From Barter to Billionaires; WTF happened? Commerce V Capitalism,

The difference between commerce and capitalism might seem like a semantic distinction, but understanding this gap illuminates how our entire economic system functions today. Commerce—the simple exchange of goods based on mutual needs—has existed in all human societies since time immemorial. It's relational, built on trust and reciprocity. But capitalism? That's something else entirely.

In this deep dive, we trace capitalism's evolution from feudal Europe through the first multinational corporations to today's tech monopolies. The story begins with the rise of merchant classes who threatened landed elites, and the subsequent creation of corporate charters that married private capital with state violence. The Dutch and British East India Companies—with their own militaries, courts, and prisons—represent the first true capitalistic enterprises, extracting wealth globally while distributing risk through public stock offerings.

This historical development fundamentally transformed human values. Worth became determined not by usefulness but by exchange value. Time became money. Work became wage labor. The abstraction of wealth from tangible goods to returns on investment created our modern financial system where billionaires claim to assume risk while actually transferring it to workers and consumers.

From ExxonMobil's resource extraction backed by military force to Amazon's 30% marketplace cut while enjoying massive tax breaks, the mechanisms have evolved but the underlying structure remains. Delaware's corporate secrecy laws hide the modern version of those early public charters from scrutiny, while our legal system obligates companies to maximize quarterly profits regardless of human or environmental costs.

Understanding this history challenges us to reimagine what trade could look like without domination. How might we increase reciprocal commerce in our communities while resisting exploitative capitalism? Join this conversation about one of the most misunderstood but influential systems shaping our world today, and discover practical ways to support alternatives that benefit everyone, not just those at the top.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Speak Plainly
• 2:24 Commerce vs. Capitalism Defined
• 6:30 The Evolution From Feudalism
• 14:15 Birth of Corporate Charters
• 23:50 Modern Capitalism Unveiled
• 33:40 Call to Action: Supporting Commerce
• 40:38 Benefit Concert Announcement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Thank you, hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I'm your host, owl Medicine. Thank you for tuning in today. We have another episode this week for you, as promised.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Last week, I told you I would be talking about the origins and history of capitalism, and since capitalism is all about efficiency, I'm going to do my best to make this as quick as possible. It is a logical progression, but I had never had it explained to me how we got to capitalism. What exactly is capitalism? How is it different from commerce? When did capitalism replace commerce? How does it work out with, like, feudalism and all of that sort of thing? So that's what we're going to cover today. We're going to try to well, I'm going to try to cover a history and the natural kind of progression of how things work, because that's how my brain works. I like to know a narrative, because I like to know if this, then this and like what, the important pieces were, not just a bunch of individual bits of lingo. So the lingo that we will be including, though, is going to be everything from barter to Bezos. We're going to be starting with barter, bartering, and trade and commerce and moving our way up to capitalism and moving our way up to joint stock companies, limited liability and risk pooling. So buckle in and we're going to get through this together, alright. So, from Barter to Bezos, how capitalism replaced commerce, all right.

Speaker 1: 2:24

Well, let's first separate what is capitalism versus what is commerce. First off, the definition of commerce is commerce is the exchange of goods and services between people or groups, locally or across regions. Now, commerce obviously existed in all societies indigenous trade routes, agent markets, barter systems and it was all relational. It was built on trust and reciprocity, custom and mutual need. This all makes sense. This is intuitive, right?

Speaker 1: 3:04

I have eggs, you have wool. Let's trade eggs for wool. Now. I have eggs all year round. You have wool once or twice a year. So if I'm going to trade my eggs for wool, because of the amount of perceived value and because of this natural seasonality of creating these products or of harvesting and processing these things so they become useful, eggs are pretty useful right out the chicken, but wool is not Wool, takes a lot of processing, is not wool, it takes a lot of processing. And so if I'm going to trade little things that have small value every single day for things that I can like, make blankets and clothes out of. That's only available once a year and it takes a lot of that product. How do I want, how can I, or how can we, if we're exchanging these goods come up with some kind of way that feels right and feels like we're not going to be taken advantage of? Well, we do that through developing trust. That's why commerce is relational, because I know you you're the chicken guy, you know me I'm the wool guy and we understand how all of this works. We've been working together, we've been living near each other for a long time, we know our reputations in our little village and that trust built into my interactions with you and your interactions with the people that I know, that is basically that's commerce, right? It's the farmer trading grains for tools or eggs for wool. That's what commerce is.

