Part 2 of Tucker Max talks about his DOOMER OPTIMISM!
Part 2 of Tucker Max's Doomer Optimism!
If you missed Part 1, make sure you go back and check it out!
In this episode, I was joined by Tucker Max, an American author, and public speaker, to talk continuing talking about his article, Doomer Optimism.
We talked about empire, and if America is one, and what does the future hold for America. Will it be for the best or for the worst?
Tucker also explained to me the power of community, and what does community means to him, also the town that he's building!
We also talked about if people are starting to wake up that they don't get stuck at what they're doing, but they get to choose to do what they wanted to do and they don't have to be in 9 - 5 jobs anymore.
And finally, Tucker also talked about what skill does he thinks would benefit the most in the future!
Again, if you missed Part 1 of Tucker's Doomer Optimism, make sure you check out Episode 811
My new book Skip The Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever you get your new book!
Join You Should Run For President 2.0 Facebook Group, and we discuss why should run for president.
I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.
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James Altucher 0:02
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Altucher show, if the world ends, what are you gonna do about it? Meaning if there's some political collapse of the system, how bad can it get and what should you do? Not only that, what I appreciate about what Tucker told me is that he's doing this anyway, because it's just improving his life. So part two of Doomer optimism with Tucker Max, here it is.
You and I both know very intelligent people, when presented with something that's clearly hypocrisy. Like why weren't these people in the chairs arrested? Somehow 20,000 person gatherings or COVID Free when a furniture store isn't Brother
Tucker Max 0:59
How many times to tell you that when faced with truth or group he most people put group?
James Altucher 1:05
How could they? How could they rationalize it when you just present it to him that way, though?
Tucker Max 1:09
Dude, I mean, my how much? How much mental gymnastics do you have to see in people before you realize that the human mind will justify anything if it lets them believe something that gets them what they want? How you see, you come from finance? How many times have you seen people believe absolute nonsensical fantasies to arrive at a conclusion that they want? Only 90% of the time?
James Altucher 1:39
Or 90? Yeah. Or if you combine it with media that it's then it's 99. But But the role of an investor is to kind of get through those hypocrisy, otherwise, you're going to make a bad investment.
Tucker Max 1:49
Right? Exactly. Which is one of the reasons that finance is, in a lot of ways, a different world, right, then. Now, granted, there's some it's not black and white there, but like probably why you like chess, because you can argue about chess all day. But what really matters what happens on the board why a lot of people love MMA, because you can talk about fighting all day. The truth finds you on the mats, right?
James Altucher 2:15
I think I think for me that kind of because of events like this that happened to me, let's say over the past few years, I think that drove me towards something where the truth is just on the board. There's nothing but the truth there. And me I don't know for all I know, maybe that's what drove you to MMA
Tucker Max 2:32
it is it's one of the things I love about it truly, is that there's no bullshit and there's no talking
James Altucher 2:36
there's no BS and there's very few things if you think about it, what professions are no BS is very few.
Tucker Max 2:44
Yeah, very few. Fair.
James Altucher 2:46
Like if you if you take the standard professions, Doctor lawyer, they're all They're made up bullshit. Oh, yeah, there's all BS. It's all narrative. So So and it's been through for millennia. And politician Judge, I don't know what even
Tucker Max 3:01
veterinarian is pretty, pretty tied to reality.
James Altucher 3:05
All right. Yeah. I think that veterinarian is I was I was about to say busking for money on the street, like playing a banjo for money, total bullshit there. Yeah. But it's hard for me to find other professions. Sports maybe like like a basketball player. There's this? Well, although there's politics of getting on the court, I guess, in professional basketball, and there's, there's a lot of BS in how the brand of basketball team Yeah, and there,
Tucker Max 3:32
I don't think it's there's, I don't know if there's anywhere it's pure. Like it's like a light switch where it's like binary, right? I think it's degrees, you know, so like, you go to, you know, economist is 90 plus percent bullshit, you know, NBA player is 90 plus percent honest, right? Like, you could ball you can't. And so like, in Yeah, there's some level of bullshit about accessibility and this and that I get you it's not perfect. But most sports, sports without judges, like I don't consider as athletic as Janus are, right? There's judges, it's like, although they've actually done a lot to make the scoring more objective. So it's actually a lot better now. It's still judges or judges, right? And so like, at sports with our judges, things where the feedback mechanisms are non human veterinarians, things like that are objective chess you know, like those a lumberjack either you cut the fucking tree down and you don't like there's those sorts of things to some extent finance although it's you know, on the continuum essential
James Altucher 4:36
side the middle here, right? It's totally fine to finance Yeah, when you when you only eat what you kill like you either business either works or it doesn't. Yeah. Or if you're trying to sell something like Oh, buy these mutual funds. That's 100% bullshit, but if you're like, Oh, I either I only make money if this investment works out. If it helps people, then I feel there's less bullshit in in that but Okay, given all this, does it end? Or does it get worse?
