Dr John Izzo

There's so many things I want to follow up on there, but let's move to John.

And building on what Suzette just said, can I ask from you, what is a fully functioning democracy?

If we were to move forward, let's lay on the table.

I don't think any Western power has ever actually had a democracy.

They've had a kleptocracy that has masqueraded as a democracy.

And actually, its function was to make sure that the minimal amount of democracy took place.

And most people's opinions were never taken into account.

We had the best democracy money could buy and a lot of people with the money got what they wanted.

And now the people with the money are getting exactly what they want.

And it seems to me that power is shifting very fast from the political and industrial business class to the tech business class, who also own the information management.

And the bringing together of all of the data, of all of the things, of all of the people, means it's a lot easier to know who's doing what.

including this podcast, probably.

So if you feel that we're likely to be weaponized for anything we say, we will cut it out before it goes live, although it's probably too late because we're on Zoom.

So, John, if we were to imagine in theory, based on what Suzette's just said about building from the ground up, local and layers up, participatory democracy, participatory budgeting, distributed levels of decision making, what does a really functioning democracy look

really look like if we were able to get there?

If he leaves office.

Yeah, I would be prepared to put an amount of money that he dies in office.

The only question is when and how many iterations of office happened first and how long they can keep him looking like he's alive when it's happened.

It's going to be a little bit like some of the old Soviet leaders who have been dead quite a while before the rest of the world knows about it.

Right.