Speaker 1: 4:54

No one is trying to maximize profit, because commerce is based on sustenance. Commerce is based on mutual need, right? So I'm not trying to make as many eggs as humanly possible or chickenly possible, because what am I going to do with them? They're not useful, they're just going to go to waste. That is commerce.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Capitalism, on the other hand, is an economic system where private individuals or corporations own the means of production. The goal in capitalism is to maximize profit. Labor is bought and sold and capital is reinvested to generate more capital. It's no longer about exchange. Commerce is about exchanging. Now it's structured around wage labor, the accumulation of labor skilled or unskilled and the accumulation of capital, competition and state enforcement of contracts, property and debt. I'm going to say that again. It is characterized and structured around wage labor accumulation, competition and state-enforced contracts, property and debt, state-enforced contracts, property and debt. This is the heart of capitalism. This is the seat of all of the issues that we have with capitalism. That's commerce versus capitalism.

Speaker 1: 6:34

So how did capitalism replace commerce? Because obviously now everybody, from Karl Marx way back in the day, to like Bernie Sanders and well, maybe not Bernie anymore, but lots of people now are screaming about how capitalism is fucked up and capitalism is killing us. And then there are other people who that are going no, capitalism built your iPhone, and which is it? Did capitalism screw us over completely or is the seat of all of our problems? Or did capitalism create our iPhone, or is it both or is it some like some combination, and to me, I think it's a combination of things. I think it's the combination of our, our, um, our working together to create things that are big and cool and new happens much, much faster under capitalism because the risk is greater. And to all of those people who talk about billionaires assuming the risk for all of us, I want you to know that you're very, very wrong. You are extremely wrong Under capitalism.

Speaker 1: 7:40

One of the tenets of capitalism is that risk is no longer assumed by the people who make the investment. Not anymore. The risk is actually assumed by the workers. Because trade, you can declare bankruptcy and now you are a one-eighteenth or one-eight-hundredth or one-eight-trillionth of an owner of some company or some venture that a company is going to do with the intent of making money on the back end. That is where the investment comes in. That's where the investment of capital comes in, of capital comes in. This is why it's capitalism because it is the investment up front, on the assumption that there is going to be a profit made through trade. That creates capitalism.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So barter and regional trade existed in every single society in the world. It's based on reciprocity, kinship, reputation and need. Trade was embedded in culture and spirituality. It was not separate from it Because think about it In early market economies, markets facilitated exchange. They didn't dominate a society in any way, shape or form. It was just a way for people from Morocco to get goods from people in Palestine or in Libya or in Great Britain, and the same thing for the Silk Road all the way out to China and all the way back to Western Europe. These were market economies where people could come exchange their goods, but their goods again were based on sustenance.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Their art was based on their culture and the sustenance of their culture, and what I mean by that is surviving Every group of people. My definition of culture is the information needed in order to survive a given environment, and our art is one of those. It's one of the things that is needed to survive a given environment. And, especially before capitalism, the way that art was created was out of local goods that local plants turned into dyes that were turned into paints and local clays that were turned into ceramics and local stone that was turned into buildings and temples, expressions of our culture, because they were created by the goods around us, by the resources in our given environment. And then if we had any surplus, which was never the goal among commerce, it was never the goal in trade before capitalism, whatever additional stuff that we had. You could make a few extra widgets and go sell them. You could make a few extra little statues as an artist and give them to a merchant to sell and then bring back some money. You could do that, but it wasn't the focus. But over time, as trade routes became more reliable, the return on that investment became more reliable. So we started producing a bit more to be able to trade more. And as technology grew, our ability to create more got better, our ability to not quite mass produce yet, but our ability to produce more, which this is the feudal era. Now we're entering feudalism here, which is like the 1300s to the 1500s.

Speaker 1: 11:51

The entire structure of the world at the time of the feudalistic world is a land-based wealth system. Lords owned the land and peasants had to work it. There was little mobility, little need for markets, because production was for substance and not surplus. The church and the crown held moral and legal authority. But then as technology got better and the Black Plague hit Western Europe, it reduced the labor supply in Western Europe and peasants demanded wages. This is when we got the growth of cities and the growth of merchant towns, because there was more stuff being traded and the merchants were able to make more and more money.

