Free Transcript Project : #6

Posted on October 5, 2014 by BigPharmaResistanceOfAmerica Standard 1

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Source video
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Title : “Disruptive Leaps – “Let’s Talk Bitcoin – Episode #134”

URL : http://youtu.be/3bmeohism0g

Organization : “Let’s Talk Bitcoin” Network :
Web Site : http://www.letstalkbitcoin.com/

Host 1 : Adam B. Levine
Contact : LinkedIn Profile , Email : adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Host 2 : Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Contact : LinkedIn Profile
Web Site : http://www.antonopoulos.com/

Guest : Jeffrey Tucker
Contact : LinkedIn Profile
Web Site : http://www.liberty.me/

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Transcript

Announcer (Adam B. Levine) : Today is the 9th of August, 2014 and this is episode 134. This program is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is new, highly experimental, and we’re not experts – just obsessed companions, walking the road towards a more peer-to-peer future.

Adam B. Levine : Welcome to “Lets Talk Bitcoin”, a twice-weekly show about the ideas, people and projects building the digital economy and the future of money. My name is Adam B. Levine. Today on Let’s Talk Bitcoin I’m joined by Andreas Antonopoulos, one of the other hosts of the show.

Andreas Antonopolis : Hello.

Adam Levine : And today we have a special guest, Jeffrey Tucker – one of my favorite economists and a spirited Austrian. Jeffrey, how are you?

Jeffrey Tucker : Everything is really great. I’m so happy to be here. It’s really great that we’re able to meet up. I’m on the road a little bit doing this and that. I just got back from a nice Bitcoin meetup in Washington D.C. last night.

Adam Levine : So you are in Washington right now. What are you in Washington for?

Jeffrey Tucker : I came to introduce a series of seminars for, first the Charles Koch Institute, and then a nice interview on “Reason TV”, and now I’m headed to give a big lecture to the “National Convention of the Young Americans for Liberty”, which is kind of a political organization. But when you ask me to speak you’re not going to get too much about politics. You’re going to get a lot about crypto-anarchy.

Adam : So we have a lot of listener questions. Since we’ve booted up the forums I’ve been posting, “Hey, we’re going to be talking to these people. Do you have any questions?” So the first one that we have comes from the listener “Strip”. He says, “Is it necessary for Bitcoin to be a symbol for some kind of idea? Is the symbolism important? Is the idea important? Or is it the tech?”

Jeffrey : So this is a very interesting question because lot’s of people have different views about this. Even in Bitcoin meetups you find some people who have very conventional understanding of Bitcoin as a superior payment network. They see it as an improvement over Paypal. Then you meet other people who come out of the cyber-punk, anarchist world, and see it as a tool for liberating the world from nation-states. These are very different views, right? My own opinion about it is that it’s both things, and all things, and people should just hold whatever views they want to about it. The beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it is not dependent upon our opinions of it. Nobody is in charge of Bitcoin. I don’t think it is necessary that we have a particular ideology going into our Bitcoin promotion or ideas. We can all interpret and understand it in a different way. If you think about it, it’s almost like electricity or internal combustion or something like that. These are gigantic and technological improvements that have entered into civilization. Many people have different ideas about how the technology is going to be used. That’s good and fine, but the tech is going to take it’s own direction regardless of what we think about it.

Andreas : I love the idea that it is both, because I think that the technology itself is most certainly neutral. It’s a technology that can be used for a variety of purposes. But at it’s core it encompasses certain principles : principles of transparency, principles of openness, peer-to-peer use that is decentralized and egalitarian. And here’s the trick, a neutral technology is not neutral if you put it in a world which is terrifically biased and skewed. Or as George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” So in a time of universal financial deceit, a transparent, open and egalitarian financial network is a revolutionary technology. It is political – not because it is inherently political – but because it is put into a context of deceit. The act of creating equal access finance with transparency – in our world – that is revolutionary.

Jeffrey : This is a wonderful way to put it! So often, Andreas, when you speak I often feel like I am sort of 1.0 and you are 2.0 – and I completely agree with what you said. I also love how Bitcoin embodies all of the coolest technologies of our time. What I am about to speak on at the Y.L. is about all of the beautiful technologies that are driving the world forward. From cryptography, open source program, and distributed networks and peer-to-peer relationships – these are entirely changing the world. I’m not sure if people are aware of this – especially these highly politicized young activist. The ground is shifting beneath our feet, and Bitcoin represents, I think, the most developed embodiment of all the coolest technologies that we’ve seen emerge over the last five to ten years.

Andread : I’ll give you another example of a technology that is inherently neutral, but when introduced into a society that was hopelessly biased it caused a revolution. That was the telescope. Galileo put two pieces of ground glass on the ends of a tube and peered up into the heavens, and what he saw was not heavens. What he saw was circle objects in elliptical orbits rotating around the sun. And that was simple truth. It was completely neutral. It was just reality sitting out there. But you drop that into the middle of 16th century Catholic church indoctrination, and that is a nuclear weapon on mass enlightenment which destroys all of these preconceived notions of a firmament – a heaven above, a material world below. Geocentricity instead of heliocentricity. That is an enormously revolutionary act, and it simply involves opening your eyes and looking up, and seeing something that directly contradicts 800 years of dogma and indoctrination. Does that make the telescope a revolutionary technology? Does that making looking reality in the face a revolutionary act? No, it’s completely neutral. It just is.

Adam : But it’s disuptive. It’s very disruptive.

Andreas : It ended whole nation-states. It destroyed kingdoms. It brought down royal families. It upended the world. It lead to people nailing proclamations of doors and taking of on ships and colonizing a new continent with completely different ideas. It lead to the French revolution. It lead to a victory of democracy over the middle ages – the “dark ages”. It lead to the end of the Holy Roman Empire. And it was just two pieces of glass on a tube. Again, it’s not the technology itself, it’s the context within which it appears.

Jeffrey : In Thomas Kuhn’s book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” it’s really, really interesting his description of a prevailing orthodoxy, and a paradigm that comes to be overthrown in the course of development of science in which there are too many anomalies that appear that are not explained by the prevailing paradigm. Then the paradigm collapses and we enter into a pre-paradigmatic state, where there is a lot of argument about what we are going to believe now about the future. Then a new paradigm emerges. As I was reading I couldn’t help but think that that applies also to social and political systems also – not just scientific paradigms. I really feel like we’re living through one of those right now. Andreas, you mentioned the underlying context here of a, sort of, equipotent world in which peer-to-peer relationships are the dominant thing. I really see that as the emerging new paradigm, and the failing paradigm – that is ending – is one of hierarchies and third-party trust relationships – whether it be banks, corporations or nation-states, actually.

Andreas : The problems is that these changes are, obviously, massively destructive because there are a large number of people in very powerful institutions invested in maintaining the status quo. No matter how wrong it is. No matter how perverted it is. No matter how much pain and suffering it introduces into the world. It’s very profitable for some, and you know, as another saying goes , “If your paycheck depends on you not seeing they truth, you won’t see the truth.”

Jeffrey : People get really embedded into the current paradigms, and to orthodoxies. People don’t understand really. This is what Thomas Kuhn’s book was an attack on, is the Whig’s theory of history – that there is a, kind of, smooth evolution of marginal improvements that go from thing to thing to thing. What he said was that actually we, sort of. hurl from one paradigm to another. There are all of these establishments that exist raised up around certain belief systems, and people are born into a certain structure, and they absorb that into their belief system. And they hang onto that for as long as possible until it becomes essentially impossible to do otherwise. This is what I think is essentially going to happen with Bitcoin. We all encounter ressistance to it. We are surrounded by people who are resistant. We see, sort of,a gradual enlightenment taking place. I notice in the last month, for example, I’ve personally encountered two people who were radical, radical Bitcoin critics a year ago, who have completely changed their minds in light of of just experience. That would be Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers, two intellectual investors who I really respect, who used to laugh at me for my views on the subject, who have now come around completely and admitted that they were completely wrong and are looking forward to a beautiful Bitcoin future.

Andreas : Well some of the strongest advocates in Bitcoin were originally skeptics. It’s in the nature of a skeptic – an honest skeptic – to ask hard questions. When you encounter someone who – as soon as you introduce Bitcoin to them – doesn’t just dismiss it, but dismiss it by asking really hard questions. Then you notice that they’re eagerly listening to your answers. They present you with their objections, and they are hoping that you will be able to overcome those objections to give them rational arguments to rethink their position. An honest skeptic will give you arguments, will let you demolish them, and then will make that change, absorb the new data and become an advocate. Some of the strongest advocates, I think, started like that. Then there’s a completely different category of person who is a skeptoc, but does not want to assimilate any new information that would violate that thinking. They don’t ask questions. They have preconceived ideas of what’s true and what isn’t, and any attempt to tell them about Bitcoin is dismissed. That’s how you know the difference between an honest skeptic and a dishonest skeptic, I guess. I don’t think it is surprising that people like Peter Schiff made that change, because that’s where our strongest advocates will come from.

Jeffrey : Can I tell you how it happened? It’s actually very funny. So, I’m bumping into Peter Schiff, and I’ve been arguing with the guy for like a year-and-a-half or even two years about Bitcoin. Because even before I became an advocate I was not a critic, right? He was one of these critics who would give like 65 reasons why Bitcoin is a terrible ides – one of these kind of guys. Then I ran into him in Las Vegas at “Freedom Fest” and he practically grabbed me by the lapels and said, “I have the most amazing story to tell you. My company started accepting Bitcoin, because I figured ‘Well, if I can get it converted into dollars right away, I don’t care .’ People can pay me in bananas – if it is converted into dollars it doesn’t matter to me.” So he enabled a widget on his web site that allowed his clients to pay in Bitcoin. And he said to me “You know, I can’t believe it. When I usually get international transfers in for some of their product they have to wait for or five days for a wire transfer and pay huge transactions fees for Paypal, and credit cards are ridiculously expensive and always involves some fraud issues.” He said, “But with Bitcoin, did you know that I can process these transactions even before the client gets off the phone and I pay virtually zero transaction costs?” And he’s telling me this – with wide eyes – as if he’s telling me news, you know? So I said, “Really Peter, is that right?” and he said, “Yeah, I’m telling you, that’s what’s right.” I said, “Well okay. I’m glad to hear this.” It’s the experience I think.

Adam : The experience really is it. That really is it. I think we all started as skeptics. I was looking at Bitcoin for a good year before I really felt like it was something that I might put some money into. And that was seeing it crash and come back a couple of times. It just seems like everybody has their own comfort threshold.

Andreas : Right, and as we expand adoption we’re reaching a comfort threshold of more and more people. They see the first crash, the second crash, the third crash, the forth crash, the fifth crash – and it’s still not dead, which is kind of remarkable. The number of obituaries that have been written for Bitcoin in quite staggering.