Tucker Max 5:06
So I think we're past the point of fixing the system. So I mean, you understand like, like all empires run in cycles, right? This is, this is one of those things where I thought everyone knew this. And then most people like what are you talking about empires run in cycles? What? Yeah, cuz I guess the way history is taught is such complete bullshit. But, um, one of the things that, like everyone should know, but I guess they don't is that history runs in cycles, like it, I don't think is that exact, like, super precise, like 13.82 years or whatever. But empires tend to run in very clear sort of stages, right. And America, which is clearly an empire, anyone says it's not it's just a fool. The American Empire is, is in its downfall stage, there's no doubt, it's just clear as day. And so I don't think the system is salvageable. I'm not sure when we pass that point. But we're long past it. And so what has to happen now is that it has to collapse. And the problem is that most people don't understand what collapse means, right? Like the British Empire collapsed, it doesn't mean England doesn't exist anymore. Right? So collapse doesn't mean you go from this vibrant, amazing thing to nothing. That's nonsense. It means what the height of the I don't know, when the peak of the American Empire is gonna be pegged. Maybe it's, it's gonna be sometime in last 20 years, right? So sometime, probably past 2000, probably before, let's say, 2018, right, somewhere in there is going to be the peak. And so as we decline, how we decline, and what happens in the breakup is going to be, that's the only thing that really, we're going to figure out over the next few years.
James Altucher 6:49
This is what I'm honestly scared about. Let's define decline for a second or peak. Because, you know, still, I would say, innovation is happening. I mean, it's happening all over the world. And we're seeing in a great innovation happening, and even, for instance, China, because they don't have the same rules, regulations as we do. But innovation is still happening in the US, we're seeing amazing inventions or developments or whatever. What does decline mean, what does peak mean?
Tucker Max 7:18
So I mean, as an empire, as a cohesive, organized, functioning single unit as an empire. America is dumb. Right? That's it. It's over. And the only question now is what comes next? How does the decline go? Right? That's it. That's the old those are the only real questions in terms if you're looking at America, right? So a lot of look like there's so many ways for empires to fall apart like this Sumerians, the Romans, the Greeks, the British, the Mongolians, like, there's so there's we have such a law. I mean, there's so many different Chinese empires. You can look at how they fall, right? You can have serious collapses where like shits gone, right? Like the the Mycenaeans, right? Like that probably happened because of a major natural catastrophe. Okay, like, those were really hard to come back from i Who knows those are unpredictable, right? I don't really see that as being an issue though. Barring that for America, well, we're probably gonna see is a slow decline, and then a fracturing of the United States. I don't whether that means a full on national divorce, whether it means breaking up into more of a federated European model, whether it means who knows what it fucking means, man. But like I was telling you before, what's become very clear at a core minimum, is that there are a lot of people in America that I have no desire to share a state or a set of assumptions, we no longer share a set of assumptions. So why would we share a state? I don't need them. I don't want them. And why why should we be making group decisions? Like that doesn't make sense. Let the people who want to wear masks alone in their car, go live somewhere with that they think that that magical thinking produces benefit Cool, man, I want to live on a ranch with people who want to produce cool stuff and hang out in nature and not be a lunatic about bullshit, right? We don't have to live together.
James Altucher 9:31
Right? And we're seeing that people are voting with their feet like a data came out for 2021 where people are moving. So you see that the states of California New York, Illinois, hundreds of 1000s of people left and the other side you saw Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Utah, C sharp Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, people have been moving towards Yep. And so people but at the same time, you see people in Arizona is on the list to where People are moving. And you see people saying, you know, on both sides, people are saying don't bring your politics here. But of course,
Tucker Max 10:06
which is, I know, I think that's great. Like if you're one of those fucking lunatics who think that we should defund all the police all at once, and that, that we should have homeless encampments everywhere and all that shit that they were trying to do in Austin, go to LA or New York where they already have that, like, that's great go live there. We know what those policies look like they create a hellscape go fucking live in it. Get the fuck out.
