Cedar Park Local E7.
Why government keeps growing
Our responsibility as the governed
Practical steps on how one can help
Podcastindex.org
Contact me at [email protected]
[00:00:02]
Unknown:
Hello, friends, and welcome to the Cedar Park local podcast episode number seven for Monday, 05/19/2025. I'm your host, Cash Normandy. On today's agenda is primarily giving some insight to my motivation for starting this podcast. As I have previously as I have previously mentioned, I was motivated by Adam Curry and his vision of, hyperlocal podcasting. And as as it overlaps with podcasting two point o and value for value, it's, it's a it's it's it's really a a brilliant understanding of, of the broadcast ecosystem, the sort of the pulse of the culture where we're at currently, the state of our government and country, and, and and and even sort of the broader arc of history. It's it's a brilliantly, it's a very astute approach. So it it really spoke to me. And as a result, I, started doing this podcast.
And these, first many episodes are largely for practice, allowing me to sort of develop my, technical, skill set with respect to the editing software and and the microphones and hardware and the interfaces and these things, and hopefully getting to know other people in this, space and learning some best best practices. Anyway, so that that was, the origins of, how I ended up doing a podcast because I really had never had any intention of it. I I, enjoyed listening to Rogan and Friedman and all the big, the big names and thought what they were doing is brilliant, but it was never something I had, envisioned for myself.
And, and I've also become interested in the the nature of, government, community, and what we can do, to make a difference in in the direction the country is going. So so these two kinda came together. That's why when I heard, Adam on, Rogan's podcast, most recently mentioned the hyperlocal, podcast approach, it it made sense to me and seemed like a worthwhile endeavor for me to pursue. So so today, I like to go over some of what I have sort of sussed out in terms of my approach to dealing with government, community, and, and our responsibilities as as the governed.
First, I think there's a couple of, sort of axioms that we have to deal with and understand in order to lay the foundation for how I approach this the solution that I'm gonna propose. One, government is a course of enterprise. That means governments have, what they say is typically called the monopoly on force, and they can force the governed, the people to do things. They require it through laws, regulations, so on and so forth. It is a coercive enterprise as opposed to persuasive enterprises, which is really what's expected of all other sort of relationships in a free enterprise system, is that it is persuasive.
You voluntarily engage in commerce and conduct and affiliation with with other people. And and and that is fundamentally different from the government enterprise, which is coercive. They tell you what to do, and you have to do it. Otherwise, there's consequences. And government is inclined towards growth. It it is by its very nature, it tries to get bigger, and and the governed have to contribute to this, typically through taxes. And these are the two very fundamental elements of government. It is coercive and inclined towards growth. Because of this, the government, the people, us, we have to work.
And I emphasize the word work. Effort, work, energy over time. What was it? What is the physics definition of work? I think it's energy over time. And, so we have to work to limit the size of government. Otherwise, it will just keep growing. There are certain functions which are necessary for society to work well, and these are the functions we give to government Because of its nature, because of the government's nature towards, one being fundamentally coercive, two, inclining towards growth, we have to limit those functions as much as possible. It's a tough question.
And and the question must be, must this function be done by government? Does the government have to do this? And, really, we have to go with have to, not would it be nice. It would be convenient. It would be great. Only if that's usually a bad test. If you give government certain powers to do certain things, because wouldn't it be nice if this problem just magically got solved by, quote, unquote, the government. Usually not usually, almost always, this is a failure. And if it's not initially a failure, eventually becomes a failure because of these two parallel tracks of coercion and growth, which is the nature of government. We understand that as its nature.
We make the government because it is necessary. And then we have to give it very minimal functions, fundamentals of keeping society together. Otherwise, we have to find another way of solving problems and doing things. The government is is the answer to very few things. So you can't you can't set it and forget it, like, Ron Pope Eals, Ronco Showtime Rotisserie. I had to look it up. I couldn't remember what it was, but set it and forget it. That is exactly what you can't do with government. You cannot set it and forget it. It will grow out of control. Left unchecked, government will keep growing and growing and amass more power and eventually consume all of the government.