Speaker 1: 12:40

This is the beginning. And the merchants were able to make more and more money. This is the beginning. This was the first time in history that we started using the word bourgeoisie or the bougie. Now this was the rise of the bourgeoisie. It's the urban merchant class. The bourgeoisie are the merchants who were trading everybody's goods and keeping a cut of it for themselves, kind of like government taxes. The global exploration brought in foreign luxuries and increased demand for trade. More landed people, mostly landed lords, wanted more cool stuff from around the world because they already owned everything here. So they wanted to own stuff from other parts around the world because they already owned everything here. So they wanted to own stuff from other parts of the world. So they started paying more and trading for more cool stuff from other countries. But this is a problem because now the merchant class is getting rich enough to threaten the old money, to threaten the landed owners.

Speaker 1: 13:42

This is where we get the term nouveau riche, like maybe you remember the unsinkable Molly Brown. I remember watching the movie Titanic when I was a kid and hearing about the unsinkable Molly Brown and her being a feature in the film. I think it was Kathy Bates, if I remember right. Anyway, molly Brown was a real person and I remember them using the word nouveau riche and I was like that's kind of weird. But obviously it means new money and they say that in the movie. But that's why everyone hated her.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Is the people on the Titanic in this era in the 1600s now? On the Titanic in this era in the 1600s now, the people of the Titanic on the Titanic were the landed class. They were born into money and there is now a new merchant class that has arisen as powerful entities because now they have a bunch of money entities because now they have a bunch of money. And that's a problem for the landed class. They don't like competition, they want to keep everything for themselves. But the issue is at this point merchants lacked legal protection and military force, so the landed elites feared losing their power to the nouveau riche and the solution was the charter.

Speaker 1: 15:04

This is where states issued corporate charters to select merchants, the ones that the landed gentry in the crown and the church liked. They would issue corporate charters to them. These charters were documents that granted the legal right to monopolize trade. Charters were documents that granted the legal right to monopolize trade, even wage war and enslave and even govern overseas. This is the beginning of the first state and corporate alliances. They basically said you bring us back profit and we will protect your ships and we'll fund you.

Speaker 1: 15:41

So in walks the Dutch East India Company. This is the very first capitalistic corporation. It started in 1602 and it's the first multinational corporation. It's the first one to issue public stock. It had its own military, its own prisons and its own courts. It enslaved people, controlled trade routes and extracted resources all across Asia. It aimed at not just commerce but endless capital accumulation.

Speaker 1: 16:19

The next one, the British East India Company. You've probably heard about both of these. This was a similar charter, but with even deeper colonization of India. It played a role in shaping imperial rule Like not just a role, but like. It played the key role in shaping British imperial rule. It played the key role in shaping British imperial rule.

Speaker 1: 16:43

With these charters the Brits in Western Europe realized we can do whatever the fuck we want because we have technology, manpower and capital to be able to front kind of basically anything at this point and send people anywhere in the world to extract goods, extract value from somewhere in the world. This moved profits into the hands of investors and no longer the hands of laborers, because the laborers used to make things for sustenance. Now they're making things for international trade. Now they're making things for international trade, but because the way that these companies are using their charters to go elsewhere in the world and extract goods with the threat of force and not just the threat, the following through with force and enslavement these companies are paying back their investors.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Now it's too risky because ships sink. It's too risky for one guy or one company to assume all of the risk, because if a fleet of six or ten ships goes out and one or two of them sink, that is a massive amount of money to recoup and that's dangerous to the rich people, and rich people don't like anything risky or don't like anything dangerous Not any smart ones anyway, which is again why, if you believe that billionaires are assuming all of the risk, you don't know anything about economics, because it is the laborer who is assuming all of the risk. It seems like it up front, but it's all fake money. It's all fake capitalistic money, because rich people, especially now, are being paid through their stock investments. So you buy a little bit of stock and now you own one one hundredth or one ten thousandth of a ship that's going across the sea.

Speaker 1: 18:46

So now, with this public trading in the like British East India company or the Dutch East India company, with the investment of a bunch of people, when that ship goes down, those people only lose a little bit of money apiece and they're going to recoup their money because they are the ones that have state enforcement, the state enforcement, again, remember, of debt and of property and of the military. They have state enforcement to make sure that they recoup their investments, whereas the laborers do not have any kind of state enforcement to recoup their losses. So when any amount of profit is skimmed off of the top, whether that's from someone like Hook in the Books back in the day, or because a ship went down, or because a shipping container fell off of a ship and like, um, my friend flowers I was just with in manchester wrote a piece called like 1673 or whatever, and that's it's how many shipping containers are like lost into the sea each year. Anyway, random side, random side note because ADHD is real and I've only had one cup of coffee but when a bit of money is disappeared for one reason or another, whether in the books or at the bottom of the sea, each of these investors only get to lose a little bit of money because they're going to get their money enforced by the government. They're going to recoup their investments, so that money that did get lost is going to be eaten somewhere. That cost has to be eaten somewhere and that cost is eaten on the backs of the laborers and the people who actually created the value.