James Altucher 10:34
So do you see what's happening is maybe this is a peaceful transition to maybe this is the most man. This is more, I hope, like, like what do you see as a worst case scenario and best case scenario. I
Tucker Max 10:45
mean, dude, I don't know what world you live in. But I have never seen sociopath give up power peacefully. I've seen it Dakine from them. And I've seen not that bad of wars or fights. I have never seen sociopaths give up power peacefully, I would love to know the counter example. There might be a couple. I just don't know what they are. But so even if there are a couple counter examples, in the vast majority of cases, sociopaths don't give up power peacefully. Right? So I'm not sure how this is gonna play out. But I wrote about it in the article. My guess? I don't know, dude, there's so many things at play. That the problem with predictions is that even for me, like, I'm smart as fuck, and I get how bad predictions are. And it's like, getting that I'm gonna make predictions, and I'm gonna fall into the same traps, is that there's so linear, right? It's like, oh, okay, this will happen, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this? No, that never accounts for all kinds of other feedback loops and changes, right?
James Altucher 11:48
You know, that's a really great point predictions are not one dimensional. They're three dimensional, because there's always lots of choices. After the first event
Tucker Max 11:57
reactions happen, then you can't predict or even know about, man. Like, there's no fucking way you could predict and know.
James Altucher 12:05
But But I like how in your article, you say you describe how you're preparing for what comes next. This way, distinguish between what you're doing and prepping? Is that you're not running into a cave with lots of canned foods, you say, no matter what happens next, you would be doing the same thing. Yeah, maybe describe what you're and I really, I think that's valuable, because what you describe is actually a very great lifestyle that I'm sure many would aspire to.
Tucker Max 12:29
Yes. So So alright. You know, it's funny, man. After I wrote that article, I got a lot of tons of email feedback. But one, one email really actually hit me in the gut man is this Indian guy? And he's like, Hey, man, maybe it's just a language translation thing. But where's the optimism? And I was like, right, Fuck, he's right. Like,
James Altucher 12:54
I was thinking about that as well. But I get it because
Tucker Max 12:58
well, you know, hold on. Yeah. Let me actually explain why I'm optimistic. Right? Because I think I I did talk about in the piece, but obliquely, and I bounced off it, I did not go into it. Right. So let me start with last year, two years ago, now 2020 when COVID hit, I was one of those people for whom COVID was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. Right? Not at first, right? Because for like business, crash, all that stuff. This is a great now, but at the beginning was really rough. But then once I got through, you know, March, April, by May, and June, definitely I realized, okay, hold on a minute. I don't just love my family. I like my family. And I like spending all this time with him. This is actually awesome. What the fuck was I doing before? Like, what the hell was I doing? Like I was doing all these things kind of it is really gets us back to what we talked about the beginning, I was doing all these things that I thought I should be doing. And now I don't have to do them. And I don't fucking miss any of them hardly. And I really like what I've replaced them with. And which is spending time with the people I love. And then I my wife and I always wanted to live on land. We always wanted to kind of be closer to nature raise our kids. And we we realized like the fuck are we waiting for? Like what the hell is going on? And so so then the two things kind of came together right and I realized I don't want to spend my life on a treadmill on a running my ass off to do a bunch of things I don't care about to impress a bunch of people I don't like buying shit I don't need just like straight out of Fight Club. Right? So I really what do I want? I want it gets back to exactly what I said. I want to spend time with the people I love doing things that matter to them and improving the immediate world. that I live in. And the only way to do that, that I know of, is to live on land, to work that land to husband that land. I mean that in the agricultural sense, and to produce a lot of what it is, you know, I'm not like I want electricity. This isn't like weirdo Amish. Like I'm not going to use electricity or air conditioning shit like nothing against the Amish. But I'd like modern stuff, but at the same time, the vast majority of shit in our life we don't need and is a distraction to avoid all to get us on this consumerist, corporate bullshit treadmill. That doesn't a lot
James Altucher 15:41