And by consume, I mean, consume all of their liberty, all of their, you know, freedoms and ability associate. Eventually, it just takes it all over and becomes authoritative monster. But this is not surprising. This is foreseeable. It makes perfect sense. We know it's coming because we know that's the nature of government. We have to actively limit it. You'd make it. You set it. Definitely don't forget it. And then you have to actively work to have it function well and stay limited and keep those course of powers in check.
So then the question is, alright. You know, what can I do and how much time is it gonna take? Because, Kosh, I got Netflix to watch. I got I got bad media and bad food to consume. So you better not take away from from those basic fundamental pleasures in life. Force me to spend my time. I don't wanna be a politician, Cash. I understand. I don't either, actually. I like to spend my time consuming media and delicious food if I can also. I just try to limit it to healthier versions if I can. So based on my calculations, and I am, I have the the background and the capacity and the technical knowledge to apply some serious science to this. I've, used the Pythagorean theorem. I've applied the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to it, and I have done a lot of, Euclidean geometry.
And, I even looked up some old DaVinci stuff and applied that to it just to make sure that, the scope, the breadth, and depth of my analysis is complete. And and so the number I came up with is 5% of your waking hours. Sixteen hours are waking if you're sleeping eight. 16 times seven is what is it? Let me see my calculations here. I can't do this Top of my head. Hundred and twelve hours. So we have a hundred and twelve waking hours a week. You gotta spend 5% of that towards civics and governance. Otherwise, you will be consumed by your government.
5% is not a lot. That leaves you the other 95% to do whatever else you want, typically working and then doing some leisure stuff. And that's the whole point. That's the whole point. If you wanna spend 95% of your time doing the free to be free to do what you want, you have to spend the other 5% checking government, paying attention to government. Otherwise, it will grow out of control, and it will start to encroach on your other 95% to a degree which you can't even imagine. You think 5% is too much? Before you know it, it's gonna be flipped. You'll be 95% doing what the government tells you and 5% of the time wondering what the hell's happening.
So based on my scientific, analytical, rigorous process, it's 5%. That's the answer. The answer is 5%. That's how much of your waking time you have to spend. That comes out to five hours a week. Sounds like a lot. That's only 5% of your waking time. You can do forty five minutes a day, an hour a day. You can do, you know, designate one one person do ten hours. Out of two people, one person does ten hours a week. And then the next, two weeks later or whatever, the other person does ten hours, you can get a group of people. And amongst you get, out of 10 people, you pick one and they make that their job.
You know. That's it's called politics, you know. That's make their part time job or whatever, side job. So there are ways of doing this and, where it it it doesn't have to be every day. But you could spend, you know, thirty, forty five minutes a day paying attention to what's happening, helping keep your government in check, and and making, making your world and your kids' futures better. And and that's the price, you know, that's that that we have to pay. That is a, that's a fair price for a free society. But if you don't pay it, someone else isn't gonna pay it. For evil to triumph, good men need only do nothing.
If we just remain passive, people who are inclined towards power, people who are inclined towards wanting to control other people will gravitate towards positions in government, and they will very happily exploit the government's nature towards coercion and growth. So you have individuals whose natural propensity is towards exercising controls over their fellow man as opposed to voluntary, relationships. They like telling people what to do. You end up with them in government, and the nature of government as a as a as an entity, as an enterprise, is towards coercion and growth. And you have this marriage made in hell of power hungry people in a coercion based enterprise, and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's how we end up where we're at. So we gotta work at it. You gotta spend your time. You gotta do your 5% and and keep government in check and keep it working better.
So in that 5%, what can you do? First things first, community. It's a weird word. I have, I have I was I have generally not had a good, sort of vibe on the word community. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm an introverted person by nature and community smacked of mandatory events where I had to go to and be uncomfortable with. I'm not sure. I am, however, aware now and understand better that the term community means many things. I have experienced community in in the arena of sports, like judo, which is what I like to practice, and there's a judo community often referred to as a family around a a dojo. And so I kinda reflected back on on on many things I do in life that involve, other people. And these are all different communities. And and and once I looked at it that way, I realized, that it is just something I've been participating in my whole life. Yeah. I've been a member of multiple communities.
And and anyway, so that's, that sort of adjusted my framework. So the first thing you have to do is community, which means you gotta talk to your neighbors. Your neighbors, by definition, have shared interest. We all live in the same geographical area, which means we are subject to the same taxing bodies. We are generally subject to the same, regulations, municipal, state, county, whatnot. And by the fact that because of our proximity, we are subject to the same governmental regulations, we have the shared interest in how those things are run. So first thing is talk to your neighbors and, and and get a get a dialogue going and and an ability to communicate.