Adam : I thought it was pretty remarkable.

Jeffrey : I’m sitting here so thrilled, Here it is – I guess we’re approaching August 2014 – and I started writing about this subject around February 2013. I didn’t expect what would happen, but I wrote about five or ten articles right away, since I kind of stared engaging the Bitcoin economic structures and seeing what they’re all about. Then, in a funny way, the ceiling fell in on me. All of my old colleagues and friends started coming out of the woodwork to say that I was not of sound mind – that I had forgotten all of the lessons that I previously knew, and that I had, sort of, lost it. I was severely attacked and criticized – and it shocked me really. I have to admit to you that it is has been delightful over the last year-and-a-half to see how all of these people have shut up. You know? I hate to feel that sense of schadenfreude, but I just do.

Adam : It’s nice that there’s more support for it now, but we still haven’t hit that 1% yet,

Andreas : Yeah, Jeffrey, you said something that got my attention, which is people telling you, “Have you forgotten all the lessons? Have you forgotten all the things you know?” And that’s really the primary criticism of an established paradigm. The lessons and the things you know ; the conventional wisdom which is being drummed into your head. Especially if you study the subject – as an insider, as an academic in the space, or as a professional in the space – and you become skilled and expert in the space, that means you have reached the apotheosis of indoctrination. You’ve absorbed all of the dogma and become adept at teaching it to others. So the ironic thing is that the people who are able to escape the paradigm first are the ones who have never been schooled in it. If you come at it and say, “I don’t know anything about money so this Bitcoin thing looks good.” you’ve got a better chance of learning something. But if you think you already know everything there is to know about money and you have that conventional wisdom in your head, it’s almost impossible to escape that paradigm. It invades your life in every way. It informs your academic success. You’ve written papers about it. You’ve taught thousands of others the same thing, and reinforced it in your own mind. You’ve expanded your view within that narrow framework. You’ve explored it’s edges. You’ve taken it from a vague description to hard lines and sharp edges. Then stepping outside of that is almost impossible. So you see that sometimes a person who comes along and throws all of that in disarray is someone outside the field. It has to be, because they’ve avoided the indoctrination. It’s the patent clerk at the Austrian patent office who says, “Newtonian physics? I don’t think so.” It’s the tinkerer who has no formal training in electronics who understands a new perspective. And it’s the half-programmer, half-physicist systems-thinker “Satoshi Yakamoto” who is obviously not an economist, who comes along and says, “Well how about we do it this way?”

Jeffrey : I love what you just said, and I hope that somebody transcribes those two paragraphs you just said. I know in my case I had a serious problem that everything I thought I knew argued against the legitimacy of Bitcoin. It became a serious problem for me mentally, because I couldn’t make sense of it in light of my theories. But at some point I decided look, “What am I going to trust? What I actually see out the window? Or the theories that are in this hundred-year-old book that I’ve got rolling around in my head?” I finally had to trust reality over theory and hope that at some point they could reemerge together in a way that makes rational sense to me. But there was a whole long period in there where I couldn’t actually bring the two together. But none-the-less Bitcoin is happening. So I had to take almost a kind of a leap out of my prevailing orthodoxies in order to embrace Bitcoin. Then, gradually – over the course of about twelve months – I began to put it all back together again. Now Bitcoin makes sense to me in light of what I previously understood, but with some tweeks, you know? So there is a certain amount of intellectual humility which is required to leave one paradigm and enter another.

Andreas : When you said you had to make an intellectual leap it brought to mind another beautiful example of paradigm shifting and just stepping completely outside of the accepted norms and doing something so obviously weird and different that it shocks everyone, and it forces them to reconsider reality because it simply works. That’s the story of Dick Fosbury. Richard Fosbury is the athlete who was the first person to do the high jump with a backwards flip. Nobody had ever done it that way. Everybody would run up to the pole and, kind of, scissor their legs over it. That was the established way of doing it for decades – possibly even hundreds of years – who knows. He ran up and jumped backwards, and at first the reaction was that the judges tried to figure out if this was actually allowed.Can you do this? Is this part of the rules? Because he immediately set world records by doing this weird backwards flip. And they said, “Well, the pol is still there, it didn’t fall off.” It completely violated the existing paradigm – completely crazy and weird looking – and, of course, the next year everybody was doing it.

Jeffrey : That’s a great story.

Adam Levine : LTBCoin is the official community rewards program of the “Let’s Talk Bitcoin” network. You can earn LTBC by performing any number of thing you probably already do. If you listen to shows like “Let’s Talk Bitcoin” listen up for the magic word. When you hear it, visit http://www.letstalkbitcoin.com. Log in to your free account, and enter the magic words to claim your share of the listener rewards. Now it’s time for the ‘LTB News Flash”, brought to you by Cryptokit – the easiest, fastest Bitcoin wallet which installs right into your browser so it’s always ther when you need it.

Here are the headlines for August 9th, 2014 : Lake Tahoe Property sells for 1.6 million Bitcoin. Bitcoin momentum growing in emerging markets. Hacker swipes $83,000 from Bitcoin mining pool. The Bitcoin derivative boom could be a mark of the cryptocurrency’s coming of age. [Huboy?] bets big on multisig with quick wallet acquisition. Bitcoin Foundation seeks more time to address virtual currency rules. Hungary’s 200 volt now accepts Bitcoin for laptops, tablets, t.v.s and more. Check it out at cryptokit.com.

Today’s first sponsor, with a high water mark of 81,250 LTBC is “Storj.io”. Here’s what they have to say about the project :

Commercial Announcer : Imagine if the cloud wasn’t up here, but down here, with us. That’s storj. Storj is a cloud shared by the community. It is potentially the largest, cheapest and most secure cloud available. What you share is what you get. You can even be paid for renting your extra space. But how is it more secure? Each file is shredded, encrypted and spread across the network until you are ready to use it again. You can be sure the files are safe because the keys are in your pocket, not a company’s. Only you have access to your stuff. Because the network is shared you don’t have to worry about slowed download seeds coming from one place. We’re all helping make the system blazing fast. And if you have some extra space lying around, you’ll get paid by users who need more than they can share. It’s like renting out your empty hard drives. A cloud with security, no downtime and sopeed at a fraction of the cost.

Adam Levine : They’re currently running a crowd sale. August 15th is the last day to get involved. If you’d like to learn more visit storj.io.

It’s time for the magic word. Today’s magic word, for episode 134, is “liberty”. That’s L-I-B-E-R-T-Y. You’ve got until the 13th of August to visit Letstalkbitcoin.com and enter the magic word for your share of the LTBC audience rewards.

So, today’s second sponsor is a little bit different. With 62,000 LTBC, community member [Seen mason?] asked that we use his time to talk a little about the situation in Gaza. His perspective is this : Between 1947 and 1949, seven to eight thousand non-Jews were expelled from their family lands in Isreal and hundreds of villages were destroyed. Those people were kept under occupation without rights or a state for 47 years. Muslims, Christians and others within Isreal can’t rent or purchase land in about 80% of the country, and are basically second-class citizens by law. While, on the other hand, any Jewish person born anywhere in the world may gain Israeli citizenship and take the land of a non-Jew.

And with that, I’ve pissed off about half of our audience. Just kidding. Thanks to C. Mason for his perspective. My mind is very one-track.I tend to focus on things I can positively impact. Mostly this just seems like there is no winning scenario. It’s not about the people, it’s about the politics of control – which is probably a whole show unto itself. And certainly just because one side of the story has terrible stories doesn’t mean that it’s not just as true on the other. And that’s the thing, I guess. It’s just not about you or I at all. In the Middle East – just like everywhere else – our leaders make bad decisions just because it’s the best – as they see it – of the available options. Is it good for anyone really? No. But that’s not the world that we live in – yet. So that’s it. Back to the show.

Adam Levine : So Andreas, a little bit earlier you mentioned patent clerk, Newtonian physics. Intellectual property really has been – for hundreds of years now – kind of a core part of how people both monetize and protect. And it’s been interesting watching disruptive technologies – specifically cryptocurrency, which isn’t really governed by patents, and can’t really be controlled by patents – and on the other hand you have things liike 3D printing, that made a lot of progress over a couple of years, but that was only because some 20-year-old patents had expired and now these parts were able to be made by just anybody who wanted to make them as opposed to the one manufacturing conglomerate that had the legal right to be able to do it before that point.

So, Jeffrey, I’m curious, where do you think intellectual property controls can fit within a Bitcoin framework, and what impact would it have had if the situation had been different in the cryptocurrency space.

Jeffrey Tucker : So my own feeling on intellectual property is that it is basically an artificial thing that can only exist in an age of the nation-state, and that’s governed by the physical world threats of monopolistic elites who control the world through compulsion and coersion. That’s fundamentally at odds with what the digital age is all about : about malleability, reproducability, immoirtality and distributed networks. The idea of some elites gathering together to allocate who owns what in the realm of ideas is incompatible with this. Seriously, I’ve done a lot of work on the history of intellectual property – the ideological structure surrounding it. It wasn’t really until after the beginning of the 21st century that we saw hardcore, really serious attacks on the idea of IP – and it’s because digital networks really broke the system down. We saw some opposition to IP even as early as the beginnings of the industrial revolution, but nothing really substantial and serious until the digital age. Basically, I think the system is broken down and isn’t going to last, and it is very interesting to me to see how large corporations are starting to realize this and stop putting so much energy and time into enforcing their patents and copyrights – and starting to use the new networks of open source cooperation and the sharing economy to their advantage.

Andreas : Here, here. That’s a great commentary. Intellectual property is an artificial construct for monopolizing ideas and creating cartels around abstract concepts. The basic problem is that no one really has an original thought that they’ve conceived completely by themselves without anybody else being involved. Innovation is simply expending a culture of four-and-a-half million years one millimeter forward by combining all of the existing inputs and producing something slightly different – something that probably a few thousand other people have probably done somewhere else. The idea that you can take that and create a monopoly around that – while originally envisioned as a way to reward creators – has ended up creating these islands of stagnant creativity and isolation by removing things from the culture. The age-old compact – the social compact, that is even encoded in the U.S. Constitition, which is that “Congress can secure rights for creators in order to promote the arts and sciences.”. This idea that these patents and copyrights are of limited time – so that you take from the cultural Zeitgeist, you enhance it or advance it a tiny bit, you get a short-term reward, and then you give it back to the public domain so that others can build upon it. That compact then got perverted. Starting with the Disney company, who as soon as they saw their Mickey copyright runnning out, went ot Congress and got it extended 73 times – until copyright essentially became infinite, instead of limited in time, They were quite happy to take “The Brother’s Grim” and every other cultural story, appropriate it for their own needs, and then give nothing back to the popular culture. Take all of the stories of our ancestors, turn them into copyright material, and then give nothing back by perverting the copyright law. We’ve seen this happen across the board in intellectual property. Well, open source breaks that cycle. It recognizes that collaboration and creation moves faster, and innovation with collaboration moves faster – and if you give back to the community the community will give back to you again and again, and it creates this feedback loop of accelerated innovation. Whether it is Linux, or Wikipedia, or a thousand other things which have come from it – especially now with the introduction of the “Creative Commons” law and licenses. Those are amnazing things, and what they’re showing is that there is a much better way to do it.

