Great Houses

Gregory Treat: All right.

Hello everybody, and welcome to another
episode of The Great Houses Forum, where

we talk with interesting people about the,
uh, the ideas surrounding great houses.

Great houses are those multi-generational
business owning, people forming,

culture supporting institutions.

They are families, they are households.

They are bigger than what we
normally think when we use the

words families and households.

And so I've found great houses to
be just an incredibly helpful and

useful term and, so I, built my
podcast and, and some of the online

things that I'm doing around that.

So today we're talking to James
McPherson, who is the the author at

Aegis of of Zeus, on Substack, and I've
greatly enjoyed, uh his content and so

we're, happy to have him here today.

Thank you so much for being here, James.

James McPherson: Thanks
for having me, Greg.

Gregory Treat: Absolutely.

James McPherson: to be here.

Gregory Treat: So, so tell us a little
bit about yourself and, uh, and how

you, uh, how you came to have such an
interestingly named… I appreciate

the name of your, of your Substack.

Um, and so, so tell us
how you came up with that

James McPherson: It goes
back to high school actually.

my father was the headmaster of the
school I went to, the boys school

I went to from third to 12th grade.

And as you probably know, at some
point in your teenage years, you

need a, a different adult male than
your father mentor you because you're

butting heads with your father.

I was a good student, but I was,
uh, … I was hard to deal with.

Gregory Treat: So where, where
did where did you grow up?

Kind of where was the
family, like, placed?

James McPherson: I was born in Washington,
DC, and raised just outside the city

limits in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Gregory Treat: Sure

James McPherson: And my
parents are from Boston.

My mother is, Boston Irish.

My dad is a mix of, um Scottish, Irish,
and German the Scots came over to Nova

Scotia after the Battle of Culloden
and then migrated to Boston, which

at that point was so run by the Irish
that they dropped the A in Macpherson

to, to fit in, so it became Mcpherson.

Gregory Treat: I love

James McPherson: And, um, my father
went to Harvard and he was the townie

in, in town and gown, graduated in
1970, so there was a lot of cultural

change going on even there at that
bastion of the Brahmin establishment.

, They moved to m- Washington, DC right
after they got married my father took

a teaching position at the Heights
School, which is, uh, under the spiri-

spiritual direction of Opus Dei.

A mentor of his at Harvard, Father
Bob Jackson, who's a Welshman, was

the first headmaster of the school
and brought my father on board, and

then my father became the headmaster.

in Maryland, my father really got into
Catholic history 'cause it was the

only Catholic colony really grew…

I, under his sort of mentorship, I
just grew to love the, the soil of

Maryland and the history of Maryland
and it's, it's a fascinating state.

I was, uh, a charge of his as a son and
a student and, um, yeah, I was kind of

a hothead in high school he was friends
with a professor at Georgetown named Dr.

Jos- Joseph Palmer, and who was, uh,
written his dissertation on Aristotle

and was a, a student himself of
Father William Wallace, who was an

Aristotelian, who basically wrote
about science as a series of models.

So we create models of reality and
Palmer then applied that to the ethics

as a, you know, we model behavior
and until it becomes second nature.

The way to become virtuous is to
imitate a virtuous man, right?

And then it becomes second nature.

then how art is a model of
reality and a model of character.

So, so my father said, "James, why
don't you go talk to Dr. Palmer about

interesting things?" and he sort of
became a mentor to me, I edited his,

the second edition of his book, On
Moral Character: A Practical Guide

to Aristotle's Virtues and Vices.

But talking about Hesiod's Theogony,
with Dr. Palmer, he felt like the modern

world had lost a model of leadership that
was embodied in what he called the Zeus

principle, and also the aegis of Zeus
was a word he used, which is a shield.

And if it's

Gregory Treat: an invisible shield, right?

James McPherson: right?

Gregory Treat: When the,
lightning splits around you.

So

James McPherson: So this idea
of, the embodiment of order and

natural law in the story of Hesiod.

So Hesiod is then, you can view
Hesiod as proto-philosophical, right?

He doesn't have abstract nouns yet,
so… But neither did Aristotle, right?

The word that Aristotle, when
he talks about the material

cause, is, is wood, right?

So I started reading Greek myth as this
sort of proto-philosophical language

the last year I finally wrote the
book I wanted to write, teasing this

apart, called, About the Aegis of Zeus.

Right now I kinda, the title is tentative.

It's called Throw Thunder:
How to Lead Like Zeus.

That'd be more of an airport
book, you know, like a Steven

Pinker book or something.

And I tried to sort of keep it
there, but it just kept going

into sort of philosophy and,

Gregory Treat: are you
in the academy today?

Are you, are you, you
know, involved in… Okay.

How, how, how, how do you, how do
you make your way in the world?

James McPherson: Um, I, I don't very well.

Um,

Gregory Treat: Many says m- most
of us, most of us are in that,

in that, in that zone, I think

, James McPherson: I taught
for a number of years.

I taught at my old high school.

They needed a replacement teacher.

I was in my early 20s, and I fell in
love with teaching, and then my uncle

and… who was the headmaster at the
time, my father's younger brother, we

went and started another boys school,

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: and
called the Avalon School.

And I notice your, your
organization is Avalon Circle.

Gregory Treat: I do like that word.

There's a lot in that word,
especially for Americans, you know?

James McPherson: Right.

Well, it was the first colony of Lord
Baltimore was actually in Newfoundland,

and it was called Avalon, and then he
founded, he founded Maryland after that.

Gregory Treat: Yep

James McPherson: And obviously it
harkens back to King Arthur and-

Gregory Treat: Sail off the western
edge of the world, and there you are.

James McPherson: Yeah.

Um-

Gregory Treat: think the, the
fact that we built a nation here

where there are no walls, right,
around cities is kind of amazing.

Like, when, when you think of, like,
like, when you think of the mythic

import of that, that we have, you know,
one street called Wall Street, right?

Because we built a wall there.

Nowhere else in our, in our
fair land do we build walls.

It's just not been our thing
until, uh, fairly, fairly recently.

Uh, that's, that's kind of amazing, right?

You think about, you know… 'Cause
the story of Avalon is this magical

land where they, they don't really
have kings as we understand them.

They sit in circles, and they don't have
any walls, and they kind of ride around.

I mean, that's, that's a different
kind of, of, of world, you know?

And, and then to realize that we literally
made that myth into reality in America.

Like, we, we are a, we are a tolerably
acceptable fulfillment of the

depictions of Avalon in many ways.

Um, I find that, I find
that really interesting.

It's one of the things that gives me hope.

James McPherson: That is interesting.

I never thought about the fact
that our cities don't have walls.

It's probably why we have so much sprawl.

Gregory Treat: Yep.

Yep, yep

James McPherson: And, uh, I was teaching
for a couple years, and my father

said, "So what do you really wanna
do?" And I was like, "I don't know.

Maybe go to law school." And he
said, "That's what people do when

they don't know what they wanna do."

And I said, "Dad, you went

Gregory Treat: As, a- as, as exactly, as
someone who went to law school, the same.

James McPherson: But my

Gregory Treat: my, if any of my children
come to me and say, "Can I go to law

school?" I'm gonna say, "Ca- can't you
figure out something, like, better to

do?" Uh, you know, "I'll help you."
I'll help my children with whatever,

whatever God puts in front of them.

But, but if they ask me about law school,
I'm gonna be like, "I mean, have you

thought about alternatives, friend?"

James McPherson: Yeah.

And, and so my father had gone to law
school at night at Georgetown while

he started, helped start this school
in case it didn't work out, you know.

And I think he graduated from law school.

We-- My, I was, I'm the oldest
of six, and I think by that time

we had, there were four of us.

So I was, you know, thinking about that
and a lot of my friends were in, from

college were in consulting or investment
banking, so I started looking at that.

And then they, you know,
they lost a teacher midyear.

, I started t- filling that spot,
taught trigonometry, algebra,

and Latin, and I really loved it.

And coaching, I coached eighth grade
baseball, and that was awesome.

So I came back the next year for a
full year as a full-time teacher, and

I coached soccer and basketball, which
were my sports, and then more, more Latin

and classics And I was able to teach a
class to seniors, called, uh Monarchy

Kingl- Kingliness as a Character Trait.

So this idea of the Zeus
principle through history.

You know, we read the
Theogony, parts of the Iliad.