of people. Do you think a lot of people did get off that treadmill? Because I think you notice right now, people aren't going to work like there's there's 10 million job openings in the US and only 7 million people looking for jobs. I've never seen that kind of dude, disparity. I think
Tucker Max 15:55
a lot of people woke up, man. I think a shit I did. I met James. I thought I understood this. And I thought I was awake. And actually my wife and I had all these desires and dreams and hopes in January of 2020. But we weren't doing shit about it. We were stuck on the treadmill. And we thought we weren't. I was just as blunt all the people that I'm like talking about now. I was just as blind then the differences. I didn't even realize how blind I was because I thought I knew. Now the only thing I've really realized is that how blind I was then. And then it's like, oh, wait a minute. Here's this thing I love. Why don't I just go do that. Right and the wait. That's the thing. Old school prepping is let's endure this disaster and then go back to reality. Doomer optimism is let's change the way we live so that our lives are actually what we want them to be and actually produce more life are genuine
James Altucher 17:01
and is and is survivable in a I feel survivable in a worst case scenario. Like yeah, if your optimal if you feel your optimal life is living in a penthouse in New York City that might not survive a political collapse,
Tucker Max 17:14
right? I don't mean anything. It's nothing. I don't mean nothing judgment, no judgment living in a city and I used to do that I love this things about that that are cool. But in a world that is no longer able to be hyperconnected that is no longer able to be extremely extractive of the environment and of labor. That lifestyle is not sustainable. It's just not, it's not even doable anymore. Just for you.
James Altucher 17:41
There's there's there's land, which kind of implies independence, like if you're on your land that you own, and it's kind of out of the city, I'm a big
Tucker Max 17:49
fan of sovereignty, man, individual sovereignty. Human sovereignty means food sovereignty, it means water sovereignty, it means energy sovereignty, the more of those things that you can produce on your own or with your group around you, the free, the easier it is to be free.
James Altucher 18:06
And then the other thing you mentioned, which I think is really good, is that it's not just about, again, having the canned food stored up, although you do mention having food stored up, which is a great point, no matter what. But you also say take care of yourself physically, what's really important if hospitals are not around, you need to be in good shape. And and
Tucker Max 18:27
so it's more like our bodies are the the one physical thing that we absolutely own as our physical bodies. Like there's nothing that think about how did how many people do you see that are incredibly out of shape that take a ton of care of their car? Like, that's going against your car, man. But what what are you doing? Right? What what are you doing? Where are your priorities? Like if I actually say that I love my family? Doesn't that mean I want to spend as much time as possible with them meaning yours? Yeah. Am I going to do that? Not treating my body? Well, no, I'm not. I'm just not am I going to enjoy the years I have with them? No. Am I going to be able to have sex with my wife? If I'm a disgusting, impotent, fatty? No, I won't. So I'm not gonna do that. It's pretty simple.
James Altucher 19:32
You also bring up the power of community, which I think is very important.
Tucker Max 19:35
Well, that's I mean, community is the thing. Okay. So you again brings us back to the beginning. Humans are primates are hierarchical, but more than hierarchical primates are social. First before hierarchy. If there is a deepest, embedded sort of nature to primates, it is social. And we are the naked social primates humans are and so I Humans don't even exist without community like, I mean, we know what it's like when you raise a human in a closet with no human interaction, fortunately, because it's happened. And they're not humans, they're, they're hardly even animals. They're non functional beings. We exist in relation to each other. Right? And most of our modern world, and I, you know, I don't know if this is a conspiracy or not, it doesn't matter how it happened. But we are here in a modern world, that if you default to the, if you allow the default of the modern world to be your life, you are lonely, isolated, sad, sick, unhealthy, and exploited. But the big one, the first one is lonely, alone.
James Altucher 20:46
I agree with that. Because look, I've, I feel like I've been on every side of this equation and loneliness. When you definitely sign up for a hierarchy, and you start to fail that hierarchy, which is inevitable, every Harvey has ups and downs. fear and loneliness are the first two things that happen like Stark fear for your life. Because it's a natural thing. If you're the omega of the tribe, you're going to be left out to die, and loneliness because you don't have your community.
