No.

Why should they be paying because of that?

So, at $40,000 per move on a median priced home in Sydney or Melbourne, that would

be the figure, the average stamp duty.

It's even a de facto tax on divorce when a family home is sold to allow assets to be

split, each member of a separating couple needs to pay stamp duty to purchase again.

So it's unfair.

It hits the younger households that move around the most and it leaves alone

the old residents who stay put, ie.

Boomers.

Mm-hmm.

. So there's new modeling by the Center for Policy Studies that Victoria

University finds abolishing stamp duty and replacing the revenue lost with

land tax would put downward pressure on the price paid by buyers of about 4.7%.

So Australian Capital Territory is in a program where they're switching over

in it's a 20 year program, gradually swapping over and back to New South Wales

in the lead up to the March election.

, whether they're coming up with their policies what the coalition government

has legislated to offer firsthand buyers the option of paying an annual land

tax rather than stamp duty if they buy a property worth up to 1.5 million.

That's a good one.

Interesting idea.

That's offering the option.

That's not a very expensive property though.

One and a half million.

No, it's probably, probably the low 10% of Sydney, isn't it?

Yeah.

But I think I think it's a bit of a scale.

You'll still no.

Maybe that is the limit.

Not sure on that.

So from this week, first home buyers New South Wales can choose between

paying stamp duty or an annual land tax on properties up to 1.5 million.

Under the initiative.

First homeowners will instead pay an annual fee of $400 plus 0.3%

of the properties at land value.

So it's not the total value, just the land value.

So that's what you pay rates on.

Yeah.

Unimproved land value.

So Joe, I did a quick calculation.

If we're talking about a property that has to be 1.5 million in total mm-hmm.

maybe the land is worth 800,000 so that annual land tax would be 2,900 per annum.

So yeah, I would imagine lots of people would go for paying that annual fee

rather than, I mean, if you bought and sold within a few years, you'd

be way ahead just by paying that.

. Yeah.

State governments get a lot of money from a proportion of their budget,

so stamp duty revenue as a share of the total tax revenue for the

states and for the various states.

Victoria, it's over 30%, it looks like about 34% New South Wales, about

28 Queensland, a little bit lower, maybe about 26% of total revenue for

the state governments is, is in that 20 to 30% range just from stamp duty.

So it's a significant amount of the budget on something you're

doing every 10 or 20 years maybe.

Yes.

So makes sense to convert everybody over and okay.

And the other thing is that . Whereas homeowners can avoid paying stamp duty

by refusing to move land can't be moved, meaning land tax can't be avoided.

That's the other point as well.

So you would have a more reliable, consistent revenue stream where

you are imposing this annual fee.

Yeah, makes sense.

The other thing, territory doesn't have freehold, true leasehold

in 99 year leases in mm-hmm.

, Canberra.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

, right?

Okay.

That's New South Wales coming up to an election, even though we are based in

Queensland, we've got you across it.

At different times we talk about inequality on this podcast,

and here's a conversation.

I like this guy's expl.

This is a, ah, they're on Twitter or maybe they're not on Facebook.

It's called Exploding Heads.

So yeah, on Twitter, look up exploding heads and follow these

guys cuz they're quite good.

And here's some thoughts.

Sounds like a conversation I've had with maybe righting Tony at one point.

We'll just see.

Hang on.

Look, it's really quite simple.

If you are posh and middle class and you think society should be more equal,

then you're a champaign socialist.

And that's the thing.

And that discounts my opinion.

Of course it discounts your opinion that that's a nice view

from your ivory tower Grow up.

What if I were poor and working class?

Well that's the politics of envy.

You don't want to see anyone else achieve just because you can't let us live.

You.

You Grinch, what if I grew up poor but became wealthy?

Well then you've betrayed your working class roots and

you simply cannot be trusted.

And look, it's simple.

If you are any of these three groups, you are automatically discredited.

It's a crying shame.

But those are the rules.

Well, you made up the rules.

Those are the sums it up.

Mm-hmm.

in the chat room.

Alison has joined us.

Good on you Alison.

Right.

Actually don't have a follow up on inequality.

I just saw that one and I thought well said.

Now couple of other little things to mention.

Joe, we were talking about books last week after the podcast.

You came up with a good idea.