We watched Fight Club.

Gregory Treat: As one does

James McPherson: well, I think Fight
Club is basically the story of Achilles.

when Achilles comes face to
face with Hector at the end,

Hector's wearing his old armor.

So Achilles kills his
old self, his alter ego.

He's had this loss fr- from his anger.

He's… A lot of the Greek
soldiers have died, but his

best friend, Patroclus, died.

I thought it was a good visualization of
what that really looks like, killing your

old self had to fast-forward through a
few scenes at the Catholic high school.

But, um, the kids loved it.

Other teachers would ask, "You know, what
are you studying in Mr. McPherson's class?

What is kingship all about?" And they
would, they would answer, "The first rule

of kingship class is we do not talk about
kingship class." You know what I mean?

The buy-in was great.

And actually, I had one of the
students in that class, he's a lawyer.

He's argued a few times in,
in front of the Supreme Court.

And he told me, he said, "You know, I use
the Zeus principle when I think about,

assigning my lawyers to different tasks
on a case." That was great to hear.

And then the next year, we went
and started another school called

the Avalon School, as I was saying.

The parents said, "Can you start a
girls school?" And we had planned to

start a sister school, but we got--
They-- Parents found the property.

They, they got it up, you know, got it
up and running in the next year And I

was approaching… I was in my late 20s,

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: Approaching 30, it's like
wait, by default I've just been teaching

for eight years, and I never, you know…

I think if I had read Johan's book

Gregory Treat: It w-, it is sort
of your family trade, right?

James McPherson: Right.

Exactly.

You know, I, I never would've left.

But both my sis- my
sister went to Wharton.

She was a nurse, and she went to Wharton
for MBA, she called me up and she said,

"This is the stuff you think about,
like managing and leading people.

You should go to business school." … I
was dating the woman who would become

my wife, and she was in consulting,
and she said, "You know, the way

you think is like a McKinsey guy.

You should go to business
school." So I was like, "Ooh-hoo.

I can still th- keep thinking about
the same weird stuff and make money?"

So I went to Duke for my MBA, , it
was in the great recession, so it

was a little tough to get a job.

But I got a job, um at an 80-year-old
science education company called,

, Carolina Biological Supply, and the CEO
hired me to start a new business for him.

I started their e-learning business,
helped launch, and then did a lot of

change management within the company,
like streamlining things and, we launched

a couple other, experiments at home
for distance learning, uh, line of

business, and, uh, I was there for about
six years that was a great experience.

My CEO there, Jim Parrish,
he had, um, been hired out of

business school by Mitt Romney

Gregory Treat: Hmm.

James McPherson: I wanna say on Link-
LinkedIn somehow that Mi- Mitt Romney

is my business grandfather, but

see if I can get some
clout points out of that.

, But yeah, he was a great mentor And
then they eliminated my position

and I was like, "Oh, this, this
has been a good experience.

I've learned a lot.

I've done a lot.

I'll get a job." And I
just, I couldn't get a job.

So I started my , my
own consulting company

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: with, uh, a
couple other guys who had all

been laid off by the big fours.

And we did that for a little bit.

And then, um a client picked me up
full-time for a telecom startup, 5G

broadband wireless telecom startup, and I
ended up being the COO and chief of staff.

And it was four guys who all had
gone to law school together and

they had all had exit events.

One was the head of
intellectual property at Yahoo,

Gregory Treat: Mm.

James McPherson: got bought
out when Google acquired Yahoo.

The CEO had sold his prior telecom company
to AT&T for 200 something million dollars.

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: And another guy had
a political polling and, marketing

company in Iowa which he sold.

Yeah, so that was three.

It was three of them.

And then one-- Oh, one had, had a
broadband wireless building company, so

he would train veterans as wireless…
as wire and wireless installers.

that was really interesting.

And then I thought that was it.

Like, we'll build this for a couple years
and I'll exit and go be a very charitable,

Gregory Treat: a gentleman of leisure.

James McPherson: Yeah,
COVID just blew it up.

I mean, I, I can't go into all the
details of why that happened, but we

basically had 100 of million dollar
contracts, uh, evaporate, , with COVID.

Gregory Treat: Ah, really?

Like wireless i- going away in COVID?

Like that's,

James McPherson: Well,

Gregory Treat: the story
that we're all told

James McPherson: our contract did.

Um, there were multiple reasons for this.

None of which were really fair,
but, you know, life isn't fair,

especially in Washington, DC.

Um,

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

Yeah, I knew some guys that were in-
involved in trying to get the, uh,

the Indian broadband stuff going and
man, that, that was a, that was a

rough go for several of the people
that, that, that kind of bet, bet

on themselves in that, in that arena

James McPherson: On the,
uh, reservations you

mean?

yeah,

Gregory Treat: yeah.

There was a, I mean, there was a huge
amount of money that was allocated to

that, and then the way it was spent
was not handled super well, and so then

people, people were mad and asking mad
questions and just kinda, you know, was

not good for several people involved

James McPherson: I mean, the amount--
if you go, if you do, like, a

Google or AI search on the rural
internet, funding over the last two

decades, and they keep doing it.

Here's a couple billion dollars to build
high-speed internet in rural America.

if you did two billion in twenty
fifteen, why do you have to

do it again in twenty twenty?

You know.

So

Gregory Treat: Where's the money going?

Somewhere, right?

James McPherson: That was interesting
and, I was up in DC and my kids

are down here, North Carolina.

I got stuck up there.

My father passed away twenty nineteen
and then COVID came and I was

sort of, you know, stuck up there.

And then as soon as that started lifting,
I was interviewing back in North Carolina.

I mean, I had been back and forth a
lot, but, I just know my own experience

as a teenager, like, I need to be
in front of my son's face when he

says, "I wanna punch you, Dad." You

know?

So I moved back and, uh, they were
opening a new Catholic high school in

Durham, and they needed a a business
office manager, and so I became

the business office manager there.

When I got the job, they said, "Oh, by
the way, you're the CFO." It's like: Okay.

so I used a lot of YouTube
training to get up to speed on,

on actually that, on the metrics.

And my sister was fun.

She's, uh, the one who went to Wharton.

She ended up being the CEO and president
of several healthcare companies,

dealing with geriatric care, and that's
what her specialty as a nurse was.

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: And she, she was cute.

She sent me an email of, uh,
their, their CFO's presentation.

Uh, she was on the board of the private
school in Tampa where her kids went.

She sent me-- She's like, "Does this
look right?" I was like, "Yeah, it looks

fine." And then I was like, "Oh, this is
what my report is supposed to look like."

You know.

She didn't wanna say, like, "Do you
know what you're doing?" And, uh, she

very, elliptically got me to think,
"Oh, this is what I'm supposed to be.

This is what my report should look like."

Um, that was funny

Gregory Treat: it's an interesting…
I mean, that, that, those

are, those are good things.

I mean, the, it's funny how
successful people and successful

families have these classy ways
of preserving each other's honor.

So come- it can be
cumbersome at times, right?

But, uh, but it, it matters, man.

It matters, so

James McPherson: so I was there
for two and a half years while

we started the school, and then I
got a call from a friend who was

taking over his consulting company

and he said, uh, "When I buy out my
partner, most of the people are gonna

retire. Would you like to come on board?"

And I was intrigued ' cause
it was a good amount of money,

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: and at the school
I wasn't quite making what I thought

I needed to be making for sort of
future-proofing, , myself a little bit.

And so I, I left the school and went to
work for him, but no one retired that he

thought was gonna retire, and I didn't
get the training… It was a very niche

consulting, economic consulting group.

And, uh, I brought up the fact that
I wasn't-- I was making about 50%

of what was promised, and he's like,
"Well, we're gonna have to let you

go." I was like Do you know how hard
it is for a 50-year-old white guy to

get a job in this country right now?

So, I was pretty upset.

I basically always had this startup
consulting group On the side.

And so I just, uh, turned that back
on But yeah, it's a, it's a scramble.

I had to sell my house.

It was a nice cabin built in
nineteen hundred on seven acres

up near the Virginia border.

It was really, really nice.

but it was too isolated for my daughters.

So I have two sons and two daughters.

My daughters are very young and, uh,
three and one, and they couldn't walk

to a playground or anything, so it
was kind of a blessing in disguise.