Tucker Max 21:15
It's so funny man. Like, ask people. Like one of the other things, like what would you love your day to be. And if you really like their strip away all the bullshit, most people I know myself, like you love it, in fact, that let me tell you what my ideal day is. It's basically what I do now, except there's a couple things that I'm trying to add on. But I wake up without an alarm clock, next to my wife that I love. Sometimes we have sex in the morning, sometimes not kind of depends. She's pregnant now. So more than often not, but whatever. Then our kids wake up, they come down, we drink tea together, we have breakfast, there's no rush to get anywhere, right? We get them ready to go to school, then she and I generally work from home, right? Ideally, then we have lunch together. And then the thing we don't have yet that we're now adding on now that we're on land, and there's a lot of people around us in our community that we really like and then move there is that maybe not every single night because I might be a little tedious, but to at least two or three nights a week people are in our community are coming over and having dinner with us or we're going to their place and having dinner with them, whether it's just awesome. One family, whether it's us in four or five other families, like, you know, we had we do a fire we cook on the fire or we just you know, Cook Normal, and then just go, but like, we commune with each other. Right? Our kids now play together. Right? We with people we know, we, we eat together, we do things with people we like that we want to do with, right? Which a lot of people are like, Oh, but you get that missing? Yeah, not really, not definitely not outside of cars. And definitely like, it's that's not that's not you seeing the same people over and over. The only people I know of that have lives like that, as a group in America are religious people. Right? And nothing against religion, but like, I'm not going to join the Mormon church just to have a community. So I'm going to build my own. Right and not not the community of Tucker, just, I'm going to we're going to build something and then other people who like it are going to be part of it. It's their community, too. So that's what are the
James Altucher 23:37
virtual in this? Because I feel like look, I have felt always, you know, you and I, for instance, are in the same kind of overall community, but we've never lived by each other. Like what, but I find in the past few months a year, I don't really use the internet that much other than to do these podcasts. And so I don't look at new sites I don't look at I don't surf the web or anything. Like what's the role of virtual community? You know,
Tucker Max 24:03
it's a good question, man. Um, I'll tell you straight up. It's one of the ways I think the way the American Empire is gonna fracture will be on several several different lines. And I think very few of them are going to be the ones you'd expect. One of the ways though, that that I think America is going to fracture that is predictable, is along. virtual or real lives. I should say physical because real is a little little bit of a loaded word. I think there are a lot of people who are going to double down on metaverse. Basically they're going to go into the matrix, and I mean that more metaphorically, literally all the Who fucking knows. I like the internet. I like connectivity, but I only like it as a tool. I like it the way I like my hammer and the way I like my screwdriver. Like I don't want my hammer all the time. With me hitting everything, like I don't hit my kid with a hammer, that would suck, but I use my hammer when I nail something. If I use the internet for everything that's like using a hammer for everything, it's gonna suck sometimes, as a tool, I love it. But, um, especially the last two years, I have really learned how to use this as a tool, and not how to live on it. And I think the vast majority of people who are going to be effective, and healthy and productive and happy in the coming decades are people who are moving away from digital spaces being their prime spaces. Not I'm not sure. There's I think there's using digital connect to connect with the community. And then great, no problem. That's awesome, right? It's not I don't think this is in the clear divide. But the ones who use digital to augment physical, I think that's fantastic. The ones who see physical as almost like just the meatspace for the real world of digital. I think the world is gonna be rough for them.
James Altucher 26:05
Yeah, so So it's interesting, I guess, again, a lot of this, I want to bring it back to what we were originally discussing, which was the role of ambition in this like you are one of if not the best writer out there, one of the best writers out there. And this is clearly where you know, a skill you've spent decades building up and you're and as you know, shown by the reaction to your recent article that skill is is very much there. Where do you see your your writing going through this? What do you what are you going to? What are you going to write about next? Or is there is there such a thing as a book in the in the future? Or, or you know, his posts? Is it? What are you are you going to fixture next in James?
Tucker Max 26:50
I would be the big if, if I had laid out a clear plan for you for the future for me, then everything I said about ambition would have been total bullshit. Come on, man.
James Altucher 26:59
All right. Maybe I was trying to trap you
Tucker Max 27:03
know, there's nothing wrong with that man.