Maybe we should do it as like a book club.

Yes.

So, I think that's a good idea.

And so as we're gonna work through some of these books, what

we're gonna do is a book club.

So do you listener, your book to read and get ready by the end of February is

The Carbon Club by Maryanne Wilkinson.

And the other Paul in Canberra has already started reading it.

I've got it to read and I, you know, details will be provided.

But if you wanna read the book and wanna join us in a sort of a book

club, talk about the Carbon Club then Let me know and we'll get you involved

somehow, and we'll talk about the book, which will become part of a podcast.

But it really is the truth Behind Australia's two decades of climate

inaction and tells a story of how a loose confederation of influential climate

change skeptics, politicians, and business leaders sought to control Australia's

response to the climate crisis.

So if you are wondering why Australia never did anything and why we were

so slack compared to the rest of the world in responding to the climate

crisis, then the Carbon Club tells you who all the players were and what

they did and the ins and outs of that.

So John Howard and people like that will get a good look in.

So if that interests you, grab the Carbon Club, get ready for book club

sometime in February toward the end.

And the other one is just I've got a second podcast happening

called I F g Evergreen, which I'm just playing around with.

It's on a different system, so look for that.

And yeah, so that's a little few items there.

Now back to the UK and Prime Minister sunk, how do you pronounce his name, Joe?

I can't never remember.

Sak sunk.

So here is an interview that a journalist had with him, and just another example of

this is what journalists need to do, and if you are watching the video, you can see

the uncomfortable look on Sun Next's face as he's not allowed to get away with stuff

and he realizes, oops, here's a journal who's just not letting me do what I really

want to normally do in this situation.

So here we go.

Still Prime Minister after that election, would you accept the

result of that defacto referendum?

I tell you, what I'm focused on is delivering the people in

Scotland, today's announcement, but that's not what I'm asking you.

I'm asking about the, the possibility of a defacto referendum of the

next general election, which is what the first ministers proposing

you spoke to about it last night.

Would you accept the outcome of that?

We, we didn't talk about the next general election.

What we did talk about though, is the things that we can do to deliver for

people here in Scotland by working constructively together and today's

announcement of two new Freeport.

But, but you're completely ignoring my question, which is about the

possibility of the next general election being a defacto referendum.

Would you accept the outcome of that?

But what I'm focused on, but that's, but that's not what I'm asking.

What your folks, I'm asking to focus on this because there's a lot of

people in Scotland are very interested.

Would you accept the outcome of a def fact or referendum?

Do you know what I was, I was out all of yesterday evening.

I've been out all of today.

And what people are talking to me about is what we can do to actually make their

lives better in the, we're not gonna talk about what they're talking about.

You're just gonna ignore my question.

You're just gonna ignore my question about Scotland's constitutional future.

Is that what you're doing?

No, I think what when it comes to are, when it comes to a general election,

people will make up their own minds of what they want to vote title.

Right.

So it's not, it's not really for me to talk about that.

Well, cause that's what I'm asking you.

But it sounds like, like you, you're ignoring the mani

and the Scottish Parliament.

You're ignoring a mani, potentially a westman's election.

Are you ignoring democracy?

Absolutely not.

What we are doing is delivering it goes on.

But I like that that's such classical line.

Is it?

What we are focused on here, what people I've been talking to, are

focusing on is jobs and growth.

I I, I disregard your reality and insert my own.

Yes, indeed.

Yeah.

Well done to that reporter.

The reporter was Colin McKay.

Good on you.

Colin McKay, Joe prince Harry put out a book spare.

Mm-hmm.

It's over here.

Very popular book in terms of sales.

Is it?

I think it's, yes.

I think it's was one of the fastest selling Okay.

Books on the, on the books.

All those anti monarchists on this Alicia Gossip.

Yeah.

I think there's been so much by the Murdoch Press in particular.

Dissing the guy that it's just created interest in the book.

So, apparently one of the things he wrote in there, he apparently, when referring

to Rupert Murdoch in the book, Harry says, indeed, I couldn't think of a

single human being who in the 300,000 year history of the species, , he's done more

collective damage to our sense of reality.

Well, yeah, fair enough.

Makes you wanna go out and buy the book?

Yeah.

Maybe not, maybe not.