So I sold it, um, made some money, which
gave me a little bit of a cushion, and

now I'm renting back down in Chapel Hill.

, I run a, morning shift, the first shift
of a warehouse, I have a, a company

I'm involved with called NimbleDraft,
and we're doing a lot of AI solutions.

my business partner in that is a
friend from college who I walked onto

the basketball team in college as
a freshman, and my business partner

James saw me walk onto the team and he
said, "I can do that." And he walked

on as a sophomore and took my spot.

we became good friends and
we're still friends, you know,

twenty-five, thirty years later.

I mean, he's ninety-nine
percentile of AI knowledge.

I mean, he's really sharp
and he's teaching me a ton.

And so we're sort of trying to
build, build a business there.

And

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: when I started
writing on Substack, they were

saying, "Oh, it takes about a year
to get traction." And, and that sort

of has been true about everything.

You know, you start a
business, about a year.

things are sort of stabilized.

But yeah, I run a, I
run a warehouse shift.

I write.

I try to be a good father and husband,
and I, um, work on AI solutions.

Gregory Treat: Well, so, uh, how did
you get, you know, like obviously

you, you were interested in coming
on the Great Houses, uh, forum.

So, and, and you, you'd mentioned that
you've read Johan's book and, you know,

kind of a, an appreciator of some of
the things that are, that are happening.

I mean, it's a, it's a cool space, right?

You know, uh, Benjamin Black at Dynastes
is killing it as well, and there, there's,

there's a growing kind of group of us.

So, so te- tell me, tell me how
you got into this space and, and,

uh, you know, I'm assuming it
was, I'm assuming it was Johan.

And, uh, so what did
you think of his book?

James McPherson: The book
was, better than I expected.

, The whole discussion of philanthropy
versus charity is absolutely critical.

the way I found Johan was I'm a member of,
uh this group called Catholic Founders,

and, um,

you might know Silas?

yeah.

I think he's been on.

and he interviewed Johan, and I, I
thought, oh, this is, Something's

happening in the zeitgeist here.

I think I had found your
Substack prior to Johan

and,

Gregory Treat: wow.

Wow.

James McPherson: yeah.

Gregory Treat: I'll chalk that up

James McPherson: one of the things for me
is this concept in business called best

practices, we have that as a civilization.

in Christendom, we have the
best, best practices, right?

We, we kept the Greek and Roman, we
added Christ, and The flourishing,

I mean, that came from that.

The Making of Europe
by Christopher Dawson.

heard of Johan's book.

, Christopher Dawson, The Making
of Europe was a profound

influence on me, in college.

I think going to business school
and you're studying these best

practices and you're like, " This
is, this is a foetus from feudalism."

You know, this is not we
didn't reinvent anything.

Gregory Treat: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the futile instinct, man.

It, it doesn't go away

James McPherson: but the other thing
is, like, you'll see the meme of, like,

progressives back engineering themselves
into a traditional moral you know?

Like, hey, you know, if women
can't have abortions, then men

should have to stick around for
the… Yeah, it's called marriage.

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

Christian marriage in particular actually.

So there's a, there's, there's a, a guy
named Vishal Mangalwadi, um, who, uh,

you know, from India, and he, he kind of
started out with the basic question of

why is Europe so much better than India?

Which is a fascinating question that
basically only in America today, only

someone from his, his ethnic background
is allowed to ask such questions.

And, uh, he, he came out with some
really brutal facts in terms of answer.

Um, so he, he wrote a book called
The Book That Made Your World that's

very approachable and very, you know,
very readable, very interesting.

Um, so but I've, I've always… But
you know, he, he talks about that,

that basically the secret to, to
Western economic success is our, our,

our concepts of marriage, um, which
are different than any other concepts

of marriage anywhere in the world

James McPherson: so I was like… I was
sitting there, and then I'm in edTech,

and no one knows… Well, let me back up.

I was in business school at a party,
and I quoted Chesterton or something,

and I said, "Oh, my favorite author
said this." And the couple I was

talking to, they turned to me and
said, "You have a favorite author?

Pfft, that's weird." I s- you
know, you start developing this

sense of like, these degrees are

Gregory Treat: intellectual
bastard children.

No, no lineage, no connection to anything.

Just, "I, hi, I'm here. I'm a
spiritual intellectual orphan.

I've never been fathered by
anybody." Oh man, what a thing.

James McPherson: But there's no best pra-

Gregory Treat: author

James McPherson: we, we, we have
no best prac- we lost it all.

You know, in the sort of
late 20th century, post-'60s

deracination of the curriculum.

Like, someone like me, I'm sitting
on a gold mine, I often think, " Hey,

Claude, rewrite the Iliad as a story of
two houses fighting over a business."

What's the Iliad?

It's a trade war between, you know,
the eastern side of the Aegean and

the western side of the Aegean.

or it probably was may- you
know, I don't know for sure.

but yeah, so this, this idea of heritage,
inheritance, and best practices that

are lost, and I think of it in terms
more of like a parish community and,

like, what was lost with the, the
flight to the suburbs of the Catholic

ethnic groups and how much they lost.

And, and that Johann's recent article
on the, the loss of social capital,

So I've, I read, uh, E. Michael Jones'
book, um, The Slaughter of Cities:

Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing
in college, and it just blew me

away and answered so many questions.

Like, why, why did my parents leave
Dorchester, South Boston for suburbs?

And why am I in Maryland?

And now I'm in North Carolina.

I mean, that is absolutely Horrible.

You know, like…

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: and my father
always noted that, there was a, in

his cousins, like huge families.

My father was the oldest of seven.

My mother was the oldest of six, and
they came from families of… , and

their parents were, you know, 15
kids, and seven kids, and 13 kids.

And so the grandparents
were from big families, and

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: so I had a lot
of cousins and second cousins,

and there's still a thick network
of them up in the Boston area.

And in times of trouble, your cousins
always have your back, you know?

And I know that, and I would
love to be back up there.

And I think we're sell- so
we're selling the house.

My mom's selling the house we grew
up in, and I think a lot about,

well, where are my roots, you

know?

Are they… And I think they're more
in New England than they are in DC.

Uh, although I love Maryland
a lot, it's just so impossible

to live there right now.

I did have lunch at a, a Johns
Hopkins event with current

Governor Wes Moore once.

Uh, that was interesting.

I was there 'cause I won a Fulbright
scholarship, and he had gotten a

Rhodes, I believe, and it was sort
of a bunch of alumni coming to

talk about their experience with
these postgraduate scholarships.

So there was like the the
German DAAD, D-A-A-D scholarship,

and then the Fulbright, the
Rhodes, the Marshall, the Truman.

And so we were all at this lunch talking
to undergrads about our experiences.

, And I was sitting with Wes at, at lunch.

for publication purposes of this
podcast, I'll leave it at that.

Gregory Treat: Very good then.

James McPherson: Um, just thinking
about heritage and lost wisdom really.

So in business school,
it's best practices.

In culture, it's wisdom.

It's cultural wisdom,

and just thinking of the loss of,
of that, and that's sort of what

I try to write about, I think.

and the Ages of Zeus, I really
wanna bring back this concept of

leadership that I think basically
ran from Zeus until World War I when

all the kings were exiled or killed.

and I think there's so… You know, I was
talking to my parochial vicar about this

at lunch, and he's, like, talking about
liturgical reform and things like that.

He's like, "There's a reason things
stopped. It's because they stopped

working." You know, and I think Blessed
Charles Joseph of Habsburg was a good

man, but I think a lot of the monarchies
had become desiccated and corrupt

and, you know, probably the French
Revolution is the start of the regicides.

But, but that's a big loss, and I
think this idea of, that you guys

have about a household is, and
the father binding through time,

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: that's what a king was,
and that was a model that was wiped out.

Going back to Palmer and Aristotle and
modeling knowledge and modeling wisdom,

if you have a king, it's a model for
a father, you inherit obligation of

your family name, and you're supposed
to inherit it and, and pass it on.

so that's when, you know, I started seeing
you guys, and now the al- algorithm's

throwing Ben in my feed, and I'm like,
"All right. This is cool." and my

understanding is that what you're doing
is the legal framework to do this.

Gregory Treat: In many ways.

Well, uh, it, it, yes, it's,
it's the legal framework.