Jeffrey : I heard something last night that really intrigued me, because I’ve tried to understand the best way to describe open source projects and what they mean. At the Bitcoin meetup last night somebody said that the great thing about open source technology is that it, sort of, takes away the obligation we all feel to constantly reinvent things – to constantly recreate, on our own, from scratch – all things. Always reinventing the wheel in a world of intellectual property, as you say, requires absolute originality. But open source programming – and open source everything – allows us to draw from the energies of others, and take what’s already been done and build on top of them. So you have this cumulating capital that grows over time. I was trying to thinkof a right analogy. It’s as if you had, sort of, one cake that is baked by the entire world, that is constantly getting ever better and ever more delicious, and the more people eat it there is ever more cake for ever more people. Rather than individual cakes by individuals constantly throughout history, you have one big cake that everybody is constantly making better and testing and bringing their own ideas to. I thought that was a really nice way to think about it,

Andreas : Yeah. The core fallacy at the heart of the concept of the intellectual property is the word “property”, because one of the absolute characteristics of property is that if you have property and I take that property, you no longer have that property. It is by definition singular, unique, unitary and not sharable. But if you have an idea, and I copy that idea, we both have that idea. And if I give it to ten more people, all twelve of us now have that idea – and we can all build on it. And you lost nothing from the fact that I have the idea. It’s not property, and it’s not property because it’s not tangible, it’s not destroyable. It’s infinitely copyable. If you have invented something and I copy that, then really what we are doing is doubling the rate of invention. Because – at the end of the day – you didn’t really invent something, you just expanded on thousands of years of culture. Your addition is standing on the shoulders of giants, and really hasn’t raised the bar that much.

Jeffrey : The whole idea od property in the first place – as you said – comes about because of the existence of scarcity. It’s a social construct we invented to stop conflicts, to deal with the problem of rivalrous control over the physical world. Once you migrate to the digital world you get simultaneous consumption of all things – with no depreciation of the original object – property is no longer necessary. It becomes just an absurdity. You know, it is important to remember that in history people have had mistaken views of propert over all sorts of things. For example, in the 18th century, and up until the early part of the 19th century – people thought that slaves were legitate forms of property, In fact, there is a 5th Amendment to the Constitution that was put in there to protect property rights over other people [chuckle], you know? Now we recognize that was just a mistake. So in the 21st century we’re gradually realizing that this is also a mistake to apply the term “property” to the realm of ideas?

Adam : But was it always a mistake? Because the arguments I hear both of you making basically revolve around, “Now we have digital things.” But that wasn’t true even 30 or 40 years ago. So 200 years ago, when intellectual property was getting started inthis country – in the United States – I have it in my head that it might actually have served a purpose, because the inventor was at the mercy of a manufacturing partner that might take years and might actually kick them out of the business because the inventor doesn’t control – or have any claim to – the very centralized and capital-intensive means of production. So Lincoln had a quote that I like. He said, “Patents added the fuel of interest to the fire of innovations.” I wonder, did they ever serve a purpose in your eyes, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey : No, I don’t think so, and I think what we need to do is totally revise intellectual history. There origin of the steam engine was a similar kind of problem. I mean, it was a great innovation, but it got locked down by oatents and nothing happened of any value for another 10 or 20 years, because everybody was, sort of, prohibited by law from adding to it. It was very interesting what happened with even things like the cotton gin. Who’s that guy – Eli Witley – supposedly invented it, but he didn’t invent it, he improved it slightly and got a patent on it and then went around spending the next 20 years cracking skulls to prevent innovation, He finally learned his lesson after he bankrupted himself spending so much money on patent lawsuits. It’s the same thing with the Wright Brothers. They came up with pretty cool little onnovation that gave them the title of being the first in flight, and then they spent the rest of their whole lives enforcing the patents. Meanwhile, all of the other countries in the world actually improved airline technology. By the time World War I came along the U.S. had the worst airplanes in the world, because we had the tightest patent controls [laughter].Yeah, I don’t think that patents have ever served any kind of purpose, and we really need to revise our intellectual history.

Adam, you said something very interesting about how maybe intellectual property is not really relevant in the digital age, but it might have had relevance before. But I really feel like we should have known that IP was not a good idea, even dating all the way back to the Gutenberg bible. When the Gutenberg bible came along, of course there was no IP over the psalms and the other texts that were being printed. But there was a confusion, because people associated the ideas on the page with the physical property of the page itself. We couldn’t really conceptualize the fact that these were really difference products. I mean, the ideas in the book are part of the non-scarce realm, the book itself is part of the scarce realm, and so we have this merging of these two things – one non-scarce and one scarce – and one beautiful thing called a “book”. But it took us a long time to realize that we are dealing always with two realms – one scarce and one non-scarce. We just didn’t know it – fully and completely – until the last few years.

Adam : So Bitcoin emerged as a very hobbiest sort of thing. It was very, very amateur, very experimental – “Let’s see what we can accomplish. We’re doing this because it’s neat that we can do this.” And I recently read a book called “The Master Switch” by Tim Woo, and in that he tells a bunch of different stories of information empires as they succeed and then fail. One of the stories he tells is about AM radio and FM radio. AM radio strikes me very similarly to how Bitcoin emerged, and FM radio seems like maybe after these recent discussion about these rules that are being made in New York. Maybe that’s the situation that everything that comes after will fall under. So I’m curious, do you know this story?

Jeffrey : I’m not aware about it.

Andreas : It’s been a while since I read Tim Woo’s book, so maybe you can remind me while we explain it to our listeners.

Adam : It’s a fairly lengthy thing, but the ideais that, in the early days, a kid who wanted to set up a radio station could set up a radio station with one of these little crystal radio things, and it was a hobbiest thing that people did because it was fun. You could set up a broadcast and you could listen to things, and this was very new at the time. Basically, it took like forty years to develop, but by that point it had developed into quite a successful industry, and there were a variety of monopolies, actually. Because at the time the only way you could get a station from somewhere non-locally was to use AT&T’s long distance lines. That actually was one of the reasons why FM radio was kind of suppressed, because FM radio came along and it esssentially made it so that ranges and power requirements were such that, before, it was unfeasible with AM radio to do re-broadcast stations – where you broadcast from one hill and then it is re-broadcast from another hill. The range was too short and the power requirements were too great. But when FM radio came along, it essentially made it so that anybody who wanted to do this could very cheaply set up these networks of stations and re-broadcasters, and that was one of several reasons why the FM radio paradigm – which it actually invented the FM radio technology and funded the research to do it – then sat on the technology. So the FCC came along and said, “In order to maintain the standard you can use much less power than you could with an equivalent AM station, so that it will only give you an AM equivalent broadcast distance.”. I’m rambling, and doing a kind of terrible job with this, but it seems like sometimes – especially in the last hundred years – these are used as weapons to suppress technologies.

Andreas : Not sometimes, Adam. Every single time, in every disruptive technology, the existing industries have used every weapon at their disposal to fight for incumbency and to prevent disruption. Which is, of course, the normal reaction. which then tells you what regulation does. Regulation starts off – at least presumably, or presented as – consumer protection, and it very quickly becomes a way to distinguish incumbents and to protect them from competition. Because they become adept at navigating the regulation, they co-opt the regulators, and then as soon as disruption happens they turn the regulation around and point it as a big weapon against the disruptors. That has happened in every industry. It’s happening today in every industry.

Jeffrey : In the end they never succeed. That’s what’s amusing. History progresses in any case, it’s just that the regulators can slow us down, but that can’t ultimately stop it – which makes it just a vast waste. I feel this way about a lot of these Bitcoin regulations that are coming out. It’s going to make the sector function less well, it’s going to make it less competitive, there’s going to be less focus on the consumer and more focus on compliance. But im the end, fifty years from now, none of these regulations that they’re trying to pass right now are going to have any relevance for whether – and to what extent – Bitcoin adoption is going to take place. Bitcoin is going to take its own course eventually. It’s just a matter of how many victims you want to create in the meantime. That’s what it’s all about.

Adam : Well, in New York, for example – again, we’re talking about proposed rules here just real briefly – that essentially say that you have the same compliance requirements if you do anything with Bitcoin – and users that have some basis in New York – as you would if, basically, you were a minor bank. The reporting requirements are very stringent, and it basically makes it so that with the current way that cryptocurrency is, it’s kind of incompatible to be complaint and to not create and entirely new cryptocurrency. So, I’ve been wondering about that. I mean, it’s kind of easy to create a new cryptocurrency, so if New York wants to go along with this type of means, doesn’t it make sense to actually either – maybe not them, nut somebody else does it – but create a cryptocurrency that actually complies with all of these requirements that they want. That has the real name currency attached, and that doesn’t require you to Jerry-rig it, rather than using Bitcoin where – yeah, you can use it, but you’re throwing out all of the advantages that came with it, so why bother?

Andreas : I think that’s mistaking a feature for a bug. The fact that Bitcoin is incompatible with these regulations, that’s not a bug in Bitcoin. That’s a feature. That’s one of the best features in Bitcoin. It’s incompatible with these regulations because those regulations themselves express the existing paradigm, and that is exactly what Bitcoin is disrupting.

Adam : But I’m going to call you on this, Andreas, because Bitcoin is neutral. So, at the same time, you’re kind of putting an ideology onto it. So, that’s what I’m saying —

Andreas : No. I’m not —

Adam : Bitcoin has the ideology baked into it. Can you twist that ideology and create something else that’s very similar but that doesn’t have that exact thing.

Andreas : No. What I’m saying is that Bitcoin is neutral, but Bitcoin is neutral in a way that violates the tenets of a very “not neutral” regulatory system that assumes that the best way to achieve consumer protection is to have all of the personal identifiable information of consumers given to several agencies with lax controls – so they can lord over it and supposedly stop “bad guys”. And what that does is actually destroys consumer protection. Privacy is consumer protection. The idea that by giving all of your private information you will be protected as a consumer is perverse. And the fact that Bitcoin does not conform to that idea because it is neutral, because it allows consumers to interact without having to go through this perverse activity of giving up all of their personal information just to transact – that is not a bug in Bitcoin. That is the feature that makes sure that Bitcoin will not fit into these comfortable regulations, and it won’t fit into the comfortable regulations because the regulations themselves are perverse – the idea that consumer protection is ensured by taking all the private information of consumers. And when consumers have a choice, to choose how they want to be protected, they choose not to give out their personal information. That —

Adam : — But that is the point. —

Andreas : — It’s neutral. —

Adam : Yes, in reality, given the choice. But they don’t have a choice. If this happens, then the only legal uses for Bitcoin will be this type of use – where you are disclosing all of this information. So that’s what I’m saying, is that in the world we live in, if this happens is it better to keep using Bitcoin and still disclose all of that information because you’re going to have to anyways – if you’re in New York, and under the subject of all of this nonsense. Or is it better to create something that, kind of, bakes it in? More importantly, what about people who are not us – and who are not in this for the ideology of it – think?

