# ChangeHow - rough camera video of Vinay Gupta's talk on Buckminster Fuller and activism

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [305]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2015-02-09 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM. Text: automatic captions, partly corrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015), before the law step (Mattereum, 2017).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): The philosophical stance: solve poverty with things, not politics.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - To bite the hand that feeds: survival (2010): Four-page essay: Nash equilibria lock each of us into breaking the world, so the way out is a new,... (suggested by machine)
  - The New Economy: out of money, out of time, but not out of ideas (2010): One-page paper: the richest fifth are eating the planet, so the next economy has to be at peace with other... (suggested by machine)
  - The Big Deal (2011): Four-essay blog series arguing that government has hit hard limits, so civil society, working with... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - goat rodeo to warlords: The goat rodeo idea, from a 2010 blog post to a 2011 one-page paper to the opening chapter of Warlords, Inc. (2015). (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Engineering as political action — Fuller and material provision (91%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: engineering power (1 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); skills (4 here; 67 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 5 undated); Open Source Ecology (1 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); masks (1 here; 20 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 2 undated); Hexayurt Project (2 here; 70 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 4 undated); Scotland (1 here; 29 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); clean water (1 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); Appropedia (1 here; 34 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 3 undated); too cold (1 here; 40 sources in all, earliest dated 2008, 7 undated); too hot (1 here; 42 sources in all, earliest dated 2008, 6 undated)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): engineering power
- Importance: core-text score 0.51 (1.00 is the top), number 84 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [677] [Vinay Gupta - A Radical Manifesto for Fixing the World (2021)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/677.md): close in content (cosine 0.92)
  - [747] [Startup Societies Podcast - Episode 34 - Vinay Gupta (2019)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/747.md): close in content (cosine 0.92)
- On the same works, just before: [311] [Vinay Gupta - Proof of Work / IAmSatoshi (2014)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/311.md); [310] [Engineers Without Borders Sheffield Plywood Hexayurt How To (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/310.md); [307] [Financial Services Club Jan 27 2015 - "What is Money?" -... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/307.md)
- On the same works, just after: [756] [Change:HOW #17 Vinay Gupta (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/756.md); [302] [Vinay Gupta - Protecting History (blockchains) Maker... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/302.md); [234] [zenpundit.com » Blog Archive » WARLORDS, INC BOOK LAUNCH!!! (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/234.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: ChangeHow - rough camera video of Vinay Gupta's talk on Buckminster Fuller and activism, video, 2015-02-09, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [305], https://guptaoption.com/texts/305.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages
[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=0s) to show you we can't start okay so I'm very Gupta a thing called the hexayurt project and most of the time when you hear people talk about your project the projects are basically semi-centralized there are certain types of political solidarity there's a certain terms of the projects fundamentally about people the headset project is none of those things it's a project which is entirely about things right this is a hexayurt and it is the world's cheapest worst house 12 sheets of plywood five pieces of two by four 160 deck screws uh us price is about 86 dollars UK price of 150 quid it lost several years in the outdoors and it is a piece of right but per person per year it's 20 of the price of a disaster relief stand and it's vastly more comfortable because it gives thermal control particularly if you're in areas which are too hot or if you build enough insulation places which are too cold

[1:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=93s) and it's an example of something called open social appropriate technology which is a very kind of small scale Global movement to try and fix the material base that causes the world to be in with the world is so most of the political decisions that are made in the world are fundamentally made when you pick your engineering solution you decide that you'll use Fiber Optic Cables you therefore wind up with undersheen cables which are subject to monitoring by the safe you decide that you're going to use coal power and fire coal-fired power plants you therefore wind up with an enormous amount of CO2 emission but you also wind up with a coal industry which then becomes globalized the material phase which is obviously for a lot of artists it's fundamentally what defines our political choices you can only choose between things which are possible you cannot choose to do something which is impossible unless you will do the engineering work to make it possible right now the world other stands is fundamentally broken a civil engineer in landlord hence climate change it's fundamentally broken a civil engineering level hence a billion and throw people with no access to clean water a billion or so people with no access to or very limited access to food these are fundamentally engineering problems and it doesn't matter what kind of politics you have those into your infobells will persist so the first thing I want to say

[2:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=175s) to you is how many of you are the river engineers right highly harmful three or four people right and the rest of you better understand that all of the political choices you make are only within the bounds of the engineering which has been done you can't choose to do something with the engineers have not made possible and most of your choices are completely constrained so right harmful or not button is the guy that we should have followed instead of Marx right Thor simply said fix the material base invest in the engineering make the world's problems first soluble and then easily soluble and then build on the base whatever kind of solution you want so that everybody has stable peace and abiding happiness right we've tried reorganizing society and playing around with the kind of monkey-centric power gaming which has been our species nature for the last two million years and in terms of there's no configuration of monkey-centric power gaming that allows you to power your civilization without remaining CO2 other than fixing the engineering case if you don't do the engineering you're going to get lousy Solutions and right now the Progressive Movement as a whole has absolutely no interest in Scotland regard for engineering as a source of both all the significant problems witnessed nuclear weapons right the enormous Death full for cars oh this is engineering Progressive Movement historically has no interest in engineering it's just about power right political power to try and make people do things one way or another way rather engineering power to change the

