The Climate Tech Revolution with Justin Bean: Building Sustainable Abundance | Ep. 061

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] CODY:  Welcome back to The Mind Hack Podcast, your source for actionable strategies to upgrade your mindset. I'm your host Cody McLean, and in today's episode, we're joined by a guest who brings a refreshing dose of optimism to the conversation about the future. I'm thrilled to welcome Justin Bean, author of the Thought Provoking book, what Could Go Right?

Designing our ideal future to emerge from continual crisis to a thriving world. His journey from Silicon Valley to becoming a sustainable strategist has given him a unique lens through which he views our future, a future where technology uplifts rather than undermines. In this episode, Justin and I dive deep into the potential impact of AI on the future of work.

We explore the potential challenges and opportunities this technology presents. But also how we can leverage these advancements to create a future that thrives. So without further ado, please welcome Justin Bean.

​[00:01:00] CODY: so know.

We're in a place now where we have, mark Zuckerberg, we have the, these top, these leaders at the top of these executive companies, especially in the technology space, where initially they had this kind of goal of like having an impact, a positive impact on

society. And now we see often these companies, they don't have that kind of idealized positive impact on society.

And then the leaders of these organizations either have to really shift a mission, which is really hard to do when you have a company that has a, structure and board and equity and people want to make money. But simultaneously, you as the original leader, like what was the, you know, Google's original motto, do no, evil is, it's really arguable to say whether that they can really sustain that as a motto, because they put their, shareholders first.

And so how

do we get into a society [00:02:00] that is able to encompass everybody, not just the people at the top. I mean, this is getting kind of more philosophical in a way, which I don't know that you have all the answers, but, what are your thoughts?

[00:02:00] Justin: I don't think any of us have all the answers, but I think if we all pool our minds and our, efforts and resources, we can get to a, a better place. And so, and this is sort of where I started from in this whole journey of thinking about what could go right, and looking at the conversations that are going on in the world today, when we look at. The future models and the, stories that we tell ourselves about the future, they're so often very dystopian. And so we focus so much on what could go wrong, how can this trend line go into, you know, terminator scenarios or immense concentrations of wealth where it's just slumps surrounding small, you know, crystalline towers. and there are trends that are moving in those directions, but we've also seen a lot of trends moving in the right directions. And I think it's really important when we ask these types of questions to be able to zoom out and appreciate how far we've [00:03:00] come, not just as a few people, but as race of humanity, that has. become much more wealthy, much more educated, much more empowered, all across the world from, basically every country. So if we just take the American example, and go back to the 18 hundreds when people were still dying of dysentery, they didn't even know what bacteria really was or how to solve that with antibiotics. no one knew about health, food or vaccines many, if not most people were illiterate and the child mortality rate was immensely high. It was around 40%, right? And that's dropped to around 4%. All of these trends, I think, are obviously have increased or improved in the right direction.

We have more democracy around the world. We have more education. Literacy is almost a hundred percent. because of the technologies that we've brought in, not only from the, the first industrial revolution, right, where we got immense increases in the amount of energy and the amount of physical work that could be done. [00:04:00] free or, you know, vastly, multiply the work of one human being. We're now getting that from digital technologies where we're vastly multiplying the amount of mental work and, amount of collaboration that human beings can do. And now with artificial intelligence, that's another step change, if not exponential change in the, um, amount of work, but also the amount of impact that we can have.

And those types of digital technologies, unlike physical goods, are basically zero marginal costs to share with the world. Right? you have much more marginal cost when you're increasing the number of physical goods. With digital, you can pretty much provide, 1 million people with a service for around the same cost as one person, right? Granted. You need hosting, you need to pay for all those things. Entrepreneurs know that, but it gets cheaper and cheaper as you scale, right? And you get your economies to scale, and it can even, become free to the consumer with things like advertising [00:05:00] models. Like Like I said, what we've seen with Google then has been able to spread immense amounts of knowledge people. So when we zoom out and we look at these trends, we can see that we're actually on some, a really good path where most of humanity now has access to the, full breadth of, human knowledge. And I know this is sort of old news, but I don't think we've even seen the beginning of the impact that that's gonna have on the world and the amount that empowers entrepreneurs and returns us from a gilded age that we've been building up to more of a distributed economy and one that is more empowered, where more and more people become entrepreneurs, which is the natural human state, right?

If you go before more centralized. Capitalist or centralized socialist economies. You've got markets everywhere, you've got a blacksmith, you've got a farmer, you've got someone who, you know, sells textiles and clothing and everybody was sort of involved in the economy in a much more ownership fashion. [00:06:00] And I think that's more of our natural state than. Selling our labor to a, you know, large organization that doesn't give us ownership. And so with the rise in entrepreneurship that we're seeing in developed countries, because in underdeveloped countries, they still have immense amounts of, of, entrepreneurship. but in developed countries, I think we're starting to see a bit of a u-turn and going back towards distributed economies and ownership economies where more and more of us are entrepreneurial or involved in a family business or a business with friends or with people that we meet through online networks. And we have more of a say in our own destiny and, more empowerment from all of the tools that we have at our fingertips for more and more reasonable cost every day to be able to have immense impact on the world. We just need to make sure that that's sustainably done

from environmental and social standpoint.

CODY: Yeah. And there used to be this kind of enlightened age of [00:07:00] entrepreneurs when you had the, when we had so much optimism for what these tech companies could do for society. And now we're kind at the other end of that, where we no longer idolize the tech CEOs, the Elon Musk in some ways I used to idolize them.

I don't anymore. there's so many things that, end up in this culture now where realize that these tech companies and these entrepreneurs aren't really able to save us. And so then what is the next thing that we should be doing, as a society? should we still be putting our faith into tech companies as being the means to help us as a society into the future to solve the climate change and other sustainability crises?