Speaker 1: 20:41

So this is where capitalism separated economy from morality. We have a utter shift in values at this point. Value shifted from use what something is good for to exchange what it sells for, which meant that wealth became abstracted. It's no longer about land or goods, but it's about returns on investment. Make sure that you get this if you really want to understand how capitalism works now. This is where wealth began to be abstracted. Wealth was in the feudal age and before. Wealth was lots of horses, because people use horses for everything, from plowing to protection, to exploration, to hunting. Wealth was land, because land is used for housing and for water and wood and food. Growing Like wealth was measured in usable goods.

Speaker 1: 21:53

Now, since the way people are making money is no longer this merchant thing, because they started taxing I forgot that, to add that bit the federal government. When they started doing these charters, they also simultaneously started taxing the out of merchants, because they needed to quell this merchant class. They wanted to quell the bourgeoisie class. So they taxed the shit out of some of them and gave others the ones that were more kind, I guess you might say, to the crown, the ones that were more in line with the crown or the church, the ones that were all copacetic and all buddy-buddy and incestuous with them, they were the ones that got the charters. So when wealth began to be abstracted, time became money and work became wage labor. Let me say that again, time became money. Have you heard that before, time is money? That only existed after capitalism, because before time was just time and your work was the thing that allowed you to survive. Now, time is money because these charters give x amount of time for you to go and extract X amount of goods, x amount of value that is hopefully in surplus to the investment that we gave you and when you can show up and force your way into any situation and extract any goods you want, because you have the technology and the power and the brand new diseases to move anywhere in the world and wipe out entire populations and extract all their resources.

Speaker 1: 23:41

It's easy to see how wealth was accumulated very quickly in Western Europe through capitalism. So now we're going to move to modern capitalism. We went from charters to governmental contracts. Now we have contracts with things like ExxonMobil, which in their contract they're backed by state military forces. They extract global resources for profit, and investments in regulatory capture, lobbying and favorable foreign policy are just standard practice for ExxonMobil. Then we have places like and that's a real good right, like that's a produced good in the world. Oil is, but now we also have digital goods. We have platform empires like Amazon.

Speaker 1: 24:36

If you want to sell anything, anything in the world, now you have to sell it through Amazon, and Amazon takes a 30% cut, like the biggest wealthiest company in the world, and they take 30% of anything that any merchant creates. And there's no risk here. There's no risk by Bezos and there's no risk here. There's no risk by Bezos. He's a multi-billionaire, but all of it's fake because all of those billions are just investments in stocks, which are investments in risk, as we talked about.

Speaker 1: 25:08

With these publicly traded goods and publicly traded companies, you can trade them because essentially, you're getting investments. You're like a Kickstarter. You can think of the early Dutch East India or the British East India. You can think of them as like Kickstarters and then other people can basically buy your investment in the Kickstarter and that's publicly traded, because you had the Kickstarter you invested. Now somebody else can buy that investment from you, aka you sell the stock. That's publicly traded goods.

Speaker 1: 25:40

With Amazon, they receive absolutely massive tax breaks. While they are raping everybody on the platform for 30% of their sales. They get massive tax cuts. They pay less in taxes Like ExxonMobil, amazon and GE. Last year paid less in taxes combined. Those three companies combined paid less in taxes than illegal immigrants did. How insane is that?

Speaker 1: 26:14

But Amazon, they receive massive tax breaks. They also get USPS subsidies for delivery and they are just riddled with federal contracts, all of which are enforceable by the United States military. They have AI-managed labor with minimal rights, which usually is not allowed, which usually is not allowed. They have no physical army, but has surveillance tools, facial recognition and a data monopoly. They can do whatever they want with all of that information and, although they don't have a physical army, property, as we have seen recently, is the only thing that police are obligated to protect.

Speaker 1: 26:56

In the United States, again, police have no requirement to protect or serve people. This was a rule upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The highest court in the land ruled a very long time ago that police do not protect people, police protect property. So even if there aren't specific sections or subsections in a contract or in what used to be a charter that grants military power to these companies, because they are the most important companies to the economy and police don't have to protect people, they are there to protect property All of these mega companies have the power of the state, the violent power of the state, waiting, chilling for them, just waiting at any moment in time to be able to call on that and say oh look, they're protesting. It's against law and order and the police will always side with the companies because that's what the law demands of them. And so the charter then is replaced by the terms of services and API lock-in. So the way they have federal contracts with the government, but now they can outsource a lot of the liability of the things that might be confusing or might be risky. They can just continue to take risks and build the risks into terms of service, and those terms of service then outsource the risk even further onto the consumer. So again, these multibillion-dollar companies are assuming no risk. They might provide some upfront capital, but they assume no risk because when push comes to shove, the laborers will eat the risk and the end user eats the risk.

