Doug 
All right, there we go. There we go.

I gotta play it. It's like, you know two different genres We got them at the Monero topia show the Monero talk show. I got I gotta get in the right mode here So now I'm in that Monero talk mode Subtle differences, but but but they're real. How's it go man? How are you? I'm doing great

Derrick 
Hey, brother, it's good to, good to chat with you. I was telling you, I've just been knee deep in my research, so it's good to come up for air every now and then. 

Doug 
Yeah, dude, you do some amazing work. You're a talented guy, and you can tell that you put a lot of effort into it.

This series, I was just trying to kind of catch up on it, but it's not something you could just watch in an hour. This is 17 parts, soon to be 17 parts. And yeah, some of them are like an hour long, and very, very well done, man. We could get into it right away if you want, and go down the rabbit hole a little bit. 

Derrick 
Yeah. 

Doug 
What compelled you to start this project in the beginning and did you kind of like map it out from day one? And I guess before even that, you could just kind of tell the people overall what we're talking about here.

But I'm very curious if this was like, you went into this knowing what all your 17 parts were, what the final objective was, or if you kind of. 

Derrick 
I definitely didn't know what it was going to look like in the end. So yeah, thanks again for having me, Doug.

For those who don't know my work, The Conscious Resistance, I do a lot of journalism, but the Pyramid of Power is the documentary series. It's at the pyramidofpower.net. You can find it on all the usual platforms as well if you search the pyramid of power. And the interesting thing about this is it actually started out as a two and a half hours, three hour presentation I was giving live in person back in 2018. I did two US tours traveling, actually promoting Bitcoin at the time and promoting decentralization localization in 2017 and 2018. They were funded by Roger Ver and in 2018, I was sort of like looking for something new to talk about and to bring to the audience. We did 50 cities. So this was like a 50 city tour over three months. It's pretty crazy, but we had crowds as small as five people and some as big as 50 plus people. And I was just honing this idea. I really decided, you know what? I don't think I've ever given a real deep dive on all the different pieces of what I call The Pyramid of Power, which is just looking at different institutions and organizations and individuals who have played a role, whether we're talking about the establishment media or big tech or pharma, things of that sort, and just trying to look at all those different pieces. And then also, as I tried to do with all my work, present some solutions. And after doing the tour, I mean, everybody was kind enough to sit through this two and a half hour, three hour presentation. But after the tour, I was like, maybe this isn't the best format for it. Maybe there's a better way to condense all this information down. And so by 2020, I started thinking about this idea of doing it in documentary form. And I thought of, OK, I'll do one big epic documentary, but it's going to be an eight hours long and nobody's going to watch that. So what's the best way to break this information down? And that evolved into doing a documentary series. And at first, it was, I think, 12 episodes of what I was aiming for. And the further I got in, it's gone to 17. And I've resisted adding any more just to kind of because a lot of these pieces are sort of interconnected, as I'll share later. But the idea with it was to make it a documentary that would present my own original research. But also, there's a lot of topics like, say, for example, the Federal Reserve. G. Edward Griffin wrote the book about the Federal Reserve more than 30 years ago at this point. James Corbett and other people have done great documentaries on the Federal Reserve. I felt like I didn't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel for every single topic. So the idea would be my original research plus references to pre-existing books and other existing documentaries, highlighting them and trying to condense that down. The original goal was to do all the episodes in 30 minutes or less and to make it, you know, sort of like Netflix binge ball where you could just get pulled in. As you said, a few of them are up to, I think, about 50 minutes. 

Derrick 
I think it's the longest one, the intelligence networks, which is just I looked at the US, UK, Israeli, Russian and Chinese intelligence networks. So it's kind of hard to do that in 30 minutes. But that was the general idea is like, let's make a series. And the goal at the beginning was to do it in seasons of four episodes at a time. So that's kind of how we've released them since 2021.

And every episode, 30 minutes are in that range, presenting original research plus the best research available. And then every episode ends with some ideas on, like, say, for example, the Federal Reserve. If you want to defeat this system, look into Monero, look into alternative currencies, things of that sort. So every episode does try to end with suggested solutions. And then each episode also ends with, if you want to learn more about this topic, read these books, watch these documentaries. And everything at the Pyramid of Power.net, every episode has all the transcripts with all of my sources. Everything that I'm putting down is documented either in other mainstream reporting or government documents or books. And, you know, I have strayed away from speculation and just sticking to the facts of what we can prove. That'll be a little tougher in this final episode. But for the most part, everything that I've documented through these different pieces is 100 percent backed up by facts and documented multiple sources and some of my own original sources. And yeah, so we have been working on this now since 2021. We've done the whole series completely crowdfunded, which all the money has gone to just pay my editors because I've just been super, super lucky to work with some talented editors. Like, my side of the whole thing is to do all the research. I write all the scripts and then I record the audio narration. And I might have some direction in there like, hey, show this article on screen or show this different thing. But I've worked with three editors at this point and I'm working with my final editor for this last episode who's been with me for the last few episodes. And these are just talented people who are definitely taking a pay cut from what they could be getting paid elsewhere for the skills that they're bringing. But they believe in this project just as much as I have as I do.

So, yeah, we've been able to crowdfund all 16 episodes with just over 30,000 U.S. dollars. And that just went to paying the editors for their time. I mean, I think the last episode my editor told me he put probably 400 hours into it. And if people go back and watch the last one, I think you can really see the quality and the time and attention that he puts into it as much as I put into it. So now that it's coming to an end, as I was telling you earlier, I'm just like doing all different research. You know, I've been ordering books that are 150, 200 years old, looking at some of these topics, not because just because they're old, they necessarily mean they're true. 

Derrick 
But just to go back and trace the sort of origins of claims of like, it's the Zionist or it's the Jesuits and everybody's got their different theory. And essentially the goal for this last episode is to explore as many of those different theories from you know, look at them in a serious way.

And I'm interviewing a number of really talented researchers who are going to present those points. Like I have James Corbett, David Eich, Katherine Austin-Fitz, Richard Grove, I think Whitney Webb will be in this last one again, G. Edward Griffin, who wrote the book on the Federal Reserve back the day. A lot of other talented researchers that folks may or may not know, but these are just people who kind of are the experts in their field. You could say Larkin Rose, who will be talking about the belief in authority itself and how that plays a role in the whole pyramid, too. So we're going to explore all these concepts from people who say it's aliens to it's Satanists to it's just capitalists to it's, you know, the deep state to, you know, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, etc. We're going to explore all these big ideas and show what we can actually prove and show maybe where people are speculating or assuming. 

Speaker 2 
Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible.

Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. 

Doug 
I love it, man. I think everybody watching this stream, everybody in Monero land, they also appreciate this concept of searching for the truth.

Are we just in a program at the end of the day? Are we in a matrix controlled and controlled by some evil doers? Or is this all naturally blossom and it's just power dynamics working themselves out? Is there some deeper, darker spiritual force that the universe... 

Derrick 
all the above, right? All the above have some elements of truth in there. 

Doug 
I think anytime I've had you on the show, I've kind of, at one point or another, kind of asked you, like, so what is your grand theory on who is in control? And I guess the answer is in this series, right?

Like, obviously we don't know, and I guess you obviously haven't fully kind of came to a conclusion on it. But yeah, I mean, what would your, you know, kind of your summary be at this point, right? And I think it's gonna evolve over time. Like, how do you see it? 

Derrick 
The cool thing about this for me, Doug, is because when I started, quote unquote, waking up 2009, got into Bitcoin, got into algorithm and just solutions. I've always been very solutions focused, but I've also had an instinct to research and to investigate. That's what led me to doing independent journalism, and that's now what I do and how I pay my bills.

I think you either have that instinct to question, to think, and dig, and I like to solve puzzles and go find old books and papers and research and put pieces together. It's also been a fun experiment for me to go back and revisit maybe some of the beliefs that I might have adopted in the early years. In my experience, and I've seen this with other people, maybe folks listening can relate. If you start to wake up and you question things, and especially if you're in a panic state where you're just consuming documentaries and books and podcasts, it can be a chaotic state of mind. Especially as you're unlearning certain things and then learning new things, many times maybe you don't go back and revisit those things and you just end up carrying certain beliefs that you might later find are true. I mean that both in the sense of believing normie mainstream version of stories and history or adopting so-called conspiracies and realize, okay, maybe this person I watched, like say Alex Jones, had part of the truth, but not the full truth, or he twisted it and made it biased in this direction. I've experienced that quite a bit. I think anybody who questions their own presuppositions and their own conspiracies and their own thoughts will come to those different conclusions. It doesn't necessarily mean everything you believe was wrong once again, but it's important to approach it.

