Influence Beyond Conspiracy: The Dynamics of Change

In this in-depth discussion, the speakers explore the shift in political alignment of big businesses from the right wing in the 90s to the left wing today. They delve into the memetic virus of urban monoculture and how it spreads within bureaucracies, the mistaken assumption that businesses naturally align with lower taxes and less regulation, and how businesses actually prefer regulations that protect their interests. They also address how big business and dominant cultural groups like theocratic coalitions in the 90s seek to impose their value systems through the justice system and laws. The conversation touches on the psychological and structural reasons behind why big companies are more sensitive to criticism and how this affects their alignment with societal values. Furthermore, they discuss the influence of consumerist culture, the impact of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies, and the broader implications for corporate America.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Simone! I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today, I wanted to deep dive on one subject that has been something that has come up in other things that we have talked about, but we've never really done a deep dive on it. And I've noticed some common misconceptions people have around this, which is, I think that everybody broadly knows that in the nineties, big business was predominantly right wing.

If you were, you know, we always use like the Jack Donaghy stereotype here. If you were a big business guy, you were a right wing guy. If you were a big corporate guy at like some, you know, whether it's Black Rock or whether it's, you know, McKinsey the stereotype was, is that you would be right wing. Today the stereotype is that you'd be extremely left wing.

The core Republican party used to be made up of an alliance of a theocratic faction in the United States and a big business faction. And it broke apart making way for the new right alliance with big business departing the [00:01:00] Alliance in the early two thousands. Now. The question is, is why? And the answer that I have always given historically is that this happened because the memetic virus that we call the urban monoculture, some people may call it wokeism, whatever you want to call it, spreads better and faster within bureaucracies.

And I think I think that this is a part of it, but I don't think it's everything. Secondly, I think a core mistake that a lot of people make when they're looking at this is to assume, and I've heard this from so many people, that, well, it's natural that big business was a Republican aligned party in the 90s because It wanted lower tax rates.

It wanted less regulations. It wanted all of that stuff. And this is a very naive understanding of what businesses actually care about, especially large businesses. It is actually just as perplexing [00:02:00] that big businesses align themselves with the right in the nineties as big business aligning themselves with woke as today, because generally big businesses prefer A large amount of regulations and taxes and other barriers to entry.

There is a reason why Sam Altman is going around trying to get everybody terrified of AI so that you can get additional AI regulations because he knows no matter how big the regulations are, they'll never be enough to shut down open AI, but they may prevent his competitors. Do you want to talk on this before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, keep going. This resonates, though.

Malcolm Collins: And so, I was thinking about this, and I was talking to someone about this, and I was saying, well, here's a really interesting thing. When I look at what the Democratic Party represents today an alliance of, and I always use the word urban monoculture, but if I change the definition, an interesting pattern emerges.

It is an alliance [00:03:00] of big business interests and the dominant cultural group in the United States whose primary interest is imposing its value system on other people. And then when I say that and I go back to the 90s, it's like, That was the alliance that existed as well. Yeah, it was big business was the dominant cultural group so when we talk about the theocratic coalition that existed in the 90s This was a group of individuals who are basically like, okay, where does catholicism protestantism judaism?

The main american religious systems mormonism where do their sort of moral shadows overlap? We're going to call this the Judeo Christian tradition. And then we are going to try to impose this on citizens through laws, through the school system, through other things like that. And that is, they, they were never as good at it as the urban monoculture was, but they definitely had the same gist [00:04:00] of an idea.

And I think one before we go into it, this also helps highlight where we are so antagonistic to some people on the right where I think lay people when they see us being antagonistic to these groups, they say that we are being antagonistic to groups that are just further right leaning than ourselves.

And I think that these are the same types of people who think that what happened. is the right today is just the nineties Democrats. And that the both parties have been moving to the left when instead what I'd argue is no, what actually happened is the left today is the nineties theocrats. It's just, we have a different dominant cultural group in this country.

And the right today is a fundamentally new party that doesn't really represent the axis of The political access that existed at all in the 90s. And so when these people are doing their thing and they're like, oh, we want to impose like gay marriage bans or something like that. I'm like, well, you're just acting like the left.

From my perspective, [00:05:00] you're trying to impose a cultural value system, which is why I think there's so much hostility to this sort of rhetoric

Simone Collins: was in

Malcolm Collins: the modern, right. But before we go further with this, I want to ask the question, why does big business constantly find itself on the same side as the dominant cultural group attempting to enforce its value system using the justice system and using the laws of the country?