Speaker 1: 29:06

So now we have to talk about Delaware. The state of Delaware is the Panama of the United States. It is the Swiss bank account of the US. Over 65% of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. And why do you ask Good question? That's because Delaware offers incredible amounts of secrecy, tax avoidant laws and corporate-friendly courts. They are the modern-day version of a charter, just stripped of the public language. So what happens is the public charters that were the foundation of these India trading companies and the foundation of these companies that were basically sent around the world to rape it of all of its goods and people. Now those contracts can be hidden from public by, because we have, like, the Freedom of Information Act and stuff like that, but all of these are hidden from the public by Delaware state laws. They want billionaires there. State laws they want billionaires there. The entire economy of Delaware essentially is functional because of their tax haven status for megacorps. If they start taxing megacorps, then they'll just move somewhere else and that's why Delaware has maintained their completely atrocious laws around corporate behavior.

Speaker 1: 30:44

So what hasn't changed? What hasn't changed is that there is still a marriage of capital and state violence. It is still built on monopolies, inequality and externalizing cost and externalizing risk, even while maintaining the PR of. We are assuming all of the risk. There are still rewards for projected future profit over present needs. This is the issue that we all have with the stock market. We all have this issue, whether you recognize that you have the issue or not. The problem is in the stock market, ceos are obligated by law to maximize profit every quarter, no matter what. They are obligated by law. Our United States laws Make sure that we rape the earth, no matter what. Want proof. Remember Luigi? Remember my episode that I did on Luigi Mangione and shooting Brian Thompson in the back of the head, allegedly Well, when that happened and the CEO of UnitedHealthcare got shot in the head because it seemed like a.

Speaker 1: 31:58

It seems like this guy was pissed off and was going. You are not doing what you're supposed to do. You're killing people, so fuck you. He was shot in the back of the head. And you know what happened. Well, they started approving more care. Yeah, unitedhealth started approving more procedures for the people who had been paying money into their insurance program so they could have procedures when they needed them. They finally started approving more of them. And what happened? Less than a year later I think it was actually less than six months later there were two people who were investors in UnitedHealth that are now suing UnitedHealth because they lost profits. They still made money, but they didn't make as much money as they were making, so now they're suing.

Speaker 1: 32:46

That's capitalism. That is capitalism when you still make a bunch of money for nothing at all outside of being rich. You're being rich and then you go huh, let me just buy this stock in this company and then, if they don't make you enough money, you can just sue them so you can make more money, because either you're going to make money for me on the stock market or you're going to make money for me by me suing you. This is capitalism. It's all this like fake concept of wealth. It's all this fake concept of wealth. It's all absolute horseshit. So this is my thing. I wanted to talk about a history of capitalism, not in any kind of detail. But to give you a logical, how did we get from feudal landlords to ExxonMobil and Amazon? And that's what I think I covered today. Here is my call to action for you.

Speaker 1: 33:46

Commerce is natural.

Speaker 1: 33:48

Commerce is the trading of goods and services.