Justin: That's a really great point, and I think there is. Uh, an awakening that is happening where people are realizing that no one CEO, no one tech company, no one industry is going to save us from the challenges, the grand challenges that we face in terms of [00:08:00] climate disasters, social destabilization, and understanding where we're going in this world of technology. And a lot of the sort of utopian stories that we saw around technology companies, some of them have become dystopian and some of them are fine and they're just a part of life. I think we really quickly incorporate, these new technologies into our lives and then just expect them, to be there. And then we start looking at. Hey, maybe this isn't perfect. Maybe we should criticize some of what's going on. And it's fair to say no human being perfect. I think Elon Musk has done an immense amount good for the world in helping us shift to an electrified transportation economy. And now even more with energy, economy and with the space race, despite all of the, criticism of the space race, I think that's gonna be really helpful to humanity and in the much longer term, keeping that light of consciousness alive throughout the ages if possible. but I disagree with Elon Musk on a [00:09:00] lot of issues, and I,I agree. I think he's sort of, maybe he's just too busy and he hasn't. Given himself the amount of time that he needs to really focus on these issues and think them through clearly. I was actually, I was just on a road trip, and I saw a Tesla with a bumper sticker that said, I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy. And so I think this is a, you know, a pretty widespread sentiment of sort of losing our heroes and losing this sort of, naivete that anyone's perfect or any of these people that we idolize are, 100% pure, 100% more intelligent than all the rest of us. and I think that's happening in the way we view government, in the way we view business and the way we view these tech CEOs and entrepreneurs and kind of everything.

And so it's almost like as a western society, we're sort of at this, sort of late teenage phase of, you know, losing our innocence. But also [00:10:00] realizing that it's up to us and we really need to be the ones that come up with the solutions that empower us to move forward in the future. And we are the ones who are seeing the problems. 'cause we're on the ground in the industries, seeing the problems that need solving. And this has always been the challenge with civilizations as they reach their peak and then, you know, go over the, the edge there is that you get these, elites that are disconnected from the way that the world works on the ground and they end up diverting resources away from serious problems into more luxury and, entertainment. And we sort of lose our foundations and, and crumble. I think there's something different about today and what's different is the widespread availability of information and the transparency that's coming into all of these facets from government to business, to people's personal lives even. and that helps us to [00:11:00] adjust our models of the world so that we, we know where it's wrong.

if you talked about something like Iran Contra back in the, eighties and nineties, it was just this, huge mind shift that the US government could ever do Anything that was, Unethical. And now I think especially with millennials and Gen Z, it's just an expectation. And if anything, we're actually, too cynical about the world and about, our society and, and where we are.

And so it's like we're going through this, this sort of evolution as a culture of, you know, losing our heroes, losing our innocence. And what usually comes from that is some soul searching and trying to understand who we are and what's important to us and what we value. And it kind of gets back on personal level to what, what you were saying earlier, that in the entrepreneurial journey, most entrepreneurs go from place of subsistence living or, you know, not having immense amounts of wealth and then building a business, getting to a point of [00:12:00] good abundance.

Those who are successful 'cause it's not everybody, but those who do and they realize, hey, it's great to not have to worry about survival anymore. But now, you know, what do I do with my time? I don't wanna just sit around and watch tv. I don't want to, just waste my time on entertainment. What do I do?

What's important and what's gonna help me live a meaningful life? And, it relates at the personal level and the societal level, and I think we're kind of going through that altogether. and part of the reaction to that is the rise of populism, right? People not trusting the institutions that they once believed in.

And they're realizing that there's a lot of corruption in government and business, and especially when they collude together. and we can do something about it. We're so much more connected in our, online worlds and groups that can help us organize in the physical space. And I think what's happening is we're seeing a decline in fit for purpose. Of the established way of doing things. So these institutions [00:13:00] totally made sense. A hundred years ago, they made sense. 500 years ago they made sense, 50 years ago. But as we have reached this sort of abundant, digital age with free availability of information and the, higher ease of coordination and collaboration between people and access to capital, access to, you know, hiring people, to collaborating with people, we are realizing we may not need some of these established institutions anymore.

We might be able to just handle some of this on our own in a more distributed and democratic fashion. And there are technologies that can support that type of collaboration or that type of, democratic self-determination of a culture. But It really comes back to human beings. We're not at the point yet where we just say, Hey, there's an AI that we can ask any question to, and it will go and go forth and do what we say. AI can help us understand the world better and, collaborate better, but it's, it's still on us.

CODY: Yeah. I think when we're talking about, the [00:14:00] systems in government and how they're unnecessary for the phase of society that we're at, I think nobody's arguing against that. But simultaneously, Congress exists as a means of creating new laws, not undoing old laws. And it's really difficult, as we know, with all the bureaucracy to have an expectation or an idealistic future that we're going to solve, which I think is in some ways what has furthered this bridge between the left and the right, because nobody trusts each other anymore.

And that's a whole. Thing on onto it of itself. But, I wanna pull out of that actually, and revert back to, this idea of what can entrepreneurs do to help our future. And as you noted earlier where we have this lack of meaning per se. And I, personally experienced that as somebody who's built and sold multiple businesses.

And now I sold the company that had a thousand people and I'm very well off. I never need to work again. But yet I've jumped right back into it trying to. Make money and trying to work again. [00:15:00] Because in some ways I look at it like greeter at the Walmart, you know, this is not everybody, but often the person is older and it's not because they need to be the Walmart greeter, it's because they enjoy that interaction and they decided that they want to retire.

And they realize, wait, I'm bored. I have no meaning anymore because I'm no longer working at a company. And as a part of our society, in the US we've often kind of associated this desire for meaning with our work. And the moment we don't have that, then we crave it again. And that's what a lot of entrepreneurs are on this path.

