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It's a brisk morning here on the homestead.

the kind of cold that cuts right through the flannel if you aren't moving. I've got a cold cup of native mud.

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Gotta keep the brain firing.

And I was standing here watching the stars thinking about action versus inaction. We talked recently about the future of work. We talked about how the technocrats want to sell you a vision of a world where you don't have to work. A world where robots do the heavy lifting and AI does the heavy thinking. And you just...

Exist. You consume. You wait.

But there's a new report out from Technocracy News referencing an MIT study. And if you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

It is one of the most damning pieces of evidence we have seen yet.

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The headline simply states, AI initiatives fail 95 % of the time.

Now the corporate media will tell you that that's just growing pains. But I want to talk about why it's failing. It's failing because of abdication.

that word abdication.

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It means to renounce one's throne, to surrender authority. Wow.

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To fight this spirit of surrender, I've been thinking about three Latin phrases, three actions that if you truly deploy them, they will clarify history, politics, and your own personal responsibility.

The first is kibono, who benefits. The second is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. And the third, which I want to introduce today, is carpe diem.

We often translate that as seize the day. But in the original agricultural sense, it meant to pluck the day like a ripe fruit. It implies that the day has value.

but only if you reach out and take it.

The technocrats want you to abdicate the day. They want you to let the AI seize the day for you.

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Today we're going to talk about the great abdication versus the call to Carpe Diem. We're going to talk about why AI is a useful servant.

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but an absolute tyrant of a master.

So get your coffee, pull up a chair.

We need to have a serious talk about the future of human skill.

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Let's dig into this article and I'll link it down below for you as a reference point.

It was written by a software engineer named Josh Anderson. He has 25 years of experience, a master of his craft. He decided to run an experiment.

He said, I'm going to use AI, specifically Claude code, to build a product for three months. I won't write a single line of code myself.

He went all in and guess what? It worked. Initially.

He launched the product, he felt productive, he felt fast, he felt like a wizard. But then, he needed to make a small change. And he realized something terrifying.

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He looked at the code, his code, supposedly, and he didn't understand it. He had lost the confidence to change it. In just three months, a man with 25 years of experience had degraded his skill set to the point where he felt helpless. He said, I'd become a passenger.

in my own product development.

Caveat mTOR folks, let the buyer beware.

What did he buy?

He bought speed. He bought ease. He bought convenience.

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What did he pay? He paid with his mastery. He paid with his agency.

This is exactly what the Austrian economist warned us about regarding central planning. Whether it's central bank planning the economy or an AI planning your work, the results is the same. Malinvestment. You are investing your time into a system

that makes you weaker.

The AI promises to make it easier, but it makes you worse. It makes you softer. It makes you dumber.

The article calls this the abdication audit.

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It asks, can you explain every decision in detail without referencing what AI suggested? Could you do your job tomorrow if all AI tools disappeared?

If the answer is no, you aren't a master, you're a dependent. You are part of the 95 % failure rate. Because when the system breaks, and the system always breaks, you won't know how to fix it.

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This brings me to another Latin maxim, Carpe Diem.

which I thought of right after I released Latin to Live By. Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

Don't just try to get through the day.

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Get from the day.

abdication is the opposite of carpe diem abdication is drifting it's letting the wind blow you wherever it wants wherever it's designed to blow

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The technocrats want you to take down your sail. They want you to turn on the autopilot.

They say, don't worry about learning to code. The AI will do it.

Don't worry about learning to farm. The lab will grow the meat.

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But Carpe Diem means you look at the day, this specific 24 hours God has given you, and you realize it is a limited resource.

Carpe diem means realizing that spring is short. If you don't plant the seed yourself, if you don't put your hands in the dirt, you miss the season. If you let the AI write the code for you during your springtime of learning, you are skipping the planting.

you are getting a fake harvest. And when winter comes, when the servers go down, when the job market shifts, you have no roots.

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The engineer in this study realized that by abdicating the word...

he was losing his ability to mentor the next generation. He asks, in 10 years, who is going to mentor the next generation? If the senior developers today are letting AI write the code and the junior developers are growing up never writing code at all,

who teaches the grandkids.

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We are serving the chain of transmission.

In the family economy, we talk about apprenticeship. The father teaches the son. The mother teaches the daughter.

If I tell my son, hey, just ask ChatGPT how to fix the fence, he might get the right steps, but he won't learn the feel of the wire. He won't seize the lesson. He won't carpe diem.