Mm-hmm.

. So in the book he talks about killing people when he was in Afghanistan,

and a lot of press about what he had to say in the book about that.

So I'm gonna read a bit from The Guardian.

Now, Joe, you would expect the guardian on a topic of this to be relatively

centrist or anti or promo or anti royals?

Anti royals.

Certainly anti-war.

Right.

Okay, good point.

This is from the Guardian army.

Veterans criticized Prince Harry's claim.

He killed 25 Taliban in Afghanistan.

I profile British veterans have criticized the Duke of Suss Sussex's claim.

It's not easy.

Joe Sussex's claim he had killed 25 Taliban soldiers while serving

the British Army in Afghanistan.

The retired Army veteran colonel Tim Collins, said the prince's kill

count talk was crass, and we don't do notches on the rifle, but others said

Harriet appeared wrongly to dehumanize the insurgents by describing them as

chess pieces removed from the board.

While the Taliban accused the prince of committing war crimes

on his tour a decade ago.

Just read the next bit.

Later the prince acknowledged he had dehumanized those

who he had shot in battle.

When I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat, I

didn't think of those 25 as people.

They were chest pieces removed from the board.

Bad people eliminated before they could kill good people.

This guy Collins again, says amongst his assertions is a claim that he

killed 25 people in Afghanistan.

That's not how you behave in the army.

It's not how we think.

Just badly let the side down.

We don't do notches on the rifle, but we never did.

Yeah.

I mean, he's, he's said this has been taken outta context.

He was talking about other members of the armed forces.

He's very much involved in veteran affairs and suicidal ideation.

Yeah.

And he says part of that is the guilt of killing people.

And he was trying to normalize the fact that if you're a soldier sent

off to war, you do kill people.

Mm-hmm.

, which is why he says, look, I have killed people.

It's, it's not something I'm proud of, but it's not something I'm ashamed of either.

Mm-hmm.

So when you trying to normalize the fact that this is a, a

part of being a soldier mm-hmm.

So the emphasis in the article was quoting extensively this guy saying,

we don't do notches on our rifle butts.

That's a terrible crash thing to do.

Mm-hmm.

, he's letting the side down, blah, blah, blah.

When you actually read the passage in the book and you get quite a

different impression of Harry, and so this is from a guy called James

O'Brien, who is on LBC in the uk and he's gonna read a bit of this passage.

It's actually a long section, goes for three minutes and 45 seconds.

Cho, if you need a toilet break, here's the opportunity.

sounds like a plan.

So I'm gonna play this one and have a listen, dear listener, as to.

, you know, you've just heard from the Guardian, and now have a

listeners have a listen to this.

The thought experiment is this, try if you can, to come to this cold.

Imagine if you heard this coming out of your radio, or you read this in a

book and you didn't know the author.

The author wasn't famous.

It was just a military memoir rather than, well, so it's quite long.

Well, I'm gonna read all of it.

Afghanistan was a war of mistakes, a war of enormous collateral damage,

thousands of innocence killed and maimed, and that always haunted us.

So my goal from the day I arrived was never to go to bed, doubting that I'd

done the right thing, that my targets had been correct, that I was firing on Taliban

and only Taliban, no civilians nearby.

I wanted to return to Britain with all my limbs, but more I wanted to go

home with my conscience intact, which meant being aware of what I was doing

and why I was doing it at all times.

Most soldiers can't tell you precisely how much death is on their ledger.

In battle conditions, there's often a great deal of indiscriminate firing.

But in the age of Apaches and laptops, everything I did in the course of two

combat tours was recorded timestamped.

I could always say precisely how many enemy competence I'd killed, and I felt it

vital never to shy away from that number.

Among the many things I learned in the Army, accountability

was near the top of the list.

So my number 25, it wasn't a number that gave me any satisfaction, but neither was

it a number that made me feel ashamed.

Naturally, I'd have preferred not to have that number on my military CV on

my mind, but by the same token, I'd have preferred to live in a world in

which there was no Taliban, a world without war, even for an occasional

practitioner of magical thinking like me.

However, some realities just can't be changed.

While in the heat and fog of combat, I didn't think of those 25 As people.

You can't kill people if you think of them as people.

You can't really harm people if you think of them as people.