As I've been revisiting these topics, that's the lens that I'm filtering all of it through. Behind me are some of the books that I read when I was first starting to wake up. I've been rereading those and revisiting those, and then ordering books like this one. This is called Foreign Cons... Here's the full title, foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States, how the Jesuits used the Vatican foreign monarchies and the St. Leopold Foundation and subservient Catholic mobs to secretly infiltrate and control America. This was written in 1878. In 1878, wow. Yeah, by a man named Samuel Morse, the dude who made Morse code. He was actually a conspiracy theorist. He said that there was a plan by the Jesuits and the Catholic church to take... 

Doug 
I love that. That's a that's a sick book man. What is it good? Oh, yeah, I can't even ask you 

Derrick 
The simplest title is just foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States. Yeah, a lot of people don't know about that history of him. And there's others that I've ordered over the last couple of months. This one back here is called proofs of a conspiracy by this pastor named John Robeson, who was actually saying it was a Freemason conspiracy. He wrote his in the late 1700s. He actually wrote letters to George Washington that are still preserved in George Washington's archive. But again, little facts like this aren't things that were ever taught.

And so what I'm going to be able to do and show is the role that these different groups have played because it's 100% a fact. Whatever we think about conspiracies, who's at the top, it is 100% a fact that secret societies have played a role in history. And this is for anybody who's honest, when they look at history, you could look at the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution. And there's quite a bit of Freemasons who are involved in the planning and even some of the founders of America were involved in the Freemasons. Now, the question becomes, does that mean that they guided the whole thing themselves? Or is it just a coincidence? Or, okay, these people are all in the same club, so maybe they're all pulling in the same direction? That's where we get into more speculation. And I do think even in the conspiracy culture, people are too, they oversimplify things and they're like, it's the Jews, it's this thing. When in fact, from my perspective, that's starting to be formed as I'm writing the script is I think it's different groups and different players collaborating at different times when convenient for them. And sometimes

Doug 
competing, the way, yeah, the real simple way I like is just competing mafias, right? 

Derrick 
And sometimes they collaborate if it's in their interest and sometimes they might go against each other because there's actually a whole another history too of how like the interesting thing about some of the books I've been finding claiming that it's the Jesuits that are the top of the pyramid, those are written by 32nd degree Freemasons and then vice versa. Some of the books saying that it's the Freemasons are written by Jesuits. So is that just like a war between those two groups trying to point the finger at each other? But then there's other, you know, I think deeper aspects that are worth looking into.

There's a really great researcher named Daniel Estulin who's been, he's been at this since I think the 80s, 90s. He wrote the first big book on the Bilderberg group and they've of course been around since 1950s. We don't even really know what their name is. They just called the Bilderberg group because that was where the first place they met the Bilderberg Hotel in 1954. But we know that every year they meet in different locations every May and that it involves presidents and prime ministers and a lot of powerful people and it's all behind closed doors. This has become more and more exposed in the age of the internet and it's sort of forced them to even have a website now where they at least post the list of attendees, but they don't tell what they're discussing and it's all off the record. And so Daniel was one of the first people researching that, but he also is one of the researchers who point to, in his view, the top of the pyramid being what is sometimes called the Venetian Black Nobility, which is, you know, from Venice or generally more generally speaking, the idea that it's really still these old houses of royalty in Europe that are actually very much involved in manipulating the banking system and involved in manipulating governments, but they've chosen over time to sort of go behind the scenes. And so Daniel, as well as some other people, started looking at the like who actually owns the land in Europe, for example, looking at the land, holding records and patents and titles and finding out there are still these families, these royal houses that do own quite a bit of land. Even if we don't necessarily look at them as more than sort of figureheads, you know, they're not the real power. It's the government anymore. And so Daniel Eschlin argues that there's about 10 families that are based in and around Europe, some in Italy and elsewhere that are not names that we would be familiar with. Like many people know, Rockefeller, Rothschild, some of these names that are definitely, I would say, up there. But in his view, he argues that that's, you know, maybe close to the top, but still maybe middle management, not top of the pyramid. And it's, in fact, these families that have been around for centuries that are kind of manipulating, pulling strings behind it. Now, that doesn't mean that I take a view that whoever's at the top of the pyramid literally controls every single aspect of our life and we have no free will and that nothing happens without their approval. 

Derrick 
I think that's where it gets a little cartoonish. But that doesn't mean that there isn't planning, that there isn't coordination. And yeah, so I mean, that's sort of some of the threads that I'm going down right now. 

Doug 
Yeah, I'm just writing a message here to put up a banner out over here, a banner so people could see about the Monero topia conference. I'll add that, um, which is until next February.

Yeah, man, I see, I see it as, you know, as, as competing, competing mafias. And then I guess the question becomes which mafias are the most powerful of the bunch, right? Um, and another interesting thought is just like, how some of these mafias are as old as time, right? Like that have been, you know, and that really gives them an advantage. Uh, because they've been here for so long and kind of passing on their information and their existing power to the next generation. And the mafias that are able to like really create a structure that allows them to pass it on in a way where they like hold the power among each other really do have to have a major advantage over everybody else. Like you said, like perhaps it's, you know, owning most of the property in the important parts of the world, right? Like, um, so literally there's just certain groups that have an advantage and that they coordinated early in our evolution. Right. And, uh, we're able to be the most successful groups of their time and continue to hold that power. Um,

Derrick 
Yeah, power holds on to power. I mean, I think that's one thing that history shows is that there, it doesn't, I mean, I will definitely say there are some researchers who believe that this, you could trace this line all the way back to ancient Egypt and Sumeria. And I'm skeptical of some of those claims.

Like I said, there's a book that was one of the first books that woke me up by a now deceased journalist and author Jim Mars called Rise of the Fourth Reich is another one called Rule by Secrecy. And they're both really well researched. There's definitely some pieces that I look back down like, I think he's kind of stretching there. I don't know if you can really claim that. But absolutely, we know that just as one example that in ancient Egypt and Greece, and Rome, there were definitely secret societies that did exist. And some of them surely have no link to any secret society today, they could just been groups that thought they had secret knowledge and they were up to nothing. But there are groups like the Freemasons and others that claim to have a direct lineage to some of these older groups that were in one viewpoint, protecting esoteric knowledge. And this is where things can get all messy and sticky.

Because as you search for truth, we find just like the rest of humanity, we're kind of divided and subdivided into different groups. So let's say you got this broader truth movement, then you have some people who within that space are Christian. And so for them, the search for truth and who's at the top of the it's Satan. And the answer is follow Christ. Other people, their perspectives are filtered through their anarchist philosophy or their socialist philosophy. And so they say, no, it's the capitalist class at the top. It's actually just structural and conspiracies are actually harmful and keep people from investigating the true power that exists. And I tend to think that there's elements of each of these things that are probably true. But I think what you said there is really important though, Doug, is that if even if we just go back 100 years ago, 100 years ago, families like the Rockefellers, Carnegie's and others, we don't have to go back much too further than that to see them amassing a mess amount, immense amounts of wealth that have never existed before. And then using that to establish philanthropic outfits that allow them to influence all kinds of different things and shape public conversation, shape the medical establishment, which we covered in the pyramid of power, shape the education system, which we covered in the pyramid of power, and not just in the United States, but in China and elsewhere. So even if you're just going back to the last 100, 150 years, there was clearly powerful people amassing power.

But of course, like I said, with these books that I'm researching, I mean, it goes back to the founding of the United States, where people were already warning about secret societies having an influence and different groups, maybe that had a different goal. 

Derrick 
Obviously, the founding of the nation is probably a very fragile situation. So people are just afraid, like some people want to pull it in this direction, that direction.