Announcer (Adam B. Levine) : Thanks for listening to episode 134 of “Let’s Talk Bitcoin”. Content for today’s episode was provided by : Andreas M. Antonopolis, Jeffrey Tucker and Adam B. Levine. This episode was edited by Denise Levine and Adam B. Levine. Music for today’s show was provided by Jared Rubin of “Security Beats” and General Fuzz. If you’re a developer, you might be interested in our upcoming “Coins For Commits” program. As the platform goes open source in the coming weeks we want as much help as possible, and you’ll earn LTBC for your commits. If you have any questions, send an email to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com and I’ll help you find the right person to speak to.

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Free Transcript Project : #5

Posted on October 4, 2014 by BigPharmaResistanceOfAmerica Standard Reply

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Source video
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Title : “15 Minutes Of Fact : Want to Transform the Economy? Start by Transforming Your Thinking?”

URL : http://youtu.be/TLio1YWOkzY

Organization : 15 Minutes of Fact podcast :
Web Site : http://writtenoffamerica.com/
Host : Jerry Ashton
Contact : jerryashton1@gmail.com

Guest : Zeus Yiamouyiannis

Web Sites :
http://citizenzeus.com/
http://www.transformingeconomy.com

Contact : LinkedIn Profile , Email : zeus@citizenzeus.com

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Transcript
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Jerry Ashton : We’ve had some interesting guests on “15 Minutes of Fact” over time, and explored some compelling topics. When it comes to the intricacies of economic theory and abstract financial systems, however, I get a bit nervous. Even my bravest listeners are brightfully weary, even though they know that they will be subjected to no more than 15 minutes on one subject – hence, “15 Minutes of Fact”. So, I don’t propose that we’re going to lose even one member of our audience today with our audience with our guest Zeus Yiamouyiannis. Is that the correct pronunciation, Zeus?

Zeus Yiamouyiannis : Yiamouyiannis.

Jerry Ashton : Yiamouyiannis. Thank you so much. He is reached by way of Skype at his home in the Philippines.Here’s why you’ll be interested. Somehow Zeus is able to deliver – in understandable English – clear answers to today’s economic train wreck. He magically reduces the complexity of trillions of dollars of currency, trade and debt, and reduces things down to simple accounting – almost the type of thing you’d be able to do at your kitchen table, but not quite. Because he is a PhD, after all, he’s an economics blogger, a futurist, and author of the newly published book “Transforming Economy : From Corrupted Capitalism to Connected Communities”. He writes for zerohedgefund.com and oftwominds.com – two top alternative economic web sites – and is considered a performance educator in the way that he delivers information that informs as well as excites. Let’s see if he can make that happen on the show today. Welcome to “15 Minutes of Fact”, Zeus.

Zeus : Thank you so much for having me Jerry.

Jerry : Well, it’s a pleasure.So let me start out with that rather slippery word that you seem to use when you talk about the work that you do in economics – and that’s “transform”. Now, is this a use of semantics to get past everyone’s natural disinclination to accept change?

Zeus : Well, I think there are a couple of issues when you use a word like “transformation”. The first is the notion of resistance to change. I address this specifically in my book. I mean, many people are under the delusion that you can choose not to change. We’re in an era – as I said in my book – that things cannot go on as before. We know we will change. The only issues are, “Will change be done to us, or will it proceed from us?” So I think at this point the only thing that you would be doing is essentially using your perception to avoid reality that is already upon us. The second is also important, and that is romanticized notions of change that sort of substitute ineffective replacements – a kind of “new age fantastic thinking” that if we just hold hands together enough, or there’s a technological solution that’s going to come out of the woodwork and save us all –

Jerry : Wait…. wait,… wait. You’re telling me that “Kumbaya” and Google is not going to save us in this particular world we’re living in?

Zeus : Not without human consciousness and decision to let that change and transformation in consciousness work. And that’s what I really advocate for, and work with others to provide. I mean, there’s a necessity of change, there’s a reality of change , and then there’s the opportunity for change. I’m excited by that notion, and I think we could get more people on board if we show that change can be an exciting and purposeful and deep way to live.

Jerry : Well, let’s get to the subject at hand – the economic disaster that we’re calling the “Great Recession”. I’ve read through some of your earlier works and two stand out for me. One is called “Five Courageous Steps” – I like it when people give me numbers and quantities to work with. The other is called “Ten Shocking Practices”. Now, are they part of your just-released books? Or are they precursors? Tell us about them?

Zeus : Well, they’re both companion pieces to the book. The first one “Five Courageous Steps to Transform Your Economy” really is about what you can personally do to, sort of, see through the haze provided by our current economic situation. It’s actually available to your audience for free – if they just go to transformingeconomy.com and sign up for the newsletter, or email list signup – they will get a free copy mailed to them through their email. That’s, again, more focused on how you can translate some of the broader principles I have in my book to actual personal practices. The second, “Ten Shocking Practices in the U.S. and Global Economy” are really a “greatest hits list” of some of the most outrageous things happening in the economy – and then some follow up questions to stimulate discussion. It’s meant to be a companion piece to my book, and if people do get it – for the first people doing this, especially activists – I’m writing out a personal email and sending that along regardless of whether you buy just one book or more.

Jerry : Well, I want the listener to know that there are some really excellent, shocking items there that we’re aware of, but not aware of how really horrendous they are. Can you name three of them for us?

Zeus : Well, my greatest hit is “fraudclosure”. I’m astounded that two things happened with “fraudclosure”. One, there were hundreds of thousands – maybe millions – of forged documents, that are clearly – I mean, there’s no dispute that they were forged. People have admitted that they were forged. Basically, there was an electronic system set up to do an end run around filing requirements, for property.

Jerry : Oh you’re talking about the famous “robo-signing” and things like that.

Zeus : “Robo-signing”, and there was nothing done about that. There was no real prosecution. There was not even really any investigation. What I found when I did research is that this $25 billion Attorney’s General solution ended up being – most of it, only about $8.5 billion was supposed to be in cash – that was never really done. Only $1.5 billion was spent on consultants. And I found out as recently as January of this year not a single dime has really been spent on a homeowner. So it’s really a big, huge smokescreen. Money is the whole chain of private property, which is supposed to be the bedrock of economy in terms of who owns what, and what an asset really is – and nothing has been done about it. It’s been swept completely under the rug.

Jerry : Which, of course, leads me to my next statement of dismay, and that is one of the unquenched calls of anger regarding the recession is that the culprits – the big banks, their thieving executives – have not been held accountable for what are clearly financial crimes. Now, nobody else has answered it. Why is that?

Zeus : Well, there are two parts to that that I can see in writing this book. The first is simply this. It is obvious that the people who are working on enforcement have been members of these banks that are not being investigated – as it turns out – and they are trying to protect their own former turf and relationships. They cannot separate their own lives and what they consider to be of benefit to themselves personally, and their official duties. That’s the first part – the more obvious. The other one is really sneaky – and incredibly condescending – and that is this notion that we have to excuse high crimes to prevent the suffering of the “little guy”. If these firms collapse, how many people will be thrown out of work? Lenny Brewer , who was part of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, resigned after a “Frontline” piece in which he said, “If we indited them, the company might fail.” It’s like, “Really! A criminal company might fail if you indict them.”

Jerry : The people I want to see thrown out on the streets are exactly the people you are talking about.

Zeus : Exactly. The main point is this. There can be no market without accountability, and in the present system there really isn’t accountability. This is what I want to say to them, “You’re trying to protect what? The market? Well, if you’re trying to protect the market you need accountability, which means you need to prosecute people who do crimes.”

Jerry : Well, that brings up the larger picture of debt. Something that seems to afflict everyone but the famed 1%. Some people say that we should simply walk away from debt as individuals, and even as a country. Now, are these debts so toxic that they cannot be converted into something that is usable? What is your opinion about this?

Zeus : Well, many of them are. The entire derivatives market, and the debt that was created out of them – something like a trillion dollars of so-called “toxic derivatives” were bought up by the Federal Reserve – are nothing but junk. They were constructed vehicles that referred to, basically, fantasy assets and collateral – and had no real purpose, except to generate fees and cash flow from nothing.

Jerry : And bonuses. Don’t forget the bonuses.

Zeus : Absolutely. Wall Street rewarded themselves – after they collapsed the world economy – with a near-record $144 billion in compensation. And they do that by basically extending counterfeit value in the form of these constructed, “fantastic” – not fantastic meaning, like, pure fantasy – economic vehicles that are not backed by anything. They just simply refer to assets, and then they make off with the transaction fees and bonuses on false paper profits. So this gets at the core of debt as asset. Debts have been considered assets, and this is a very twisted notion. And they certainly aren’t assets if people start defaulting on them. Debts require ability to pay, and because that has been forgotten we now have a situation where these so-called “toxic assets” and “toxic debts” really are junk. I advocate, in two chapters in this book, not only debt forgiveness but also finding ways to administer debt forgiveness. Because when you have something built on fraud – I mean, one of the titles is “Endgame : When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy”. So we don’t expect a person to pay for a crime. If they are extended money in a fraudulent way, why should they have to pay it back? Now there is intricacies in how to deal with that, but we really should get –

Jerry : Well, I was listening to an interview you had done with Max Keiser on his show “On The Edge”, and I was struck by two things. First, the show was all about – and this was two year ago. As a matter-of-fact it was on September 17th, 2011. It was all about the Wall Street meltdown, and coincidentally enough on September 17th that’s the exact day that Occupy took over Zuccati Park. Is this something coincidental, or something you just pulled together yourself?

Zeus : Hahaha! I would call it auspicious – a meeting of the minds. What it is showing is that voice is a way to coordinate and pop-out in ways that we don’t expect. And it gives me real hope, because voice is the start of action. Real people need real food, water, clothing and shelter. They can’t go on extend and pretend. Finally, especially with Occupy Wall Street, people are finally saying, “And we need real accountability.” They’re starting to come out, and we’re finding that one of our basic needs – which people have forgotten about – is our need for community, and our need for voice. So to me I see it as a universal upsurge, and an auspicious coming together of people who care.

Jerry : Well, how could your book be of value to Occupiers and activists – not even considering the mainstream “Mom and Pop” out there, who haven’t given it a lot of thought, except a lot of their pain and blood, sweat and tears to surviving. How can your book possibly help in the face of the implacable and resolute enemies that we have both in the government and in banking. How would you, for example. counsel students with their staggering debts?