They were chess pieces removed from the board, bads taken away

before they could kill goods.

I'd been trained to other eyes, them trained well on some level.

I recognize this learned detachment as problematic, but I also saw it as

an unavoidable part of soldiering.

Another reality that couldn't be changed.

Now why bother sharing that with your readers when you can just tell them that

he's painted targets on, on, on the back of his own children and then ring up?

The woman upon whom Edina in absolutely fabulous was based in

order to get her to talk about the terrible PR damage that he's done.

I'm not exaggerating the second bit.

The daily mail's actually done that today.

Why bother actually sharing the actual words that he actually wrote when you

could instead turn it to get another firework display or opportunity to attack

him without having all the facts, you need to have a fully formed opinion.

It's almost like every single thing he said about British newspapers was

true and they're proving it today.

I just thought that was a, a remark.

Very different picture.

Mm-hmm.

. And look, I don't know what ghost writer he had.

Probably a couple of 'em.

I don't know.

But anyway, probably, you know, little bit endearing of the guy.

Like clearly you know, that that all was I don't know, sounded like a sensible

guy trying to make sense of an experience that he had and tell it honestly.

And you just get bagged Mercer mercilessly in the media and a different, and,

you know, the same press that had that been a member of the SAS would've

been lording him for his revelations.

Indeed, indeed.

Just a double standard there.

So, it's just an example of propaganda.

A classic example of propaganda because the powers that be have decided that the

royal family at this point in time must be maintained in their current position.

And Harry is a threat to that.

So he's gotta be dealt with.

And I did see somebody earlier today in one of the chat forums, I'm a member

of saying, well, if this person got in trouble for what they said about Megan,

, that makes him a racist, doesn't it?

Right.

Because you can't have a valid criticism of Meghan Markle without it

being anything to do with her race.

Yes.

Race will get tossed into things all the time.

Yeah.

Yep.

So I said, well, you know, she's an American and she's a divorcee.

And that was enough for old Eddie to step down, wasn't it?

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's, you know, and it's such a blatant propaganda against the

guy, like, okay, not saying he's a saint or whatever, but people with a

visceral hate of, of him and his wife.

Yeah.

I mean, he's swallowing the propaganda.

He's bagged the firm, hasn't he?

Mm, indeed.

Traitor.

Yeah.

Well, not as bad as his mother.

Yeah.

He was gonna take the air off to America to raise him.

Was that what she was gonna do?

She was gonna take, she was shacked up with Dody.

Right.

She was gonna take him both off to America and live with Dody.

Oh, that was never gonna happen, was it?

That was, that was the allegations as to why she was knocked off.

Oh, was it?

Yeah.

Oh, I hadn't heard that.

Didn't know that.

But, well, and and the allegation is she was intentionally killed.

So, yeah.

Look, when, I remember when I first heard about the sort of conspiracy

over, he shot JFK in the grassy Nu and I was like, oh, what a complete load

of conspiracy, nonsense or whatever.

More you think about it, the more you go, oh, maybe.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Yeah.

Speaking of racism, Joe Oyster, Parliament's gonna be coming up.

There was an Yeah.

And you're racist if you're against it.

Yes, indeed.

There's no doubt.

No doubt I will be you, you're not allowed to have valid questions that makes you a

racist as soon as you say anything at all.

Yes.

Meanwhile, I'm defending China at every opportunity against what

is really often a racist attack.

Like the, the whole forcing people coming from China to undergo special

testing for Covid a couple of weeks ago while Covid is running rampant around

the world in case they have kung flu.

Yeah.

That was just, that was just a racist policy and I expect

better from the Labor Party.

Well, do I expect better?

Maybe I'm not surprised, but disappointed yet again.

Anyway, an article by Guy Anthony Dillon.

Oh, who's Anthony Dillon?

He's writing a news.com.

He works for acu.

Yes.

So he identifies as part Aboriginal Australian is an academic with the

Australian Catholic University and is a commentator on aboriginal affairs.

So he certainly looks as if he's of Aboriginal heritage.

Can you even say that, Jane, you've, are you allowed to say that?

I dunno if you're allowed to say it.

on this podcast.

You are.

Anyway, he's certainly not white with blonde hair looking very Nordic.

