RDS: Well, you know, it is what it is. The people of New Jersey and Texas elected those gentlemen. And one of the things that I believe is that we're going to have a revolution in the United States of America. I did my first graduate thesis on predicting revolution and I published a graphic of preconditions of revolution that shows in red, all of the preconditions that exist in the United States of America today. What we're missing is a precipitant -- our Tunisian fruit seller, our soccer mom that torches herself on the steps of capitol hill after first publishing a YouTube manifesto.
I believe that we're on the verge of a major transformation of power, and I want to say very clearly, that not only do I believe in truth and reconciliation rather than vindictive justice -- and who's to define justice, you know in a retrospective way -- but I also believe that no good can come of attempting to confiscate wealth or punish the one percent. I believe that...there are several books: Barry Carter -- Infinite Wealth, Alvin Toffler's Powershift, Revolutionary Wealth, Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks, Thomas Stewart's Wealth of Knowledge -- I believe that we're on the verge of being able to create infinite wealth in which everybody has a job, everybody has a roof, everybody has power and clean water and enough to eat, everybody has free access to education -- we're very, very close to that. And if we can achieve that, not only will people not have to work as much and not be part of the slave system, but we will create so much wealth that the false digital wealth of the one percent will become largely irrelevant to how we manage our affairs going into the future.
Rob: What do you mean false digital wealth of the one percent?
RDS: Look, the Koch Brothers earn $3 million an hour, in interest, on digital wealth. That's false money. Banks that are allowed to loan money that they invent out of thin air -- that's false wealth. This whole reserve requirement -- I would purposely move toward all money being local and all loans requiring a hundred percent and I would absolutely forbid the extraction of wealth from communities.
Rob: What do you mean forbid...
RDS: No I wouldn't forbid it, I would recommend the communities that they think along those lines.
Rob: What do you mean extraction of wealth from communities?
RDS: Well one of the problems is, you have people that come in and loan money that they don't have to collect interest they don't deserve. The Amish model is much better. When a farmer...when a new young couple needs a barn, the community comes together, buys them the materials and builds the barn. And then that young couple creates wealth for the community moving forward. And I'm not going to get into all kinds of details here that every community should discuss for itself. But the bottom line here is, we started something very evil with carpet baggers after the Civil War and I think this whole carpet bagging concept needs to be buried.
Rob: I'm still not clear though when you say that you're opposed to extraction of wealth from communities -- what is that?
RDS: We're going to have to leave that for another time.
Rob: Okay. What about public banking -- what do you think about that?
RDS: I have deliberately said, well I have said publicly that I don't completely understand currencies, alternative currencies, cryto-currencies, and all this. What I do understand is that transparency is in the public interest. And what I do understand is that local credit unions are vastly superior to the national banks that are inherently biased over cheating the public. So anything that has the word public in it, by inclination I believe it's a good start.
Rob: I strongly encourage you to read Ellen Brown's books about that. I think you'll really like what she has to say. Okay now, as you've mentioned, you did your master's degree in predicting revolution and we're waiting for a precipitant. And you've got a chart on your website that lists a whole collection of them based on a grid of different categories. But you said in your question and answer session Saturday night, "the fastest way to get everybody on the street is to shut down the internet." You want to comment on that?
RDS: Well there's...right now we have mass surveillance by NSA, but I'm not so worried about the mass surveillance by NSA because the dirty little secret at NSA is they only process one percent. The real problem at NSA is that it appears to be blackmailing members of Congress and it appears to be engaging in insider trading on wall street by using its capabilities to gain advantages, to create a black or off-budget fund. So...I've lost my train of thought, I'm sorry.
Rob: Well I asked you about...you really took us to a very interesting place which I'm going to get back to...but I asked...you said on Saturday night, the fastest way to get...that there's a lot of ways that we're on the verge of revolution...there's a...
RDS: Oh, oh, shutting down the internet. Right now, you know in fact I'm holding in my hands a book that I bought at Hackers on Planet Earth, which sadly is not listed on Amazon yet. It's by Michel Sifry, it's called The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn't Transformed Politics, and then in parenthesis, (Yet) And one of the things that has happened with the internet is it's actually fragmented us -- it hasn't brought us together. And one of the reasons it hasn't brought us together is because there's nothing about the internet that helps us make sense or focus on decision support. And I had this conversation with Vince Cerf when I bought him sushi before he went over to the dark side and working for Google. Google doesn't make sense. Google scratches the surface of the deep web -- they do two percent of the web, what's called the shallow web. Google is largely worthless in terms of thinking about important complex topics and doing analysis and doing collaborative work and so forth. You do know that Google started by stealing Yahoo's search engine and taking the people that HP was stupid enough to fire from all the good stuff, and then leveraging CIA money. So Google's roots are not at all healthy.
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