You know, sort of I, I backed into
consulting because I realized that,

uh, people were not u- p- you know,
I, I, I started having a crisis of

conscience about selling some of the
legal products that I sell because people

didn't know how to use them, right?

So w- you know, I, I worked for a firm.

We had two types of clients.

We had kinda old money clients
who've been doing this, some of them,

for three, four, five generations,
and then we had new money clients.

And we were, you know, faithfully
giving them good, high quality

legal work, the same trusts and
tax strategies and family limited

partnerships and all of the, the, the,
the wonderful, beautiful complexities.

I, I love, you know, designing trusts.

They're… I think they're
just a, a beautiful and, and

wonderful legal form to work in.

Um- But I was realizing, oh my goodness,
like apparently there's a last mile

cultural gap where the clients that
I'm giving these things to, they

don't know how to use them, and so
they're not getting the same outcomes.

Um, and, and, and in some ways, you know,
when, when, you know, the, basically

the first, the first rule of trust work
is you have to, you have to get the,

the, the main guy, the money maker,
right, the rain maker, to understand

that once the money goes into the
trust, it's not your money, right?

Like, you can cause yourself, even if,
even if with the best legal work and the

best tax work, if you go around calling
the money in the trust "my money", okay,

you can cause a whole bunch of problems
with the IRS just by saying that.

A-and it's not just saying that, right?

It's, it's also when you say that, you're
gonna behave in a certain way and you're

gonna disregard the structure and you're
gonna, you know, demand things in a way

that, that is, that is improper, and then
you're gonna, you know, find yourself in

a, in a sticky situation with the IRS.

A-and I just remember, like some
of these, some of these older

families, they were flawless.

They never made a mistake.

'Cause they genuine- Like, like I
came, what I came to realize was they

weren't not making mistakes, right?

Like you were talking about
models that become second nature.

They genuinely didn't think of the
money in the trust as their personal

money, and so they never, th- there
was never a conflict of, "Well, it's

my money and I have the right to it.

Oh, but, but for tax reasons I can't
say that out loud." Like, for them,

they really, they really understood,
"Oh, this genuinely isn't my money.

I've given it up.

We've entered, my family has entered
into this long-term contract, uh, i-in,

in, in a way of which kind of the IRS
is almost the, the covenantal guarantor

in the sense that if you, you know, th-
they're not really a party to it, but if

you break your covenant with your fathers
and grandfathers, they think that they

get to tax a whole bunch of years of
money that wasn't, you know, collected.

And so they, uh, they, they, they, you
know, can be quite attentive to, uh, to

some of the things that you're doing.

Um, and so that's kind of how I got
into this, but, but I've really come

to the conclusion, I mean, I, I, I do
less and less legal work, um, uh, first

of all because I'm doing a lot of work
outside of the state of Texas where

I'm licensed and so, you know, outside
of Texas I can't do the legal piece.

Someone else has to do that for me.

But, uh, but even in Texas, the, the,
the templates that people work with,

the things that they get, what's in a
irrevocable trust that you get from,

you know, Westlaw or, uh, you know,
uh, WealthCounsel or any of these,

you know, legal templating programs
that are, that are designed for

estate planning work, they're great.

Like, they've got all the pieces in
there, it's just people don't know, uh,

they don't know how to use them, right?

It's, uh, you know, they, they sort
of, I, I… Now do you ever, have

you ever, uh, been in a, an old,
uh, an old, um, semi truck that

has two stick shifts, two, uh, two
transmissions that you can move around?

Um,

James McPherson: I've, I've,
I haven't been in one, but

I know what you're talking

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

So, so it's, it's sort of like somebody
that's, that's they're n- you know,

there's actually… First you gotta
teach them to drive a stick shift,

'cause most of them have never done that.

But then you say, "And, and by the way,
there's that other lever over there that

you can also use to get some extra stuff
and do some really cool things with this

machine that you don't know about," right?

Like this machine is not a, a
vehicle like, uh, you know, the,

the way, the metaphor that I, that
I, I'm gonna abuse here for this.

So if, if it's a semi-truck, if
your trust is a semi-truck, people

use it to drive to the grocery
store, you know, once a year, right?

And, and, you know, to keep, to
keep, to make sure that it still

turns on and runs, and they leave
it in first gear the whole time.

They don't do anything with it.

And it's like, man, this thing
could serve your family in ways

that more than take care of it- than
more than pay for itself, right?

This doesn't have to be a cost center.

You can make a lot of money if you're,
if, you know, with, with this structure

if you know what you're doing.

Uh, now you gotta have, you
gotta have the inputs for that.

Um, but, uh, but that's, that's the,
uh, that… So that's the thing that I'm

doing right now is, is helping people
develop the skill set to use, um, you

know, these, these wonderful legal
structures that, that you can now get

very, you know, you get the legal work
done, you know, most of the case, most

of the time for less than 20 grand.

But learning how to use the, the
legal piece that you've gotten is,

is in many cases significantly more
expensive than that, uh, 'cause it

takes time and it takes a mindset shift.

It takes a, a, a difference
in belief, right?

You, you have to really come to the idea
that there, there i- you know, there is

or was a, a thing called a family that is
greater than the sum of its parts, that

has some relationship with, you know,
God or the universe or whatever higher

power you believe in, and this legal
document is the, the legal instantiation

of that preexisting spiritual, social, you
know, psychological reality if, if, you

know, however, however people frame it.

And, and most of my clients are
basically, you know, Christian

of one stripe or another.

Uh, but you know, it's, it's, this
is… You know, it's really interesting.

Trust law in, in, in, in the
Western context, the Anglo-Western

context is, is essentially, it's
a very religious body of law.

Like you go back 200 years and you are,
you are reading treatises by, by pastors

and priests, not, not, you know…

It's, it's, it's, it's a very, it's a
very religious piece because there's so

much about, you know, passing on what
are the spiritual duties of these people?

How do you think about all this stuff?

Um, so yes.

I mean, that's kind of, that's kind
of the, the, the, the specific piece

but, but you know, the, the, the
legal thing is, is, is interesting

because I don't actually think it's the
bottleneck for a lot of these things.

Um, I think, I think the
bottleneck is a mindset issue

James McPherson: Yeah, and that's,
that's interesting w- that the older

families, it's become second nature.

I was reading an essay by Daniel, Catone.

He has a Catholic money podcast,

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: and he talked about
investing as a way to develop virtue.

And surprisingly, pleasantly
surprisingly, he talked about habit

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm.

James McPherson: And so to be a
disciplined investor, you know, you

have to develop habits, virtuous habits.

And I had never thought
of investing that way,

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: right?

And anything that's, you know,
habit-forming fascinates me.

And so like when you're ta- you
know, so a family has a habit.

And so the, the old money with the family
mindset and the habit that aligns to

that teleology, then it's second nature.

And then so taking, uh, new money
and trying to teach that habit,

that's really challenging I bet.

And, but also that's the real value add.

Gregory Treat: It's rewarding
is what I'll say, for sure

James McPherson: And I think al- also,
like, our concept of the family and

the household is so watered down.

You know, I, I wrote an essay about,
Laudato Si, you know, the Pope

Francis encyclical on the environment.

But ecology is the logos of the oikos.

It's the logos of the household,
and the household is not mom, dad,

three kids on a plot in suburbia.

It's a business, it's workers.

Or in, in Athens, you know, it
would've been slaves and freed,

freed workers, freedmen workers,

and you're running a, a small business.

That's the household.

And then economy, e- eco- oikos nomos,

Gregory Treat: The law of the house or

James McPherson: the r- rule of the house.

So you have to have the… You understand
the logic of the house, and then you have

to then devise the nomos of the house.

And, you know, getting back to those
roots is, I think, is really important.

And, and that's why I think there's a
large section of Laudato Si on usury.

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm

James McPherson: Because the geometric
growth of the debt cannot be ever repaid

at some point, at usually about 80 years.

And so

not just-

Gregory Treat: debt is… Debt is the
kind of thing that, that I'm not saying

you shouldn't have debt, but debt creates
a quasi household bond, if you will.

Like, it's very… If you're indebted
to someone, it's very difficult for you

to… Like, the first things that the
person who you o- owe is gonna wanna

constrain is your ability to contribute
to a different household than his, right?

So you have, in some way, become
a kind of slave to his house.