But before we jump into that, actually I have a further kind of meta, which is that, say 20 years ago. Kids, if you ask them what do they wanna do when, when they grow up? Well, I wanna be a police officer. I wanna be a firefighter. and now you ask them, the number one thing is to be an influencer.

and that also even relates to this other concept of building businesses. And back in the, the heyday of technology companies, we were so optimistic about, we're gonna solve climate change, we're [00:16:00] gonna go to space, we're gonna do all these things. And now that we look at. W as entrepreneurship and as, the, skills necessary to build a business have become more disseminated throughout society.

What have entrepreneurs been doing? They've been creating online courses, they've been selling knowledge, they've been building apps that effectively are just more niche versions, more niche SaaS subscription services. And we have a million different CRMs. We have a million different to-do list programs.

So we've been doing the bottom of the barrel, which is getting money for ourselves and not really like, outright solving these existential problems in society that we had hoped that people would do. So I'm curious your thoughts on how do we get out of this place where the number one thing that people wanna be or Gen Z is they want to be an influencer, which doesn't really benefit society.

I don't know. And how does that relate? How can we not only change that. But also how does that relate to motivating and [00:17:00] inspiring, those who want to be entrepreneurs to less be less likely to create an app that's gonna generate their money, but is more likely to spend 10 years creating something that's solving a problem in society.

That's not the easy path, but it's the best path for society as a whole.

Justin: Yeah. We don't, need any more soc delivery apps.

Right. there's too much work being done in areas that are just maybe to make somebody some money for a short period of time, but those businesses don't usually last anyway if they're not really solving a, big problem. So I think.

Part of the phenomenon that you're describing here is that, we get these new inbound new technology innovations or enabling platforms as I like to say, that, we saw with the internet and with mobile phones and smartphones, right? And then we, got all of these really big challenges and these big businesses built. And then, sort of at the end of this, everybody's competing over the last remaining sort pieces of it. and I think with things like generative ai, 'cause we've had, you know, artificial [00:18:00] intelligence for a very long time. but this is, a change in the way that people are able to interact with it and use it and deploy it to, to solve challenges.

So I think that's one part of it is like, when a new enabling platform comes along, then all of this new innovation is spurred and people create it in different directions now, like where they choose to deploy it. is another question. And with the, the influencers, yeah, I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other.

I think it's, in one way, if we were to look at it, it's disseminating the entertainment industry to the hands of more influencers instead of, you know, we tune into a few different television stations and then that sort of broke apart into different, like, YouTube stations or, different podcasts, right?

Like this is disseminating the ability of people to spread ideas and sell entertainment and whatever it happens to be, right? [00:19:00] And so in a way, I think this is democratizing the entertainment and educational industries, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just sort of a question, what do we consume? Right? you can still go to the grocery store buy ice cream at the same time you buy a, you know, head of broccoli. and part of that is consumer choice. but, I think that there are such immense challenges in terms of climate change and, societal challenges that we like one need to solve. and two, there are immense rewards in solving those challenges. so as someone who is working in climate technologies and seeing some of the big companies and startups that are working on these, Anytime someone makes a criticism of some type of climate tech, I see an opportunity, right? it's this classic argument with like electric vehicles, for example, That people say, oh, you're just switching a, tailpipe for a coal stack somewhere, right? And you're not really solving the problem. That's not true, right? Like, one, there's electricity required to run the oil pumps and, [00:20:00] you know, everything that goes into mining coal, and then the distribution and shipping those, fuels around the world and then burning it at about, a 15% efficiency in a combustion engine and all of that.

So all of that is not true anyway. Electric vehicles are more efficient by far, however. when you look at the battery, for example, those batteries are going to expire in 10, 20, maybe 30 years of their built. Well, what do we do with 'em, right? And so this has been a legitimate criticism of electric vehicle batteries and of things like wind turbines that they're very difficult to recycle.

Even solar panels, they're 95% recyclable. but that's mostly because of glass. but some of the persistent challenges of recycling those are still troublesome. and so when we look at that, we could say, well, that's a problem and we're never gonna solve the challenge of renewable energy. We're never gonna solve the climate challenge. or we could look at it and say, maybe there's an opportunity here. And this is what entrepreneurs are so good at, is really looking at the challenge, [00:21:00] looking at the problem and saying, I think I have an opportunity to solve this. So when we look at. ev batteries, there are many companies spinning up and scaling even today in anticipation of millions and millions of electric vehicle batteries. companies like Redwood Materials, lifecycle Service Solutions, et cetera, that are building new businesses to solve this, big challenge with part of climate tech. and that's just one example. but there are many opportunities for, you know, building software, building solutions for companies that need to comply with new climate regulations.

So government does play a part in this in some cases. And then when you look at things like the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA in the us, that's sort of bridging the initial gap in the, private markets. to, get to a place where we can have a functioning and flowing economy in the climate tech world. and bridging [00:22:00] the cost gap for r and d and figuring out how to solve the challenge so we can get to a point of commercialization and scale. and really, disseminating those solutions out to the market.

CODY: so. Thus far, we've had society that every time a new problem or a new technology comes along, there's always this fear that it's going to impact the jobs available.

Now we've had that fear with ai and every time that a new technology comes so far, that inevitable crisis, about how capitalism functions every time. It's always threatened with this new technology. but every time a new technology comes out, there's always new problems that are, created from that technology.

So can that keep going effectively or there always gonna be new problems created that are going to sustain more jobs? or are we likely going to have to pause the way that capitalism functions and try and figure things out based on, a lack of new problems and jobs?

Justin: Yeah, I wanna touch on [00:23:00] what you talked about in the first part of that, which is the big companies kind of doing the innovations and everybody else fighting for scraps. I think it's kind of the reverse actually. these big companies, are really great at building dynamos that just kind of, once you get 'em turning over and once you get 'em moving, they're really efficient at pumping things out. But they're, essentially pretty terrible for the most part in actually, innovating to the level of a smaller entrepreneur. Granted, they have way more resources and they're trying to build these venture studios and they're trying to build these innovation groups, and some of them are doing a good job, but they can never compete with 100 startups.