So once you get to know your neighbors now, you're able to at least, overlap some of that, some of that information, some of that thinking. You know, earlier, I was talking about people who are inclined towards power and and and and and inclination towards controlling others. The main, opposition to and the and the main force that that they have to contend with as, aspiring tyrants is, organized communities and and communities that are organized typically around a church or some house of worship. This is the the historical, focal points.
I grew up, in Chicago, and, and Chicago has a lot of distinct, immigrant neighborhoods. And you can see the houses of worship that those communities built when they came. And it's it's it's you go to the, as you visit the neighborhoods, many of them have changed, and the and the waves of immigrants have moved out of the city into the suburbs. Now there's, like, different suburbs with distinctive immigrant backgrounds. However, their houses of worship that they built, remain. And on the North Side Of Chicago where I I lived, when I was young, on the corner of my street was a synagogue.
And the neighborhood at that time, this is in the eighties, was largely Indian and South Asian, Indian. And, but there was a synagogue because, some what? That would have been probably eighty years earlier. It was largely a Jewish neighborhood. And East European Jews had immigrated through South Side Of Chicago, and from there to the North Side Of Chicago, and then from there to the Northern Suburbs. These are descendants, generational shifts. And, so and the end of my block was a synagogue that eventually end up it was mostly closed. There had had really no, no people attending to it. I I just saw caretakers and things, and that was about the only people I saw there.
Eventually got sold. But going further, further down, there there was a small, portion of the old traditional Jewish neighborhood that was still there, and they had, like, the last Jewish bookstore was on, nearby. And, there was a couple of Jewish delis were still kinda around because, even though the Jewish neighborhood had shrunk, it was still they had some people there, particularly an orthodox community, which maybe they were less more reluctant to move. And, so they hung around, but the deli was there. So that was a good place to get some, good sandwiches.
Anyway, I digress. The houses of worship were built by these immigrant communities because that was, understood as a fundamental, way of so, for social cohesion. And and for for the would be tyrants, that is the the biggest problem is a is a cohesive community that is paying attention and can keep them in check. And that's, I guess, the whole point of this podcast is to promote and foster a community, a sense of community, an actual community, a dialogue in the community of, Cedar Park and maybe Round Rock and and, Leander since they're our neighbors. And and there has been a great deal of, influx.
And there's a lot of people have have come to Texas, basically fleeing poorly run, states like New York, Illinois, and California. And and us I'm one of them. And us, mixing with the with the the people who are, here before us, the local Texans, and the sense of community that we need to develop and foster. And hopefully using these new technologies and this vision of of of, podcasting two point o, the podcast index that, Adam and Dave, maintain. And, and just sort of this all seems to kinda melt together in my mind as a sensible way forward as our answer on the ground level of how we deal with because everybody can feel the country is going in the wrong direction. This is this is it's palpable.
Everybody I talk to doesn't think it's going the right way. Most people I speak to don't know quite how to fix it. To keep us from becoming a cohesive and organized threat to tyranny. The government wants to grow. The power hungry people that tend towards government want it to grow. The biggest threat to them is an organized, informed, and active community. And the best way to prevent that from happening is to keep people divided through rancor, Point out the divisions, race based divisions, religion based divisions, political based divisions, even though the difference between the two parties is almost nothing.
And they all, you know, the uni party as it's called. They make government bigger. They make budgets bigger, and they're they're almost exclusively, beholden to somebody else besides the constituents. Like, the population is for sure, like, number six on their, on their who the hell they care about, with the exception of, Thomas Massey and probably Ron Paul, Rand Paul Randopaul. And, and Rand Paul's retired. But, there are just these couple of exceptions which appear to be true patriotic Americans that, that really care about the country. Everyone else is caring about who knows what.
It's it's bizarre. But but in order for us to, to build a community, we need to get past those intentionally, intentionally fostered divisions. We have so much more in common. And, all the Trump supporters and all the Biden supporters and the Bernie supporters and all of these people have so much more in common. Just, like, 99.98% in common than what they don't have in common. It's, and it is it is, remarkable how these divisions have been formed and fostered. And and but I understand the origins of it is because it's profitable. It makes, you know, it makes for good clicks, so it makes the media companies money. It makes the, the politically powerful people happy because it keeps the constituents divided and prevents them from forming communities.