Yeah, I guess it doesn't surprise that a clearly dear listener, he's gonna have

a slightly contrarian view, slightly contrarian, and it doesn't surprise

that this comes out of somebody at the Australian Catholic University.

So, anyway, just, it's a few extracts from his article where he says, First,

if the voice does get up, its highest priority should be to abandon the

prevailing ideology that indigenous Australians are fundamentally different

from non-indigenous Australians.

I believe the number one reason why we are not seeing the gap close,

despite considerable investment in programs that aim to improve the lives

of indigenous Australians, is because they have been cast as having vastly

different needs from other Australians, but they essentially have the same

fundamental needs as other Australians.

My default position when I took an interest in indigenous affairs was that

the commonalities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians

far outweigh any differences.

Nearly three decades, decades later, and I have not seen any evidence to the

contrary, and it goes on a bit further.

Finally, once recognizing that indigenous and non-indigenous

Australians are far more alike than they are different, the voice should

abandon the preferred view that.

Only indigenous Australians are considered capable of understanding

and helping indigenous Australians.

I'm not saying indigenous business and service providers should not exist.

I'm all for them.

As many do a great job.

But what I am saying is that caring and competent non-indigenous service

providers are just as capable as helping indigenous people as

indigenous service providers are.

To question this is to question if indigenous service providers are

capable of helping non-indigenous people, of course they are.

And to suggest otherwise is racist.

So, Joe on, you know, I don't think I mentioned New Year's Eve,

I was on a boat on the river.

Mm-hmm.

and one of a friend of a friend I met on the boat had worked as a nurse in Hey.

Yeah, boy, oh boy.

Stories.

She was there for three weeks.

She harassed.

Police and teachers were in a secure compound, but Queensland Health didn't

have nurses in a secure compound.

I've heard.

Thursday Island is not a good place to go as a nurse either.

Hmm.

Really dangerous.

Yeah.

In terms of of just getting from their accommodation to the hospital

and just some of the stories.

Oh my goodness.

Me just, you know, of course, dear listener, the problem with that community

is that you've got five or six tribes who were all hustled into this one town,

ex sort of missionary type town, and there's just all this tribal conflict.

It's just still ongoing and any amount of money or resources thrown

at that, I cannot see a solution other than closing the entire town

down and moving people separate ways.

But that's never gonna happen there, there is no solution to that.

One.

Good luck to people in the voice making representations to Parliament about what

should happen in communities like that, that are actually gonna fix the problem.

Yeah, she'd been in some other remote towns as well in Central Australia.

It's another world out there, Joe, not like the leafy western

suburbs of Brisbane . Ah, right.

Nobody in the chat rooms commented on that one.

We've got through that unscathed.

Joe, you saw this one?

Mm-hmm.

. It was about Supreme Court in the USA hearing a labor dispute essentially,

where there were cement truck drivers who went on strike while they still

had wet cement in their trucks.

And they basically returned the trucks to sort of depo and kept the, the

machines turning, but then walked away.

And it would've been a mad scramble for supervisors and management staff to empty

the trucks out before it said Yes indeed.

So there's a case going before the Supreme Court about the right of

strike, of, of labor to strike in circumstances where there might be some

sort of, well, some obvious ancillary.

well, consequential damage might flow, so see what happens.

Do you have any strong thoughts about that one or you just it's

a concern that a very, make it up as you go along Supreme Court.

Mm-hmm.

is likely to say, oh, well, you know, the unions are liable for

any costs that an employer might face whilst they're on strike.

Mm-hmm.

Which is, yeah.

Deliberately trying to push the costs of a strike.

Yeah.

Any loss of profit, any loss of ongoing revenue.

Mm-hmm.

Basically making it impossible to strike without getting sued.

Mm-hmm.

So in this case, you know, none of the trucks were damaged

by concrete setting in them.

So, but the employer decided to take on the union with a friendly court

in session and see how they go.

So, There's been previous cases, milk truck drivers who went on

strike, even though the strike risked spoiling some milk and a similar

thing with striking cheese workers.

So, see how that one goes.

Might be more difficult for people to strike.

Even this Biden government did that thing with the railway workers.

Mm-hmm.

forcing them back to work even though the majority wanted

to keep going with a strike.

So, yeah, not very labor friendly.