Zeus : Well, first of all, I would simply say, “Get active, creative, imaginative and organized.” One of the best ways to do this is to “stop feeding the beast” – that’s one of my steps in the “Five Courageous Steps To Transform Your Economy”, and there are specific ways to do that in the book. I think the most important thing about that is to start taking leadership, not to be reactive to the current system. To take as much energy away from it as you can, identify toxic practices – which I do in my book – and then take as much of your time and money away from that system as possible and use your leadership to organize and create the creative alternative. The last chapter in my book is called “Youth of the World Unite : How the Younger Generation Can Lead the Way To A New Frontier”. There is so much talent and ability there, and so much responsibility and liability being dumped on young people. I think they just need to go ahead and face that. Organize together and find ways to be really resourceful, and pull themselves out of that – essentially “death spiral” that former generations have provided for them – and develop their own leadership going forward. There are specific ways to do that.

Jerry : Okay. So what would it look like if we actually had an economy and a society built around the things that matter most to us. What would those things be, and what would that world look like?

Zeus : Basically my book is about going toward a democratic capitalism. We’ve never had it, but basically it is money serving people – not the other way around – people serving money. It also involves – because we have a sustainability issue – us really going from a more material to a non-material basis for our purpose of living. That is already kind of happening. We want to move from a : taking, exploiting and consuming society to a creating, giving and sharing society. Now that’s not kumbaya. That tag line that I like to use sometimes, that I’ve created is that, “I am a more fulfilled me by a more effective we.” If we can begin to develop that notion – and it is already coming up for the younger generations who not only believe that but experience that as a quality of life for them – then we can begin to turn the tide.

Jerry : Well, I can’t think of a better note on which to conclude our “15 Minutes of Fact” today Zeus. So allow me to ask you to give our audience some contact information on you and your book so that they may reach out to you directly. Now I know your email address is zeus@citizenzeus.com – and that’s your website as well. You’re also on LinkedIn and I notice that you’re also on Facebook. How else can people reach you and how can they find this book?

Zeus : Just type in : http://www.transformingeconomy.com . That will bring up the main page with email signup where you can get the “Five Courageous Steps To Transform Your Economy”. There’s a book link there where you can click on “Get The Book” where you can actually pick up the book. And I’m trying to develop community forums and so forth – but that is more in the works. You can also get at my main site – just having to do with transformation – and that is http://www.citizenzeus.com. It really focuses on transformation in economics, education and spirituality. So if you have interest in those areas go to http://www.citizenzeus.com and you’ll see some of my past essays there are well. So those are the two main resources I would point people to, and again you can contact me anytime at zeus@citizenzeus.com.

Jerry : Well Zeus, I can’t thank you enough for the time you have shared with us. You are living up to your reputation. I didn’t fallen asleep once. [laughter]. I hope that will also be true of the audience. That’s a good start – not falling asleep – I actually think you’ve activated me. I think that just might be happening. So, once again, this is Jerry Ashton with “15 Minutes of Fact”, searching out people with interesting ways of dealing with what we call “The Great Recession” – different and more likely fruitful ways in which to be able to build a stronger “we” so that you can become stronger yourself.

You can find me, of course, at Huffington Post – where I blog – my web site : http://www.writtenoffamerica.com, on Twitter as @WrittenOffUSA, and on LinkedIn.

Jerry Ashton signing off for “15 Minutes of Fact”

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Free Transcript Project : #3

Posted on September 2, 2014 by BigPharmaResistanceOfAmerica Standard Reply

Source audio

Title : “Unstuckable – Episode 20 : Create Your Own Job Like Jon Spitz”
URL : http://unstuckable.co/episode-020-create-your-own-job-like-jon-spitz/

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Organization : Unstuckable Podcast

Web Site
http://unstuckable.co
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU07xkEbTzsD6u8xz4_tNTw/videos

Host 1 : Stephen Warley
Contact : LinkedIn profile

Host 2 : Chris Wilson
Contact : LinkedIn Profile

Guest : Jon Spitz
Contact : LinkedIn Profile

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Transcript :
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Announcer : It’s time to get unstuck.[music] Welcome to Unstuckable episode 20. Need a mentor? Email someone you admire today and ask them to meet. I’m Chris Wilson and now here’s Stephen Warley with today’s unstuckable story. [music]

Stephen Warley : Thanks Chris. Why wait for someone to hire you? Why is it that the only way most of us think we can ever get a job is by applying for one. In today’s very competitive economy the very best way to stand out from the crowd and eliminate the competition is to create a job that only you are uniquely qualified to do. Meet Jon Spitz. He just got a job as the operations manager of 43north.org. It’s the world’s largest business plan competition, with $5 million to give away. He recently brought “Startup Weekend” to his home town of Buffalo. He produced three different events in just one year attracting 350 entrepreneurs, and wasn’t paid a dime for his work. Jon doesn’t wait for job openings – he creates them. On three different occasions Jon basically created his own job. Once he pitched a local juice vendor on how he could manage their social media for them. He got noticed on LinkedIn for his social media abilities and then landed his next job as a director for online recruitment for a local college. Finally, he landed his current job by connections he made by bringing “Startup Weekend” to Buffalo and showcasing his ability for bringing entrepreneurs together. As you listen to Jon, think of a couple of companies you’ve always wanted to work with and spend 15 minutes thinking about what you could do for them that noone else with your qualifications can. Hey John, thank you so much for joining us. Our good friend Griffin Jones – our mutual connection – I’m so glad he got us together.

Jon Spitz : Hey, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Stephen : We’ll be talking to Griffin in a future podcast, because he’s galavanting out in Boliva right now as the both of us are enduring a hard winter. So Jon, tell me how you think you’ve been unstuckable in your career.

Jon : Well I guess when I graduated college I was working for a supermarket – granted it was the biggest and best, and still is, the best supermarket in the world – Wegman’s –

Stephen : They’ve finally come to Massachusetts.

Jon : Yeah, that’s a big deal. You should go there. It’s good stuff. Great prepared foods. Can’t say enough good things about the place. I worked through high school and then I got a full-time job, had a great management role people would have killed to have. I did it for about two-and-a-half years, but probably after a year-and-a-half I kind of realized that this is not what I wanted to do. So I did feel stuck. I was in retail and I wanted to get out of retail as bad as I could, but I couldn’t dream of the day that I could put on a shirt and a tie. That was my goal.

Stephen : Really? See, I was dreaming of the day when I didn’t have to put that on anymore.

Jon : Yeah, I’m at that stage now. But at this stage I was like, “God, I don’t want to have to put on a uniform. I want to put on a shirt and tie and go sit in an office.” So what I actually did was – it was long talks with my folks at home, my support network – and I basically was like, “I can’t do this job.” I had to quit, and that’s exactly what I did. I quit and I didn’t have anything lined up.

Stephen : Really, it was that bad?

Jon : It was that bad for me, yeah.

Stephen : What was it like towards the end? How did you feel going into work?

Jon : I dreaded it. I would have to get there by 6:00 am – it was a thirty minute drive. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of getting my coffee in the morning, from Tim Horton’s – which was really good coffee, but it wasn’t that good.

Stephen : What was it about the job that you were like, “This is so not for me?”

Jon : Well, I was 22 or 23 at the time, and I’m working retail. So the busiest days at a grocery store – if you were to guess – would probably be what? What days do you think people usually shop at a grocery store?

Stephen : Oh, weekends. Isn’t Wednesday the best day to go shopping?

Jon : Yes it is.

Stephern : That’s when I go.

Jon : Yes, weekends. So that means that as a manager you’re there on the weekends. So when all of my friends are out having fun on the weekends I’m getting up at 6:00 am to go into a cooler and then empty the cooler and bring it out to the sales floor for people. So just being in the retail environment, working weekends and holidays, I knew that was something I wasn’t going to be doing for very long. I guess at the end there I actually tried to get to Boston when they opened up those stores. I was like, “Listen, I’ll go to Boston. I’ll help them open the stores and show them the Wegman’s way.” and when I got rejected for that, and upon getting rejected for a couple of other things I kind of thought that the company wasn’t on the same career trajectory so I had to make my own career trajectory.

Stephen : That’s interesting. Also, that seems like a big part of it. Maybe if they did give you some advancement opportunities you might have stuck around a little longer.

Jon : Yeah, but would I have been happy? Maybe temporarily.

Stephen : Right, it’s true. We always think that small change sometimes can be a good thing, but if it is more of the same thing you’re stuck a little longer in a place you don’t want to be.

Jon : Exactly.

Stephen : So you quit. I know you were probably raised this way. I was raised this way. It’s like, “Oh my god! Don’t quit your job until you have another job.” I have to say that I feel my mindset is changing. I mean, if you’re not happy and as long as somehow you can financially take care of yourself and you’ve found an alternative way to do that, I think it’s not a bad thing if it puts more time into focusing on what you really want to do.

Jon : Right, and to me – at least from my experience, as I’ve done it recently again – looking for a job really, for me, is a full-time job. So what I did when I walked in and quit – I didn’t do it like a maniac or anything like that, I did it politically right – was I created my own job. Then I was a juice vendor who worked at Wegman’s that was locally in Geneva, New York. I basically reached out to them and was like, “Hey, I can help you guys. I love social media. Let me build something for you and be the social media guy.” Basically what they said was “Come back to me. Write a business plan on what you’re going to do for us and break it down…” So, long story short, I got a job with them and started working with them. So I kind of created what I wanted to do which at that time was social media. Social media was just getting into businesses, and I was like, “Okay, this is my ticket out of the grocery store.”

Stephen : So was it a ticket out of like, “Cause I didn’t want to do that.” Or were you generally really interested in it?

Jon : Really interested in social media. Can I say I was really interested in the juice company itself? No. But to this day, Red Jacket Orchards is the best fresh juice that you can get. If you’re in New York City they have it in all of the Green Markets there. I don’t know about Boston. It’s great stuff. It’s like Bolthouse juice basically, if you’ve had that before.

Stephen : So where did the idea come from? Did you ever think of working for yourself before? Where did that idea or urge come from?

Jon : No. I just had a connection there with one of the vendors and I was like, “I’m just going to try and create my own job there.” I ended up doing it. Then three months later, all of a sudden via LinkedIn, I got a phone call from a recruiter and then I got my next job and I had to leave that place. I kind of created that momentum, because I wrote that business plan. I told those people, “This is what I’m going to do for you.” You can send your resume all over the place, but – I don’t know what the numbers are – I think it’s about a 10% chance that you’re going to get that job, compared to knowing somebody.