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There is a concept in this article that I absolutely love.

Anderson talks about accumulated scar tissue.

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He says that masters of a craft, whether it's coding or farming or carpentry...

We have scar tissue. We learn by failing. We learn by debugging. We learn by sweating in the sun when the crop didn't come in.

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He says, you can't prompt your way to that knowledge. You can't download that experience. You have to earn it.

This brings us right back to F.A. Hayek and the knowledge problem.

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The technocrats think knowledge is just data.

They think if they feed enough data into a large language model, it becomes wise.

But wisdom isn't data. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is scar tissue. Wisdom is the result of Carpe Diem, of seizing the struggle.

If we outsource the struggle to AI, we outsource the wisdom.

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key bono.

Who benefits from a population of people who have no scar tissue, who have never struggled?

the people who sell the painkiller's benefit.

the people who sell the convenience benefit.

If you lose your agency, you become the perfect consumer.

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you become dependent on the subscription.

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Ludwig von Mises taught that the common man is the sovereign consumer.

But if the consumer has no skill to produce value...

He has no sovereignty.

If you are just a prompter, you are replaceable.

The AI will prompt itself eventually.

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Now listen, I'm not a Luddite.

We use tools here. We use tractors. We use the internet.

This is why we're not Amish, as I've explained before.

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The amount of work I can accomplish by myself with the power of a gasoline powered tractor or power tools is exponential.

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The article makes a distinction. It says the formula should be A I plus H I.

human intelligence, where human intelligence is greater.

than AI.

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when AI helps you analyze feedback while you make the decision.

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That is augmentation.

When AI tells you what to build next, that is abdication.

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It's the same with money.

The Bible says the borrower is servant to the lender. Money is a wonderful servant. It builds houses. It feeds families. But if you serve money, it is a cruel master.

AI is the same. It's a tool.

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But here's the catch. To use a tool effectively, you have to be stronger and smarter than the tool.

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If a man who doesn't know how to chop wood buys a hydraulic splitter, he's probably going to lose a finger.

because he hasn't learned to respect the wood.

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We are handing a hydraulic splitters.

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to a generation that has never swung an axe.

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We need to return to fundamentals.

Jim Rohn said, success is neither magical or mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.

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What are the fundamentals of work?

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thinking, struggling, creating.

solving problems.

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If you let AI solve the problem for you, you are skipping the fundamental. You are cheating.

And you are cheating yourself.

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So what do we do?

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How do we resist the great abdication? How do we truly carpe diem?

the author of the study, Josh Anderson.

issues a challenge and I'm going to issue it to you Homestead style.

He says, for the next week, pick one core skill of your job, just one. Do it without any AI assistance. Write the email yourself. Code the function yourself. Plan the garden yourself.

He says, feel that discomfort? That's not incompetence. That's your actual skill level revealing itself. That burning feeling?

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That's the feeling of weakness leaving your body. That's the feeling of the muscle waking up.

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We need to embrace the struggle. That's how you seize the day.

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You don't seize the day by letting it wash over you. You seize it by wrestling with it. If you are a father,

Teach your son to do something the hard way.

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Don't just give him the answer. Let him struggle with the math problem. Let him struggle with the fence post.

That struggle is where character is built.

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Don't let the efficiency or convenience of the technocrats rob you of the mastery of the craftsman.

We are building a parallel economy.

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and a parallel economy needs people who can actually do stuff.

We need plumbers who know fluids, not just prompts. We need farmers who know soil, not just sensors.

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So caveat and tour.

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Don't buy the lie that he uses to go. Mastery is the goal.

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Don't be the 97%.

Be the 3%. Observe the masses and do the opposite.

Look at your life today.

Ask Kibono. Who benefits from my habits? Apply caveat, mTOR. Don't buy the lie of ease and convenience. And finally,

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

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Don't let the day drift by. Don't let the season pass. Plant the seed today. Write the code yourself. Teach your son the hard way.

Because the day is short, the night is coming when no man can work.

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if you wanna start seizing the day right now.

Go on over to TheTexasBoys.com. Check out the food forest in a box.

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Get the cuttings. Stick them in the ground. Touch dirt.

Really?

Reconnect with reality.

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I love y'all. Stay fearless.

Stay human.

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and seize the day.

We'll see you all in the next one.