Um, and, and, you know, I think,
uh, the, one, one of the things is,

is hav- having the recognition of,
okay, if what we're doing is creating

some kind of household bond, some,
you know, some kind of, some kind of

relationship that falls within this
sphere, well, are we following the rules?

Uh, you know, one of the, one of the,
the things that I've, I've often observed

about the ordo amoris and, and one of
the reasons why I'm so happy that, you

know, JD Vance, um, you know, brought
that back into the kind of the public

consciousness, um, by, by using it
so frequently in interviews, is it

really makes, uh, a lot of contractual
relationships objectively eval…

You know, you can
evaluate them objectively.

If, if there is an ordo amoris, and
if that ordo amoris is, is logical and

something that you could go out and
calculate, then you could take that, some,

some, you know, rubric and, and look at
a contract and say, "Does this contract

make, you know, one or both of these
people more able to meet their covenantal

duties before God and man, or less?"

Right?

And, and, and that's a, that's a really
interesting possibility because, you know,

what the libertarians wanna say is, "Oh,
no, this is just a black box. It's too,

too complex. You could, you could never
know if it's a good contract or a bad

contract, you know, w- if you constrain
the individual freedom in any…"

It's like, what are you talking about?

Like, no, you, you
absolutely can build rubrics.

You absolutely can calculate does…
You know, here are the duties, here

are is the person's fitness, the,
their ability to meet th- those, those

duties, those obligations as they come
in due course, and here is the net

effect of this, you know, this contract.

It's, it's reducing this amount
of cash at a certain point.

It's reducing this amount
of time at another point.

It's, you know… The, the… You're,
you're sort of swapping obligations

between these people, and then you can,
you know… So you can evaluate the state

before, and you can evaluate the state
after, and what you want is for both

gr- both people a win-win, a biblical
Christian win-win, is somebody who

said, "Well, the r- net result of this
contract is both parties are more able

to meet their obligations," or at least
they are meeting their obligations and

they're not being put into breach or,
or the reasonable expectation of breach.

'Cause I think if you wander around
making contracts that put the people

you contract with in reasonable
expectation of breach, God is gonna

have some thoughts for you, right?

At a certain point.

James McPherson: I think that's
the 14th circle of hell, isn't it?

In Don- 13th or 14th in Dante.

And then I started writing and I was
like, "Ah, I should've talked to Greg

before I bought this cabin in the woods
and set up…" 'Cause as smart as I

am and as good as I am at some things,
I did not have the legal structure

set for when, when I went south.

Such is life.

I, you know, and so I, I kind of
think, um, there's some sort of,

Jobian struggle I'm, I'm going
through now, which is clarifying.

And I think once I see an Audi A7 and
don't say, "Man, I want one of those,"

I think God will be pleased with me.

Gregory Treat: That's the, that,
that's the test of your, uh,

your, your spiritual maturity

James McPherson: Yeah, exactly.

Gregory Treat: good.

Very good

James McPherson: I have a funny,
um, JD Vance story actually.

I had a, a very, uh, charming but
difficult Latin student and, uh, he

went into the Marines right after
high school, and he ended up in the

journalism program in the Marines.

He went to Parris Island and everything.

I get an email from him in Iraq and he
says, "How do you say fighting writers

in Latin?" And so I give him a couple
options and I was like, "What's this for?"

He says, "Oh, you know, we're coming up
with a motto for our, our, uh, company.

We're the journalists.

We're the war correspondents."
Like, oh, interesting.

And, uh, so he picks one.

And anyway, JD Vance
was in that company with

him.

Oh.

So they used my line for their,
their, their Latin motto.

Gregory Treat: I love it.

I love it.

I love it

Yeah.

Well, it's, you know,
it's an interesting time.

One of the other things, you
know, you mentioned that you're,

uh, in- involved in kind of AI
stuff, um, in your, in your work.

You know, I, I've been writing
and talking on the podcast about,

uh, about AI and, uh, all this
stuff and, and basically my…

You know, the, the not to, not to
hide the ball, my, my thesis is, um,

that we are… And I think we were
always gonna be in a moment where we

were trending back towards hierarchy.

We've been, we've been pushing ourselves
as far to the egalitarian side as,

as we possibly could as a society,
and things were starting to break.

I mean, you think about, like, peak woke
was, was really bad, and it was really bad

for an unusual amount of people, and kind
of we're, we're starting to swing back.

Um, but I, I really think that
AI is gonna massively accelerate

this trend towards hierarchy.

I think it's gonna magnify,
you know, in… both individual

and group differences.

I think it's gonna allow a new class of
people to, to emerge, um, that, that are

gonna have similar interests and similar
experiences and similar daily things.

I just put out, uh… or I haven't put
out an article yet, but I'm working

on an article about, uh, CAD and what
CAD did to all the industries that

CAD touched, which was basically it
made them into one personnel pool.

So if you worked in any CAD-dominant
industry, you could move to, which meant

you were competing with everyone that was,
you know, using CAD, and you could, you

know, you go from, you know, uh, doing
dental fillings, dental modeling over to

3D printing for this, over to prosthetics,
over to da-da-da-da-da-da, right?

And, and it all became one thing, which
dramatically raised the quality, right?

Still is a sort of one of those things
that people think that, that when you, uh,

when you have hierarchy, that hierarchy
is always, like, anti-capitalistic

and bad and all of these things.

It's like no, no.

Like, when we… What we're talking about
is having a larger pool of competition in

which a natural co- competence hierarchy
can emerge, which improved quality, right?

It really did.

But it also meant that you, you
knew exactly where you were.

You weren't protected by the,
the, the rankings of, of, of

your, your little siloed industry.

You were now ranked or potentially
ranked against everyone else

that was using the CAD program.

Because what you were doing, right,
you're logging on, you're, you're

entering into some kind of 3D modeling
CAD-based program, and you're,

you're doing stuff in there, right?

Um, and that's why, you know, the three or
four big CAD companies, they have kind of

the same tiers of their, their rankings.

We kind of… It- it's, it's… I
don't know why they didn't just use,

you know, apprentice, journeyman,
master, you know, maybe grandmaster.

Uh, probably 'cause of the,
probably 'cause the D&D

implications or something like that.

But they… But it's the exact same ranks.

Like, they, they have four of them,
and it's very clearly like, okay,

this is… this person is just, you
know, barely going, and then there's

somebody that you can trust to work.

Then there's somebody that can
teach other people, and then, you

know, we kind of have the, the,
the, the ultra-high-ranked people.

And, and it's like, oh, okay,
so, so- We, we, we like this.

Like this is the, this
is what we're doing here.

Um, and I think the same thing
is gonna happen in the AI space.

The problem is like the CAD space was
two dozen industries maybe, all told.

What industries are not
included in the AI space, right?

Like it, it, it, it's gonna
be a massive sea change.

You know, I'm noticing it in, um, in my
industry, uh, you know, 'cause I'm in a,

in a, in a tax adjacent legal specialty.

And if, you know, if, if the
accountant is using the older

accounting tools, he's better.

But if we're both using the AI tools,
I'm either better or pre-- you know,

very, very nearly as good at a whole
lot of stuff that, that, that, you know,

was accounting until fairly recently.

And, you know, now I still need the
accountant for legal reasons to sign

off on the things that I'm doing, but
that… it's really interesting to,

to, to just recognize I, I understand
the, the fundamentals of what's going

on, and so I can tell an AI program,
"Hey, pull me these numbers," right?

And, you know, so you gotta check to
make sure that it's actually pulling

the right numbers and it's doing
what, you know, like 'cause there's

always the AI hallucination problem.

But frankly, I've had the
CPA hallucination problem

probably more frequently than
I've had the AI hallucination

problem in terms of my career.

Um, and so there's this, there's this
leveling, there's this sense, you

know, uh, uh, Marc Andreessen gave
an interview where he was talking

about, uh, software coders and,
and, uh, designers and project…

or yeah, project managers, and
how basically, you know, all three

of those groups are now, he's
calling them builders, right?

They're now the, the, those three jobs,
those three distinct… So you know, so

there, there are not less jobs necessarily
in terms of the number of jobs, of the

number of people working that is, but
there are g- there are apparently gonna

be less jobs in terms of like the names
and silos that we give them, 'cause

three distinct titles are now one thing.

And presumably, you know, at a certain
point a company will look around and

go, "Wait, do we really need three
builders on everything?" Right?