And of course, just because somebody wrote a book 150 years ago, 200 years ago, doesn't mean it's true either. So I'm exploring those things and seeing like, sometimes there's because for example, the Jesuits are accused of everything of from being involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, there's a whole theory and books around that. And there's some claims, like I'll just give you an example of how I chase these things down. So there's this gentleman, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he was a lawyer. He wrote a book about this around the time of Lincoln's assassination shortly afterwards. And he claimed that this was a, there's actually more than one book, but this most famous one, he said that he had been a lawyer who worked with Abraham Lincoln, and that the Jesuits, specifically the Catholic Church over in Rome, were upset because of they didn't want the Civil War to happen and they didn't want the North to win. And in fact, there are some pieces of truth to this, like you start to look and see that for some reason, Vatican recognized the South during the Civil War. And so there's a piece of truth, right? But then from there, people start making different leaps. It is true that his name was Chinnequay, this lawyer, Chinnequay and Lincoln did have some connection. But there are these claims that say, that make that quote from Chinnequay claiming that there's direct evidence connecting the Vatican to Lincoln. But the point is, I chase down these quotes, I look for like, what's the oldest book, what's the reference? I use resources like newspapers.com and others where you can find all kinds of old articles from hundreds of years ago, or 150 years, at least from some of the oldest papers around the world. And I take those things and I find clips and I've been able to verify a lot of, you know, these sort of old wives tales and it gets passed around the internet that most people don't actually go and fact check. And a lot of times they don't pan out. And sometimes they do. And so that's sort of the approach I'm taking. I'm not just repeating the same conspiracy line that people have heard on a million documentaries. And it's a quote that actually, if you look into it, there's no verifiable evidence to it. You know, one other just quick example that I often use, like I've been researching fluoride and the dangers of water fluoridation since 2011. I was the only journalist that went to the federal trial in San Francisco last year for two weeks reporting on the case against the EPA. I've been following the story immensely and again approaching it, not as a conspiracy theorist saying, you know, the Nazis used fluoride to brainwash people or the communists did it. 

Derrick 
These are claims that get tossed around the internet instead just focusing on the actual evidence. But over the years I've heard people say those sort of things and I've tried to chase them down. There is no verifiable evidence that the Nazis or the communists used fluoride in any of their camps or concentration camps, internment camps, but it's a meme that gets passed around like literally memes of this or in articles and things like that. People just kind of have absorbed this information. But I followed it down to like the original article that made this claim and that referenced a newspaper from like the 1950s. And there's no record of that newspaper anymore. So if it did, if it was true, it's lost the pages of history and that sucks. But at this point, I just tend to be like, well, there's better arguments to make that aren't as hyperbolic. So why would I make that claim when I can't really prove it? You know, if somebody, if I'm talking to some normie and they're like, okay, prove it to me, let's go ahead and look up, show me where the Nazis did this. And you can't prove it. Well, then you just make the whole issue look stupid.

And they're probably less likely to listen instead of saying, well, hey, actually, here's a federal court case that happened last year. We can look that up, the EPA, this whole thing. That's just the sort of approach that I try to take with this documentary. And I encourage people who haven't watched it, you know, it's designed to sort of watch all the way through, but really pick a topic that interests you and dive in. But if let's say you have a friend who's new to these ideas, the whole goal was that you could sit somebody down and say, look, it's less than 30 minutes, just watch this. And if they get sucked in, you know, he might change their life by the end of it. I've had people tell me they've used it to homeschool their kids, which is kind of cool, have them watch episodes and do homework reports on it. And yeah, all kinds of. 

Doug 
I was thinking that as I was watching, I got to get my 10-year-old to watch this. Because it is a constant struggle with these kids and they're just, you know, they're getting actively brainwashed in school and you have to give them the other information for them to begin to question things.

Otherwise, it gets to the point where it's too late. 

Derrick 
Yeah, even just get them to question even if you say like hey don't necessarily believe this whole thing But can you debunk it or what do you oh yeah? 

Doug 
Yeah, well that's the overall lesson I always tell my daughter, she's a smart kid, she really loves school, which is great, but I'm also like, I'm like, question everything. You don't have to believe the things I say, the things I'm telling you.

Just know that what I am telling you I think is the truth, but I may be wrong, and you're much smarter than I am, question me, and then definitely question everything you learn at school and elsewhere, the things you see on TV, think about who's sending you that message and what they might be trying to achieve by providing that message to you, and that's it. And then I'm like, you know, just please do that, the rest I can't control, you know, that's kind of my take. 

Derrick 
those critical thinking skills. 

Doug 
Exactly. That's what they need at the end of the day.

Yeah. So bringing up the Kudo here. So those that use Monero into Monero, I imagine quite a few of you that are watching us right now, or you might be just a Derek Rose fan, but I imagine you're also into Monero at this point too. So yeah, go ahead and you can donate. If you just Google Kudo, you'll find it. You could find the website and it's a Monero-based fundraising site. I'm sure Derek, if you want to put the link in the stream, all donations will go directly to Derek's Monero wallet. No fees are taken. So it's a great way to fundraise. And basically it's unstoppable. Derek can't be deep banked from Monero. We could send him donations. He can raise his funds. So go ahead and do that. Let's see if we could get his full funding goal here. I love it. 

Derrick 
I'm just learning about it, man. Thanks for sharing it with me. It's been cool kind of becoming familiar with it. And this is the first time I'm using it.

I do have another fundraiser that's for those who are doing fiat, but it's been cool to see some of the support coming in from the Monero community, so I definitely appreciate that. 

Doug 
Yeah. And it's a real powerful use case, right? Like I'm saying here, right? So without censorship, anybody can raise funds for anything.

I think yours is actually the perfect example, right? Like free speech, journalism, putting information out there that certain powerful people may not want you to get out there. Let's use Monero to raise funds to fund this journalism. It's actually kind of the perfect use case for kuno. So

Derrick 
Yeah, I love it. And we've raised just over one Monero so far from six donors. So thank you to the folks who've done that. Obviously, it's a it's a anonymous there. So I can't see anybody's names, but I appreciate everybody who has contributed there. And I'll also say like I got another donation off the off the platform that somebody sent me. So just thanks to everybody who's been supporting.

We've only been doing it for the last week and a half. And we're doing it until April 1st. And between what's coming in a Monero and what's coming on the Fiat fund, we raised over $5,000. So far, our goal is 1000 USD. Like I said in the video, people can check out there and in the description. 5000 is just to pay my editor. And then if we do make it to pass that and 10k, which we're doing pretty good, then we're going to immediately put those once the final episode is released, put those into producing USB drives and DVDs, and I'm going to turn all my scripts into a companion book as well. So all this research is collected with all the sources and everything. So yeah, this is kind of it's the end of the series pretty soon. But it's also just the beginning. And I kind of feel like this is going to be an evergreen project. One of my editors from years ago gave me some great advice and said focus on evergreen stuff, not something that's going to be here and gone in a week. And this for me is something that I'll be able to promote for the rest of my life, like just these topics aren't going to change there. I think they're probably going to

Doug 
You're gonna just have to add more more chapters as we learn more I mean, yeah, I don't think it ever ends right unless unless you're gonna discover the truth But unfortunately, I don't think that's gonna happen in our lifetime I mean, do you think I mean we get all philosophical there Do you think humanity ever you know actually does discover the truth? I feel like it's a race too, right?

So like we're We have the internet we have the ability to save Information throughout time and space and pass on information to each other But we also have these powerful groups that are gaining You know are gaining abilities with new technology with AI and surveillance tech And so do you think we even like, you know, are we ever capable of getting to the truth or will those those that are fighting against us Ultimately keep it from us

Derrick 
So this is one thing that I've had to accept as an individual, and maybe this will change with time, but long ago, especially when I was first going down the rabbit hole, and I'm pretty obsessive with anything I get into, but especially in the beginning, like I think a lot of people have that wake up experience and you're watching YouTube videos all night, listen to podcasts and just trying to figure things out, especially I'd say some people went that way during COVID, that was their wake up experience. And I had to really kind of have a conversation with myself years ago and just say like, hey, just accept that there's never going to be this sort of grand reveal.