Simone Collins: Well, because they have the money, right? And business goes where the money is, like sharks following blood.

Malcolm Collins: Do they have the money though? I don't know if they ever really had the money. I don't know how

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: can, you can't

Simone Collins: impose a policy upon other people without having deep pockets. Politicians don't listen to you if you don't have deep pockets.

I'm going to disagree. Well, no, I also think that, you know, I think the major, huge political donors did go woke. So

Malcolm Collins: I agree with that, but I, I don't think that that is why the politicians are [00:06:00] following them. I think that when I look at the, the, the sort of imposition of woke culture on other people, Yeah.

I think it was from a vocal minority and that the wealthy then ended up following it because they saw this vocal minority and saw them as a threat. And I think it's very similar to like the satanic panic of the eighties or the you know, the extremist evangelicals of the nineties where they never really made up that large of a population. But if you had something like, you know, a demon in a show or something like that, you had to be very careful about it or anything that could be seen. We actually saw this with the Catholics.

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but for a long time, Hollywood wouldn't make any movie that could be interpreted as anti Catholic

because the Catholics were very, very good at vetoing movies.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: The organization I'm talking about here is the national Legion of decency, but my timeline is a bit off. They were mostly prominent between the 1930s and 1960s. , and they use the audience of 20 million Catholics who back during that time period would actually listen to what the church told them to [00:07:00] do, which they don't so much anymore. , which has largely why the council lost power. , To boycott movies and they ended up influencing things like the Hays code and most of the movies that were released.

Malcolm Collins: And there was actually this chain of like movies made by Hollywood specifically to endear studios to the church.

Like, in one of them the plot was something like a Catholic preacher was given a confession, but like, that the guy was going to murder someone or like murder him, the preacher. And like, he couldn't do anything about it because he was so moral and he had to follow, you know, these rules. This was a common thing, and you might actually have noticed this, that Catholic preachers were disproportionately in media in the 80s and mid 90s, and you basically don't see them in media anymore because they weren't that big a faction of Americans.

Simone Collins: So that their, their appearances were artificial, you're, you're arguing.

Malcolm Collins: Their appearances were artificial due to, and I'll look up in post some specific examples of this, but it was a specific union of Catholics that would boycott movies. [00:08:00]

Simone Collins: That's so interesting. I mean, that I suppose makes sense, which was, I think, strategically empower.

Is that what you're saying is going on?

Malcolm Collins: No, I think the right, despite what people would say today in the nineties and eighties had a form of cancellation. They would say that this individual satanic or this individual is, you know, they'd use different words to label them, but they had a form of saying, oh, this company does this or this, therefore we won't do business with them.

And I think especially children's media was very afraid of crossing these boundaries for a very long time. Yeah. And I think that the woke's more borrowed these existing tools, but implemented them much more effectively. And I think what we might be seeing here is big business is a very susceptible to bullying more so than it is looking for market demand.

Simone Collins: And Okay.

So could this be an [00:09:00] issue of larger bureaucracies? having basically the sensitivity to criticism and that's why they're more subject to whatever the mainstream zeitgeist is because they have compliance departments, they have lawyers, they have marketing departments that are capable of hearing criticism and freaking out about it, whereas smaller organizations just don't, literally don't have an ear or an eye to that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: I wonder if it might even be that the type of person who works at a large company is more sensitive to criticism.

Simone Collins: When

Malcolm Collins: I think about our friend groups, you know, our job basically with the pronatalist movement is attracting criticism in a way that furthers the message of the movement.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: So we're always going around baiting media sources to try to get them to talk about us.

And then we use that to draw attention to our cause areas in ways that are usually pretty effective. Like, honestly, we've been enormously effective. I don't think that there's been a public media figure. That has been as effective as us at either rising or catching attention in the last five years.

Which I, I [00:10:00] take, I take great pride in. But this has given us a unique understanding of who has freaked out about knowing us or being publicly associated with us. And the people at startups or venture capital firms or small companies, they give us a hint. They're like,

Simone Collins: okay, fine.

Malcolm Collins: The bureaucrats who work or run very large companies are extremely scared of being associated with us.

Yeah. They are extremely scared of criticism. And I wonder if a fear of failing, which is I think where this fear of criticism comes from, failing in other people's eyes or being seen as not good enough, associates with working in large companies.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I could see basically not being willing to stand for anything personally and being really afraid of being subject to criticism would make a job at another company where you can always blame it on someone higher up the line.