Stephen : It’s so interesting. That’s what I’m increasingly advising people to do, is – not that we want to work for free, we want to be rewarded for our efforts – but show what you can do. Bring ideas to a company you want to work for instead of waiting around for a job opening, because your initiative is going to really stand out rather than just a long line of people asking for a job.

Jon : Right, exactly.

Stephen : So you got called by a recruiter.

Jon : I got called by a recruiter. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been called by a recruiter, but usually it’s for insurance – at least that’s usually my experience, they were like, “Do you want to sell insurance?”. So I kept getting these calls and I was driving on the road selling juice in Binghamton and I got the call. I kind of answered snarky at the time [crosstalk], and it turns out that it was this great opportunity at this college. So I was like, “Yeah, I’m definitely interested.” To make a long story short, I interviewed on a Thursday and Friday morning at 9:00 am they tell me I got the job. All of a sudden I’m in a shirt and tie in the office I’ve always dreamed of –

Stephen : What were you doing at the college?

Jon : I was supposed to be doing a lot of social media. What it turned into was more sales admissions, but it was still a great learning experience, learning opportunity and I ended up getting my MBA through them. Never in a million years did I think I would go back to school at the time.

Stephen : Hey, and it was paid for.

Jon : That’s a good thing.

Stephen : That’s the best way to get an MBA.

Jon : Right. So as I was doing all of that I kind of started realizing that maybe I was a little stuck again. So I was like, “What do I really like to do?” and that’s when I went to a “Startup Weekend” in Rochester. For those who aren’t familiar with the “Startup Weekend”, it’s a 54 hour event which brings like-minded people of all different skills sets – whether you are business folk, a designer or developer who develops web apps or whatever –

Stephen : It is an awesome event. Chris and I did the one in Cape Cod last year.

Jon : Oh, it’s great. To me it’s the best learning experience. It’s just a great way to get around people who have the same interests as you.

Stephen : Yeah, and at a lot of conferences you’re just sitting there listening to panels or lectures. This is very proactive. You really get to be involved and it’s awesome.

Jon : Yeah, so I did that and I left that weekend and I was like, “Wow! That was just amazing.” and I’m like, “That really needs to come to Buffalo.”

Stephen : So they had not had one in Buffalo.

Jon : No. It just hadn’t happened, because, it hadn’t happened. So I reached out to a couple of people I had met at the event, and I’m like, “How do I bring this to Buffalo?” and I get connected to my buddy Dan and he was like “Yeah man. We totally want to bring this, but we don’t have the bandwidth. We need someone to lead the way.” I naively was like, “Oh, sure. I’ll do that.”, not knowing what I was signing myself up for at the time.

Stephen : I think it is so awesome. I mean, you brought a Startup Weekend to a city. That’s awesome.

Jon : I did. I signed up it, but there was an army of awesome people I met along the way that helped bring that to fruition. Really, without them it wouldn’t have happened. But yeah, I was kind of the thing that pushed it over the hill. I was like, “We’re just going to do this. I’m going to sign us up and then we’ll figure out how it happens after.”

Stephen : How long did it take to put together?

Jon : I want to say we took about four to six months for the first one, and then we’ve launched two others after that, so three total in almost less than a year – which is a little aggressive – and I’m a little burnt out.

Stephen : And how many people participated?

Jon : I’d say over all three events we’ve had about 350 people participate –

Stephen : That’s awesome. Congratulations.

Jon : Which, in Buffalo, it’s really exciting because we’re trying to change that blue-collar mindset where you have to graduate college and go work at a bank or just go get that job. Maybe you can create your own job, right here in this community. We want that encouragement and support and make people realize that it’s okay if you try to start a business and fail. It’s going to be rewarded, and then you can try and start the next one, and you’re going to learn a lot from doing that. So, we’re trying to create that environment here.

Stephen : That sounds like a very unstuckable philosophy.

Jon : Absolutely.

Stephen : And you’re trying to do it to a whole city.

Jon : A whole city, man. It’s grassroots. My one buddy, whose really involved in this too, posted an article about Detroit. Maybe he can get connected somewhere in there. The guy was saying that the real entrepreneurs are the people that are trying to build an entrepreneurial community in their communities – like Detroit, like Pittsburgh, like Buffalo – these cities that are rust belt. They’ve been destroyed by businesses leaving and they’re trying to build that community back up. I like that because I’m in Buffalo. Nothing against being in Boston and New York and San Fran, right? Those are already built.

Stephen : Well, you never know what could happen to the economy… How do you know when you’re stuck? It seems like you have this – you just know when you’ve had enough and it is time to move on, and then you just jump into things. So how do you know?

Jon : For me it’s like every job that I go to I’m trying to learn whatever I can from that job. To me, you kind of get that feeling that you’ve taken all the skills – you know, you’re not going to be a master or expert of anything – but you get a feeling that like, “Okay, I think I’ve kind of used everything I’m going to get out of this employer.”. And if there is no room for me to get higher up and learn some more new skills, to me, that’s when I’m stuck. That’s the scariest thing to me, when I’m not learning anymore, or developing my own skill sets. Because in the end, everybody is in the business of themselves, and if you aren’t in that mindset – that you’re in the business of you – you’ve got to get in it, because nobody cares about your brand more than yourself. That’s the way I look at it.

Stephen : It is. It’s so funny. I always say the most important skill in business is communication – and I would say, sales. Yet, what don’t they teach you in business school? How to sell! So none of us know how to sell ourselves.

Jon : It’s an awkward thing, too, usually. People aren’t comfortable bragging about themselves – some people are – but not everybody is comfortable selling themselves and bragging about what they’ve done. It’s just an awkward thing sometimes for people.

Stephen : Yeah, what is your quick story? I think that’s a big thing that we’re trying to make people aware of, is how to tell your story. What’s the quick story that you tell about yourself. What’s your quick pitch about why Jon Spitz is so awesome.

Jon : Oh man. You’re putting me on the spot? I guess I’m a doer, right? I’ve done a lot of things, from being the guy who brought Startup Weekend here, and now I’m going to be one of the guys, and gals, that brings the world’s largest business plan competition to the city of Buffalo. I don’t know. You’ve put me on the spot and I didn’t have a good response.

Stephen : I think that’s a good answer because I think that’s what it’s about when you’re selling yourself, right? You have to have that answer ready to go, because how are people going to remember you. I’m sure there are already people in the community of Buffalo who know “Oh gosh, if we need to get this thing done, you know who we need to call? Jon Spitz.”

Jon : I’d like to think so. My new boss – who is awesome – says “Your reputation is the one thing that you have to hold near and dear to your heart, because when you lose that reputation it is very, very difficult to get it back. So you need to be known as someone who follows through, gets things done, that can be relied on. If you are known as that type of person I think that goes a long way. Then you can help other people through networking and volunteering – I think volunteering is probably one of the number one things I recommend to anybody to get unstuck.

Stephen : Yeah, and I think it’s amazing – you didn’t get paid for anything you did for the startup weekend, correct?

Job : No.

Stephen : That is a ton of work, but tell me – what do you feel? What did it give you back? Why was it worth it?

Jon : Let’s say I didn’t get this job I have now – which I attribute to Startup Weekend – still, just like the relationships I have now in the community with like-minded folks. The feeling you have when you’re at that event, and you see the energy in that room and all of the people – whether it’s 70 people or 100 people – that believe they have the next Facebook, the next big thing. Man, it’s just such a high that your high on it for that whole weekend, and then a couple of days after. That’s why we keep doing it, because it’s just an incredible feeling to see these people and this energy. You’re bringing strangers together to try and accomplish something huge. That’s why I did it and that’s while I’ll probably continue to do it.

Stephen : I want to ask you in a second about your new job – about the new chapter in your career – but something else about the Startup Weekend, or your experience in building communities. What do you think are the ingredients to build a community that cares?… That’s hard.

Jon : It is. It’s a slow burn, but it really starts with a couple of passionate individuals really spreading that energy. That energy is contagious, and once people see that they’re not alone and there are other people who feel the same way and have the same ideas and think the same way they do, then it starts spreading. It’s slow, but to get people involved what really probably should happen – what I keep telling the folks that we do Startup Weekend with – is that we should really probably pass that event off to somebody else – as much as I love it – and let them run with it, bring their communities into it and let it even more. Then we go on to do a different event. So we keep getting all of these different events which are running simultaneously so there’s just a ton of entrepreneurial events happening in Buffalo, and we turn into this hub of – nobody would even think right now to start a business in Buffalo – but I’d like to think that in ten years that’s going to be a very, very different story.

Stephen : Well, just the standard or cost of living is so much less expensive than Silicon Valley or New York City, that I think that is a story that Buffalo needs to tell. That is, the dramatic cut in startup costs just because it’s going to be so much cheaper to live and have office space, etc.

Jon : Yeah, I own a house – which is just stupid to me that I can own a house. You can do that in Buffalo. Your friends in New York and etc. – they can’t do that. That’s one of the big advantages here.

Stephen : Absolutely. So you were at the college. When did you know to leave that and what did you leap into next?

Jon : I left Medaille College. I think both parties knew it was time. It was just, a lot of things went on there. Half of my staff had gotten fired, and they had been there for 30+ years. So it was just a really negative atmosphere, and I knew that I couldn’t keep doing this to myself because I started to feel like I was back at Wegman’s. Nothing against Wegman’s – because they’re a great company – but I just didn’t want to feel this way. Life is too short to feel this way. So it was really a mutual part. I told them, “Listen, I’m just going to finish up my MBA and I’m out of here.” Then I was finishing up my MBA and this job opportunity popped up – through one of the connections through Startup Weekend, giving me the introduction to the hiring manager – and then , long story short I ended up scoring really, right now, the dream job. I’m basically getting paid to do Startup Weekend, which is like “Wow!”.

Stephen : Awesome. So what’s the company? What do they do?

Jon : So, it’s “43 North” It is the world’s largest business plan competition, and by that meaning we have the most money. So it’s almost like a mass challenge, except there’s more money in the line. So we have $5 million total in prizes, and there’s going to be a million for first, there’s going to be six half million prizes, and I think four quarter million prizes.

Stephen : Wow, and what are you doing for them?

Jon : I’m the operations manager, so I’m really trying to build the competition – like I built Startup Weekend. So, what are the requirements to join the competition, getting judges, getting mentors. Then I’ll be traveling. So I’ll be heading up to Washington, New York, Boston – trying to recruit people.

Stephen : Well, you have to stop by and visit Chris and I.

Jon : Yeah, I’d love to. I’ll be in Boston, I hope. So , it’s like unbelievable. It’s a really small team, but I’m interfacing with some of — like, some of the people I’m sitting next to in meetings I’m like, “God, I can’t believe I’m sitting next to this person.” You know? Because they’re really successful people in Buffalo, and just sometimes I pinch myself, because I’ve never liked a job where I woke up and didn’t mind going to work in seven degree weather, like today. Or brought work home, and was just doing it because I wanted to do it and not because I had to. It’s like a strange feeling, and I think that’s what everybody is looking for. It doesn’t necessarily have to be you starting your own business, but finding that company where you have the same belief system, and you like the mission that they’re going for and things like that. I really wish it upon everybody, because it’s really an awesome feeling.