Like, at least I don't see it happening, right? Like, I'm not going to be, there's not, I don't know, I just don't think we're going to get this massive disclosure, whether people who think Trump's coming into office and he's going to reveal all the truth, like they're talking about JFK files today or the QAnon people who think like there's this mass awakening. I do think there's an awakening per se and Monero's part of it and other things are part of it, but I don't know if it's mass. I tend to think that like the masses of humanity, they tend to just follow what's in front of them. They watch the mainstream movies and mainstream TV shows and eat at the mainstream restaurants and buy Bitcoin in the mainstream places. You know, they just, people who do what's easy to do, they go along to get along. Then there are those who are, and not to say those people aren't good people and can't be capable of critical thinking, but they just do what is convenient and easy. I think that's the majority of people.

Then there are those who are questioning and thinking and we go off in a million different directions of what's the right way to fix the world and what's the real truth and who's at the top and all this sort of stuff. We kind of subdivides further and further from that. What I am working towards and what I hope for is that there will be enough of a groundswell of even five, maybe as high as 10% of the population and who knows, maybe we're already there. Maybe we've just been fooled to think that we're a lot smaller than we are. But if you could get five to 10% of the population and for my efforts, the focus is building parallel systems. So not say five to 10% of people go overthrow the government and become the government, but a good amount of people of the population creating and building and participating in parallel systems.

If those systems become obviously better than the old decaying debt-based immoral systems that we're all used to, then the idea is that the masses would change over or would switch over, at least some of them might. Maybe others will choose to just stay in the current systems because that's what they know, that's what they're used to or they're indoctrinated to think that's the best there is. But I definitely don't really believe that there's going to be just some singular moment where we're all awake and everything's revealed. 

Derrick 
And I don't know, I just don't have much optimism for that. But obviously, I haven't given up.

So I put all my energy through this documentary and through other things to try to reach people. And thankfully, I mean, if people can just go, you can look on the fiat fundraiser we have, there's just a bunch of really, there's been 80 donors over there. Just so many really heartwarming and humbling comments from people who say that my work and the pyramid of power has helped reach them and help them reach other people and continue their journey. And that's really what this is all about for me. This is not a money-making venture, per se. Maybe in the long term, it might bring some cash back in for all the hundreds and hundreds of hours I've put into this. But it's because I think it's important. This information needs to be conserved. And I think that I'm capable of compiling it together in a way that is easy to understand and then working with some amazing people to make it visually appealing. So my hope is at least this will be a part of the ongoing awakening of some of the population, but not very optimistic that it's going to be a mass scale thing. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, that's going to take some time. But I do highly recommend people check it out and donate to it. It's definitely worthy of donation and support.

Like I said, I think you do great work. You definitely put your heart and soul into it. And you produce high-quality stuff, and you do the research, man. And I've been following you, listening to you. Obviously, I've gotten to know you now, really. I guess we've known each other now for like three years, right? I kind of discovered you late in the game, considering I'm a big Monero person and there's a lot of crossover. You've been talking about opting out in parallel societies for years now, right? I mean, you've been tooting that horn since like what? I don't even know when... I guess when you started with Bitcoin, right? 2018? 

Derrick 
I discovered a tourism in 2011 and I started using Bitcoin in 2013. So definitely like the focus started to come together that like, hey, we need to be doing something alternative to this. And it took a few years to really kind of put it all together and this the way I do now. But yeah, it's definitely been my focus.

It didn't take me long to see like, I don't think politics is going to fix the things we're dealing with here. 

Doug 
Yeah, we've spoken about that as well, right? And obviously, I completely agree with you.

I just brought up, I was gonna bring up XMR Bazaar because I wanna make sure your followers, your people know about it. But what are some tools and systems and things that you are most excited about in terms of things we can use to fight the powers that be and regain liberty or hold on to the liberty we have? What are the things that are first and foremost that you see as, because I know you're very much solutions focused too, which is fantastic. You, like you said, even in the series, you always end the series kinda with like, well, that's great, we pointed out a problem, what do we do about it? What are some of your best problem solving things that you use? 

Derrick 
Yeah, I mean, obviously I support Monero and I think that it's still a tool that provides an opportunity, as you said, with the Kuno as well, like an opportunity for people who want to support me to do so in an uncensorable way. I first got into Bitcoin and Monero because of trying to avoid using the banks and that came out of being involved in the Federal Reserve, in the Fed movement and learning about people who are using silver dollars and then goldbacks and barter networks and time banks and just learning about all these different ways of transacting that may be an alternative to the Federal Reserve system.

And then, of course, I discovered, you know, Bitcoin was like, wow, this seems to be a piece of the puzzle, too. I also think it's hugely important to think about your food and where that comes from and not necessarily saying everybody needs to be a farmer, per se, or anything like that, but having some awareness and connection to your local community and where your food comes from because easily disrupted. I also think that the current food production and distribution systems are pretty unsustainable and just wasteful and things like permaculture can really change the world if more people adopt it.

Like, even if governments, like on a city scale, were to adopt permaculture, you would see massive change and getting rid of pesticides and things like that. But since I don't believe in political solutions and I don't want to wait around for them, I try to take that into my own hands and try to think holistically. So, we're talking money, crypto, Monero food, getting the permaculture, you know, volunteering at a community garden or learning some in an urban farm or even just putting up a few plants in the windows sill or just watching some videos, learning more about what permaculture means. And I think that's important to me, permaculture and agriism go hand in hand because they're just, it's a, quote unquote, alternative system to the mainstream way to grow food. I also think we need to think about the technology side of things. Obviously, that's sort of interlinked with Monero, but there's a lot of people I've noticed in the freedom communities, truth communities, spiritual communities, conscious communities, what have you, who are doing good work in a lot of ways. And then their entire business, their entire event, their entire life is on Gmail or Google Docs or Microsoft or things of that sort. So for me, I talked about this at Monero topia this last year, that it's important to kind of have this holistic approach, like so Monero is a piece of the puzzle, but how about we also try to get off of Google as much as possible and use better platforms that are encrypted and open source and decentralized and distributed, like really and down to the browsers we're using to the phones we're using to the VPNs, email, et cetera, just really looking at what is possible. I like to send people to knowmoregoogle.com as a cool website to just get you started on that journey. 

Derrick 
Another one's called privacytools.io. And then my buddy Hakim's website, takebackartech.org is a great website with lots of tutorials and resources to try to get off these different systems.

He also owns a company called abovephone, abovephone.com, and they sell de-googled phones loaded with privacy apps and alternatives to Google maps and said, you got magic earth or organic maps. And there's so many different options out there, but like I said earlier, you're not going to find them in the mainstream electronics store. You're not going to find them at the big box stores. You got to go out of your way to sort of look for these alternatives. So I try to approach it in that holistic way. And if anybody is interested in going deeper into that journey, you guys can download my book, how to opt out of the technocratic state for free at my website, theconsciousresistance.com slash how to. And it talks about the whole exit and build strategies is what I call that, you know, just looking at different systems and figuring out how we can try to become less dependent on them. And obviously this doesn't happen overnight. So you do it in stages and phases as you are making your way towards, you know, living in line with your values. 

Doug 
I just saw, as you were saying, I was wondering, let me see, I'm pretty sure I've seen graphene phones. So even on XMR Bazaar, you can buy a graphene phone, the services, people that will help you de-Google their phone and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, you have an Aerotopia, right? We have a lot of that element as well, right? People there, we had somebody giving a workshop on how to use graphene and de-Google. Totally agree with you. I mean, I could do a lot better personally, even with things beyond Monero, right? What I like about Monero is you use it, it works, and you got digital cash. That's kind of a big part of everyone's life, just how we use our money. But yeah, obviously, we need to get off the Google and all these social media apps that are tracking and tracing us.

And yeah, it takes effort. But fortunately, I think we're getting to the point where the UX and UI in the privacy realm is really just as good as the mainstream apps. And in a lot of ways, it's why you may lose some convenience with things. You're not dealing with all the ads, you're not dealing with all the bullshit. It actually becomes a better user experience in many ways when you completely de-Google and de-sanitize your digital life and just simplify it and use something like, all right, I got my graphene phone with my cake wallet on it, and I'm on my tour browser here, on my graphene phone. Yeah, it's simplified, it helps you focus better. I personally need to sit down and do that. It takes time, right? Because you have to... It just takes time and effort. You have to off board from what you've been sucked into, right? You've all been sucked into this, you got to off board and I'm on board into the private versions of things. But it's all here at this point, right? It literally is just a choice at this point, you know what I'm saying? It's not like theoretical. 