[4:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=286s) set possibilities we have into a set of possibilities that we like more we've completely ignored the engineering base have you ever heard anybody stand up a company for better engineering doesn't hurt right all the stuff of a cold warm all we have to do is go to a pulse does that mean that you stopped up there and talk about the engineering side my God we need to do this and this and this these pieces of engineering these five pieces of research we need to raise the money move the money affects the problem no what we talked about is regulation we talked about policy we talk about power we talk about money we never talked about further problem article is and this is a huge cultural Legacy that we have from the struggle for control of British society that happened around the time of the Industrial Revolution as the basis for the generation of wealth move from being feudal aristocracy sorry a few normal aristocracy essentially we were run by the children of the Normans to being the new industrial class which was largely a bunch of Northerners like we're now right you know all of that kind of revolutionary stuff that was coming out of the black country right in them inside of that power struggle at British Society figured out how to de-legitimize engineering as a position through which one could exert political power unsolutely protecting the feudal under in the feudal London aristocracy so since the points what happens is that there's a power struggle between the funeral aristocracy and the new kind of industrial captains industry the brunelles and all the Restless for controlled British Society is it going to be by the inherited class or is it going to be about manufacturing wealth and Manufacturing power right and inside of that struggle the feudal aristocracy manages to demagitimize the right of the engineers to exert political influence from the possession of being good at engineering thank you

[6:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=415s) and this is something that you know is critical to their ability to send their privilege um it resents in us not helping an engineering class with any political partner right certain burners we invent the web which most people you know use every day for hours does he have any substantial amount of political part is he celebrating his being about the most important person to come out of the UK no right Sports spies absolutely politicians absolutely creators of enormously powerful Global artifacts that shape everything that we do largely I've known you've heard the name but there's no substantial status associated with it right so the point I want to make here is this you are completely incapable of solving most of the fundamental problems in the world unless you're an engineer you could do nothing substantial about global warming and less you can actually deploy new solar panels or other equivalent Technologies unless you're capable of building a 200 kilogram car you are helpless doesn't matter who you act doesn't matter who you vote for doesn't matter what you found being on it's not going to get fixed the solutions that you could deploy by bicycles right a bunch of Engineers develop those not you right so if you want to fix the world's problems firstly start figuring out how to selectively Empower Engineers who are building the stuff that will fix the world's problems right you can't do it you are as helpless as somebody trying to take over the panics you can't fix the global power structures right yes sir you can't fix the energy distribution you can't do anything about food distribution you can't figure out how to grow new food right you are a de-skilled helpless mom and you exist in a culture which looks at the people that half the skills can fix the world as if they were second class citizens right look at the absolute uh you know a destination of the culture of the nerves which is happening our mind right now under the name gamergate right you think the only people that have the skills to actually prepare the society that you're in and you decimate their culture because you don't like their values actually if you want this world fixed these are the people that you need to persuade to your calls these are people who use the public support in the past

[9:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=557s) 10 years the open source world has created a free operating system roughly equivalent to Windows or mockups called Linux and it's more or less sold the global vibration Problem by creating Wikipedia we now have organized three content that anybody could have to educate themselves and we're rapidly on the way to building the end use devices that people can use at their Villages and then their slums to get an education any uptight the Progressive Movement has done nothing but use around on every substantial gender and the open source movement can still gets zero political Voice or political support from the rest of the Progressive Movement right the people that are actually solving the world's problems because they are engineers and therefore whatever political stages get zero support from a movement that is rapidly losing ground on every single critical area it is broken to the core you cannot fix it you don't have the skills the people who do have the skills are making incredibly rapid progress on education own health on energy and on everything else then we can get zero political support from you it's broken stop worrying about the funny politicians start supporting the engineers start building up that world that you can actually live in right now stop messing around right 200 years ago right 100 Jewish schools markets get started tons of years ago marks get started or marxism's political force it's serving about we're going to emit wealth and factories and we ought to figure out who controls the ultimate from the factories does it belong fundamentally to the workers in the factories or the capitalists that created the Machinery or does it belong to the designers of the things in the factory Capital labor of talent was the old tripod right right now all of the eternity politically is around fighting against Capital nothing is going into supporting Talent right and it's the other fund we've done