Stephen : I’m really glad you said that, because that’s something that we’re trying to do – that idea of entrepreneurship. That you don’t have to be that person that’s going to go get VC money and start your own business. You can find that right opportunity. It’s about being empowered. It’s about really knowing your story, knowing what you want and the people you want to work with, and going out there and finding it. It sounds like you’ve gone through a lot of trial and error to find it, but it seems like it was so worth it.

Jon : Oh my god, yeah. I probably wouldn’t have it any other way, but if you would have asked me when I was at a couple of those jobs, I probably would have sang a different tune. But now that I’m where I’m at today, you kind of see why it all took place, and all of the things you learned throughout those jobs.

Stephen : Well this is really awesome. I love your unstuckable story, but now it’s time to turn the tables. Are you ready to help our listeners get unstuck and take action?

Jon : Of course.

Stephen : So, how would you describe someone who is unstuckable?

Jon : I guess if you’re in a place where you just know that you’re not happy. If you’re not happy going to work – which I don’t think most people are for the most part – you’ve got to do something. For me, I took a drastic move and quit my job. I really don’t recommend that to anybody unless you’re in a position to do that. Other than that, my first thing would probably be networking. I think networking is the #1 thing to do to get unstuck, wherever you are. By that, try to find a cause that you really believe in. There’s tons of non-profits in any community. Maybe create your own, but just get involved and help people. When you truly try to help somebody, it seems that it comes back to you. By that I mean that if I help connect you to somebody else I know that’s somewhere else in the country, you’re going to be more prone to help me do something. It’s just human nature. If somebody helps you you want to return the favor. So to genuinely help people by volunteering, I think good things just come your way. Not only karma, but at the end of the day, I think job opportunities, etc.

Jon : Yeah, I think even when you want to go to a conference or an event that you’re really excited about – the people who are going to be there, the speakers, the content. Take the next step and actually volunteer and see if they need any help, because you are going to meet that many more people because you’re going to have an integrated role into how that conference is run. You know that better than anybody.

Jon : Yeah, that’s actually great idea.

Stephen : Right? You were kind of like. “I’m going to sit at the registration table so I can meet everybody and they come in, absolutely. So, excellent point. I really am such a firm believer in just meeting somebody and doing something new. That’s a great way to get unstuck. Is there a particular resource, a book, podcast, quote – anything like that – that you use regularly to help people get unstuck?

Jon : There’s a couple of books. One of them is, I think it’s “The Magic of Thinking Big”. I don’t know who the author is. I gave the book to my sister because I loved it so much, and I wanted to make sure that she read it. Really good book. Just really on the magic of thinking big. So thinking positive and all of that stuff. I highly recommend that book. I also really like Gary Vanderchuck.

Stephen : Oh, yes.

Jon : I’m a social media geek –

Stephen : I love “Crush It”.

Jon : Yeah, “Crush It” was actually the book which made me quit my job.

Stephen : Wow!, Thank you Gary V. Look what you did for Jon.

Jon : Those would be the two which come to mind immediately.

Stephen : Is there anybody you would like to thank, that has helped you get unstuck, and how did they help you?

Jon : I always think that getting that job at Medaille. Jackie Matheny was the hiring boss. For her to give me that opportunity – because I was hired as the director of online recruitment, which at the time after I got there I realized that I probably had no business getting that job. She really took a leap of faith on me, and it probably changed the whole course of my career trajectory. So that would be one of the first ones. I actually wrote her a letter after they fired her that said how much I owed to her. Then [Ad Harrigon?] –

Stephen : I think that’s awesome by the way. I just think it is a reminder. For those people that – you don’t even realize – it could have been just something they said. But it affected your life. I think, write a note, send an email if you’re able to contact them somehow, and just let them know how they changed the course of your life. I think it’s such a nice gesture back to what you were saying about helping people out, volunteering, and giving something back.

Jon : Oh, absolutely. Then Ed Harrigan, he was my manager over at Wegman’s. It was not until I got into my MBA program, and they started doing the leadership courses, that I really realized like, “Wow. Ed was telling me all of this stuff for free at work.” So I was learning leadership way back from him. I guess to my last point on really how to get unstuck – and my boss kind of reiterated it – and I’m going to try and pursue this myself now. You need a mentor, and you probably need more than one. Just reach out to somebody. He suggested you reach out to somebody in the community that you admire and it doesn’t matter how big they are. He goes, “The worst thing they do is don’t respond or say no. But everybody likes to get their ego stroked, so write them an email and say, “Hey, you have a phenomenal career background. I would love to grab a coffee with you and chat.”. Then just take it from there. So I actually reached out to this gentleman I’ve met through my new job, who has just an incredible resume, and said, “Hey, I had a great time meeting you the first time. If you’re available, I’d love to bounce ideas off of you from now and then, over a cup of coffee. He’s like, “Sure, no problem. I would love to help out.” I think you don’t know until you ask, but we’re all afraid to ask. So I think, just getting somebody you admire that you don’t work with but is in a different industry, I think that is probably a huge thing that most people are afraid to do,

Stephen : I think that’s great advice. What I always tell people is everybody likes a compliment. Something they wrote or did that you genuinely really liked, and influenced you – let them know. That is a connection, instead of just saying, “I want to make a lot of money just like you!” And maybe that is an approach, who knows. You never know who you’re talking to. Even for our podcast, it’s amazing how many people who have been so generous with their time who we thought would never want to give us the time of day. It’s been a tremendous experience.

Jon : Awesoe.

Stephen : So John, thank you so much for all of your awesome advice. There’s a lot of great nuggets in there for people to go back and listen to on how they can get unstuck. Hopefully, we’ll have you back one day. And good luck with the new business plan competition.

Jon : Yeah, and people should check it out at 43north.org. You can apply, register, and maybe you can get unstuck by starting your own business and bringing it right here to Buffalo, New York.

Stephen : Love it! Thanks so much Jon.

Jon : Alright, thanks.

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***If you are the producer or host of an interesting YouTube video, podcast, etc. which you would like transcribed, I may be interested in taking on your project, free of charge. If the subject of your production is something which is especially interesting to me (some favorite subjects of mine include : technology, health, philosophy, media, psychology, art, economic, globalization, cryptocurrencies, and many more) I may decide to work it into my “free transcription project” schedule. I am currently working at the comfortable pace of one or two transcription projects per week. I prefer audio/video files which are in the range of 15 to 30 minutes in length. It requires roughly one hour to transcribe 15 minutes of audio. I also ask that the audio of the production be of professional quality, since I post the audio/video on the individual transcript page and prefer to fill my pages with high quality content which maintains the integrity of the site. Please email : freelance_transcriptionist@hotmail.com to discuss this potential opportunity further.

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Free Transcript Project : #2

Posted on August 25, 2014 by BigPharmaResistanceOfAmerica Standard Reply

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Source video
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Title : “15 Minutes Of Fact : From Graduating to Indentured Class — Will America Continue to Eat its Young?”

URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1LRmgIr0xI

Organization : 15 Minutes of Fact podcast :
Web Site : https://www.youtube.com/user/15MinutesOfFact
Host : Jerry Ashton
Contact : jerryashton1@gmail.com

Guest : Cryn Johannsen
Web Site : http://alleducationmatters.blogspot.com/
Contact : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasecrynjohannsen

Transcription Notes : This project is a good example of how transcription can remedy some of the problems which accompany less-than-ideal audio. There are numerous reasons why the final audio of a production may end up less than ideal. It may have been an on-location live interview in which there are many uncontrollable factors involved. It may be that the communication channel (ex. phone, Skype, etc.) had problems. It may be that the producer/host just didn’t have the resources and/or skills to apply the proper recording equipment or techniques or hire a competent person/organization to do it. In the end, what good quality transcription can do is make words which were inaudible clear (for instance, through figuring them out through context and/or research) and represent the production in a more accurate and complete form in writing.

In addition, YouTube actually has its own speech recognition (transcription) software for video. To show it, just click on the icon which looks like a page, immediately right of the “add to” link on the video page. To save you the calories and bewilderment of doing so, let me present for you here the exact text which is generated by the YouTube “transcriber” for this specific video :

YouTube automated transcription
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“0:00
from graduating class to endangered class
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American pieces all showed almost two years as I’ll ask after the time and
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attention over yesterday
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mes creating your handsome evolve its Keisha matters
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back in march it 2011 and still basking in the chilly spring up the Occupy
0:19
movement
0:20
Trenton I was working hard to see that student debt goes much attention is more
0:24
realistic
0:25
this means we’re going for her and I believe”

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As you can see, the YouTube computer-generated transcriber is about as accurate as the subtitling on a bad Chinese Kung Fu movie – without all the funky acrobatics and scenery. As a result of this, a proper transcription by an experienced human transcriptionist does justice to YouTube videos.

Transcribing YouTube videos has several important benefits. It extends the reach of the video outside of the already very powerful YouTube marketing platform. It makes up for the horrible YouTube automated transcriber/subtitle generator. It also gives your videos more marketing punch as it provides many more words than the limited number of tags allowed for each video (around 50 I believe), and this enhances the SEO potency of the production.

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Transcript :

Jerry Ashton : From graduating class to indentured class, America eats its own. It’s been almost two years since I captured the time and attention of our guest today – Ms. Cryn Johannsen of “All Education Matters”. Back in March of 2011 and still basking in the chilly Spring of the Occupy movement, Cryn was working hard to see that student debt got as much attention as mortgage debt. It’s been slow going for her, but I believe however, that she and other education militants have finally achieved that attention. Just how far they’ve come and how far they have to go in freeing generations of students from a lifetime of debt will be our subject for today. So welcome to the show Cryn Johannsen.

Cryn : Thanks, but I do not consider myself a militant. I’m actually, truly a pragmatist. You’re right that I suppose the work has been slow-going – there’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes that I do on the hill. But I can tell you one thing – and I can’t divulge the particular office that I just went to recently – but from a wonderful staffer of a Congressman’s office, who I know quite well – maybe it is slow-going but they are listening. They are definitely listening, in such a way that I can actually say that I am incredibly hopeful about.

Jerry : Well, before we dive in then – and, by the way, I want you to know that you may not be an activist, but you are hardly a milktoast either. I would like you to give the listener a bit of your background in the world of student debt. How did this come about for you personally, and where do you find yourself today in this world of trying to make a change on student debt?