Derrick 
Yeah, I mean, and you guys have great speakers at Monero Topia. We try to do the same thing with the people's reset and highlighting all these folks who are already creating these next level solutions. We had a guy from this company called Eden that came and spoke, and they're taking pretty much any carbon-based material and through this process that is above my head, essentially recycling it and turning it into biofuel that can be used in any other area. They're putting these in African villages, and there's just so many creative people who are outside of government and are trying to use entrepreneurship and business to create new tools.

At the end of the day, my message in the book, How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State, is not anti-technology. In fact, it's just saying, let's reevaluate our relationship with technology. I think that's what it really needs to come down to. Maybe you need an email for your business, but maybe you can find something better than Gmail. Maybe you need docs and sheets and forms to run your business, but there are alternatives like CryptPad that do all those things and are, I think, a bit moral in what they're willing to support. They're not Google and other big tech who are, in many cases, contributing to the military industrial complex.

The essential idea is let's put our energy into building those parallels, those alternatives. Even with the Pyramid of Power series, that's my ultimate goal, is to try to like, okay, let's wake you up. Also, here's some solutions, here's some ideas, really push people in that direction because I think that that's really what it comes down to. I do want to answer one question, I saw a question here, somebody said, can you source the materials personally within 500 miles of your home area to build a modern cell phone? I think I kind of get what they're going at, but I don't think that's what I was advocating for necessarily. I've heard this as well recently. People think I'm advocating for some kind of like isolationism or that because we want to build parallel systems, there won't be trading or networking or exchanging of goods and resources. My bigger picture vision is like net worth communities, eco villages, intentional communities, homesteads, whatever it is, all sorts of things that maybe we can't even dream up yet that are using parallel economic systems and parallel food systems, and we're able to trade and exchange goods, resources, services, and et cetera.

I don't have to build my own phone, I can just work with other people who have access to those things. I think that's kind of the goal though, is like how do we look deeper into these different systems and see what's in line with our values and what's not, and perhaps we're also in an imperfect world. 

Derrick 
The other thing that I kind of have issues with is just acknowledging that every time I use a laptop, there's a lithium battery in it, and that was dug up out of more than likely in Bolivia or somewhere in the Amazon from an indigenous tribe's local area where it might be poisoning their water, and I believe I'm doing good things with it, but it'd be hard to look that person in the face and say, I know this battery is poisoning your water, but I promise I'm doing good things with it, so we're in an imperfect world. There's no perfect solution to all these different things, and I don't propose to have all them, but I definitely think that we have to at least take some steps to try to live as close in line with our values. 

Doug 
Yeah, 100%, you can only do so much. What do you think of XMR Bizarre, man? I think I've asked you in the past. Obviously, I feel like this aligns with the things you're working on. 

Derrick 
I got a large hat too. Oh, sweet. Sweet. Yeah, I was going to tell you that.

Yeah. I got that up. I checked out the bazaar. I haven't bought anything off it yet, but I'm probably going to, if they're not on there yet, add my books and such on there. And I definitely will put the pyramid of power, USB and DVDs up there once we get those for sure. 

Doug 
Sweet. Yeah, there's, there's no fees.

So anybody that buys anything off, it goes direct to you. Monero master tip 25 cents. So we got our first Monero based super chat today. Derek, have you read the writings of Malachi Martin and inside look into the Jesuits by professor of the Vatican, Ponta, typical Bible Institute who claims they embrace Luciferianism and left the order. 

Derrick 
I don't know if I've read that one yet. I have a bunch of Jesuit books and some that are on the way to me right now I'm gonna look that guy up though for sure and if this if Monero master if you've got more details or you're interested You can email me at into the light at protonmail.com and shoot me some some more details definitely down to check that out 

Doug 
What's your xmrchat.com? Is it like slash Derek bros? Just slash Derek bros.

Yeah, just my full name. Yeah people you could you know Send him super chats there, too I want that to also just become a good tool for getting in touch with somebody right so like you want to get Derek's attention Send him a note through xmrchat with a with a nice tip and I'm sure he'll Notice it and get back to you right so it could be used in that way as well not just during the show for super chats

Derrick 
I haven't got my first one yet, so I'm looking for the... Oh, sweet! ...one, so whenever that comes in... 

Doug 
Yes, somebody make it happen. So yeah, so like you mentioned the Jesuits and then you mentioned some other names.

So it's like, what would be kind of your top groups or names that we should be interested in, like that we know are reals of a lot of power and that maybe that's who we should have an eye on. 

Derrick 
Sure. Look, I'm going to see, can I share my screen real quick? I'll actually show you guys the script. I haven't really shared this with anybody else yet, so I'll just show you guys a little bit of it. Can you see that, Doug? 

Doug 
I'll bring it up. Here we go. Yep. Now we see it 

Derrick 
Okay. So this is just my Crip Pad. Like I said, I use Crip Pad instead of Google Docs. This is just the beginning of the script.

But I'm getting now into the section, which I'm calling the suspects, where we start going into different aspects of this. Today, I was focusing on writing the section defining this term deep state. And for those who don't know the author, Peter Dale Scott, he's one of the first people that popularized this in the English language. So we're going to look at this term deep state. We're going to look at more kind of obvious things like corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, some of these groups that own almost everything. We're going to look at the World Economic Forum, the Club of Rome, which I consider to be more like front groups that we know about that obviously are powerful, but they're not the top. We're going to look at the Bilderberg group. Like I said, I've got Daniel Eschlin's research, and we're going to go into the whole history of the Bilderberg group. Then this is where I start to interview some of my guests, including Patrick Wood, and he believes it's the trilateral commission, the technocratic state. So we'll give him his moment to say that. I'm also going to explore this idea called Synarchy, which is a really old idea, which is essentially kind of like hidden power. I think some people interpret it different ways, but that's the way it was originally used. Then there's this claim, people out there, conspiracy researchers may have heard the term committee of 300. This is this idea that there's 300 people that it comes down to. And there's two different sources for that. One was this guy named John Coleman, who wrote the book called the committee of 300. And he claimed to have been ex-British intelligence. So I'm going to look into his story a little bit. But there was also this German politician, Walter Radenow, in 1909, who wrote something, and all he said, which people have then extrapolated from his statement, he said that, quote, 300 men, all of whom know one another, guide the economic destinies of the continent and seek their successors from their own milieu. And this was in 1909. So from there, people have interpreted and picked up with John Coleman's research to think that that's what is at the top. Then we're going to look at claims of Zionism, the Zionists, the Israeli state, and even people who would simplify that and say, it's the quote, unquote, it's the Jews. We are going to look into that. There's a gentleman named Adam Green who, that's not really his viewpoint specifically, but he definitely thinks the Judeo-Christian kind of Abrahamic religions are a big piece of the puzzles. We're going to look into that. I'm going to look into some of the stories about the Jews. There's a book I found called The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, Freemasonry, and Judaism, another one called Jews and Modern Revolutions. 

Derrick 
Then we're going to look at the Freemasons. Like I mentioned, the Freemasons being involved in the American, the French, Russian, and Spanish revolutions. You can find big lists of all the different presidents and UK prime ministers and Mexican presidents and monarchs who were all part of the Masons. As I mentioned, you can also see George Washington warned about the dangers of secret societies and associations in September 19th, 1796.

The book I mentioned, Proofs of a Conspiracy, another one called Memoirs, illustrating the history of Jacobinism, talks about the role of the Masons. I even found evidence that about half or more of the group who was involved in the coup against the original Hawaiian people, the Hawaiian kingdom, when it eventually became a state of the United States, they were called the Committee of Safety. At least half of the members of that Committee of Safety who are the ones who led to the creation of the Hawaiian state were all Freemasons. I found that through their obituaries. I found that through just tracking them down and looking into who they were, and those things are usually listed in obituaries. Then we get into the Jesuits, like I was mentioning. I got this book, Foreign Conspiracy, by Samuel Morris. I also got the Jesuit Conspiracy, The Secret Plan of the Order. There's another one who are the Jesuits and wrote what is their role in world history. Like I mentioned, Abraham Lincoln, there's some conspiracies about that. Another one called The Engineer Corps of Hell, which is similar things, making claims about the Jesuits. It is interesting.