[11:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=680s) unionization one of my grand great great great great great grandparents it was apparently avoid of becoming a tall panel marker by about this much right we've done huge amounts of struggle between labor and accountable and it turns out that we've lost them were upselling the next round of the struggle is between Talent of capital and talent in the form of Engineers are winning very fast against Capital the open source software movement is decimating everything that it touches we have taken things that used to be extremely Scottish Goods on making them globally available to any human being at zero cost and we've done it for knowledge we've got it for software we're doing it for photography we're about to do it for financial instruments through things like Bitcoin subsequent project or ethereum that I work with right so I want you to really heavily reconsider everything think you think you know about how you win this game and about what victory looks like because the whole you're going to do is get increasing amounts of influence and control over a system of horrific engineering welcome to running a planet with six or seven degrees warming while you all sit on your hands and wonder how we wound up in this mess right it's all going to become because we put political power in the hands of the engineers and scientists who know how to solve these things and then listen to them when they tell us what to do I absolutely deny the right of a de-skilled political class to instruct the engineers about outrun the world anymore and if democracy will not put engineers in charge because people will not vote for them you're all going to die right and if you think I'm joking wait until you see non-technology and biotechnology and the issues around regulating and controlling these things we're 10 or 15 years away from being able to take a tax file containing the gene sequence of saltbox put it into a machine and get a line virus out the other side right the people that you're putting the tower even the progressive people that you're building power are AIDS they have new ability to understand the world but to be afraid of them even your side of new ability to understand the world that has been created they are delegitimized as power Clause so I want you to go home and I want you to really think who runs the world who decides what systems we know what systems we don't build who has the necessary skill and refined understanding of valve control of these systems the only option available to create a world which works for everybody and

[13:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=830s) given the threats from nanotechnology and biotechnology which is certain values is to figure out how to put the right engineers in a position of having political and governmental power not lawyers not people that would go on TV not a bunch of good bastards sweeteners right British Society took the wrong Fork we should have gone with Bernal the rest of those guys and just to prioritize that power of us would be the chance it is not too late

[14:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=856s) so we can't take the questions the questions arise um that's about 45. if you have questions yeah hello yeah say ignore politicians and I agree with basically everything research because I think I've been a big fan of your theories for all time but you say ignore the political class but how do you get to a position where we are relying more heavily on Talent rather than politics and is there an argument to create a talent party which is part of the school politicians which actually have backgrounds in research and through urban areas and Ministries discussions should we create a talent party so I mean I'm all in favor of continuing to participate in the Electoral politics and potentially to setting some resources into it right I think for example the pirate party has a pretty good point of being the talent party the greens are also pretty long in science and technology right they are by no means a bunch of orders so I think that it's important that we continue to do these things but with that the expectation that they're going to give us fundamental Solutions right um really the way Jimmy Wales to start with Wikipedia we need a Lifeline historical storm Linux these things are potentially massively more effective for poverty alleviation than anything that has ever been done by a government and I think that we need to think about that as a general solution right others are responsible design the engineer at The Architects and to fix our societies by direct subscription rather than by electing people who then redirects tax tax money could do these things right distance remediate the Charities which are producing crap invest in the Charities which are doing useful stuff build and fund engineering projects you'll have 200 kilograms overpowered car we can build that for you we just need money to pay the engineers Charities that raise money to solve engineering problems I think are probably the hot vehicle for much of this work but that is not to save your vote vote maybe building your parties of countries which have a compatible electoral system

[16:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=1006s) yeah plus how do you stop the uh sorry about this The Talented Engineers all about playing monkey games and we stop The Talented Engineers playing monkey games because the question is uh a relationship around around uh Commandments and what and what accrues to money and what's with you know you're talking about complete change with mindset absolutely I mean I'm very much right halfway between forward and gambling so what we have seen so far right is do you think speaker no so okay so what we've seen so far is that the people that are at the top of these kind of projects like torvaults or uh Jimmy Wales I've taken pretty much professorial salaries right I don't know what Wales is or maybe it's 100K they might be 200k but it is by no means you know 3.8 million dollars a year on the bonus right in the open source world the engineers are in the straight capitalist world are also solving Global problems right so Elon Musk right made 300 million dollars but 100 million each into Tesla SpaceX and SolarCity and it's currently about 60 of the actual functional government in America right and if you actually want to look at the wing of the American system which is producing the solutions for the future it is not the state it is not NASA all of that stuff is crap right even Dharma no longer has anything resembling the same research agenda right but you look at masks right these are the things the human race used to be enduring and successful we're going to go and build them in the market because the state won't fund the majority doesn't work so we have to contend with the fact that some of the best actors we have working towards long-term humans survival or ruthless capitalists I I don't think anybody wants anyone must be a ruthless capitalist if we were going to provide them with enough money that he could do the engineering that he's doing without having to go through the market I'm sure he'd be delighted to accept our facts right but we've not figured out how to fund the engineering and the state is not there so you're left between an open source on one side which is funded by donations or Elon Musk on the other and right now will be both yes where you've seen where activism and the engineers are beginning to work best together so we'll talk about that open

[19:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHinwF1ChYM&t=1156s) source in additional Stevens love exciting digital activism happening investigation oh there's tons of stuff right so open source ecology in Michigan are doing really nice work real in Greece and Engineers work orders of course uh Appropedia uh the hexayurt project which is my own thing there's no

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End of [305] ChangeHow - rough camera video of Vinay Gupta's talk on Buckminster Fuller and activism. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [756](https://guptaoption.com/texts/756.md) Change:HOW #17 Vinay Gupta (2015); the most closely related, [677](https://guptaoption.com/texts/677.md) Vinay Gupta - A Radical Manifesto for Fixing the World (2021); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.