Trying to do the same thing that, will eventually someone will figure out product market fit, someone will figure out how to scale that, and then the big companies are better at m and a and better at incorporating those startups. And actually they're pretty terrible at those, at that too,

right?

Often a big company can steamroll a startup and make it really difficult for that to integrate into the big [00:24:00] company and then, you know, get moving. So a lot of the startups actually get, shut down. But those that work, it's a great way for the bigger companies to take something that startups have sort of, you know, competed for in the market. Someone rises to the top as, solving the problem in a better way, and then that gets acquired by the big company and is able to scale it out and really solve the challenge for the broader markets. But I think your point, you're bringing up around, does every solution create more problems and does it create a challenge for employment and for people to participate in the economy? And I think yes, but every time it's happened, things have changed. And so if we continue along the same path as we did in the 18 hundreds or 19 hundreds, it's just not going to work. And, we brought about factories and then agrarian societies just didn't work as well.

Right? Like we were able to mechanize and industrialize [00:25:00] agriculture. but, cities were built based on the, people coming to work in the factories and, and then now the office buildings and, and everything else. and now with. A new sort of paradigm shift with artificial intelligence that's able to, decouple thinking and mental work from the human brain in the same way that machines and robotics decoupled physical work from human muscle and animal muscle. Um, we're gonna see a big change, and this may change some of the way that capitalism functions. but if it's truly capitalism and not oligopoly or monopoly, then that's how we solve the problem is that, more and more people are able to access it, to create new businesses and create new, ways of working.

'cause so much of this are, so many of these solutions are platforms for buyers to meet sellers. Now, one of the questions is what happens when you don't need people to work? So you can't really pay people and then there's not the [00:26:00] demand you need to run a business. And so I think there's a few really interesting dynamics here.

there's a great book. Called the Zero Marginal Cost Society by Jeremy Rifkin. has like the longest, subtitle I've ever seen. It was like I, ot, artificial intelligence, machine learning, every technological buzzword and the eclipse of capitalism. And so it was just like really long explanation, but great book. So it looks at not only how all of this is increasing, the amount of work that people are able to do, but if capitalism's good at anything, it's about reducing costs for things. So, as we move further into this, we may see a reduction in, wages, but we're seeing a really dramatic decrease in costs. And so when you get to a world where. You've got, renewable energy coming in, basically getting free fuel from the sun or from the wind or from the ocean. And that fuels, automated robotics, which we're able to do work [00:27:00] and construct things and build things for us, but also are able to, maintain and rebuild renewable energy, capture infrastructure, right?

You get this sort of virtuous loop where automation starts building its own infrastructure for feeding energy into the system, and then it's able to, maintain and build more robots and more automation so that more of the things that are being produced are lower and lower cost. So when we get to a place where, let's say something that's sort of tangible like autonomous vehicles, right? I took my first, Waymo ride in San Francisco and did a cruise ride also. And it was amazing how quickly that just became kind of normalized. now they charged me about the same as Uber or Lyft, but their margins aft over time are going to be so much larger that that's gonna start eroding and they'll come down pretty close to cost 'cause of competition. And so when a [00:28:00] ride doesn't cost you $10, it costs you 10 cents, then essentially your costs of living have gone down immensely. And so the amount of wages you need to earn are also pretty low. But I think there's a change that could happen where your ride might actually just be sponsored by the restaurant that you're going to, or the school. If you go to a school or it's just offered because everyone is exchanging work for to each other. and it really makes us question these institutions like money. What is money and how does it work? And who has the right to create it and exchange it? I worked on a project, for I-D-O-I-D-O did a financial empowerment challenge and we came up with something called Community Coin. And it was the, sort of child of a lot of conversations around what is money, how is it created, how is it funneled down to the rest of us so that we can exchange it? and that's by an institution that decides how much money there needs to be. They print it, you know, or why give [00:29:00] banks the right to keep a certain amount or disperse more?

Basically it's, you know. Monopoly on money printing. but there's so many other types of exchange that we have available today and we will have available in the future that, could be created differently. You could, what if you could create money at the point where value is created, because there's a lot of value created in the world that it's not recognized by monetary exchange. like if you look at parenthood, anybody who strictly looks at parenthood through the lens of economic exchange would say that motherhood is completely useless and fatherhood is completely useless. And, there's no monetary exchange, therefore it can't be measured. Therefore, it's in, it's not valuable. Which is absurd, right? It's probably the most valuable work that a human being can do for another human being is to help raise them and bring them up in the world. if we were able to recognize that value, that would be immensely compensated, but it's not. And so I think what may happen in the conversations that we [00:30:00] have in the coming years is that we need to, you know, this is our time to rejigger and refigure out what an economy is and what it means.

And so there's all this unrecognized value that's going on in the world because some people have access to money, which they're able to exchange with others. For some work as a baby, are you able to, Go and earn money so that you can pay your mom to take care of you. No, and that would be absurd anyway, right?

Like your, exchange medium is like cuteness and love and for that you're getting caretaking and love and nurturing and all these, wonderful things. and so I think we just need to expand our understanding of value exchange in the world and recognize how little of it is actually, marked and valued and measured in exchange for money. And in that understanding will come better ways of recognizing the value that human beings are providing to the world. Shifting [00:31:00] that to ways that are more sustainable. because when you ask people what they want to do, most people don't say. I wanna be an accountant. Like, no, no offense to accountants.

Some people really love the, you know, the puzzle of being an accountant. but let's just use it as a straw man for now. most people don't say, I really want to, organize other people's money through a system of rules that somebody else made up for some reason. and that's my purpose in the world.

Most people say, yeah, an accountant is a good job, right? You get a license. It's a secure way of earning money. There's big companies that'll pay you. You can get a job anywhere. Great. You can live well for exchanging your time to shift money around in different boxes and numbers. I would be a terrible accountant.