And, and I hope to, in my little way, counter that and foster the building of community using this, local podcast model and this sort of infrastructure and vision that, that Adam came up with that I think is, is at least one viable path forward. And if, if we are to, if we are to keep this republic. So building community and, spending the five, 5% of your working hours, that's that's my solution so far. I can probably get a little more specific. I'll come up with, like, a matrix or something, maybe apply some more of my, Euclidean, geometry to it and and see if I can come up with, like, Andrew Huberman does really good protocols. You know? He he likes to read those wonky papers and and just go through all that, scientific data, which is just mind numbingly difficult for most people to read through. But he loves doing it. And and if I remember him correctly saying in Rogan's podcast, I used to do it when he was a kid. He just loved digesting, just dense scientific data and then distilling it in what he calls protocols in actionable ways, which is brilliant because that's what I love. Because I'm not gonna be reading scientific papers, but I'd love it if you can give me a couple two, three pointers on what to follow.
Get some light in the morning, get some ground contact in the morning, and, you know, don't eat a bunch of sugar first thing in the morning. I can follow those simple protocols. And if that helps me out the rest of the day, thank you very much. I didn't have to read, you know, whatever study was out of Stanford. So hopefully, I can apply some of my, some of my ability to distill to a, to some actionable, some actionable, you know, protocols, I guess. Maybe you can call them. Do some protocols and and be able to, get a formula and maybe a matrix for how to spend those that that 5%. But but you gotta spend the five we gotta spend the 5%. It's gonna take 5%. That's not a lot. 95% of your waking time could be spent, on on whatever you choose. That's the whole point. But if you wanna keep that 95%, you gotta spend that 5%.
We have to work together. We have to, limit the size of government, shrink it. We gotta shrink it now. It's just it's gone so big. It's it's, become insanely inefficient. And we have to shrink it, get it back down to a proper size, keep it there, and, you know, we gotta take care of our neighbors. The people are in need. Try and help them out. We have to find ways of taking care of each other, not expecting the government to do it because the government will not do a good job of it. It'll just grow and grow and grow. And I think that's it for today.
Hopefully, I can get out, out and about in the street and see if I can do some, local business, interviews. I really need to get better at that. Actually, I just need to do it. I haven't done it at all because I don't have a microphone that's, portable. I just have this mic that sits on a stand, and, this is, I guess, the the beginning the beginning, bootstrap setup. So maybe a little couple more pieces of gear I can I can do something mobile? Alright. Housekeeping. So podcasting two point o with Adam Curry and, Dave Jones. You can visit, the podcastindex.org.
I, guarantee you when I, when I if and when I receive anything of value of that that I can that I can forward or at least bifurcate, give give a chunk of to, to them? Because I I read somewhere and I forgot which one. There was a lot of resources that, Adam has on on the various platforms that he's involved with. And one of them had to do with the value for value, the the payment system, the lightning network, and and I must have been I don't have that set up yet, and I'm not fully, proficient and well versed on that. Actually, well versed. I'm proficient. And, but there was a way where you could automatically, you could set it up. So if you receive the donation from someone, you could set it up where 20% automatically went one way, another 10% went another way. So you could the the donations could be auto split to support the things that, you find, useful.
So for sure, I would do if I would get a donation, for sure, I would send 20% to a pot tech pot podcast index Org because they are the they're they're the lifeline. They are the only not big government index and which is the linchpin, the keystone, you know, the the key to it all, if you will, of of a free free broadcasting, really. It is, dumb. So my contact email is [email protected], and you can, send me email if you see if something of interest, and I will do my best to make sense of it, Share it. If you got a local business you think I should check out, drop me a line and, if I have a good experience, I'll share it. If not, I'll keep it to myself.
Okay, friends. You've done it again. You've wasted a perfectly good hour listening to this nonsense. Remember that we are given a short amount of time in this world. Life is short. Take more risks. Do difficult things. Be kind to your neighbor. Don't get angry at the guy who cuts you off when you're out in traffic. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know if they're going through a hospital because there's a loved one on their deathbed. Thank you for listening. Till next time. Bye bye.