James Altucher 27:06
I guess I guess I always ask you questions I asked myself,
Tucker Max 27:09
yeah. Okay. So let me say I do have a view of this. But it's definitely not a clear, specific user. I'm gonna do here's my plan. My view is, so I'm not comparing myself to him, please. I'm just learning from him. But I read one of my favorite books over the last couple years. I'm not gonna say recommending this to most people, because it's kind of a weird, thick, long book. But it's called Old path white clouds. It's a novel. I have not heard of this. Yeah, it's a novelized version of the Buddha's life by tick, not Han, who's like a very famous
James Altucher 27:44
V. Oh, yeah,
Tucker Max 27:45
I've met him, right. So he, not many people in America know about this book. But he basically took most of the old school Pali canon, and some of the the oldest oldest Buddhist writings, and wrote like a novelized version of the Buddha's life. And I love that No, I thought it was amazing. It was an incredible book. It's like, don't read it, because it's high literature, read it, because it's a really awesome way to learn about the Buddha. And that one of the insights that I took from the book, one of the things that Buddha said was, you know, because the question he got a lot was like, What's the point of life? What's your goal? What are you supposed to be doing, especially his Buddhist disciples would ask him, and he always said, the same basic thing, which is, I'm not trying to quote the Buddha, I'm just paraphrasing the way I took it. Your job here is to do your work. And then share your work with others, so that it might help them. So that's all I'm going to do, man, that's like the Doom or optimism piece. What did I do? I just told I did my work. So I got to a place where in my life where I was happy and on the right path, and figuring some things out. And there are a lot of people that I told that that were interested so I wrote the thing up told them about it. And notice how James I didn't tell anyone what to do. I didn't go in there I defy you to find the word should in there. It might be in there if it isn't, you take it out. But at no point was I like you didn't hardly use a word you like you should you ought to YOU NEED TO YOU MUST I don't think I used any of those terms. At least not in the sense of like telling other people what to do. I as I basically have cut that from my life, man, because I don't know what other people should do. Like, no, I'm not trying to tell other people what to do or how to live. I am just going to do my work. And I'm going to share it with the world and if it helps others. Awesome.
James Altucher 29:41
And then one last thing about all this and by the way, I just literally I just bought the book that you just recommended. It was written in 1987 I had no idea like I've read a lot of books by by him I don't have tick not on and you know, a lot of them are from the past decade. Two decades. I didn't know he was writing. Back then. So I just I just bought the book. The other thing is I would recommend Steven Batchelors book on Buddha's, or Confessions of a Buddhist atheist, because there's probably similar themes I have heard like, that's good.
Tucker Max 30:11
He's good. He's smart. Yeah, yeah, he's
James Altucher 30:13
very good. So that's interesting. But okay, a lot of the stuff you say somebody might be thinking, and I think they're wrong and thinking this way, but then anything, oh, you need money to do these things that Tucker is suggesting. And I don't think that's true, as evidenced by the fact I do what I've
Tucker Max 30:29
done. It's a bifocal, jumping spring. Good luck.
James Altucher 30:33
Yes. But I think I think to live, I think to live a simpler life. Oh, you see the fact that so many people have dropped out of the workforce or the traditional workforce, that there are many paths to get to this point?
Tucker Max 30:44
Absolutely. You need money. They'll the idea that you need money is an idea of the consumerist corporate culture, they want you to think that because it keeps you on their treadmill, it keeps you in their hierarchy. You just don't like, Listen, I'm not going to tell you that money doesn't work really well, for a few things. Because it does, it has made my transition to this life way easier. Truly, man, if I had to do this with three kids and a wife and no money. It's doable, but it would be rough, it'd be hard, it would take a lot more work. So it's been easier. But you can totally do this with very, very, very little money. Let me give you a couple examples. Because I know like most people who don't have money tend to have a very defeatist scarcity mindset. And they don't believe it without examples. Right? So I'll tell you right now, we are going into a phase right now, where if you have real hard vocational skills, you are going to be one of the most valuable people in the world. And I mean, like, Can you are you a plumber? Are you an electrician? Are you a diesel mechanic? Are you a metal fabricator? Are you a carpenter, like, can you do h fac repair kit, those sorts of things used to be so called blue collar jobs are very looked down upon, you can walk into today, you can walk into almost any if you have no skills, none of those skills, like you don't even know what a diesel engine is, let's say you can walk into a diesel repair shop, as long as you are like a punctual and, and not completely mentally Dreft they'll train they'll pay you to train you in these skills. Because everyone is so desperate for anyone who can who does anything well, that if you just show up and do your best, they'll pay you probably 15 or 20 bucks an hour to get trained. Right. And then once you're actually let's say, a metal fabricator, you're charging whatever you want. You're I mean, you're 50 100 bucks an hour. If you're a master electrician, you're charging anything you want. Like we I'm building all kinds of stuff at my ranch. And we found a contractor. And dude, bless his heart, man, like this guy is like a great contractor. And he basically can charge anything he wants, like, anything, anything he wants, because we can that you can find good ones. And he's like, nice, and he's not gouging us, but charging us double what we would have paid three years ago for the same job. And we feel like we're mad at least is not screwing us. Seriously. I'm not kidding, man. Like, I love to dude. If you can actually do real things with your hands, your future is absolutely golden.