Like I said, a lot of these threads do have historical evidence. It is true that a lot of countries kicked out the Freemasons. It's true that a lot of countries were kicking out the Jesuits in the Royal Society of Jesus and were worried about their influence from the Russian Alexander I and 1820 and others. There's definitely some indication that people were concerned about this.

Then we're going to explore the connection between the Jesuits and the Masons and how they overlap. Then, as I mentioned earlier, this idea about the Venetian black nobility and these old houses, families from Austria, Germany, Britain, Portugal, France, Sweden, Monaco, etc., Denmark, elsewhere. Then we'll look at, of course, we got to look at this claim of the Illuminati. What is the Illuminati? Who is that? Then I've got a cult researcher, Mark Pacio, who is going to offer his perspective that he thinks it's Satanist, or what he calls dark cultists that are at the top. Then we interviewed David Eich with his perspective. He does touch a little bit on the whole reptile thing and his belief that there's an otherworldly power that whatever group you put at the top, whether it's the Masons or the Jesuits or whoever, that above them are maybe possessing them, in his view, is some other force. Then there are some people who answered me and said there's no capstone. We're also going to talk about the belief in authority with James Corbett and Larkin Rose. We're going to look at the secret societies. 

Derrick 
Then the last thing as you see here, I have solutions. After all that, try to talk about solutions and then all of my recommended books that I'm going to be using for that.

That is what I'm working on day and night until I'm done. 

Doug 
That is diesel. That's a lot of work right there. That's a lot of effort. Yeah. I'm very much looking forward to, let me bring it back. Let me bring the Kudo, the Kudo back up here, bam. 

Derrick 
Yeah, it's been a fun journey getting to this point, and I feel like I'm getting somewhere, but obviously I know that anything like this, a project this big won't please everybody, obviously. Some people are going to... I'll be accused of being a shill by the people who think it's a certain group if I didn't choose that group as being the top of the pyramid or whatever, but I'm just going by what I can prove, what I know, and we're going to explore all these threads.

Like I said, it's the biggest project I've ever taken on. I'm definitely ready to be done with it, but I'm just going through it day by day, just chipping away at it, and the goal is to be done by the end of this month. Once we wrap up our crowdfunding, send the funds to my editor, send him the script and the audio, and then hopefully it'll be out by May. 

Doug 
Fantastic, man. What do you say to those that say you're just controlled opposition and you're just, you know, spinning the story for us?

Nah, I don't think anybody does say that about you, actually. I say that about a lot of people, but I don't actually, I don't think anybody actually says that about you. 

Derrick 
I get it every now and then for different things, like the flat earthers, if you don't ascribe to flat earth, then you're obviously a shill for the rounder. Everybody has a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people have their pet theory, right?

And anybody who doesn't focus on just that one pet theory is clearly obviously controlled opposition sent here by the GIA to misdirect us from the truth. And yeah, there's a healthy dose of paranoia. 

Doug 
For sure, for sure. Cleopatra tip, 25 cents.

Would you agree that there will always be just one pyramid of power in the world in terms of capitalistic power? Also, please name drop the ones who would attack Monero through data centers. 

Derrick 
So as far as that first question, will there always be a pyramid of power? Probably.

I mean, I don't know how. I mean, obviously, like for those who know my work, my website's the conscious resistance. Like I'm in the grand scheme of things. I'm pushing for a conscious evolution. Now will that happen in our lifetime? I have my doubts, but in the bigger scheme of things, I think that's what's needed to happen so that humanity can sort of grow out of this need for having authority over us. And that is definitely a point that we're going to be making in the documentary that, hey, maybe it is true that the Freemasons are doing this, and the Jesuits are doing this, and the secret societies are doing this. But perhaps it's the fact that people haven't found their own internal power and aren't able to claim that and to stand up and recognize how powerful humanity really is. I'm not black filled in terms of thinking things are completely screwed, but I don't believe the power is just going to disappear overnight either. So it probably is likely that until humanity has some sort of conscious evolution, there will be people who want to dominate others. 

Doug 
Yeah, 100%. I think he's also saying, yeah, I don't know. And they say, who's gonna attack Monero? 

Derrick 
Well, I think the people in power don't want Monero around for sure. I mean, I would say that we don't even, and we don't have to name any specific names to just say, I think governments of the, I mean, we've seen it right the last few years with the attacks on wallets, with businesses like local Monero being, you know, like deciding just to shut down and stuff like there's definitely. 

Doug 
Anybody who's threatened by a world where you know that there's aspects of it that they can't surveil, right? 

Derrick 
Exactly. And they don't want people to be able to send money privately.

They don't want people to be able to, you know, and this is, you know, it's a whole other can of worms, but we've talked about this on some other episodes that this is, I think, why there are people who would prefer to, you know, funnel people towards Bitcoin instead of Monero and make that become more popular and more easily accessible by the masses because it's easier to track and trace as opposed to Monero. 

Doug 
100% I'm just I'm just said I'm just sending a little kuno don't have cool guys do the same guys Let's let's get some fresh donations up there I use your Monero you don't you don't have to say you don't have to send a million dollars Send them you know send them ten bucks and twenty bucks send them a dollar send them something everybody everybody's got something to say Just use Monero anyway, just fun to send I agree

Derrick 
All of it's going in place. Like I said, it's not this isn't going to send me on a luxe vacation This is going to my editor so we can put in all the time. No 

Doug 
You see the work that you do for it, right? It's not uh, you're not retiring off of these off of these donations That's for sure man.

Um Shit when I had some other good questions brewing over here. Oh, yeah, like Elon Musk We got to talk about Elon Musk a little bit, right? I mean, that's that's obviously I feel like the hot story, right?

technocracy You know, it seems like that's the direction where we're ultimately headed in who's controlling the technocracy You know, that's all we right. Obviously, we don't know that's that's what you're trying to theorize here in the pyramid of power But I think we're almost pretty much certain that there will be there is some form of technocracy that I would argue has already Taken hold right and it's clear is clearly growing in power. So who controls that we don't know But yeah, ask is a player talk about that

Derrick 
Musk is definitely a player for sure. I mean, so two things on that. So in between writing The Pyramid of Power and working on this, we actually just released a mini documentary last week called Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and the Technocrats. It's 15 minutes long. I encourage people to go check that out, especially because it does mention and tie into Elon Musk.

But I've been focusing a lot on, Elon Musk is playing a role, but I've been focusing a whole lot recently on Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, because he is with Elon and other people he funded. They co-founded PayPal and yeah, Palantir was his other major project. And for those who don't know the whole research on Palantir is a private surveillance firm. And we'll use private and air quotes because they got their funding from the CIA, CIA seed funding. And there's some really great research by Whitney Webb at Unlimited Hangout that goes into the history of Palantir and how folks may go back, cast your minds all the way back to post 9-11, war on terror, just everybody being told that we need to lose all our rights to keep us safe. There was a program that launched after that called Total Information Awareness, TIA. And the scary thing about this is the logo for the Total Information Awareness Office was literally an all seen eye pyramid looking over the earth. That was what the government's logo was for it. But back in 2001, 2002, people still had some semblance of privacy and of rights that I think has very much been lost over the last 20 years. So when they announced this office that they said was going to roll out facial recognition and all the things we're seeing now, they were talking about rolling them out post 9-11. And thankfully, there was enough pushback that they decided to shut down the office and close it down, okay, we won. But in reality, some of the same people involved in that program, including John Poindexter of the US government, worked with Peter Thiel and essentially helped him craft Palantir to become the private version of that program. And so Thiel has been in the background for a lot of the last years funding things. He funded Trump's first campaign. He gave the largest donation in US history to a Senate campaign to now Vice President J.D. Vance when he was running for Ohio Senator just a couple of years ago, Peter Thiel gave him $15 million. And I've been doing some investigations recently at the last American Vagabond showing that there's at least 10, I think there's probably 15, but I can confirm 10 officials within the Trump administration who all worked with Peter Thiel or for Peter Thiel at his different foundations or Palantir or his different companies. He has the Thiel Fellowship, the Thiel Foundation, and different things like that. He's also got a number of different venture capital firms, Andrew and others and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and these folks are essentially trying to step into the role of being the... 