Hello, friends, and welcome to the Cedar Park local podcast episode number seven for Monday, 05/19/2025. I'm your host, Cash Normandy. On today's agenda is primarily giving some insight to my motivation for starting this podcast. As I have previously as I have previously mentioned, I was motivated by Adam Curry and his vision of, hyperlocal podcasting. And as as it overlaps with podcasting two point o and value for value, it's, it's a it's it's it's really a a brilliant understanding of, of the broadcast ecosystem, the sort of the pulse of the culture where we're at currently, the state of our government and country, and, and and and even sort of the broader arc of history. It's it's a brilliantly, it's a very astute approach. So it it really spoke to me. And as a result, I, started doing this podcast.
And these, first many episodes are largely for practice, allowing me to sort of develop my, technical, skill set with respect to the editing software and and the microphones and hardware and the interfaces and these things, and hopefully getting to know other people in this, space and learning some best best practices. Anyway, so that that was, the origins of, how I ended up doing a podcast because I really had never had any intention of it. I I, enjoyed listening to Rogan and Friedman and all the big, the big names and thought what they were doing is brilliant, but it was never something I had, envisioned for myself.
And, and I've also become interested in the the nature of, government, community, and what we can do, to make a difference in in the direction the country is going. So so these two kinda came together. That's why when I heard, Adam on, Rogan's podcast, most recently mentioned the hyperlocal, podcast approach, it it made sense to me and seemed like a worthwhile endeavor for me to pursue. So so today, I like to go over some of what I have sort of sussed out in terms of my approach to dealing with government, community, and, and our responsibilities as as the governed.
First, I think there's a couple of, sort of axioms that we have to deal with and understand in order to lay the foundation for how I approach this the solution that I'm gonna propose. One, government is a course of enterprise. That means governments have, what they say is typically called the monopoly on force, and they can force the governed, the people to do things. They require it through laws, regulations, so on and so forth. It is a coercive enterprise as opposed to persuasive enterprises, which is really what's expected of all other sort of relationships in a free enterprise system, is that it is persuasive.
You voluntarily engage in commerce and conduct and affiliation with with other people. And and and that is fundamentally different from the government enterprise, which is coercive. They tell you what to do, and you have to do it. Otherwise, there's consequences. And government is inclined towards growth. It it is by its very nature, it tries to get bigger, and and the governed have to contribute to this, typically through taxes. And these are the two very fundamental elements of government. It is coercive and inclined towards growth. Because of this, the government, the people, us, we have to work.
And I emphasize the word work. Effort, work, energy over time. What was it? What is the physics definition of work? I think it's energy over time. And, so we have to work to limit the size of government. Otherwise, it will just keep growing. There are certain functions which are necessary for society to work well, and these are the functions we give to government Because of its nature, because of the government's nature towards, one being fundamentally coercive, two, inclining towards growth, we have to limit those functions as much as possible. It's a tough question.
And and the question must be, must this function be done by government? Does the government have to do this? And, really, we have to go with have to, not would it be nice. It would be convenient. It would be great. Only if that's usually a bad test. If you give government certain powers to do certain things, because wouldn't it be nice if this problem just magically got solved by, quote, unquote, the government. Usually not usually, almost always, this is a failure. And if it's not initially a failure, eventually becomes a failure because of these two parallel tracks of coercion and growth, which is the nature of government. We understand that as its nature.
We make the government because it is necessary. And then we have to give it very minimal functions, fundamentals of keeping society together. Otherwise, we have to find another way of solving problems and doing things. The government is is the answer to very few things. So you can't you can't set it and forget it, like, Ron Pope Eals, Ronco Showtime Rotisserie. I had to look it up. I couldn't remember what it was, but set it and forget it. That is exactly what you can't do with government. You cannot set it and forget it. It will grow out of control. Left unchecked, government will keep growing and growing and amass more power and eventually consume all of the government.
And by consume, I mean, consume all of their liberty, all of their, you know, freedoms and ability associate. Eventually, it just takes it all over and becomes authoritative monster. But this is not surprising. This is foreseeable. It makes perfect sense. We know it's coming because we know that's the nature of government. We have to actively limit it. You'd make it. You set it. Definitely don't forget it. And then you have to actively work to have it function well and stay limited and keep those course of powers in check.