James Altucher 33:46
Right and and what can you do?
Tucker Max 33:49
So it's a great question. I actually have decided one of the hard skills, right, because I've got all kinds of amazing skills. I don't have a lot of hard skills, mechanical vocational skills, I'm going to develop as carpentry. Like I've always loved working with wood. And so it's a very easy place to start. I'm going to start with carpentry I actually don't hold me to this I'm not promising I'm definitely gonna go to wood because I've already built a few things I built a shelf I'm doing a cutting board now like you know the basic entry level things and I can already tell I'll be I'll be workable at this like I probably you know, I'm not going to be Bob Vila or some shit but I'll be good enough. I the thing I really want to get into is blacksmithing because that's always seems super fun to me. But and that but that's hard man dealing with metal and I don't just mean skill hard. I just mean like, like, the level of artistry it takes to be like a good knife Smith. You think oh, how hard can that be? Dude, you have no idea. Those people are as skilled as the greatest winemakers or the greatest artists on Earth. Maybe more skilled. It's it's I agree with you. Yeah, but like so I think carpentry and then maybe blacksmith.
James Altucher 34:59
I feel like I don't Know what I would do maybe plumbing because I'm so used to dealing with shit all the time.
Tucker Max 35:05
Like hard skills. I'm not saying, everyone like you're good at a lot of things, man I'm just talking about for someone who has no money, right? And they're like, Well, how do I even start? Dude, if you are, it'll take you a couple years to be a serviceable electrician, you can literally pick wherever you want to live and pick your salary. And by the way, as people start to build communities and begin to live as communities, which is going to have it as a major trend, I've been brought up one of the major projects that I have, because I don't even want to open that Pandora's box. But long, long story short, and don't you dare try and get me to expand on this, James, because I want is that means that people are getting together and we're building a town like an actual town, like a real like a town town, right? Like an old school, like European style town, in Texas. And literally, the first thing we're going to have to do is find craftsmen, masons, plumbers, electricians, and those people are going to get in, like, we're going to, if they're good, they're going to get the best deals of anyone, all the rich people are gonna have to buy their way in, and they're got to pay a lot.
James Altucher 36:10
I swear to God, I'm gonna I'm gonna work on my plumbing skills over the next year. So I could, I could sign up. But I Tucker, once again, as always, so fascinating to have you on the show. You've been the guest that's been on the show the most. And I was really not only fascinated by your article on doing Doomer optimism, and everyone can check it out at Tucker, Max calm, but I was really, I heard about the article when I saw two people arguing about it on Facebook, and one person was saying you should kick this guy out of your group. And like, and it reminded me like, I was literally kicked out of a bunch of Facebook groups after a certain article of mine in New York one, right, but New York, New York one, and like people just don't want to hear it and like they kick him out of the group. And even though I was like, No, this is how you get your group better is to consider these issues that a certain element didn't want that but and like you say, these are not You're not like prepping for an atomic war, you're like doing things you would normally should do, you know, like keeping good care of yourself, understanding plumbing, having electricity, getting food for your family and so on. So, but always it's a fascinating to talk to you and and look, I Robin, I have to visit Texas before the next kids born because I'm sure you're gonna be very busy that we're not that far away.
Tucker Max 37:34
We're finishing a guesthouse soon. You know, you and the wife are always welcome.
James Altucher 37:38
And vice versa. We have a guest house but I know you're you're nesting now because Veronica is preparing for for number four. So good luck and let's let's we'll definitely talk soon.
Tucker Max 37:49
Definitely. Thank you, man.