Blame the company, blame your manager, et cetera. Yeah, [00:11:00] yeah, I could see that. And you could argue that, Also, people with a bigger external locus of control are more likely to be drawn to larger organizations and bureaus. Actually, I'm

Malcolm Collins: having an understanding here. Both of these types of people aren't just drawn to large companies.

They're also drawn to academia. Because they're both career tracks where it's for people who are more afraid of failing. They don't want to go outside their bubble. They're just like, okay, this is what I've been doing for the past four years. I'm just going to keep doing it if I can maybe make some money from doing it.

And they're very sensitive. They have a lot of status anxiety. They're very sensitive to the status the job gives them. And so not just a fear of media criticism, but potentially a fear of criticism within these organizations makes the memetic virus spread faster within the organization.

Simone Collins: That, that's quite interesting.

Yeah. Well, but then aren't you really ultimately just arguing the same thing that you've been arguing since the beginning, which is that memetic viruses are [00:12:00] more likely to In these large bureaucracies and maybe the refinement you've gotten.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think that the, the nineties version of like, evangelical mom was really a memetic virus.

I think that they like evangelicalism didn't spread through companies in the same way woke as them spread through companies. I think that it, what we are seeing is, is, is two things happening simultaneously. You have this phenomenon that I'm talking about with people more sensitive to criticism working in these large bureaucracies.

On top of them also being more sensitive to like, when a Guardian article says something mean about me, my , sorry. people in my life freak out about it. And then we always get the email of, Oh my God, how could this happen again? You must be devastated right now. And I'm like, bro, the guardian doesn't even have a Twitter account anymore.

Like, what are you talking about? Nobody reads this. It just establishes credibility for stuff like Wikipedia articles and getting in front of like a few other people's faces in terms of expanding our reach. [00:13:00] Yeah, that's, that's my thought on that. But I'd also note how wokeism spread within companies because we had somebody talking, we were talking to about this and I hadn't realized it, but it's something that is really interesting, which is, and I note here, by the way, anybody who wants to hire us as consultants to anti DEI a fire company, now that we're stepping back from our day job, absolutely happy to help with that.

Stanford MBA, Cambridge degree in technology policy, run major companies in the past will work inexpensively if we're helping. Make a company strong. Well, we'll even run for the work for a percentage of the increase in profits we can make you within certain margins or the cost savings we can give you.

Cause that's the great thing about taking DEI out of a company. You're only saving money, but. It was when the DEI stuff started, what companies did, like, they were like, Oh, I have to put this, like, whatever person that fits all of these criteria into the company. All right. Well, we don't want to put them in like engineering and we don't want to put them in like making [00:14:00] products.

Cause like they actually need to be good to have those jobs. So where can we put them? Well, HR, like people don't really do anything in HR.

Simone Collins: Often marketing to communications, PR compliance.

Malcolm Collins: And what they didn't realize when they were putting these people in HR and compliance but specifically HR is where I think the initial crop was dumped is that now these people had control over hiring and they started to exclusively hire and heavily affect the hiring processes around these DEI objectives which quickly DEI ified the entire companies.

And in addition to that, As as simona's talking about you have things like marketing becoming heavily dei What happens when marketing becomes heavily dei then you'll have them Leave twitter when elon buys it for example because they think that they can use the company at the cudgel even when their customer base they're still on eggs.

They're still on these these platforms [00:15:00] and They, but they don't care, like, because they're not in this for, at the end of the day, making money they are now part of the, the DEI cordyceps virus and they just want to expand the reach of the virus. What are your thoughts on that mechanism for how the spread was in companies?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean that, I think that's what we've largely understood to be reality for a long time. It's, it's, it's funny how things happen. I think people think of arguments around the woke mind virus or the people on the left or the people on the right as, as being this, this all being a very concerted organized effort that happened on purpose where a bunch of people got together in a room and we're like, ah, yes, this is how we shall slowly take everything over.

And there are even people who are like, oh, let's conspire to do this, but it rarely works. Conspiracy is rarely Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and we've been involved in conspiracies. We've been involved in organizations that [00:16:00] conspiratorial. People are just, there's not that many, like, truly effective, independently thinking humans for a conspiracy to be effective.

People are not that many. What is

Simone Collins: interesting, and this is why I think your interest in governance is so crucial, is that just, The correctly misplaced incentive or the, the misplacement of a particular agent within a particular area. It's like putting a seed crystal into a substance. It's

Malcolm Collins: much worse than a conspiracy in a way.