There are plenty of people who are amazing at it and love doing it, but when you ask people, if money wasn't an object, what would you do with your time? Most people respond, and there's plenty of surveys and studies around this. Most people would spend more time with other human beings providing more community, emotional, social, psychological [00:32:00] value to each other, and they would work on more interesting projects.

They'd work on solving challenges that they think have meaning in the world. And so, one of our grand challenges is climate change. How can we create. A sustainably abundant economy where our energy is renewable and clean. The way we get around is clean. The way that we produce and manufacture things is clean and circular so that we can move products into the market and back into production so that we can reuse it and not just send it to a dump somewhere. and all of these things are ramping up extremely quickly. So this is already happening. This isn't just some, philosophical meandering that we're doing here. if you want the hottest areas of VC investment, it's in climate tech. And so while the overall market, of VC investments declined, last year, climate tech was up, when you look at the end of the year, Climate tech had gone down, I believe it was around 6%, but the rest of the market was down around [00:33:00] 40%. when you look at things like EVs, right? You saw an 8%, drop in the overall automotive market. At the same time, you saw 65% increase in electrical vehicle sales or electric vehicle sales. And so, whenever we start looking at these, places in the economy, where's the opportunity?

Even if you don't care about anybody but yourself, even if you don't care about solving these challenges, even if you're, just selfish and you wanna make money, solve climate change, you'll be a billionaire, right? Not only is it, you know, going into the traditional areas of energy and transportation, it's diversifying and, VC funding and private funding for smaller companies and mergers and acquisitions is going into more areas than other.

So not just energy and transportation, but sustainable textiles, sustainable real estate, sustainable food across the board. And so these are the areas that you want to be in over the next decade or two, because you'll have a more success, you'll be more likely to run a [00:34:00] successful business. You'll be more likely to, find funding and you'll be more likely to find meaning and what it is that you do, and more likely to feel great about waking up every day and doing something.

And you'll hopefully find more connection with other human beings that are working on something that's meaningful and important. And. To follow up on your other point with artificial intelligence, this is helping to help us reach that more zero marginal cost society, where we're getting more and more things for, nearly zero marginal cost and we're able to cover it with other areas. It helps us to rethink how we go about an economy and what participating in an economy means. And with the rise of entrepreneurship comes the rise of an ownership economy where we all get to own a piece of the economy again, whether that's through stock or whether that's through owning, our own business or whatever it is.

But the trends are, are clear that we're all getting more involved in the economy and, people are shifting away from traditional work,in many ways. And there's so many new [00:35:00] opportunities opening up that there's, a lot, there's a lot of work to do. And so there's a lot of work for all of us to get involved in.

And it has psychological, emotional, and, economic, environmental benefits across the board.

CODY: I end up having like 10 questions and I have to throw them all away because we're going from point to point. But I love it because you touch on so many super important really. Big questions in society that aren't really asked that often. And I love the focus on the entrepreneurial perspective, because effectively what you're saying is that we need to undergo a shift in what we value as a society away from this creation of money and, hope and expect that technology will effectively eliminate the need for money as the exchange of value, which is why money was created to begin with.

And if I understand that correctly, you're saying that we should hope that technology will. Create an economy in which we don't have to have an exchange of value through [00:36:00] monetary means, but we can exchange value through other means, whether it's like raising a child, spending time with somebody, all those things that we know and we, derive a sense of purpose and happiness from, it's like they say that if you're depressed, go and volunteer.

Like it's impossible be depressed if you're doing volunteer work. And I know that we have so much anxiety, depression, et cetera today. So is that kind of where you see us going? but also I. We end up having like the tech CEOs, mark Zuckerberg, or Peter Thiel, when we see these stories of them building their Armageddon base.

And I think that's this other concern that's been growing as we see how does a monetary system work? how does, society function? The, global economy. And there's always this fear of this kind of collapse and hopefully we can get through this collapse on the other side if that so happens where we are able to shift to this positive kind of star Trek like society where we're all able to work towards a common goal.

And money isn't really an obstacle, but it is [00:37:00] the question nobody can really know is, we gonna have to retreat into our bunkers for a period of time? Or will technology also be able to shift government policies in a way where we're able to have slower transition away from monetary as a means of value, which is also associated with that lack of meaning that so many of us seem to be experiencing.

Justin: Yeah. I mean, I named my book what Could Go Right for a reason and not What Will Go Right. a lot of people label me an optimist. I'm optimistic about some things. I'm pretty pessimistic about others. Like there's very much a world where I. This spirals out of control. Artificial intelligence enables terrorism in a way that it never was before. The electrical grid goes down and 90% of people in the United States starve within a year. These are extremely horrible outcomes that none of us want. and so I don't think any of them are outside the realm of possibility. but I think there are so many trends going in the right [00:38:00] direction, and more importantly, it's up to us to envision what we want the future to be.

And part of, I think what's going on is that we're waking up to the fact that this is kind of our responsibility, right? Like, we can't just put this on a politician. We can't just put it on some, you know, tech, CEO, like they're powerful, but not as powerful as all of us doing the work that we do. To make them irrelevant and build this better world that we wanna see.

But the first thing we have to do, like you said, we don't talk about this enough. And so what we need to do is envision what that future is that we wanna build and that would be a better world. And that gives us a north star and a place to start backcasting from, and not forecasting, but backcasting and saying, what would it take to get there?

If we were living in this sort of Star Trek age, what would the next a hundred, 200 years look like that gets us there? Or even 50, who knows? It might be faster than we think it. I, suspect that it might be [00:39:00] exponential. so what does it look like to get there? And then if we go backwards from that goal. We can see how do we start today and what does my path look like to help build that? And how do I build systems and businesses and technologies or communities or whatever it is that I am good at doing, to help us get there. And the more people that we have these conversations with, the more people we share these paradigms with, the more we can start, having those same shared goals.