Derrick 
They want to be the new class of military industrial complex contractors. I mean, they essentially already are, but they've said that their goal, like OpenAI, Andrew, SpaceX, and Palantir, they've recently kind of formed an alliance and they're saying that they want to be the new Northrop government. They want to be the new Boeing. They want to be those new MIC contractors and they're definitely succeeding at that.

And unfortunately, there's a winning as the good guys have won, especially a lot of people in the crypto community have been fooled by this after things like the announcement of the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. But when you really look at what's happening is you have a billionaire in Elon Musk and others who are surrounding him in Trump, unelected power who created a new department, the Department of Government Efficiency, which, hey, I think as most of us as libertarians, anarchists, volunteers, et cetera, we probably want, if there's going to be a government, let's get rid of some of the waste. Let's make it more efficient. Some people might argue, I don't really want a more efficient government necessarily, but that's sort of a big cheering point for a lot of people. But when you look into what's really going on, even Doge right now, the courts, I was reporting on this last night, the courts are still trying to figure out what the heck Doge even is. Trump, using an executive order, took some random obscure government agency, the digital service, I can't remember the three letter agency it is, and rebranded it as Doge. And Elon is in this sort of unofficial position where he doesn't even have a title, he's not on government payroll. And so that's kind of allowed this legal gray area for them to start just firing people, bringing in all these software engineers and coders who are big fans of Elon, and just having them take over. I mean, this is technocracy. 

Doug 
in obtaining the data, right? Exactly.

Technocracies only achieved if you have more data than whoever you're competing against, right? Exactly. And literally getting some of the largest data sets on US citizens, data that nobody else has. 

Derrick 
Citizens on contracts on and then obviously there's the other side that is he's as a military-industrial complex contractor He's in a direct position to be able to use this this knowledge to his benefit to continue to gain, you know a favor Contracts obviously he's like got the right, you know the the ear of the president So I think he's in a pretty good position already But that is I mean that to me it's showing like the the whole definition of technocracy rule by experts by technologists by the scientific elite It's talks about getting rid of the political class getting rid of the business class and having those experts Micro-managing society using the machines or AI and in the last week, we're learning more and more about the different government Tasks that are being you know replaced with AI and again on some places we might say hey, that's better That probably is gonna save time this and that but it's a step towards AI governance And that's definitely part of what I think that they're trying to ship this towards I actually just released a new investigation the other day at the last American vagabond It's called Doge is efficiency a gateway to technocracy and I'll just give you guys the short version of it but I basically went back and looked at the Technocracy movement of the 1930s and 40s and I started to look at what are the movements that preceded it and inspired it because you can typically learn a lot about you know a movement by seeing what its roots are and There was actually a movement called the efficiency movement that existed from the early 1900s till about the time that Technocracy became popular and this was just people who were trying to make the workplace more efficient and there was a number of different theories That were all about this But actually and I didn't know this till I did the research this weekend The US government had a Bureau of efficiency and many cities including Chicago New York and others had municipalities or the municipal municipal Efficiency Research Bureau different things like this This was actually a very popular idea during the progressive era of how do we make government more efficient?

How do we make the workplace more efficient Robert? 

Doug 
Robert Moses played a big role in that here in New York, which is basically all the United States at the time. He was kind of a thought leader on that. 

Derrick 
I definitely found the New York, I think it was like a New York municipal bureau of research and that was actually funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. And then I looked further into it, and you may have heard this name, Doug, there was a gentleman, a philosopher back then who was named Frederick Winslow Taylor, and his ideas were kind of before and around the same time as the efficiency movement, it became known as Taylorism, or he called it scientific management. And so a lot of these same ideas played and rolled right into technocracy. And even at the time there were some people who said, okay, these ideas could be useful but in the wrong hands, they could become authoritarian.

They could suppress the worker, they could treat people like they're just autonomous worker bees and things of that sort. And the really intriguing thing that I found is, and this is just super obscure, but it was, it was cool to kind of find this as I was writing this article, that Frederick Taylor, Frederick Winslow Taylor, he was worked at a company called Bethlehem Steel, and he was doing steel cutting. And again, he was super focused on how do we make this more efficient, make these processes faster and save money. He apparently carried a stopwatch everywhere he went to like clock inefficiencies everywhere he went. And so he was at this world fair, it was called the Paris Exposition of 1900 in Paris, France. And he was, him and his partner were displaying like their new steel cutting techniques they had created. And there were some German engineers there, this is, you know, 1900, they were just enthralled by his ideas. He goes back to the US, they start translating all his books, including his books on scientific management and shop management. And there's definitely a line of thought from the German engineers being exposed to Taylorism, and then them writing about it and embracing it during World War I and afterwards, and even some would say up to the time of the Third Reich. But then even more interestingly, in his, one of his essays, Vladimir Lenin, of course, the, you know, Russian communist Bolshevik leader, after the Russian Revolution in October 1917, just about five or six months later, he published an essay, and he specifically said that they should use the model of Taylorism as a way to, you know, build their socialist economies. They wanted to kind of have a socialist scientific management of the population of the workplace.

So the ideas from Taylorism, from the efficiency movement, go right into technocracy. And we know that Elon Musk's grandfather, Joshua Hadelman, was involved in Technocracy Inc. in Canada. I don't think it's, you know, crazy to say that we're dealing with the same people and the same ideology that has just continued to exist. 

Doug 
Yeah, for sure. I see these things as naturally occurring though.

Do you as well or are they born out of evil? I just see them as naturally occurring things like Bitcoin and Monero itself. They were invented essentially. You have people that are at certain points in time, societies that are at a certain stage and you have intelligent people that come along and want to naturally add efficiency to society. If your goal is to be as productive as possible, that really is the ultimate role of most people. Desire is to be as productive as possible. Now you're just using society to achieve those things. These are naturally occurring evolution. 

Derrick 
in society, from communist perspective. Like you said, it's an idea, right? I don't think Frederick Winslow Taylor was a fascist or something like that. From all intents and purposes, his politics aren't really discussed. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but he seemed singularly focused on how to make the workplace more efficient.

And then those ideas can be taken and can be adopted and people can say, hey, what if we apply this to society as a whole, not just to the workplace, but we start micromanaging society and trying to remove inefficiencies and make things work quicker and faster and better. But of course, along with that, those ideas, often the individual and individual liberties are kind of lost in the conversation because it's like, well, for the good of society, we need to micromanage this and that. And the original technocrats also talked about energy certificates that they said that everybody would be using energy certificates to measure how much energy they're producing and those would be- credits. I mean, it's a very similar concept. Yeah. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, if you know, if you're going to sit down and think about how can I control all of society and basically give a number to, you know, how much they're producing and how much they're using, that's pretty much how you do it. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty scary, though, that we're, you know, we're at this point.

It's exciting, though, right? Because at the same time, we do have technologies like Monero that do exist. Obviously, everything always boils back down to Monero for me. I mean, I do see that as the ultimate litmus test. Do you think Elon Musk, Trump, the administration, they're going to approach Monero, they're going to be tested by Monero, and then, you know, will, will reveal where they truly stand? I mean, are they, like, if, if Elon Musk, Musk, and, you know, is a true technocrat, and his ultimate goal is like mass surveillance and using data to control people with Peter Thiel, I feel like Monero is going to be a problem for them unless they're just going to allow, you know. 

Derrick 
I don't see them going in on Monero, I'll say that. I don't see them embracing it per se.

But you're right, that will be an interesting test. And I don't even think we have to really, I mean, obviously, we'll see what happens with Monero. But just for example, like I mentioned, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, when Trump put out that executive order like a week or whatever it was, a week and a half ago, it wasn't only about Bitcoin, but they're also embracing XRP, and then some other, like just to me, coins, tokens, projects that show clearly that they're not interested in privacy and they're not interested in, you know, they're taking like the mainstream sort of popular coins and Monero was out of that conversation. We'll see, right. I mean, the last few years we've seen that the IRS has been trying to make efforts to crack Monero's code and see if they can crack the encryption. Maybe that'll ramp up, maybe it'll get, you know, kind of forgotten about and left alone for now. I mean, the trust. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, the Trump, the executive order, I think we had even talked about this on X at some point. The executive order that Trump put out, I think it was, I mean, the way I read it, it basically said, you know, we support true cryptos like Monero and how it read as public blockchains. So we'll see where they truly stand, but I hear what you're saying, like the projects that they're choosing for their reserve. But they did also mention that they're going to use cryptos essentially that they've confiscated, that they already have. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting. Like Ross's tokens. Like Ross's Bitcoin. Right. I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying I philosophically agree with this approach, but I'm just saying that like, that's what they're saying, you know, because it's also a way to not spend tax dollars.