Speaker 1: 33:51

It's based on relation and reciprocity and need. That is commerce. Capitalism is not that. Capitalism is designed. Capitalism needs a certain amount of technology to work. Capitalism needs a certain amount of actual capital and goods, a certain amount of surplus, to be able to invest that surplus and take a risk with that surplus on extracting more goods out of some other place. Before capitalism, commerce was reciprocal. Trade can be reciprocal. It can be a win-win-win for everybody. But capitalism, because of its nature, because we take a surplus and then we risk that surplus for more surplus the only way that capitalism functions is it demands constant growth. Think about that. Think about if you take a surplus and then you risk that surplus, especially if you take that surplus and it's not actually a surplus. If it's like if you are that surplus and it's not actually a surplus. If it's like if you are taking from what you have right now and you're like, well, I'm going to need this in two months and if I make that money back then I'll be fine, and I probably will. But if I don't make that money back, I'm kind of screwed, which is what happens constantly with corporations and banks. Then capitalism demands growth at all costs, because if we lose, if you lose those investments and your company shuts down, you're screwed. But nowadays the companies don't shut down, they just declare bankruptcy and get bought by another shell company and the same thing happens all over again. So what I want people to be thinking about is what are the differences for you between commerce and capitalism? Did you know that there was a difference between the two? And what would trade look like in our modern world without domination? Because capitalism and domination are inseparable. You cannot have capitalism without domination. You can have domination without capitalism, but barely. It takes that investment of goods, that investment of money, that investment of time and training for soldiers and for spearheads and guns and cannons and nukes. It takes investment to build these things and that investment then puts a strain on things and that strain comes out as domination. We say we have to make this money, so whatever I have to do, I need this to survive. And this is the way the workers feel. This is the way the wage laborers feel. We have to do this in order to survive, because our company risked everything on this investment, and so now, if this investment falls through, I don't get to feed my family, and this is how regular good people get turned into fascists and Nazis capitalism. So what does commerce look like for you? What does trade look like for you, if it's not capitalism? If you don't need a crazy investment, how can you increase commerce in your community? How can you find a way to do that For me? This week I am doing a show at Rosie's, which is a beautiful spot on the wharf. It used to be the Roosevelt. Now it's owned and ran by the wonderful Matea, and I just had a show there last Friday. But this Saturday I'm doing a benefit concert. I'm asking anybody that can come to come and tip and donate, because 100% of the money that will be made, 100% of the money that I get tipped and I get paid, will be going to Love Without Borders, a refugee group that I worked with in Athens. They provide art supplies to refugees so the refugees can make art and then the woman who runs it, she goes around the world selling their art and before you think, well, that sounds pretty bougie, just keep in mind that the only reason she can go around the world and sell their art is because she got and has maintained her job as a flight attendant for two decades almost, and that's the way that she's able to do all these pop-up art sales, and 100% of the money that they make on that art goes directly to the pockets of the people who created it. They use donated supplies. They also provide housing. They facilitate education, they facilitate integration into the community and not just people living in refugee houses or squat houses. They are awesome, and this is one of the ways that I'm trying to increase commerce. I'm trying to help give people what they need, because I know out on this peninsula we have some of the most just, fantastic human beings on the planet, some of the truly most heartfelt, heart forward, loving people who want to see everybody fed. They want to see everybody taken care of. So I wanted to be able to provide a way that those people can voluntarily provide whatever it is that they have spare to give to people who are doing real on the ground good, with no red tape, no certifications, no governmental intervention, no oversight crap just people who have been doing good work for decades, who will continue to do good work and have dedicated their entire lives to this. Like this is all that they do. So I'm trying to get good people here to be able to put their money where their mouth is, because that's what we all want to do. We all feel the desire to help with so many things in the world, and right now there's a lot of things to help with. So this is how I am trying to get commerce. Even though it's international, this is kind of, in a way, it's commerce. I wanted to make that little announcement. If you are in Port Angeles or Sequim or on the Olympic Peninsula and you're listening to this podcast, please come out to Rosie's on the Wharf in Port Angeles. 9 to 11 pm, I'll be playing. I I'm gonna have a drummer. There will be a fancy cocktail made especially for this event. So if you want to, if you want to buy a cocktail and have all those proceeds donated, you can do that. If you want to throw money in a case and have that money given to love without borders, you you can do that. But come on out and support. Come on out and show your love. Come on out and support commerce and fuck capitalism, because capitalism is the reason that all of these people are not all, but many of them are refugees. We currently have the largest refugee crisis in the world. The largest migration of the human species in history is happening right now in Africa because of the extraction of cobalt and lithium in the lithium belts. The mining out there, the extractive processes, the extraction of these resources are the definition of capitalism. They're the newest round of capitalism in the world and it is causing the largest migration in human history. But we're not hearing about it because we're in the Western world and some 85 or 90 percent of those people that are ran out of their home stay in Africa because they're like, yeah, we may be fucked, but the rest of the world's worse, which really should say something to those of us in the West who have this like still tribal, like frankly insulting version of Africa in our heads. So if you want to find a way to give back, to buffer a little bit of the pain of capitalism, then you can come out to the show 9 to 11. I'll stop kicking that dead horse. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you got something out of today's episode. I hope you learned a little something about the difference between commerce and capitalism. You learned a little something about the difference between commerce and capitalism and how we developed from the feudal age up to Exxon, from Barter to Bezos. Thank you so much for listening. Please leave a message, leave a comment, give me a rating. The ratings go really really far. Please Thank you and you have a marvelous day. And remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you you.