Um, and, and that'll, that'll,
that'll get interesting.

Um, but yeah, I think that's a, that's,
that's, that's what I see AI doing, and

I think that'll have a dramatic impact
on the amount of hierarchy in our world.

Uh, because I'm, I, I think that
hierarchy is relatively stable.

Hierarchies of competence
are relatively stable.

People are, have very, you know,
reliable levels of intelligence.

People have very reli- especially
at, as an adult, right?

There's people that are better than
you at a certain set of things, and

there's people that are worse than you
at a certain set of things, and that

more-- mostly doesn't change, you know?

James McPherson: Yeah, I, uh, I had a
conversation at a wedding with a childhood

friend's husband who was a investment
banker in London, and I… That's when

I really understood standard deviation.

I was like, "This guy is a standard
deviation smarter than me." I

was so out of my depth, and I
think I'm a pretty smart guy.

But that was like, wow.

And, you know, that's just a reality,
you know, th- just talk to this guy.

But, um, in terms of AI, it's
a, it's a force multiplier.

So sort of what you already
have, if you multiply it,

Gregory Treat: Right

James McPherson: it's gonna
exacerbate differences.

And,

Gregory Treat: Right

James McPherson: you know, I think
back to when I was in ed tech,

I was in ed tech for six years.

And it was, to be honest, there were a lot
of boondoggles a lot of wealth extraction.

So I, I wr- you know, I've written
about Strauss and House fourth

turning concepts in Amer- cycles,
generational cycles in American history.

And in the unraveling, which is what
we were g- in up through the Great

Recession, or maybe even after, it's
like looting the treasury, you know?

Like, "Oh, this is all coming apart.

Let's,

uh, let's loot." So when, when the
LA Unified School District rolled

out, um, one-to-one Apple iPads for
their students, Steve Saylor said, uh-

Gregory Treat: And what year was that?

James McPherson: Question 12, 2012, 2010.

he said, "Here's what's gonna
happen In the poor school districts,

all the iPads will be broken or
stolen or attempted to be stolen.

In the rich school districts, the kids
are gonna hack the safety attempts or

the, the governors, and they're gonna
start using it and building stuff.

It's gonna exac- and 'cause the idea
was like with ed tech, the, one of the

operating assumptions of ed tech was
like, this will close the achievement gap.

And Saylor, Saylor said, "No, this is
gonna exacerbate the achievement gap."

Gregory Treat: Right.

Well, and, and, and implicit in the
idea that, that this is gonna close the

achievement gap is, is this underlying
egalitarian communist vision of the world

that says, "Well, actually people are
all the same underneath, and, and it's

just accidents of, uh, of, you know,
socioeconomic factors that are, that are

responsible for the, for the differences
or at least the group differences," right?

James McPherson: Right.

And, and it's like Aristotle had
to explain a thing, you have to

know it by four causes, right?

The final cause, the formal cause, the
material cause, and the efficient cause.

It is the d- denial of material, right?

So Marx was called a materialist.

So Dr. Palmer thought that Marx
was an Aristotelian, but that he

neglected the other too much to the…

Which was a fault, a fi-
a flaw in his philosophy.

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: And then, 'cause
it was, it lacked teleology,

ultimately.

And so, um, but reading, you know, Marx's
Capital was a fascinating exper- I read

that in college with this Professor
David Harvey, it was a great experience.

It was one of the most
interesting classes I took.

But at the same time I'm reading
Chesterton, which is this sort of

Catholic critique of capitalism, you know?

And so it worked itself
out, saved my soul.

But so back, you know, so that
causal reality and yeah, there's

the blank slatism of the, the
denial of the material cause.

And Saylor was dead right.

Like, they implemented the one
iPad per student across the LA

Unified School District, they had
no insurance, no replacement program

that, you know, all these things you
do to implement something expensive.

Gregory Treat: Sure

James McPherson: And no one at
Apple even flagged like, "Okay, to

implement this across the school
district, you need these protocols."

Nothing.

Just, "Here, it's magic," right?

Which is another thing I see a lot of
in late stage America is magic, right?

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: And I, you know,
I wrote an essay about this.

Is education just a prestige sticker that
says, "Oh, you get to be in the club,"

or do you actually learn something?

Gregory Treat: I mean, may- you know,
I think the, the, the dominant sort

of the… One of the problems is when
you have people that are ostensibly

arguing in favor of why you should
go to Ivy League schools, and their

argument is, "Yeah, it's a, it's a
prestige marker. That's it," right?

Or even, you know, Peterson, right?

You know, Jordan Peterson has that, that
famous speech where he talked about,

you know, the, the only thing valuable
about Harvard is the sorting mechanism.

It sorts for really smart people, um,
at the beginning, and it's like, huh.

I mean, do you believe that?

You know?

Um, which I,

you know, I think, I, I think it, the,
the, uh, that's probably true about

how those institutions are operating.

But we should probably think about the
fact that as that became true of those

institutions, their social credibility
and their, their excellence in the world

has been dropping like a rock, you know?

James McPherson: yeah, and, and, and
that's the… Because it's also--

So one of the products, you know, my
business partner built is called College

Aviator, and it's basically a Socr-
AI Socratic method of finding fit.

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

James McPherson: Uh, and then if you-- And
so I'm working on that with him, and so my

whole algorithm is on like Instagram and
Facebook are all these guys, like these

two tricks to get into Ivy League schools.

You know, all the college counseling
is geared towards this prestige,

and it's a trick to get into
prestige, and so it becomes a game,

right?

Gregory Treat: that's
the definition of magic.

That's a spell, right?

James McPherson: It's a spell, right?

And yeah, exactly.

And the prestige comes from magic.

A prestige is the final thing the
magician ju- does to reveal the trick.

And so you can see that upper middle
class families gaming the system, right?

So you set up a 501[c][3] for your
sophomore with $10,000 in it, and you…

That sophomore starts a blood drive
or, you know, feeding the homeless.

And like, there's all these games
people play to match the ideology

of prestige to sort of get in
there, and then they're there.

Okay, now what?

You know?

And you'll-- There's plenty of stories of
like, "My whole life was geared towards

getting into Brown, and I got into Brown,"
and then I was like, "Well, now what?"

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

James McPherson: And

so,

Gregory Treat: have no telos.

You know, I, I think about the, the,
the transition in chess, you know, that

I have, um, I have some, some legacy
families that I talk to, some legacy

founders that I talk to that one, you
know, e- every now and then the question

about chess will come up, which is just
sort of int- it's interesting to me that

that's, that that's a thing that comes up.

And, and really what I've, you know, uh,
learned from these, from these founders,

you know, one of… 'cause, 'cause one
of, one of the beautiful and terrible

things about my job is I'm serving
people who are at, many times at least

one standard deviation smarter than me.

I've got a lot of domain
knowledge that they don't have.

I've got a lot of sense for how, how,
you know, the law works and how tax

works that they don't have, but they're
like super sharp cookies, right?

Um, and what I've learned from them
basically is that, uh, there used to

be a way of playing chess that was a
reasonably good training method for

getting people to think about medieval
logistics and deployment, okay?

Um, and that the rules of chess changed
over time kind of during its development

because it was meant as a reasonably
simplified proxy for how you think about,

uh, medieval warfare, uh, especially from,
from kind of a positioning side, right?

And that's not what
chess is anymore, right?

Chess now is memorizing
pictures and kind of…

That, you know, the humans are
training themselves to solve chess

the way a computer solves it, right?

Which is more efficient, like you can
win the game that way, but doing that

decouples, it makes chess not useful
for the, for the traditional, you know,

use of it, which was helping you train
your brain to have, have some kind

of mental model that helped you think
about a, a simpler version of, you

know, medieval combat and kind of think
about, okay, will this work, right?

How would I do this on a chess board?

Um, kind of a deal.

And, and, and I just remember, you
know, one, uh, one, one of the guys

kind of explained, walked me through
that and I was like, "Huh, I would

have never thought about that," right?

But just the, the, the, this idea that
there are, there are different ways to

play this one game and the, the modern
strategy, the modern way that that

game is played is not terribly useful.

It's hard though, 'cause if you try
to teach your children to play chess

the old way, they're like middle,
middle rate players at best, right?

No matter how smart they are, 'cause
it's, it's a different, it's a different

way of approaching the game, right?

James McPherson: Yeah.