I did hear about it.

It's probably on opening arguments, isn't it?

I think I've read about it.

I haven't heard the story on openings.

Yeah.

No, no.

I read about it somewhere, but I would've thought it was something

that Andrew Torres would cover.

Mm-hmm.

. Right.

And just gonna finish off with a bit of reading of Caitlin Johnston.

So she's a blogger and.

She's got some good thoughts, I think, because what have we been looking at here?

It's you know, Cardinal, Pell Child Abuse enabler, getting positive

coverage in the national newspaper.

We've got poker machine industry crippling so many families yet

still charging on and the Labor party not doing anything about it.

Realistically.

Mining industry, coal mining in particular.

Indeed.

And we've got the mining industry overthrowing and an elected government.

Yes.

Kevin Rod.

Yes, indeed.

Yep.

So anyway, I'll read some of the Caitlin Johnson.

If you live in one of the so-called freedom democracies of the Western world,

the worst mistake you can make is to buy into the hype to believe you are a free

individual in a nation that respects and protects your freedom and individuality.

Whenever I broach this subject, I always get a deluge of objections along the

line of, well, I'd much rather live where I live than under an authoritarian

regime like in Iran or China.

You would never be allowed to criticize your rulers the way you do

if you lived in one of those places.

Actually, Joe, I get this all the time in the podcasting community cuz people who

are working on new podcasting protocols and other stuff in the tech side of

podcasting, it's all out of America.

They're really pro libertarian, pro crypto, anti-government, and

they often, and like some good guys in there, like they're doing

voluntary work they're really.

Doing a lot of hard work voluntarily just for the industry,

not making money themselves.

They keep throwing in these anti-china comments and stuff like that along

the way justifying why they're why they're keeping it open source,

because you know, of the government.

And then, and then they'll throw in, of course, you know,

authoritarian regimes like China.

It just shits me off that they do it.

Anyway, I'll, I, I've digressed back to Caitlin Johnson and I always

wanna ask them, what do you think drove you to make that objection?

Why are you falling over yourself to defend your country and the people

who rule over you while condemning foreign countries that your own

government happens to dislike?

Would it be because that's how you've been trained to behave from

a young and impressionable age, and that your objection is arising from

the same place as a cult member's objections to criticisms of their cult?

. That's what I'm thinking about.

A lot of things Joe is in looking at economics and a lot of sort of

standard economic theory is being blown outta the water by mmt.

Mm-hmm.

. And a lot of, you know, the more history you read about the stuff

that America's been up to in terms of foreign intervention in

other countries never happened.

Yeah.

It's, it's like, it's like religion.

When you went, you were a kid and you were told these fairy tales and eventually

you pick up a Christopher Hitchens book or something and you go, oh shit,

I've been lied to thoroughly haven't I?

Like, of course, this was complete nonsense.

I really hate having the wool pulled over my eyes by people deceiving me,

Joe, I hate it and I hate swallowing.

bullshit.

If I find myself doing it, it's terrible.

Mm-hmm.

, I'm finding my response to challenging standard sort of economic

theories like I have been recently.

And course the US heger money in that as, as a ref, as a reaction to having,

you know, swallowed that whole neoliberal pro western line as a stupid 21 year old.

Like, oh, I, you know, at my 21st birthday party, I wouldn't

have been wearing a Nazi outfit.

. I would've had some pretty stupid ideas in my head that would, should

make me, you know, unelectable.

But hey, I think I've changed since then.

So anyway, subject to propaganda, that's the way that I thought.

It's only that I'm reading more widely now, and if you are dear

listener, you know, you join this podcast initially because of.

Our anti-religious stance, pro secular stance.

Then there's a bunch of other topics where maybe the wool has

been pulled over our eyes and we need to look at them just as hard.

So, she goes on.

But that's ultimately what holds power structures together in the

US aligned nations of the global North indoctrination, the same

thing used to program religious extremists and cult members.

The only difference is that rather than scripture and religious leaders,

the means of indoctrination is school, mainstream media and Silicon

Valley algorithm manipulation.

In reality, we are not truly freer under our rulers than people are under

the governments that our rulers hate.

Sure, people can post criticisms of their elected officials online, but

those criticisms will be dismissed and ignored by everyone who matters.