Yeah, suddenly everything can just.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like in a way that no human, no exerted effort could, could make something happen. What happens for example, when, when you're tempering chocolate you'll put. A seed, like essentially a seed crystal, like a piece of chocolate that has been properly tempered in with a batch of chocolate, and then you raise it to a certain temperature.

And the idea is that your,

Malcolm Collins: she used to work at a chocolate factory.

Simone Collins: Your one seed crystal will then help the rest of the [00:17:00] chocolate snap into the right crystal. Crystalline structure. And I, that's kind of how I see this happening is that once you get, for example, this certain culture in HR, it's able to make the rest of the company snap into that crystalline structure in a way that doesn't require you to go through each and every single department.

It just kind of happens naturally. And almost all at once, and in a very powerful way,

Malcolm Collins: HR is the department that can fire you that determines your salary moving up and down within the organization. As soon as you control that was in an organization, you control the incentives that the organization has.

And people will want to D E I F I themselves to ensure that they can move up or down. And I think something that you were talking about earlier, like the conspiratorial mindset towards this stuff, I think a lot of that is actually downstream of humanities. And I think that this is really important when I'm, when I'm interacting with people.

And when I typically, I'm like, okay, this person is an idiot. When they start to see like [00:18:00] big agentic conspiracies everywhere, because they're not an idiot, but The mistake that they're making, and it's, it's an inbuilt human mistake, is humans are evolutionarily programmed to see the world in terms of theory of minds.

Yes. So we look for theory of minds in everything. We look for theory of minds in mass groups of humans. We look for theory of minds Oh,

Simone Collins: you'll see faces in tree stumps and in wall plugs. We just think, yeah, it's very hard not to humanize things.

Malcolm Collins: When you, yeah, when you see action, you're not thinking, okay, how could this action have evolved?

I. e. how could iterations of this action have been better at replicating themselves than non iterations of this action? Which is actually why most things happen. Most actual conspiracies are not agentic. They are not one individual attempting to impart of a brand conspiracy, fool a bunch of other individuals.

It is just a self replicating thing. And. So it's better rather than

Simone Collins: to look at. Who wants this or who's trying to orchestrate [00:19:00] this. I think it's better to look instead of the incentives and where our incentives align.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But I think that, and people can say that this is the, like a kinder interpretation around this, but it very much isn't.

If you look at what the implication is. Hmm. If this is the mimetic virus, like that cordyceps virus, which infects ants and then makes them just spread the fungus. Once an individual is infected, they must be surgically removed from the company. There is no amelioration. There is no cure. The only cure is cut once cut deep.

You have to remove the cancer.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I haven't heard of anyone deescalating from a position that is like, yeah. Have you ever heard of

Malcolm Collins: a woke person genuinely deescalating? I don't think I ever have.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, I guess what I, here's what I could envision happening because what we're doing is here with corporate America.

We're contrasting. The [00:20:00] point at which it was sort of a strongly influenced by conservative Christian American culture of like the 90s to now when it's has been very influenced by Wilk coach culture, the urban monoculture when. When that Christian conservative subculture suddenly became the minority in corporate America, that didn't mean that the people who used to enact witch hunts as Christian conservatives no longer existed at organizations, it meant that they kind of realized that they were outnumbered, and they had to go underground, as it were, or just be tolerant.

And I think that that's more what happens. It's not, these people can exist and not do damage As long as they know that they don't have a mandate and they don't have impunity. I think the only instance

Malcolm Collins: From the christians

Simone Collins: really? Okay. I I disagree

Malcolm Collins: with you. So convince me i'll explain why so first you got to put these people in two camps who can be ameliorated is the people who [00:21:00] just sort of like Believed mainstream media and then one day we're like, oh s**t I'm being lied to not like the torchbearers but the people I think a lot of people like us jd vance a lot of these people who are just like You They believed the mainstream narrative and then one day they're like, Oh, you guys are all against us.

That, that community I think can, can reform. The problem with the wokes is they don't have families. They don't actually need to make money. They would rather enforce the message and self indulge in a victim mindset than actually make money or keep their job. Whereas it was the Christians they, you know, they might've been an angelic mom, you know, they had five kids to feed back home, you know?

Speaker 4: I know this much better place down the street. The girls are cleaner, the liquor ain't watered down. Sure, and you get kickbacks. Hey, man, I got five kids to feed.

Speaker 5: Take him to the dentist.

Malcolm Collins: I got to put a Benny thing here. I got five kids to feed. But they yeah, so they, they had to worry about losing their jobs in a way that [00:22:00] I think that the wokes don't. And they also had to worry about feeding themselves. You see, it was a woke, if you're a Christian and you lose your job, you take some level of personal responsibility for that.