'cause right now I don't think we do, right? We've, we we're, like I said, given these dystopian views of the future. And so all of us think that we're just gonna, goose walk into the Terminator and we may, if we don't take hold of the reins and build the future that we want, we're, none of us are victims. Some of us get victimized, but none of us are victims here. Like we are all playing a role or could be playing a role in building a better future. And the. Amount of wealth that it takes to do that is lower than ever. The amount of, coordination and [00:40:00] collaboration, that you can do without, more resources is better than ever, right?

And so we're, we're getting all of these really empowering tools all around the same time that we can pull this off, I think. and so we need to focus on what it is we wanna pull off and how we plan to get there instead of, hey trend Oracle, tell me where the world is going to go. And I'll just be along for the ride as it, falls off a cliff. so it's important for us to recognize that there are grand challenges and they, I'm not minimizing them whatsoever. Climate change is real. It's huge. We're already seeing immense, disastrous impacts of it. There's a lot of social instability that's happening. That's pretty dangerous. And if we don't find ways of countering disinformation and misinformation, and finding ways of understanding each other and understanding what's going on in the world, we'll be in trouble. But there's great solutions. I actually, you know, I just shut down a website that I built years ago called Spectrum Report. I think, people at Ground News are [00:41:00] doing a great job of this and, you know, I've got other things going on and thought I'm just gonna have to let this go. but the good news is other people building are building it, and that's great.

And so like looking at how do you, one, break yourself out of an echo chamber by looking at what's being said on the left or the right or purple, brown, green, whatever. as first. And then looking at what are the narratives that are sort of between the lines in this information, and then which of those narratives are actually true? Some of the information could be true, but being used strategically to give you a view of the world that is untrue. And there's plenty of examples of that, but I don't really wanna get into a political conversation. so there, there's, ways that technology can help us to process information in the world.

I think artificial intelligence is gonna be a great help in that because it can process a lot of this. When I started Spectrum Report, I tried to recruit some AI engineers that could help build something that was basically an LLM that would, sort through all of these different articles, that were coming out of different outlets across the left and right, looking at what [00:42:00] distilling, what the narratives are on the right that support, things like really strict immigration policies or, whatever, or on the left, that, support the goals of the left. and then how do we fact check those narratives, automatedly so that we can see what's actually true and false about these and we can start making decisions about the world and have more accurate view of what the world is. so. Information is really important. I think artificial intelligence, and this will help us, um,

CODY: we need to envision,

AI is not fed There's a new term, forgot what the term is, but there are are creators now that are creating things to poison AI data so that it's not utilizing all of the copyrighted and other material. But I guess in some ways it could be like how China owns TikTok and they can influence what Gen Z view and, see, because now they're, using TikTok instead of Google to solve their problems.

So, I mean, there's other issues that come up with how do we reduce that echo chamber and also make sure that if we're [00:43:00] getting most of our information from ai, that that is also not corrupted by, any state or other individual.

Justin: absolutely. Yeah. And this has been a challenge for years, right? In advertising and what we've seen in elections with election meddling from foreign actors, right? That have gotten really good at. influencing a society through message boards and social media and influencers, things like TikTok. and, we could see a crumbling from within because of the influence of foreign actors or, internal actors here. and this is a global phenomenon, right? This isn't just the US, this is across the world. but the way I think about it is, through this framework called the Three Horizons, right? You've got some existing paradigm that's starting to lose its fit for purpose and starting to sort of decline.

So we can see this with the carbon economy and with, coal, oil, et cetera, right? We're starting to realize this has too many problems versus the benefits, and we've got some better technologies and we [00:44:00] don't need this for everything. We're gonna need oil for, like, all kinds of things in the future.

There's no reason we should just be like setting it on fire so that we can move somewhere. it's a valuable resource. We should, conserve it for, better things and not pollute with it. so that's the horizon one. Something that's losing its fit for purpose. This could be many other things. And then we start seeing this horizon three, which is. little tidbits of the future. We're starting to see things like renewable energy and Teslas, whatever, that are like, oh, we can start seeing like parts of what the future looks like and we know there's a better future if we're able to leverage all of these things. But then there's horizon two, which is the conflict zone. And this is where these different alternatives compete for the future. And I think we're in that messy middle right now across many different areas where you've got a declining, establishment state or establishment industry. You've got, rising new innovations and technologies. and then you've got this competition in the middle where like, not only are they competing for who's gonna win, but we as a society are [00:45:00] competing and discussing and figuring out how do we use this in the best way? How do we defend ourselves against disinformation campaigns? How do we defend ourselves against artificial intelligence that can crash the electrical grid or. the minds of people. If it's able to infiltrate social media in ways and create influencers that influence people in nefarious ways, those are real problems that AI could create.

And AI is probably, you know, what's gonna help us to solve some of those problems. 'cause we're not gonna be able to keep up with it.

we need to figure it out. Will we? I don't know. I hope so. And I think so, but never know.

CODY: I do love that though, that so new technology comes into place and that we as a, collective society then end up discussing the problems with this new technology and then we would hope and account for the government to hopefully implement some of these policies to make sure that we still have a economic system that favors the people over the individual.

And everybody's rights and whatnot are [00:46:00] protected so that we're maintaining kind of the status quo to some extent. But still, if we look historically at society, is that you as an individual, no matter how poor you are, still living better off than a king did. in the 16th century, you have running water, you have access to medical, and you can basically do whatever you want whenever you want.

And so we still have more freedom, so we're still so much better off. And the hope and the goal is that we will end up having technology and new problems, but it creates a freer, more open society where we can hopefully derive a greater sense of meaning. Because I know that now we're at the, Maslow's hierarchy Pyramid of Needs, and we're kind of going closer and closer to the top, which necessitates answering.