They've already stolen these assets or taken them from people, whether they're guilty of crimes or not. They have they have this crypto. And so it's going to be interesting because part of that they said they're going to do an audit. Right. So the first thing they're going to do is audit to see like what crypto they actually have. And it'll be interesting to see if Monero comes out in that audit. And then if it does, what are the, you know, they said they're going to keep the cryptos they already have. So now are they then keeping Monero in their strategic reserve would be quite, quite interesting. And there's been a lot of incidents, right? Like there's a lot of dark markets that went down. I mean, you could look these things up and it was always, you know, Monero had in quite a few had been mentioned, you know, an unknown amount of Monero, right. And these things have been confiscated from people along the way. So that that should be interesting as well. 

Derrick 
I'm sure the government's got a stockpile of some Monero. We won't know, but I guess if we see any big moves going around, we should pay attention, but yeah, I mean, in general, I'm- 

Doug 
You don't think they'll be announcing Monero as part of their strategic reserve, even if they're sitting on 30,000 Monero or something? 

Derrick 
I don't see that happening, and honestly, if they did, I'm just curious to see how the market and how people react. What does that do to Monero with its rebellious nature to have the government embrace it? I don't know. 

Doug 
I mean me personally I see it you know these tools right there They're there for everybody to use right and the game theory has got to work out that one everybody adopts them It leads to more Liberty Including the government right like so ideally we want the US government in my mind using something like a Bitcoin For the the reserves that they're keeping and the money they're spending so we could see it on a transparent ledger, right? They're all like all their accounting should be done in Bitcoin Let's watch to see how governments take in money and spend money perfectly right if the governments are going to continue to exist Yeah, and then and then Monero for the people right allow people Without barriers to live peer-to-peer with digital cash and take away, you know, you know, don't put any any barriers allow people to just freely Exchange peer-to-peer with digital cash and that would kind of be like the ultimate scenario in my mind I don't know if you get there, but I was hoping things set in that direction.

Yeah. Yeah

Derrick 
Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that, brother. It's definitely a sentiment to continue fighting for, and I'm hesitant because we'll just, you know, at the end of the day, we can't control it, right? So all we can do is keep trying to put our energy into what we want to see.

And I know you're doing that. I know there's people tuning in who are making their own efforts in their own way to do that. And I think that's really all we can do is try to keep exposing the bad stuff, promoting the good stuff and, and yeah, doing our best where we can to raise awareness on these topics and help people see there's tools because there's even people like, you know, I'm streaming to my, my YouTube and my Twitter right now. And there's people in my audience who I know who are still not familiar with or interested in Monero. I will say over the last six months, I've gotten more questions about Monero than I had in the last couple of years. So it definitely seems like there is a growing interest.

So yeah, let's get started. 

Doug 
to hear. Yeah.

What do you think of this, Matt? So Tesla, Elon Musk tweeting out, encouraging destruction of Teslas throughout the country is extreme domestic terrorism. Is this a false flag? We're going to see some things done here, things put in place to prevent domestic terrorism. 

Derrick 
It seems pretty convenient. I haven't looked into though I mean I've been seeing what's going on and the protests and then these claims of fire and I know that the people on the Magus side are very quick to just assume it must be the leftist radical leftist and sure there might be some people who were You know duped into going and doing stuff like that But I definitely think it's pretty convenient that as soon as they come into office all of a sudden Teslas are going up in fire and I saw one video for example showing a whole like a Lot of the Tesla's and they're all on fire I mean I don't know about you guys But I've driven by a lot of car lots in my life and they are all pretty well protected and got lots of cameras And things on them So I don't feel like it should be difficult to find these people if it is You know a coordinated thing or if it's just random people right now It kind of seems weird to me that it's all just sort of it's a mystery right now Who's doing these things when like? 

Doug 
Especially considering they have like Tesla's all have like video cameras on them. Yeah 

Derrick 
They've all got video cameras on them. They've got facial recognition cameras there. So it doesn't seem too hard for me to find that, but as usual- I mean- 

Doug 
It is kind of believable that you know the temperament is out there right there are you know there's the lip the lip tards are Real right there's and 

Derrick 
like this is what sucks man.

He's like I get accused of being a libtard or a leftist or a buy you must have voted for Biden or Harris for calling out everything that I was sharing with you just a moment ago about Elon because people are still trapped in this binary they're like oh somebody attacks Elon they must be a progressive oh I bet you wanted Hillary I bet you wanted Harris like there's so many people that are still just stuck in what I think a very low level kind of binary thinking so you criticize Trump you must have voted for Biden you criticize Elon you must be some left-wing progressive who hates billionaires just because they have money or whatever right instead of kind of seeing it in this nuanced way and I think that's unfortunate because that's just you know you could keep dividing people it's a lot easier to keep ruling with your pyramid of power if people fighting each other. 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, I boil it down to, I think very similar to the way you boil things down right now is technocracy, right? Are these people, whether you're Republican, Democrat, are these people on the side of moving us closer towards technocracy or are they actually looking to move us away? And unfortunately, it seems like both sides are just trying to move us towards technocracy, you know, when the devs are in the same desk. Yeah. Yeah. They all just use different tools to do it. Right. And then you just, you know, the money keeps getting printed. You know, Congress keeps passing legislation that just takes away more of our rights and just adds, adds, you know, adds more tools for, for surveillance, whether it's Republicans or Democrats. So that's the way I look at it.

Definitely not. It's definitely not one side is more liberty than the other. Right. 

Derrick 
Unfortunately not, yeah. 

Doug 
Yeah. 

Derrick 
I got to get going just a moment, Doug, but thank you, brother, for having me on again and for giving me a chance to share about the pyramid of power and to everybody out there who, whether you donate or not, if you check it out, please do share with your family and friends.

This is why I'm making it. You know, if you ever struggle with trying to get your family and friends to listen to a three hour podcast, maybe they'll watch a 30 minute episode or get them started and trying to get them pulled in. It really is created with this idea of it being a tool that people can use to help other people start their journey of questioning the world. 

Doug 
Awesome, man, and I know it's super early, but I'm hoping we see you at the next Monerotopia, Mexico City, which will- I would love to be- 

Derrick 
I would love to be there 

Doug 
essentially a week or two after your conference, so it should work out nice. Perfect, I'd love to be there, man. Any chance you go to Porkfest this year? Do you have you ever been to? 

Derrick 
pork fest? I haven't been to pork fest yet.

I've known about it for a decade plus now, and I've got a lot of friends who speak there. And I've thought about it because I'm pretty much taking off from all talks right now to be home working on this project, but I'll be done by then because it's in June, right? 

Doug 
Yeah, man. You should consider stopping by. That could be a good scene for you to debut if you're finishing it at that point. 

Derrick 
I would love to go there. I'm definitely gonna have to try to connect with some people there and see if I can get a slot there speaking or just sharing some ideas. 

Doug 
Yeah, well, we have, Aaron Day and myself are throwing up a narrow topia at pork fest. So we have our own large tent. And with that come, we're gonna have our own stage. So obviously you're welcome on our stage.

Then there's also the pork fest stage and maybe we could help you get on that. 

Derrick 
I'd love to, brother. Yeah, let's talk about it. 

Doug 
All right, Ben. Be in touch. Good luck. All right. Thank you. 

Derrick 
guys. Appreciate you. Cheers. 

Speaker 2 
Hi, Monero Land, thank you for joining on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week.

You can find and subscribe to our YouTube, Odyssey, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go to MoneroTalk.Live for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. If you want to interact with us, guests, or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, or any of our social media platform. MoneroTalk is also made possible from contributing by viewers and listeners like you and supporting us is easier than ever. By typing in MoneroTalk.Crypto in your Monero.com or cake wallet send address to send us a tip. Once again, thanks so much for listening and we look forward to being back next week.