Cryn : Sure, well like many people my age I do carry student loan debt, but it is more than manageable. I have never been deliinquent on my loans. It’s never been a problem. I am very lucky. I consider myself blessed. I am a religious person – so I will say that on the radio. But in terms of diving into it, I myself have been working on my PhD on the intellectual history of Europe and there was a lot of conversations we always had about student loan debt. This was around the time of the housing crisis, in 2008, and I just began to piece together the parallels. The big difference was that you can walk away from your home – as we all know – if you’re underwater. However, with student loan debt you can’t do that. So, there was an intellectual curiosity with how the student loans and the U.S. government, and how these institutions were related to financial markets. It’s incredibly complex because you are talking about the U.S. government – “Uncle Sam” – they’re the biggest lender. Then you are talking about the universities – where the money is being funneled to. Then on top of that you’re also talking about a lending industry that was born out of the federal government. These are all very complex institutions, and all of them are interconnected because of the student loan debt.

Jerry : Okay, I’ve got the fact that there is a macro level at which this is being approached, but let me get to the thing which seems to be catching the attention of people right now. Student debt exceeds one trillion dollars. It is considered to be the next bubble to pop. So let me give you a couple of Time Magazine article facts. In the last five years the average student loan debt has risen 30%. More than half of student loan accounts add up to more than 40% of the total dollars owed, and they’re in deferral status – meaning that students are looking for a reprieve for a few years before they have to repay. But these delinquencies are increasing by 22% over the last five years. So how can any of us have hope of a way out in the face of these statistics.

Cryn : Well I think that’s a really good question, and one of the things I wanted to say though about my interest – just to return to my original personal interests – is that I have a deep love for people. And these people with student loan debt have opened up to me tremendously – because Americans are very ashamed to talk about debt. They are hopeless, and as your probably aware, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post which I received a scholarship from the “Economic Hardship and Reporting Project”. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, and also Gary Rivlin – who’s also an author – they were the editors for my piece. It was about people who were committing suicice, and I continue to get these notes – it’s incredibly troubling. But I guess one of the things is that – I have a feeling, and I know that sounds odd – but I just have a feeling that 2013 is going to be the year for us – the indentured educated class. One of the reasons why is because I’ve gone through – and I’m not going to go into the details – but I’ve gone through a significant loss personally, very intense. I’ve prepared myself tremendously. The reason why I’m saying this is because I am so ready to get this done, more than ever before. And I’m not the only one. That’s what’s great. The more the merrier in my opinion, There’s a lot of us out there [crosstalk] and I think this is going to be the year, despite all of these terrible statistics. And they are terrible.

Jerry : Okay, well first of all, Gary Rivlin – I’m a fan of – when he wrote that book called “Broke USA” and he talked about how banks supported and financed loan companies, pawn shops, mortgage people – predators. So anybody who can align themselves with that guy automatically wins with me. How many people would you consider to fall into your category about being at least militant about changing the world of student debt.

Cryn : Well, again, I’m hesitant to use that word. I guess I’m more insistant through the power of love – as cheesy as that might sound, and people might say, “Oh, she sounds like she’s from the 1960s” – well so be it. Well, there’s plenty of us. I know that Robert Applebaum is still doing quite a bit. I believe Alan Colinge is – to the best of my knowledge. But they’re not the only ones out there. There are so many groups doing things, and the reporters continue to write about this left and right, and I think that’s fabulous. The more people talking about it the better. That’s the way it should be. So the more of us out there, the better. And I think the more and more people join our ranks [all with?] different approaches. I think it’s great.

Jerry : Well I know that you came up to New York City when Occupy was still blooming at Zuccati Park. Shortly after, of course, they pulled it out by the roots and thought that would get rid of it – but that didn’t happen. What was your impression of Occupy, and do you think Occupy has been an important force.

Cryn : Oh, it absolutely has. It’s a collective voice of people who are deeply in debt. These Americans having the courage to go out there with the placards showing how much debt they owed – bless their heart. That was the most powerful thing about that, because we hide the debt we have. We pretend because consumer capitalism – that everything is okay, and it doesn’t appear that there’s any trouble – but we all know that that’s not the case. Americans are just drowning in debt, and not just student loan debt. I was just in awe of the fact that these graduates were walking around with a placard showing how much money they owe, and saying, “This is really a part of my identity.” I think what we need to work on is moving away from that just being your identity, but it needs to be solved. It just needs to be solved. That’s one of the reason why I come to D.C, – where I am right now, because we’re trying to get this done.

Jerry : Okay. Let’s talk about that. Your way of being able to make a difference is by – instead of picketing governmental offices – you’re actually walking through the doors and talking to people. So give us some history about that, and how is that making any difference.

Cryn : Well I run “All Education Matters” on a shoestring budget, as I said. I’ve been very lucky to have people who have debt send me $5 here and $10 there. That’s enabled me to come to Washington DC and walk the halls, and knock on the doors and have the conversations. Because these offices are lobbied 24/7 – including the White House, of course – by the lenders. The Washington Post ownes Kaplan – which is a for profit school. So the Senators and the Congressmen read those papers and they say, “Oh, what the problem? There is no problem.” Well, but that’s changing , and I don’t think I’m the only one. I’m not going to toot my own horn but I have to walk these halls. I have to have these face-to-face interactions – which I’ve been doing for years. It used to be that when I first started doing this – when I came back from South Korea after teaching there – they were telling me behind closed doors, “Yes, we agree with you. There is a student lending crisis.” but they wouldn’t say it publicly. This last summer I was on a phone call with several Senators – including Sharon Brown, and I’m forgetting the Senator’s name, I apologize – but this was with hundreds and hundreds of people who represent millenials – the youth generation. I brought up the problem of suicide, and a Senator publicly thanked me for having my ear to the ground, and let me know that I remind them – and I’m not the only one, of course – but he told me that I remind them that the current borrowers are struggling. I thought that was a huge moment for the indentured educated class, to be recognized publicly on a phone call in that way, and to be thanked for that. It’s not me . I’me streaming voices of other people. That’s what I’m doing.

Jerry : Well you are channeling the essence of the spirit. So let’s talk about that. Let’s say that you have been serving your role and your function in getting out this word and we also talk about the fact that if a student is willing to put a placard in front of them saying, “I owe $80,000 of student debt.” I think that their willingness to do that isn’t to show themselves as victims, as much to publicly acknowledge that, “Guess what? I don’t know what happened, maybe, but I’m up [a creek?] without a paddle”. So, I think its important that it has to be brought to people’s attention however it is done. And you’re doing your job on that. Now I’ve heard that there are some governmental agencies investigating the relationship between college administrators and bankers. Do you know anything about this?

Cryn : Um, if memory serves me – and if I’m following it correctly – the new consumer financial bureau, the new bureau which is the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren. I’m so glad she’s Senator now. They have been doing excellent work on investigating the “for profits” and putting out supurb reports about student loan debt. This is a very good thing, and so if this is what you are referring to. They’re doing some great stuff. That’s our tax dollars at work right there, and I’m delighted at this new bureau. The other thing is that people are not aware of IBR (Income Based Repayment) program. Now there is a problem with that thought, which I want to make clear to the listeners. This is a loan forgiveness progress if you have federal loans, which is forgiven after 20 years, which is good. However – and hopefully this will change, and a staffer told that it probably would or should – you will be taxed on the remaining amount that has been forgiven. So the year that your loans are forgiven, guess who’s going to come knocking at your door? The IRS, which is not good. I don’t understand why they put this in, why they have that, but this is something that absolutely has to change, because then what is the benefit of the loans being forgiven [crosstalk] when you owe $10,000 or more that year for taxes.

Jerry : Well, let me address that. There is no such thing as loan forgiveness. As far as I’m concerned there is just loan trickery. It’s a form of a shell game. When you think of it, the American student is the only class of citizen – other than a felon – who can not declare bankruptcy on their debt.

Cryn : Right. It’s ridiculous.Punish people for getting an education. Why? Why are we like that? It’s very odd. I don’t get it.

Jerry : It isn’t odd if you happen to be on one side of the political spectrum in which you hold the fact that, number one, everybody has to be accountable and responsible, and, number two, you also fill up your wallet at the local university or college so that you can continue your campaign of good citizenship. That’s a personal gripe of mine, and I think that the relationship between college administrators and bankers has got to be put out into the spotlight.

Cryn : Right. But I think that more than that, Jerry, for me I guess I’m at the point where it’s no longer about pointing fingers and blaming. It’s more that this is a systemic problem – and I’ve said this many times – that this is a terrible systemic problem. And it can be sorted out. Lightning can strike down in D.C., as a matter of fact, and things can change. I know that people might think that, “Oh, she has rose tinted glasses on.” but that’s happened. Especially if there is the power of the type of movement you see with Occupy, and you’ve got lots of “busy beavers” – if you will – people like me, who continually bring it up and bring it up. There can be push, and there can be movement. You can look at the civil rights movement to see that sort of thing. And that started -many people argue, historians – that the civil rights movement began in the early 1900s. Then we moved forward with Martin Luther King in the 60s. This stuff takes time, and that’s alright. Now I wish it could be stopped immediately because of the people who want to kill themselves. It’s horrible. It hurts me in my heart, deeply. But it takes time.

Jerry : Speaking of time. We could do 15 hours and not 15 Minutes of Fact, so what I must do is end the session now, but please let the listener know how they can reach you. For example, do you have an email address, a web site, a Twitter account,. How can they reach you.

Cryn : I want them to follow me on Twitter. I’m very responsive on that. My name is @Cryn_Johannsen. They can also subscribe to me on Facebook. Just look up my name. They can also email me. It’s ccrynjohannsen@gmail.com. I promise to try to get in touch with them as soon as possible. I’m lso a teacher and I’m writing a book about the student loan lending crisis, So, I’ll keep you posted on announcements about that. There’s a big thing coming out about that. I’m very busy at work and I’m also teaching English as a Second Language, which is a big honor. So, I’m [heavily involved?] in education, as you can tell.

Jerry : And what do you do in your spare time, Cryn.

Cryn : Um, [inaudible], I’m just very busy. Busy, busy, busy, solving problems.

Jerry : OKay, well one thing I will do is ask you to give us a final word before we sign off.

Cryn : A what? A final word? Well I guess it’s all those people who are out there suffering. I want them to know that they’re not alone. Especially those who are suicidal. Please don’t be that way. I want them to turn to people they trust – family and friends. People they can speak to about this. This is not something that you should end your life over. I cannot say that enough times. I’m also speaking from a personal perspective, not about debt, but a great deal of suffering. Through suffering you can see solutions and things can get better. That’s my final thoughts on that.

Jerry : That’s a wonderful thought, Cryn. This is Jerry Ashton here at WGRNradio.com, bringing you “15 Minutes of Fact” as an innoculation against the many hours of foe which is usually generated by mainstream media. So I want to thank my listeners for attending to this show. Be reminded that you are searching out my blog at the Huffington Post, and friending me there would be appreciated as well. Signing off, Jerry Ashton.

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