Even if you were, you know, trying to push a Christian agenda if you're a woke person and you lose your job, you take no, you don't feel like you messed up in any sense.

Simone Collins: If anything, you sue and expect to win a ton of money. You're

Malcolm Collins: the hero. Of the story, right? You know, and I, I think that one thing, one thing I will note, and this is a surprise to me about companies is after this Trump election cycle, which has appeared very different than previous election cycles last time Trump won, there was this broad perception of like, The pollsters got it all wrong, and you know, the pollsters didn't know what they were doing, but like, broadly, everything else is still fine.

Like, society still works the way we used to think it did. This time, it's almost acted like a mandate against The infected cultural institutions more broadly We think of msnbc being sold now [00:23:00] with things like disney going back on to x slash twitter With a lot of rollback in woke policy that I didn't think I would see I am actually surprised How quickly business has turned on these individuals now Are they still putting out media that's been in production for the past five years?

It has like pronouns like Oh god, one of the ones that's actually You Interested in, in trying out recently. It was something like

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): About is the game I was thinking of.

Malcolm Collins: Awakend or something. Anyway, I'll, I'll add it in post, but it turned out to have pronouns in it. And I'm like, I'm not going to play that. Like, I'm not going to do that.

Cause I know

Simone Collins: that's inertia to your point,

Malcolm Collins: right? What? That is the product of inertia. I think where we are seeing business able to make retreats, we are seeing it in many areas I did not anticipate. So. Business might be correcting faster than I thought. I'd also note here. About another argument I've heard which is very interesting is that business went woke because woke culture is more [00:24:00] consumerist

Simone Collins: It is I guess yeah I mean the whole thing the the core of of woke culture and the urban monoculture involves atomization and divorcing the human from their family from their community and You So suddenly, instead of having friends, you have a therapist and you have social media and a bunch of things that you buy.

Can I just say how

Malcolm Collins: much I love that? Instead of having a friend, you have a therapist.

Simone Collins: I mean, but that's what's happening. Right. And so, yeah, it does. It basically says you it's taught all of these original sources of these things that you used to get are toxic. Now you buy it. And to not buy these things is to be a conspiracy theorist, raw milk drinking homesteader who believes in a bunch of crazy things and doesn't vaccinate their kids like, and they're seen as crazy.

And I was thinking about this when you [00:25:00] suddenly were concerned about food dies last night of, like, now, even when a totally normal person is suddenly kind of concerned about processed foods. There's this feeling about them, like, oh, you're one of those, like, you're one of those off the grid, like, only eats, you know, raw eggs and, and by the way, like, I'm super into that, but it, it is categorized by the urban monoculture is sort of a crazy off the grid.

Conspiracy theorist. So yeah, that does make sense. So you're not going to and also you're not going to make money from those people. So if you're a business and you're marketing to someone, are you going to market to the person who does their best to avoid hyper processed foods? Who does their best to avoid toxic?

Social media, addictive games and, and things like that. Or do you go for the person who has fully surrendered themselves to operative condition and dopamine? Heads? Yeah. I mean, conservative culture

Malcolm Collins: says, [00:26:00] you know, restrict yourself, you know, have a degree of self control. And those are bad consumers.

They're, they're,

Simone Collins: they're not repeat purchasers. They're, they're not sticky. They're not addicted. Like that's terrible. You're right. That's a bad investment. That is, I think it's the most convincing thing you've actually said to me so far in terms of like why they have chosen to double down so hard on this audience is this is the most trigger and spend happy audience and an audience that is not woke is far more likely to not buy things.

That's convincing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, look at the way our family buys things. We tried to buy just a few things that are very reusable. And I even look at the us when contrasted with much poorer friends that we have, they buy so much more than us, like,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it actually like causes Simone to like almost panic when she sees the way that other people who were friends with who are much less wealthy than us spend money.

They like actually like go out to like McDonald's. They like, actually, [00:27:00] like, buy, like, snacks at like Dude, these days,

Simone Collins: anyone who goes to a restaurant, I'm like, How can you financially, like, survive this? This is Yeah, I'll never financially recover

Malcolm Collins: from this.

Oh my God. I am never going to financially recover from this.

Simone Collins: Every single time someone goes out. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: every single time we go out.

R. I. P. When was the last time you went out to a restaurant, Simone?

Simone Collins: Hold on, I know this. Well, when we were at Hereticon, but that was included.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so when somebody else wasn't paying. When was the last time? Can you even remember? It must have been a year ago, at least.