So then the question is, alright. You know, what can I do and how much time is it gonna take? Because, Kosh, I got Netflix to watch. I got I got bad media and bad food to consume. So you better not take away from from those basic fundamental pleasures in life. Force me to spend my time. I don't wanna be a politician, Cash. I understand. I don't either, actually. I like to spend my time consuming media and delicious food if I can also. I just try to limit it to healthier versions if I can. So based on my calculations, and I am, I have the the background and the capacity and the technical knowledge to apply some serious science to this. I've, used the Pythagorean theorem. I've applied the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to it, and I have done a lot of, Euclidean geometry.
And, I even looked up some old DaVinci stuff and applied that to it just to make sure that, the scope, the breadth, and depth of my analysis is complete. And and so the number I came up with is 5% of your waking hours. Sixteen hours are waking if you're sleeping eight. 16 times seven is what is it? Let me see my calculations here. I can't do this Top of my head. Hundred and twelve hours. So we have a hundred and twelve waking hours a week. You gotta spend 5% of that towards civics and governance. Otherwise, you will be consumed by your government.
5% is not a lot. That leaves you the other 95% to do whatever else you want, typically working and then doing some leisure stuff. And that's the whole point. That's the whole point. If you wanna spend 95% of your time doing the free to be free to do what you want, you have to spend the other 5% checking government, paying attention to government. Otherwise, it will grow out of control, and it will start to encroach on your other 95% to a degree which you can't even imagine. You think 5% is too much? Before you know it, it's gonna be flipped. You'll be 95% doing what the government tells you and 5% of the time wondering what the hell's happening.
So based on my scientific, analytical, rigorous process, it's 5%. That's the answer. The answer is 5%. That's how much of your waking time you have to spend. That comes out to five hours a week. Sounds like a lot. That's only 5% of your waking time. You can do forty five minutes a day, an hour a day. You can do, you know, designate one one person do ten hours. Out of two people, one person does ten hours a week. And then the next, two weeks later or whatever, the other person does ten hours, you can get a group of people. And amongst you get, out of 10 people, you pick one and they make that their job.
You know. That's it's called politics, you know. That's make their part time job or whatever, side job. So there are ways of doing this and, where it it it doesn't have to be every day. But you could spend, you know, thirty, forty five minutes a day paying attention to what's happening, helping keep your government in check, and and making, making your world and your kids' futures better. And and that's the price, you know, that's that that we have to pay. That is a, that's a fair price for a free society. But if you don't pay it, someone else isn't gonna pay it. For evil to triumph, good men need only do nothing.
If we just remain passive, people who are inclined towards power, people who are inclined towards wanting to control other people will gravitate towards positions in government, and they will very happily exploit the government's nature towards coercion and growth. So you have individuals whose natural propensity is towards exercising controls over their fellow man as opposed to voluntary, relationships. They like telling people what to do. You end up with them in government, and the nature of government as a as a as an entity, as an enterprise, is towards coercion and growth. And you have this marriage made in hell of power hungry people in a coercion based enterprise, and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's how we end up where we're at. So we gotta work at it. You gotta spend your time. You gotta do your 5% and and keep government in check and keep it working better.
So in that 5%, what can you do? First things first, community. It's a weird word. I have, I have I was I have generally not had a good, sort of vibe on the word community. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm an introverted person by nature and community smacked of mandatory events where I had to go to and be uncomfortable with. I'm not sure. I am, however, aware now and understand better that the term community means many things. I have experienced community in in the arena of sports, like judo, which is what I like to practice, and there's a judo community often referred to as a family around a a dojo. And so I kinda reflected back on on on many things I do in life that involve, other people. And these are all different communities. And and and once I looked at it that way, I realized, that it is just something I've been participating in my whole life. Yeah. I've been a member of multiple communities.
And and anyway, so that's, that sort of adjusted my framework. So the first thing you have to do is community, which means you gotta talk to your neighbors. Your neighbors, by definition, have shared interest. We all live in the same geographical area, which means we are subject to the same taxing bodies. We are generally subject to the same, regulations, municipal, state, county, whatnot. And by the fact that because of our proximity, we are subject to the same governmental regulations, we have the shared interest in how those things are run. So first thing is talk to your neighbors and, and and get a get a dialogue going and and an ability to communicate.