For more individuals at society, how do we have meaning if money isn't as meaningful as I once thought it did. So with that in mind, what advice or direction do you have for whether it's, say somebody like me who's already been a successful [00:47:00] entrepreneur and I've, frankly I've wanted to have an impact on, I want it to feel that thing that I'm making a difference, but I'm also afraid of, investing money into something that I don't know anything about.

or even what's the best way? Should I try and start a company about climate change when I don't know anything about it? Should I just, find some VC companies that I can maybe work with? and also how do you, as a smaller entrepreneur, how do we change them so that we're not just always creating content or solving an app to get more money?

How do we change that shift so that we have more. People who want to become entrepreneurs as a function of making an impact and are willing to take the risk necessary in order to achieve that.

Justin: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think part of it is around recognizing the opportunity. we just need to flip some of these conversations on their head and say instead of, Hey, these are a bunch of problems, and so give up. Like, here's a bunch of opportunities. Go solve a problem. And then the second part is know thyself, right?

Like, who [00:48:00] are you and what do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? And therefore, what can you do in the world that's going to have a positive impact? maybe you're really good at marketing and you love getting people excited about something. That could be a great opportunity as an influencer to raise awareness around an issue and, and get things moving. Or, be a marketing person at a startup. maybe you, really love. Exploring new ideas and you know, figuring out what's next and, do some scenario planning and figure out some visions of what that future could look like. Maybe you love just, giving yourself a checklist and ticking off boxes and getting shit done. maybe you just need to like figure out what that checklist is so you can go execute on it and just knock it out of the park. Maybe you like to analyze things, right? Maybe you like to take things apart and figure out how they work. Maybe you like to criticize, Hey, these are crazy ideas.

Like here's 27 reasons why that won't work. even though all these different types of people annoy the shit out of each other, they're really valuable to have in the same room because they balance each other really well if they can recognize the value that each other is bringing [00:49:00] to the table. So you need the explorers who are out there kind of, out front scouting and figuring out where, what could happen. You need the people who are the exciters who go out and get, you know, people really excited about what could be and, and how, uh, this might happen. You need the people who analyze and say, don't you wanna bring water on this trip? and then you need people who are really executing and just getting things done. and so I think part of just knowing yourself and knowing what role you play is really valuable. and then also sort of flipping sort of idea of privilege on its head. like you touched on that. Sure.

Even some of the poorest people in America at least are, more well off than many kings. and even if that's not your immediate, Property or anything that you own, the resources you have access to are, immensely more than someone did not too long ago. And I'm not trying to say that privilege doesn't exist in many areas, and underprivileged definitely exists right in many ways. But I think from a [00:50:00] personal perspective, when we're starting to think about what we can do as people is looking at instead of where, what are all the reasons that I'm disadvantaged and what are all the ways that I don't have privilege and someone else has it, that's a good place to start. But next we really quickly need to go to what are the privileges that I have, whether that's, financial or political, which are sort of the, traditional ways of looking at it. But what about community privilege or, what about, educational privilege or access to information or living near a place that does have resources or people who are smart and can do these things? Or having a computer so that I can, get these things done. So start, flipping it into what are the privileges that I really do have and how can I leverage those to help people who don't have it? How can I leverage the privileges that I'm afforded and be not only grateful for them, 'cause that makes me happier as a human being, but how can I think about how to use those in ways that are gonna impact the world in a positive way? and I think, that kind of shift in mindset [00:51:00] and then, the focus on knowing yourself and what you're good at. and then figuring out what you really care about.

I kind of see it in two different ways. There's some people who, there's two types of people in the world, right? Let's say, there's people who want to have a large amount of impact on a few number of people, and they wanna look those people in the eye, and they wanna feel the, impact they've had in the gratitude.

These are people who are teachers, they're firefighters, police officers, you name it. And then there are some people who are like, I'm okay with having a small amount of impact on a large number of people. And I think often these are more of the entrepreneurs and, people who get into politics for the right reasons or business, et cetera.

And that's my judgment for what's right or wrong. but those different things motivate people differently. I worked with someone in tech who used to be a firefighter and, you know, we were working on a renewable energy and sustainable business, and he said, you know, I just really miss being able to look people in the eye that I saved. And, knowing that I saved that person's life and I've really felt like a [00:52:00] hero. And he is like, I have a hard time with this 'cause I, you know, I know we're doing something good, but I just don't get to see it. I'm not close enough to it. And I totally respect that. That's, a hundred percent true for him.

and myself, I kind of think about, large, impacting a large number of people. It can be a smaller amount. I love, one-on-one and impacting people have done, tutoring and education and stuff. And it's really, really meaningful and, and rewarding. but also I think we need some of these sort big picture, concepts. We need to unleash ourselves to be free to think about what the world could be without the constraints that we put our on ourselves today and without the. Sort of judgment that comes along with it. I feel like, you know, the word optimist is, has become sort of a bad word in a lot of ways, right?

Because it implies being naive. It implies, not understanding fully what's going on. and not everybody has to be an optimist, but we have to be willing to imagine what could go right and how the world might work out so that we can build in that [00:53:00] direction and try our best to make that happen.

Because if we don't a hundred percent sure it's not gonna happen, right? If we try our best, we may build it. We may overcome these challenges. I think we probably can. I think it's a likelihood. But If we don't even try, there's zero likelihood we're gonna get there, and we're probably, we're not gonna feel great about it when it hits.

I'm just like, God, I wasted all that time and all those years building a SOC delivery app, you know, when I should have been trying to do something about something I knew was important to humanity and to our future. So, yeah, focus on that. You know, think about, not only environmental, but abundance.

So I, like to think about in terms of sustainable abundance. So classic two by two, right? We've kind of gone from unsustainable scarcity where, nobody really had much, whatever we build was pretty unsustainable. We just burned stuff and ran buffaloes off of cliffs and, killed all the mammoths.