Yeah.

I was at a, a high school friend's
house during a power outage in

one winter, and so we stayed up
and played chess by candlelight.

I might've had a few beers
while we were doing that.

But he was… He had become really
good at chess, and he says, "You know,

you can tell a lot about a person
by how they play chess." And I said,

"What does my game say to you?" And
he says, "Reckless and aggressive."

Gregory Treat: Well

James McPherson: I was like,
"Yeah, that sounds about right."

Yeah, that's interesting.

And, and then it becomes just winning by
the technique divorced from the purpose.

And that's, yeah, and that's
elite, elite college admissions.

And it, you know, uh, Hermann Hesse,
whose house was up the street from my

parents when my father was a headmaster in
Switzerland, he wrote, uh, Magister Ludi.

the, the master of the game, the teacher
of the game, and it was a futuristic

world where all scientific endeavors had
merged into one mathematical skill set,

and it was called the glass bead game.

Maybe like Chinese Go
or something like that.

And so

everything was

Gregory Treat: right?

James McPherson: Right.

Gregory Treat: Okay, yeah.

I'm, I think I, I think
I, I remember this, so

James McPherson: But I remember, you
know, my father talked about that, and

he, he had taken me to his, uh, when I
was 16, it was, uh, his Harvard reunion,

and they had a session for parents, you
know, how to get their kids into Harvard

And we're sitting there,
and I'm like looking at him.

I'm like, "What is this?

This is… I thought these were
stodgy old wasps, you know?

This is very liberal." And he said,
"Well, yeah, I mean, this is what

changed when I graduated and why, you
know, the class of 1970 has the lowest

donations of any class back to the school.

It's because the old wasp establishment,
thought Harvard had gone off the

rails, so they, they didn't donate.

And then the, the new, the new
rulers of the Ivy League think

they didn't go far enough in
1970, so they didn't give money."

And, um, it's… But he, he also talked
about… He mentioned Hessa then, and

I d- never read Hessa until much later.

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: But, but he talked about
the glass bead game where it just becomes

this sort of theoretical abstraction.

And so prestige in America , has
become that But it's also, you know,

so hollowed out that within the next
three to five years we're just gonna…

things don't work.

And so you have to start, you know,
going to the engineering school at

NC State and find that guy, right?

And I'm not saying, like,
I love NC State you know.

And, and I think

with the prestigious,

the-

Gregory Treat: League without
the, the, the, the transcendent

purpose that they had.

Like, the, the Ivy

James McPherson: they
started as seminaries

Gregory Treat: Yeah.

Yeah, they started as seminaries.

They started at… They, I mean, they
started as trying to re- rebuild.

I mean, their goal was, okay, we've
got, like, 1,000 years of incredible…

Like, let's say, let's say Charlemagne,
you know, starts, jump-starts what,

what we would think of as, as the
European educational journey, right?

So we got 1,000 years of that,
close to it, as these Ivy

League s- schools are starting.

We wanna do that in 40 years.

We wanna build for us what it
took Europe 1,000 years to build.

That's our goal.

We wanna, we wanna push it
to the, to the max, right?

a- a- and be, you know, the, the
genuine heirs, you know, the, uh…

You know, Trump and, and, and,
uh, Vance and, uh, Rubio giving

these amazing speeches, right?

About being, being the heirs of
1,000 years of, uh, of civilization.

Um, and which is, which is incredible.

Like, it's incredible that our leadership
is, is saying this on the world stage.

Uh, but that was, that was
what Harvard was about.

That was what Harvard thought it
was doing, um, for a long time,

and all the Ivy Leagues did.

And, and that's what gave
them their moral force.

You know, one of the, one of the
interesting things that, that I know

professionally is, uh, you know, as
the internal revenue code was getting

started in the 19- teens and all
of this stuff, a lot of, a lot of

money, a lot of old WASP money went
into trusts And the, the guiding

principle of those trusts, and I'm, I'm
oversimplifying to an, uh, uh, absurd

degree here, uh, but, you know, so…

But, uh, but the guiding principle
of those trusts was, hey, the, the,

the thing that's gonna make this not
just a pure bloodline trust where the

kid just gets something for breathing
is he's gonna go to an Ivy League,

or he's gonna go to a school, and
he's gonna graduate from that school.

And when he graduates, the
trustee gets paid, the kid gets

paid, and the school gets paid.

So everybody wants this to happen, right?

as far as I understand it, basically,
you know, some, some trusts had, like,

one school on it, and some trusts had,
like, a list of schools, and kind of the

concatenation of those lists from these
various family trusts became what we

understand as the Ivy League 'cause they
had this extra funding source, right?

They had extra capital that was more or
less accessible to them, and that's, you

know, there's some, some relationships
between that effect and, like, the,

the, the prep school, the legacy,
you know, concepts in the Ivy League.

and, and, you know, i- in the '70s as,
as you were mentioning, that sort of went

away and they, they must have gotten…

I s- Somebody should go and do a
study and figure out, like, where did

the extra… 'Cause they, they had
to have gotten some other source of

funding, at least initially, to kind
of move away from, from these things

in the new direction that they did.

A- and especially in the
last 20 years when they have

really, like, like Harvard has.

I had a, I had a guy on my podcast
that, that, uh, a couple weeks ago, um,

that talked about just how his family
was treated terribly, uh, by Harvard

when he attempted to join, and many,
many of his father's classmates had the

similar experience of their children
were just given the absolute shaft.

Um, and, and some of those, those
families were, are not small.

Like, some of those families are not…
You know, they, they are, they are

wealthy and powerful families with,
with significant trust and significant

ability to make their displeasure felt.

And the Ivy League feels that it has or
had, you know, sources of funding that

enabled them to just, you know, not
care about that, which I, I, you know…

There, there's some story there.

I don't know what it is
necessarily, but, uh,

James McPherson: Yeah.

Well, I

Gregory Treat: if I have a…

James McPherson: Well, they're, they're
sitting on such a massive endowment

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: that then just
perpetuates itself for the most part.

So, you know, the ideologues
can definitely take over

from the, the heritage.

It is interesting that this sort of
prestige marker and gaming the system.

And so what is education?

Is it a checklist of prestige
markers or is it formation, right?

And I, I just think it's become a
checklist now, and you just… And

you go into a lot of debt that you
cannot get rid of via bankruptcy

Gregory Treat: Yeah,

James McPherson: for a checklist that
even the culture is itself reneging on

the, the terms of the agreement, right?

So I was talking to, um, Dale
Dougherty last week, who founded

O'Reilly Media with Tim O'Reilly,
and he started the Maker Movement.

And when I wrote out about my
experience in STEM, the Maker

Movement and S- STEM education,

I was on this group called
Change the Equation,

Gregory Treat: Mm-hmm

James McPherson: and we were the only
education providers on that group.

Everyone else, it was Intel, DuPont,
Dow, and they're, they're like, "We

need a trained workforce." they need
a minimal level of STEM literacy to

come work in our factories, basically.

Okay, that makes sense.

but one, is it the job of
taxpayer-funded schools to supply

minimum label- labor criteria, or is
the public school supposed to turn

out well-formed adult voting citizens?

Gregory Treat: And how much, how,
you know, and when, when, not

if, those two goals conflict,
who, which, which, what wins?

James McPherson: Right.

So I, I was, you know, start this STEM
business for us, and I do research.

50% of hard science and engineering majors
were working in consulting, banking, There

are no jo- There weren't… We don't make
anything anymore in this country, right?

So there weren't, like, hard science jobs.

And so

Gregory Treat: you, have you read
Eric Weinstein's discussion of, of

the, the STEM job bait and switch?

James McPherson: No, but it
sounds like I should because,

Gregory Treat: man, you would,
you would, you would really enjoy.

But the, the short version is there
was this big push to get STEM majors,

and then at the last minute, uh, y- you
know, they, they, they didn't make quite

enough of them, and so basically the
federal government had s- or someone,

someone, presumably the federal government
plus some, some other interested

parties, decided that, "Oh my gosh,
we're gonna have to pay these people.

They're, they're, they're, they're
cratered full of student debt, so

we're gonna have to pay them asur-
absurd amounts of money." And so they

just pulled in a bunch of people from
India and China and, and, and, and

wrecked, you know, suppressed the
wages in those industries and that may

be why one… You know, that's one…

'Cause Eric Weinstein is on this quest
to figure out why there hasn't been

an a- you know, any innovations in
physics in 45 years, and that's one

of his chief… He has others, right?