So once you get to know your neighbors now, you're able to at least, overlap some of that, some of that information, some of that thinking. You know, earlier, I was talking about people who are inclined towards power and and and and and inclination towards controlling others. The main, opposition to and the and the main force that that they have to contend with as, aspiring tyrants is, organized communities and and communities that are organized typically around a church or some house of worship. This is the the historical, focal points.
I grew up, in Chicago, and, and Chicago has a lot of distinct, immigrant neighborhoods. And you can see the houses of worship that those communities built when they came. And it's it's it's you go to the, as you visit the neighborhoods, many of them have changed, and the and the waves of immigrants have moved out of the city into the suburbs. Now there's, like, different suburbs with distinctive immigrant backgrounds. However, their houses of worship that they built, remain. And on the North Side Of Chicago where I I lived, when I was young, on the corner of my street was a synagogue.
And the neighborhood at that time, this is in the eighties, was largely Indian and South Asian, Indian. And, but there was a synagogue because, some what? That would have been probably eighty years earlier. It was largely a Jewish neighborhood. And East European Jews had immigrated through South Side Of Chicago, and from there to the North Side Of Chicago, and then from there to the Northern Suburbs. These are descendants, generational shifts. And, so and the end of my block was a synagogue that eventually end up it was mostly closed. There had had really no, no people attending to it. I I just saw caretakers and things, and that was about the only people I saw there.
Eventually got sold. But going further, further down, there there was a small, portion of the old traditional Jewish neighborhood that was still there, and they had, like, the last Jewish bookstore was on, nearby. And, there was a couple of Jewish delis were still kinda around because, even though the Jewish neighborhood had shrunk, it was still they had some people there, particularly an orthodox community, which maybe they were less more reluctant to move. And, so they hung around, but the deli was there. So that was a good place to get some, good sandwiches.
Anyway, I digress. The houses of worship were built by these immigrant communities because that was, understood as a fundamental, way of so, for social cohesion. And and for for the would be tyrants, that is the the biggest problem is a is a cohesive community that is paying attention and can keep them in check. And that's, I guess, the whole point of this podcast is to promote and foster a community, a sense of community, an actual community, a dialogue in the community of, Cedar Park and maybe Round Rock and and, Leander since they're our neighbors. And and there has been a great deal of, influx.
And there's a lot of people have have come to Texas, basically fleeing poorly run, states like New York, Illinois, and California. And and us I'm one of them. And us, mixing with the with the the people who are, here before us, the local Texans, and the sense of community that we need to develop and foster. And hopefully using these new technologies and this vision of of of, podcasting two point o, the podcast index that, Adam and Dave, maintain. And, and just sort of this all seems to kinda melt together in my mind as a sensible way forward as our answer on the ground level of how we deal with because everybody can feel the country is going in the wrong direction. This is this is it's palpable.
Everybody I talk to doesn't think it's going the right way. Most people I speak to don't know quite how to fix it. To keep us from becoming a cohesive and organized threat to tyranny. The government wants to grow. The power hungry people that tend towards government want it to grow. The biggest threat to them is an organized, informed, and active community. And the best way to prevent that from happening is to keep people divided through rancor, Point out the divisions, race based divisions, religion based divisions, political based divisions, even though the difference between the two parties is almost nothing.
And they all, you know, the uni party as it's called. They make government bigger. They make budgets bigger, and they're they're almost exclusively, beholden to somebody else besides the constituents. Like, the population is for sure, like, number six on their, on their who the hell they care about, with the exception of, Thomas Massey and probably Ron Paul, Rand Paul Randopaul. And, and Rand Paul's retired. But, there are just these couple of exceptions which appear to be true patriotic Americans that, that really care about the country. Everyone else is caring about who knows what.
It's it's bizarre. But but in order for us to, to build a community, we need to get past those intentionally, intentionally fostered divisions. We have so much more in common. And, all the Trump supporters and all the Biden supporters and the Bernie supporters and all of these people have so much more in common. Just, like, 99.98% in common than what they don't have in common. It's, and it is it is, remarkable how these divisions have been formed and fostered. And and but I understand the origins of it is because it's profitable. It makes, you know, it makes for good clicks, so it makes the media companies money. It makes the, the politically powerful people happy because it keeps the constituents divided and prevents them from forming communities.