Simone Collins: Like, when you and I just did it because we weren't in a business.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: when did I pay for a meal that you ate? Oh, my birthday at the hibachi place. Yes! Your birthday! So that was pretty recent. Yes. Yes. Okay, before my birthday,

Simone Collins: when? [00:28:00] You, you got takeout for yourself. We cooked for the whole family. Yeah, no, no, no,

Malcolm Collins: I'm saying you.

Simone Collins: Okay, me? Huh. Yeah, I, I honestly cannot,

Malcolm Collins: I could not.

It must have been more than a year ago. I'm just pointing out that I think a lot of people don't get, like they think this stuff is normal and it's not normal if you're from a conservative cultural group. It is a disgusting amount of overspending that is genuinely nauseating.

Simone Collins: Well, and this is, this is how spending used to be.

People think that I guess in the 1950s there was just some era of abundance. People were eating shitty canned food. Like when you actually look at what are considered gourmet recipes at the time, it is stuff that. Like even poor people living on food assistance would not bother to eat it. It's stuff I served food in a tenderloin San Franciscan food bank.

 It was better than like the best 1950s had to offer. People don't realize like the level of luxury that they're [00:29:00] living with now. And like, if

Malcolm Collins: you look at like good night, it's like a dinner party stuff.

Simone Collins: You would like go out of your way to like serve to the fancy your boss, you know, who's coming over for dinner.

Malcolm Collins: It can be jello, so you'd have like some, some fruit in some jello and then you have some like, I'll put things on screen here. It is quite disgusting, but yeah, I'll

Simone Collins: see. I can share some of my like videos on cooking. So anyway, that was the nice people like, Oh, like, Oh, we live in such and also going out to eat was a very big deal for a whole family to do that.

And maybe, maybe a, I don't know. Young people courting or something might go out. It's like a, Ooh, I'm really shamed.

Malcolm Collins: Disgusting signs of opulence is smart, casual restaurants being branded as like a a regular thing that people should.

Simone Collins: What, what a conspiracy. Yeah, I guess that's, that was sort of, maybe what we're seeing is the tail end of this era in which American families were gaslit into believing that That [00:30:00] eating out regularly was normal.

That insanely opulent birthday parties were normal. That

Malcolm Collins: Oh my god, birthday parties for kids are insane. Why would you do that? Why would you give a

Simone Collins: child a party? Well, but even now, like, what's so normalized, and I see this, not just among influencers, I'm just saying our friends, people buying cakes for birthday parties?

Like, b***h, make a cake. Like it can be a box cake. It, this is not hard and it doesn't even have to be good. I mean, I've had so many disaster cakes that, you know, because we're cooking at altitude or with like borrowed pans or something didn't work out. And we just turned it into a construction cake that like, you know, it's a pile of like cake dirt, but it's fine.

Like P but people are buying and these are, these are expensive cakes. There's fondant involved. They're multi tiered cakes. These are, and that's just the cake. Like, what else are they getting? Some people are renting decorations.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way, just so people know how we do [00:31:00] toys with our kids. So, we do do the future police where they take away the kids toys, but we don't give them all back.

In fact, we regularly clear out all but about a quarter of their toys. We put them in the attic and then we wrap them and give them back to them or younger kids later on. It's great because they treat

Simone Collins: them like, sometimes they remember them from before, sometimes they don't. But they're always really happy to have them again, and they're, they're otherwise ignored.

It's not like they miss them, and if they miss them and ask for them, we give them back.

Malcolm Collins: But they typically don't miss them or notice them, but if they do, we give them back. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't, I can't remember the last time they've asked for something back.

Malcolm Collins: Which is no, but it's a good system. And I think that so many people, they just are like, Oh, that wouldn't, you know, whatever.

Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: think that the consumerist thing might be part of it. Is it the urban monoculture was to an extent crafted or a partnership with big business to create this belief that if you want something, and this is one of the things I've noticed [00:32:00] again,

Simone Collins: you're using language that implies intentionality when, no, it was.

That they clicked together, that this, this on, on, on the one part, this mimetic virus that promised instant gratification and never having to say no to yourself and never having to do something unpleasant in the moment. Plus an industry that profited from that mindset. Like, of course, they're going to love each other.

Like they're going to

Malcolm Collins: be best friends, of course, works for Doritos. You'd have like the Hayes by Doritos and Dunkin Donuts. That is beautiful brought to

Simone Collins: you by Doritos. Yeah, basically. And now there's Heroin Chic brought to you by Ozempic. Now, yeah, it's sort of this really interesting backlash. I think the more interesting question now Is now that there is this backlash to the urban monoculture, and yet organizations are going to have to still figure out how to make money going forward.