But that's one of his chief contenders
is, like, we just destroyed an entire

generation of Western physicists and,
and STEM majors doing, doing this, right?

So they're, they're basically,
you know, debt slaves.

Um, a- a- and 'cause to survive, one
of the things people don't understand,

o- one of my, my pet bugaboos is people
talk about, "Well, well, I don't support

student loan forgiveness." And it's like,
oh, well, I didn't realize you wanted to

change the laws, 'cause we already have
student loan forgiveness for the left.

If you go work for a non-profit for 120
months, then your loans are forgiven.

And while you're doing that you can
get income-based repayment, and so

your employer can pay you next to
nothing, give you a housing stipend

or a credit at a, you know, some kind
of a, of a joint, you know, housing.

Um, the i- a- and, and, and
I'll say, they're, they're…

the only people on the right that I
know that do this, uh, successfully

are, there is a, is a, it's a couple
of Catholic guys, um, that are

doing it, and, and God bless them.

It's a really efficient program.

We could do a ton of it, right?

But that is the law right now.

Right now, the only people
that student loan forgiveness

does not materially apply to…

And, I mean, and I mean,
think about this, right?

Like, if you get to your last year, your
last 12 to 6 months, uh, before your

loans are forgiven, and you've got to
keep your job, and you know that if you

get blacklisted that, you know, this,
th- this debt will just hang around and,

and be a, a, you know, this, this, this
anchor around your neck, what wouldn't you

do for the liberal establishment to keep
your job for those last 12 to 6 months?

Okay?

And then if, if people were interested,
they could go look at some interest-

you know, certain, certain, uh, leftist
a- activist and, and the, the moments

at which in their late 20s, right,
or early 30s when they've done some

extraordinarily aggressive things and
you're like, "Oh, it's right before they

were, you know, gonna get their loans
forgiven, and they, they, they had to do

whatever they had to do to keep the job."

Fascinating.

James McPherson: Wow, that's interesting.

I noticed that changed the
equation was that, they were also

advocating for, uh, H-1B visas.

And I was like, if STEM, if a lack
of STEM qualified graduates is a

national issue And you're bringing
in H-1Bs while we have 50% of our

STEM graduates not working in STEM
fields, you're just suppressing wages.

That's all this is.

And, and, uh, and so Dale then reached
out to me and, I thought the maker

movement was awesome, and he's revived it.

He bought it all back, and he's
reviving it, I think that's great,

and but his suspicion was similar.

Like, why didn't make, making…
And he, he'd been to the White House

for these discussions and he said,
uh, you know, "Is welding a STEM

program?" And it, it wasn't, right?

You know, like these are real things

Gregory Treat: I mean, just
a part of it is just, is just

wage suppression in general.

You know, when you, when you… You talk
about there's that factory in, you know,

near, near Norfolk, um, that has that…
Where they… We used to turn out, like,

a destroyer a week or something like
this, and now we get one every, every,

you know, 18 months or something, right?

And then you look at the wages, you
price the wages in gold for what the

factory workers were making when we
were putting out a destroyer a week,

and you say, "Okay, if we had that
amount of money for labor, do we

think we could get a destroyer out
of this a week?" Oh, yes, we could.

And isn't that interesting, right?

Like, apparently, like, we,
we, we could still do this.

We just choose not to.

Um, you know, there, there's
some, there's some really fun,

fun facts down that rabbit hole.

I, I, I, I sat in a presentation a while
back, I can't, I can't verify this, but

I found it really interesting, basically,

it… there, there is a, there is an
amount priced in gold that is, uh,

where you hit replacement fertility.

So you're w- there's a certain amount
of wages, and it's stable, right?

At a, at a certain, certain amount of
ounces per month or per year, and if

people are making that much priced in
gold, they are at or above 2.1, you

know, fertility if in a population
that's making that much money.

And this is a super stable relationship.

It's been, you know, there as
long as we have the data for it.

And, and I thought, "Huh,
well, that's interesting."

James McPherson: That is interesting.

And, you know, in 1973, right,
productivity and wages split, right?

And it's just, you know, you know,
Johan's, um, point on mill- oh,

millennials are fine, you know,
but by what metrics, you know?

And, and the loss of social capital.

I did the math on what the cost
was for Catholics when they

got exited from the enclaves

Gregory Treat: Yeah

James McPherson: and, uh, it's billions
of dollars of social capital lost.

I mean, if you can really measure
that and, you know, they're

good

Gregory Treat: but yeah,
it's, it's at least.

It's at least, right?

It's, it's the same things that
people do when, when you talk about

what do, what do families lose when,
when mom goes to work, you know?

My wife, uh, we had a, we had a
medical event in my house, and

so my wife was basically down.

She was bedridden for two and a half
weeks and not really able to do kind of

her normal thing for almost six weeks.

And we had help, right?

And we had people that,
that, that came in.

We had… You know, we were able to triple
the amount of hours we were giving our

childcare, right, and all this stuff.

But, you know, it wound up, like, e-
excluding the, the, the actual e- extra

costs of, like, the medical bills and
the extra childcare and all of that, just

for our normal expenses, it increased
everything across the board by a third.

Apparently not having my wife there to,
you know, massage, to stretch, you know,

to stretch the pennies meant that, that
it, it, it increased the, the expenses

of my household by at least a third.

And then, and then on, on top of
that, we had, you know, the medical

bills and all this, all this
stuff, and it was just like, wow.

Wow, honey, this is what you do for me.

Thank you, you know, if I haven't
said that, you know, recently.

So, well, thank you so much for, uh, for,
for giving me so much of your time, man.

I, I, I, I really appreciate it.

so, uh, any, any… I mean, I
think, you know, we're, we're

living in a really interesting time.

I'm, I'm, I'm excited to kind
of see where things are going.

Um, and, and we didn't, we didn't
get in, in, into AI as much

as, uh, as much as I'd hoped.

But, um, you know, I, I think it's a,
I think it's an interesting moment.

I, I really do believe that, that
we're gonna see a, uh, new hierarchies

emerge and new, new people that are,
that are able to say, "Hey, we're…"

I, I think tech is, is finally
gonna defeat finance in many ways.

I think that's what, what AI represents.

Um, and, and, and not that tech
will always be better than finance.

Finance has actually, you know,
been, been pretty good, all,

all things considered, right?

Um, you know, maybe, maybe,
may- like the kings, right?

Maybe we'll miss them when they're gone.

Um, but, um, but I think, I think
we're moving in that direction.

And so, you know, my hope is, is that guys
like you and me and, and, and obviously,

you know, the, the, the talented folks
like, like Johan and Will Tanner and

Ben Black, um, that, uh, that we're…
The things that we're doing, the, the

relationships that we're building, the,
the recognition of, hey, social capital

is actually valuable and needs to be
recorded on a balance sheet somewhere.

You know, one of the interesting things
about AI is, is that it probably can do

a better job than we've historically done
of quantifying and catching, you know,

the, the… You know, if, if you were
gonna reduce the social capital to money,

how much, what would that take, right?

Um, and, and you know, that's
a really interesting, that's

a really interesting thing.

So, um, so any, any, any final
thoughts before we wrap up?

I've, I've really enjoyed
this conversation.

James McPherson: Likewise.

you know, AI… I'm sorry if I derailed
off the AI a little bit, but like I

think it's a, it's a force multiplier
and it's like the kind of analogous

to the parable of the talents, right?

So who has the force?

What force do you have?

What, what gift from God do you have?

And can you use these tools to
multiply your im- your agent or

efficient cause in the world?

there's definitely people with poor
teleology who have a lot of talent

and will have a force multiplier,
but there are good people in the

world who haven't had a, a voice,
and you can, with AI agents, you can

have as many employees as you can
build doing different things for you.

And I think that force multiplier will
really help, I think, the good people

who don't necessarily have access to
capital or large amounts of capital, be

able to, um, have an impact on the world
for good, and, uh, it's pretty exciting.

And, uh, thank you so
much for inviting me.

thanks so much for inviting me on,
and I've enjoyed the conversation.

I look forward to further
correspondence and conversations, I hope

Gregory Treat: All right.

Awesome.

Thank you so much, James.

Appreciate it