And, and I hope to, in my little way, counter that and foster the building of community using this, local podcast model and this sort of infrastructure and vision that, that Adam came up with that I think is, is at least one viable path forward. And if, if we are to, if we are to keep this republic. So building community and, spending the five, 5% of your working hours, that's that's my solution so far. I can probably get a little more specific. I'll come up with, like, a matrix or something, maybe apply some more of my, Euclidean, geometry to it and and see if I can come up with, like, Andrew Huberman does really good protocols. You know? He he likes to read those wonky papers and and just go through all that, scientific data, which is just mind numbingly difficult for most people to read through. But he loves doing it. And and if I remember him correctly saying in Rogan's podcast, I used to do it when he was a kid. He just loved digesting, just dense scientific data and then distilling it in what he calls protocols in actionable ways, which is brilliant because that's what I love. Because I'm not gonna be reading scientific papers, but I'd love it if you can give me a couple two, three pointers on what to follow.
Get some light in the morning, get some ground contact in the morning, and, you know, don't eat a bunch of sugar first thing in the morning. I can follow those simple protocols. And if that helps me out the rest of the day, thank you very much. I didn't have to read, you know, whatever study was out of Stanford. So hopefully, I can apply some of my, some of my ability to distill to a, to some actionable, some actionable, you know, protocols, I guess. Maybe you can call them. Do some protocols and and be able to, get a formula and maybe a matrix for how to spend those that that 5%. But but you gotta spend the five we gotta spend the 5%. It's gonna take 5%. That's not a lot. 95% of your waking time could be spent, on on whatever you choose. That's the whole point. But if you wanna keep that 95%, you gotta spend that 5%.
We have to work together. We have to, limit the size of government, shrink it. We gotta shrink it now. It's just it's gone so big. It's it's, become insanely inefficient. And we have to shrink it, get it back down to a proper size, keep it there, and, you know, we gotta take care of our neighbors. The people are in need. Try and help them out. We have to find ways of taking care of each other, not expecting the government to do it because the government will not do a good job of it. It'll just grow and grow and grow. And I think that's it for today.
Hopefully, I can get out, out and about in the street and see if I can do some, local business, interviews. I really need to get better at that. Actually, I just need to do it. I haven't done it at all because I don't have a microphone that's, portable. I just have this mic that sits on a stand, and, this is, I guess, the the beginning the beginning, bootstrap setup. So maybe a little couple more pieces of gear I can I can do something mobile? Alright. Housekeeping. So podcasting two point o with Adam Curry and, Dave Jones. You can visit, the podcastindex.org.
I, guarantee you when I, when I if and when I receive anything of value of that that I can that I can forward or at least bifurcate, give give a chunk of to, to them? Because I I read somewhere and I forgot which one. There was a lot of resources that, Adam has on on the various platforms that he's involved with. And one of them had to do with the value for value, the the payment system, the lightning network, and and I must have been I don't have that set up yet, and I'm not fully, proficient and well versed on that. Actually, well versed. I'm proficient. And, but there was a way where you could automatically, you could set it up. So if you receive the donation from someone, you could set it up where 20% automatically went one way, another 10% went another way. So you could the the donations could be auto split to support the things that, you find, useful.
So for sure, I would do if I would get a donation, for sure, I would send 20% to a pot tech pot podcast index Org because they are the they're they're the lifeline. They are the only not big government index and which is the linchpin, the keystone, you know, the the key to it all, if you will, of of a free free broadcasting, really. It is, dumb. So my contact email is [email protected], and you can, send me email if you see if something of interest, and I will do my best to make sense of it, Share it. If you got a local business you think I should check out, drop me a line and, if I have a good experience, I'll share it. If not, I'll keep it to myself.
Okay, friends. You've done it again. You've wasted a perfectly good hour listening to this nonsense. Remember that we are given a short amount of time in this world. Life is short. Take more risks. Do difficult things. Be kind to your neighbor. Don't get angry at the guy who cuts you off when you're out in traffic. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know if they're going through a hospital because there's a loved one on their deathbed. Thank you for listening. Till next time. Bye bye.