They are being directed at political figureheads with no real power,

and they're coming from minds that have been deeply indoctrinated

into power serving worldviews.

Your rules do not care if you're a Democrat who hates Republicans or

a Republican who hates Democrats.

As long as you're plugged into one of the authorized reality tunnels as Na

Chomsky put it, actually, name Chomsky is amazing, Joe, in the guy's output.

Like he's, he's still on, he's still doing podcast interviews everywhere.

He's in his nineties.

Mm-hmm.

Still sharp as a attack as name Chomsky put it.

Propaganda is to democracy.

What the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

In a totalitarian state, people are physically abused into conformity

and obedience In a democracy, people are psychologically abused into

conformity and obedience, in a sense.

Someone who lives under overt totalitarianism.

China, Russia is freer than a westerner who's been indoctrinated by the most

powerful propaganda machine ever devised, because at least they've got their minds.

At least they know who their persecutors are.

I love telling that joke.

I use a dinner party a lot, Joe, even though I haven't been

to dinner party for a while.

But about the Russian guy meeting a American guy on an airplane,

and as he's heading to America, and the American says, what are

you, what are you coming over for?

And he's said, oh, I've, I've come over to to learn about American propaganda.

And the American says, what?

Propaganda?

And the Russian says Exactly,

Mm-hmm.

can't tell as well as I normally do.

I forgot the word exactly.

Yeah.

It's hard to even imagine how much freer our mental lives would be if we weren't

being continually herded into artificial confines for thinking about the world.

It's actually pathetic how constricted and confined minds are inside the

indoctrinated mainstream worldview.

Have you ever marveled how some of the most intelligent people,

you know, can buy into the most obvious articles of propaganda?

Some people though, Joe, take this line of thinking too far and we are

thinking of anti-vaxxers and do your own research and yeah, I mean, the

smarter you are the easier it is to rationalize your your reasons.

So you come to your conclusion and then you make up your reasons afterwards.

Yes.

And the more intelligent you are, the easier it is to rationalize

and make up your reasons.

Yes.

So when I rail against some of the economic thinking or

others, am I just another.

anti-vaxxer, who thinks I've done my own research by watching a few YouTube videos,

possibly, might possibly hang, hang on.

The difference is they never question.

That's true.

Yes.

But maybe by questioning and then discarding, I'm just rationalizing it.

. Oh, possibly.

At least you wants to further along.

Mm.

We who live in a so-called free liberal democracies like to tell ourselves a

fairytale that we live in a society that respects and prioritizes individuality,

but the truth is the exact opposite.

Our society does everything it can to stomp true individuality out of

existence and hurt us through conformity manufacturing processing systems.

What's presented as individualism increasingly means having the freedom

to express, express your uniqueness by having endless brands and varieties of

products to choose from, while thinking the same thoughts as everyone else.

About your government, your economic systems, your nation, and your world.

Real individualism would encourage radical individuality

and divergence from orthodoxies.

Our project then, as prisoners in a profoundly unfree society, is to help

awaken as many people as we can to the reality of how unfree we really are.

To be voices whispering in the matrix, beckoning the dreamers towards the

real world in whatever ways we can, engaging in our creativity and finding

more and more ways to get people to question if everything they've been

told about their world is really true.

There we go.

There was a second one there.

I'll read it for next week, Joe.

We're done.

We're not gonna get the hour a half for the next few weeks, I reckon.

Shark Tank.

Landon Landon doesn't leave me any messages anymore.

No.

Mm-hmm.

We we're gonna have to invite Shay back on just to Yeah, actually Shop Tank.

You probably can't even find the speak pipe link cuz website's not really.

Oh yeah.

You all mucked around so Yeah, you have to fix all that up.

Sorry, Landon, you can't even do it if you wanted to or dear listener.

Well, thanks for tuning in.

Tell your friends about the podcast.

Tell 'em about the chapters, if they wanna skip through bits and have a

look at the I F V G Evergreen Podcast because more and more bits and pieces

have being thrown up there and I think it's a good one for people.

If you want to introduce your friends to the podcast, then maybe they don't

wanna go through an hour and a half of some old stories of politics, but there's

some good stuff in that Evergreen one.

So have a look there and talk to you next week.

Bye for now.