What are they going to do? I mean, already there's a lot of commentary online about what highly [00:33:00] processed food companies are going to do in the face of becoming widespread because people just aren't having the same. Cravings for highly processed and like snack foods. So they normally would. So now what do they sell?

Another they're trying to remarket a bunch of things. I don't know if that's even necessary. Maybe we've already reached this point at which people are so morally, not morally, mentally bankrupt, like sort of incapable of, of self control that it doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, Simone, I think I remembered when you last went to a restaurant, it

Simone Collins: was when

Malcolm Collins: we were speaking at that conference in Vegas.

And I took you to that Chinese restaurant and we ordered that dish that we split and the waiter shamed us for buying too deep a dish and splitting it. Do you remember that? That was, what, a year ago? That was at

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: Bellagio. I

Simone Collins: don't know if that counts because it was

Malcolm Collins: a business trip. Yeah, I mean, it was an expense to the foundation, so

Simone Collins: So, then it doesn't count.

Yeah, but, if it's a [00:34:00] business trip, you don't I mean, we wouldn't have spent that money to buy Two dishes in personally, but especially if you're traveling for business, you should be respectful of the business. It's paying for the thing. And then only buy one entree. That's what we did the entire time that like last personal vacation we took, which was in Switzerland.

And we're like, oh, s**t, it's expensive here. We're going to share one meal. Going forward and it was great

Malcolm Collins: because I wanted to like normalize this because they don't understand the way people actually lived in the fifties. If you are trying to be trad, being trad is being frugal. Okay. Yeah. And this is the problem is they don't realize this.

They think that being trad is a life of abundance and it is.

Simone Collins: There's also the, this theme that keeps coming up in Hannah's children, the super pronatalist book that's actually super pronatalist in which. Parents of five plus children are interviewed. And basically it's a book compiling their interviews.

Very interesting. A common theme that [00:35:00] comes up is in response to this question of what will we do when we have, how will we travel once we have five plus children? How will we get out of the house when we have four plus children or six plus children? And the answer is you just don't like that. You just don't do that anymore.

And guess what? Life goes on. Like, There's just kind of this expectation of like, but how will we make it work? How can we possibly do it? And once you realize that the answer is, yeah, just don't honestly, things get so much better. I, I love the trip thing.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know if people know this, but like even the concept of vacations or trips is like a fairly modern concept.

Simone Collins: Oh, and even the, even the. Scaled down 1950s version where you would go everywhere in your car and go car camping. Even that was very new because the highway system was a new invention. My dad. The concept that you had roads that you could travel across America, that was a big deal that you could actually drive across America suddenly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, so, so my dad, who's father was a congressman, [00:36:00] so like, not like an insignificant person and a, and a, a fairly wealthy individual, they'd go on one trip a year and it was a car trip to the Jersey Shore. Yes. They would just

Simone Collins: stay in one place the whole time. It wasn't freaking Disneyland. It was a house.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think that we as a society are like, this is one of the, you know, you're talking to me about this. You're like, if I have a kid, how will I go to Milan? It's like, well, maybe you need to not be going to Milan. That's like a one

Simone Collins: sucks. What do you do? There's like one Da Vinci piece. some old churches, but like the rest is just mostly office buildings.

What are you,

Malcolm Collins: Milan? We say this is people who used to split our time between countries every other month.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, I think that's, that's also, it's, it's kind of like, We're speaking from a position of so much privilege and abundance. It's kind of shitty for us to do like you being like, Oh, sex, isn't that interesting, but you've had so much sex.

Like

Malcolm Collins: very much the way I am was travel as well. I'm like, you've traveled so [00:37:00] much throughout your life. And now I'm like, ah, you, you guys shouldn't live for sex. Don't do that. I used to travel. As I said, I think it was. Early I said over a hundred countries. I actually think if I remember correctly, the number was over 50 countries, but over a large number of countries.

I've done tons and tons of travel. I've lived in like seven countries. And, and now I'm just like, ah, travel sucks. We still have a house in Peru.

Simone Collins: Do we need to sell? We need to get that

Malcolm Collins: sold. Come on. ASAP.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm trying the, we have to make all the plumbing repairs first and the. Do you go the house? Yes, we do.