Right? and we still didn't have that much. We sort of shifted up that scale to unsustainable [00:54:00] abundance where we have much more available and, more people have more resources and more access to information and healthcare and all kinds of things. You know, we could shift to sustainable scarcity. Which is, what some people are pushing back on. I don't think that's the goal of many people, but what would that look like? It would look like authoritarianism, where there's immense amounts of control. Everyone has to live in these, cold, dark apartments and, don't move around too much 'cause you might spend too much carbon, right?

this is the fear of the sustainable world, which is nobody wants and nobody's pushing for. But I think that's more of an authoritarian approach, which leads to social collapse. and so it won't work anyway. So I think the only viable future for humanity is sustainable abundance.

And the good news is that's a much more fun and better world for all of us to live in anyway. Is one where we can go out and, Try to live our dreams and pursue happiness and try to figure out our limits as a species, and we can [00:55:00] do so in a way that's not, you know, destroying the planet that we depend on.

Because without ecology, there's no economy,And so we need to be able to reach that level and all of us have a part to play.

CODY: I really absolutely love all your views, and frankly that's, quite rare for me to have a conversation with somebody in which. I, I, agree. We have, we need the optimism. You have the realistic optimist, which is probably the best way of looking at it. And I love the, the perspective that you can either be somebody who wants to have a large impact and a few amount of people, or a small impact and a large amount of people, and those being a way that creates that inner fire, that drive, that ambition, that allows us to kind of go on this journey that we all have on ourselves.

And then the concept of sustainable abundance, in that we should be in a society in which we all have equal access to various technologies, and we're able to maintain that without ruining the planet. That we're all kind of, you know, on this spaceship flying through earth. and so you touch on so many different [00:56:00] kind of core concepts about privilege, about, meaning about being, say, less individualistic as a society, and even having like a mindset that is shifting from what's preventing and blocking me from what is inspiring me.

What kind of philosophies, know this is a broad question, but there's so many individual views that you have within this wider argument, and I'm wondering what. Impacts, what would've you read? What influences of, from all of these perspectives, I know it's a broad question, but privilege, individualism, mindset.

Is there anything that kind of pops to your mind as like something that either myself or the listener can go and view?

Justin: great question. Difficult one to answer. hard to distill, but, I think that Jeremy Rifkin book, zero Marginal Cost Society is a really good one. it's a really good way of thinking about how economics could work towards our betterment. there's things like Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, which is a great way of thinking about artificial intelligence.

I think. [00:57:00] Where, we're creating a new form of life that's able to not only evolve its hardware as we've done, we've been able to evolve our software with culture, but with artificial intelligence, we're taking it to that, 3.0, next step. So there's a lot of really interesting frameworks there. yeah, there's so many good books. There's, book called How to Save the World, by Katie. Patrick. that's a fun, optimistic and like visually exciting book. and there's just, there's just so much out there.

I mean, in terms of philosophies, I think I've always been interested in philosophy and, love Nietzsche as much as I love Camu and, you know, a lot of these other, thinkers. That, help you to understand what your own take is. And you don't have to be one or the other, you don't have to be a federalist, you don't have to be a localist, you don't have to be, you know, nihilist or an optimist.

we're all of the above, right? and that's for good reason, that there's a good time to be a nihilist and there's a good time to be an absurdist. And so I think those are, good resources. And I think just thinking about it in terms of, like you said, [00:58:00] we're on this little, beautiful crystal of living things.

This biosphere floating through a, very cold, infinite universe that. Probably has other life and probably has all kinds of, forms of consciousness and stuff. And definitely is more complex than we know. But, that perspective is helpful and it's helpful to think about how sure our lives are, you know, I mean, I, recently lost my father unfortunately, and I was there with him when he died, and, I've always tried to hold death close. and I think that just sort of really reinforced that idea and that thinking that, you know, when you're thinking about what you're doing in life and you're making decisions about what to do, like think about yourself when you're 90 years old, let's say, and you're on your deathbed,

You've got a week left to live. And say, Hey, 90-year-old dying, Justin, what would you do in this situation? Should I jump, should I go for it? Or should I like, play it safe? often that person's gonna be like, eh, screw it. Have fun. you're gonna end up here one way or the other. but there's gotta be a balance where [00:59:00] you plan, like, you're gonna live forever, but you live like you're gonna die tomorrow. and so everybody's got their own calculus on how they get to that point. But, yeah, I think just absorb as much as you can and then look within for the wisdom that you can find to help you, develop along your own path.

CODY: Yeah, I think that life is, in some ways it's trying to balance the amount of hedonism that we, seek in the short term, but also recognizing that, say, working really hard to accomplish something that you can feel proud of, that is also a form of happiness just as much as alcohol or sex or drugs is.

And being able to find that balance between those two, I think what it can allow us to build that positive version of society without being, without having this perpetual burnout that we're seeing so often from where we are now.

Justin: right? Like, you know, drug sex and rock and roll, all of that is sacred in the right amounts, right? Like going to a music festival and dancing your heart out is one of the most beautiful things you can do. But also, building a business that you believe in and, having impact [01:00:00] on the world is also incredibly important.

If you burn yourself out to the point where you just can't even feel or think anymore, then that's over the top. Like there are periods where you have to work late and, you know, skip sleep for a night. but over the long term, everything in moderation.

CODY: And so I know that you have a website. if they're interested. Where should people go if they want to follow your ideas and hear more of what you have to say.

Justin: Yeah. the book is a great place to start. It's called What Could Go Right. designing our ideal future, to move from, continual crises into a thriving world. and so there's a lot of, a lot of these ideas and a lot more there where, I really had a chance to talk to people and interview people and come to some of these ideas and conclusions, and also, think through what that world might look like from the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs scale if we adapted it to society. and so there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. That's a good place to start. If you, you like these types of conversations, on Twitter, I'm Jay Bino, and then if you wanna reach out, I'm at justin c bean.com.

CODY: Justin Bean, thank you for being here. It was an [01:01:00] absolute pleasure. I learned so much and would definitely be following up with you.

Justin: Thanks so much, Cody. This is a great conversation. I really appreciate you bringing me into it and being such a great leader of this podcast.