We actually really, there's no hot water in the apartment right now. And the housing association is blocking Alexander from doing the fixes. But again, see, like, this is the thing is everyone's like, well, I want to have multiple houses someday. I want to have a vacation. No, you don't. Do you understand what a hassle that is?

I mean, one, there's a property taxes too. There's a constant repairs. Three, there's a cleaning for there's the travel between the places and all the money that you have to spend just doing the travel. And then, of course, [00:38:00] whenever you bring over more supplies from one country or another, there's import or export taxes that some customs person decides to, like, slap on you after digging through your suitcases.

This is not fun. I, yeah, it's, it's, it's super interesting to see. How just having a lot of kids and the forced frugality and groundedness that a large family forces on people causes them to become a lot happier. It seems in this book, and it could be, it doesn't have to be children. Like, it could be that, you know.

I don't know. Both of your legs are cut off or something or whatever. Like it could just be that you have been forced by law enforcement to not leave a certain radius around your house, but then suddenly your life gets a lot better because you're not doing all this stuff that ultimately doesn't make you happy anyway.

I just find that interesting as a concept, but yes. Okay. The big thing that I'm taking away from this [00:39:00] conversation is that a big reason why The urban monoculture paired so well with corporate America was that they mutually benefited from reinforcing instant gratification and consumerism.

Malcolm Collins: And. How else is a flag company supposed to stay in business if you don't change it every year?

What was the The colonizer's flag. Oh. The new gay pride flag. They

Simone Collins: haven't updated it recently, have they?

Speaker: Sales are way down. No one's buying American flags anymore. We had some success when we jumped on the Pride bandwagon. But now that it's a settled issue, there's just no demand for flags anymore. GuYs, I've got it! Hm? What if we updated the gay flag for trans people? Woah [00:40:00]

Oh,

Simone Collins: Actually, they haven't.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I feel like They need to add like

Simone Collins: a new, like, could be a pattern layer onto the end of it.

Malcolm Collins: I feel like they ran out of new communities to add.

Simone Collins: That's why I said they need

Malcolm Collins: to add the keffiyeh.

Oh yes, to make it Muslim too. Yes. No, no, no, no. Specifically to make it like Hamas coded. Like a big Muslim sign on the center of the gay pride flag. You know they'll do that one day, you know. Like the star?

Simone Collins: The, like, sort of, the moon. The crescent moon thing. Yeah, the crescent moon. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I can, I can, no, no, to make it extra good though, it would have to be like a crescent moon, like inside a star of David to be like, no, no, no, we're inclusive.

We're, we're not, they would not know. They hate the Jews. No, no, but like, I just feel like it would be so extra offensive in a way that actually works with the colonizer flag. If you were to do that, because already, like, if, if we're slapping that on, like,

Malcolm Collins: no, we need to literally would put like a little X in the star of David.

They, they, they, they honestly would.

Simone Collins: All [00:41:00] right,

Malcolm Collins: Simone. I love you to death. I have enjoyed talking with you and I am so glad to be married to you and I am so lucky that you are a woman who seems to enjoy frugality to an extent that I find frustrating when it comes to buying things for our kids.

Simone Collins: What? I let you buy the bouncy house today. How could you say that?

Malcolm Collins: You got it. Well, so this is the way I was doing the cost per kid. It was 25. Okay. We have four kids. Oh, no, 50 per kid. 50 per kid for a permanent play thing is not that bad, especially considering we plan to have more kids

Simone Collins: permanent. Have you met our children?

I think it better have patches because that thing is getting stabbed.

Malcolm Collins: got a little indoor bouncy house at BJ's for the kids. But I'm like, look, I look at what I pay for them to do things on weekends, like, go to various kids places [00:42:00]

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: 50 per kid is, you know, that's like four weeks of stuff if we can get them better than that, especially in the winter when they can't go outside to play.

Yeah, I

Simone Collins: think that's big. That's what convinced me is I want them to still be able to exercise and get all their energy out in the winter. And this is going to be great for

that.

I love you. I love you too. Good day, sir. Good day! Where does that come from? What does I said good day? Like, is that just a trope?

 You lose! Good day, sir!

Malcolm Collins: It's a good day.

Simone Collins: Said good day.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know, maybe it comes from talking to British people. .

Simone Collins: No, it's like, it just, it, it comes up so much. I wonder if it's like that trope of like, they always use the, like they throw in the sound of that guy going, ah, when he falls off. Something like that sound effect being used and it's like you have to Simon all anyway.

Bye B bye bye.

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to the next room. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 6: Nobody [00:43:00] else can go faster because Julie has to go first. I love you guys.