Great Houses

35. Virginia and Britain Historical Cursus

In this episode of the Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat continues the discussion of what a cursus honorum might look like in the AI era, focusing on Virginia's gentry system and the concept of elite overproduction. He argues that the real crisis is not too many elites but a lack of patronage, where older generations fail to steward young talent through customized pathways as Virginia and Britain once did. The conversation then explores how AI will create durable power imbalances between those who can build their own systems and those who depend on them, drawing parallels to the aristocrat and peasant relationship. Gregory also addresses how the closure of the frontier, the short-term incentives of modern corporations, and the breakdown of household structures all contribute to the problem. Read more about Programming and Norris’ Number at JohnDCook.com Read more of Mr. Treat's thoughts on AI at his Substack: avaloncircle.substack.com

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34. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 6

In Episode 34 of the Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat revisits his case for the Roman cursus honorum as an alternative to modern credentialing, correcting the prior episode's impression that nation-state scale is required by arguing that just six to ten neighboring households, comparable to the Jewish minyan, can run the system effectively. He walks through each rung of the Roman sequence, tribune, quaestor, aedile, senator, praetor, consul, and censor, showing how each office forced leaders to prove competence through real-world tests judged by the people whose lives were affected, with particular attention to the censors' power to investigate private household management as a proxy for public fitness and its connection to Paul's pastoral epistles on elders. He draws economic parallels between ancient metal-based wealth thresholds and modern equivalents, showing that a first-class Roman fortune (~$470,000 in copper) feeds 80 men in the field for a year just as it did in antiquity, and that this same sum buys an 8-GPU AI compute machine today, making a cursus honorum viable for a mid-sized church or investment firm. He introduces the "44 ounces of gold" fertility metric, demonstrating that whenever American workers' average pay fell below that threshold in gold terms, the country dropped below replacement birth rates, a ratio that still holds at roughly three times median income. Read more of Mr. Treat's thoughts on AI at his Substack: https://avaloncircle.substack.com/

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33. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 5

In Episode 33 of the Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat argues that the modern credentialing system, originally built to educate Prussian peasants, produces leaders of "ungrounded virtue" who cannot be trusted with the new seats of power that AI, robotics, and surveillance technologies are creating. He proposes reviving the cursus honorum, the tiered ladder of ascending public offices used by Rome and the British aristocracy, to train "AI paladins" who master three core skills, code, content, and command, through real-world challenges rather than classroom certifications. The progression spans three levels: mastering software and rhetoric to build digital communities, applying those skills physically through autonomous manufacturing or AI-guided farming, and finally serving in medicine, policing, or the military where lives are at stake. Treat frames this through his "aristocratic-democratic technology thesis," arguing that catastrophe follows whenever a society's leadership system mismatches its technology, just as the French Revolution followed from aristocrats confronting the democratic technology of firearms, and COVID from democrats managing the aristocratic technology of biotechnology. He contends that AI will make traditional testing obsolete by instantly profiling every user, and that the converging of civilian and military drone technology is erasing the boundary between those career paths. Read more of Mr. Treat's thoughts on AI at his Substack: https://avaloncircle.substack.com/

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32. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 4

Continuing the series on the Cursus Honorum of the AI future, this episode tackles three main questions: (1) whether "AI-proof jobs" actually exist, (2) the economics of a "prime", someone who masters the core AI skills of code, content, and command, and (3) how AI reshapes the corporation, illustrated through the "zero human company," Microsoft's evolving structure, and the Visa chaordic model. Read more of Mr. Treat's thoughts on AI at his Substack: https://avaloncircle.substack.com/

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31. Zack Fava of Methean.io Talks Great Houses

In this episode of The Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat sits down with Zack Fava, founder of Methian, an AI-powered homeschooling operating system built to give parents full sovereignty over their children's education. Zack shares his journey from 15 years in the Department of Defense to building a platform that handles curriculum creation, state compliance documentation, mastery-based tracking, and AI-assisted grading, all customizable to each family's principles and pedagogy. The conversation explores how AI can restore household sovereignty by replacing institutional dependence with parent-controlled tools, and how platforms like Methian and Runcible might eventually form an integrated household AI stack covering education, business management, and domestic life. Gregory and Zack also discuss the dystopian risks of hosted AI, where employers gain deep insight into users' profiles, and argue that family-held data sovereignty is the healthier alternative. Read Ronald Dodson's article "House-Centric AI and the Return of the Aristoi" here.

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30. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 3

In Episode 30 of The Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat continues his series on the “Cursus Honorum of the AI Future," arguing that AI will collapse today's thousands of specialized roles into three core skill sets: Code, Content, and Command. He stresses that humans are not obsolete, there is always a human in the loop, and that claims of "fully automated" systems really just mean people are insulated from responsibility, a legal doctrine he expects to fail under pressure. Gregory walks through industry vignettes showing this convergence in action, including Marc Andreessen's "Builder" role collapsing programmers, product managers, and designers into one; a solo marketer running a full content operation with AI agents; and a one-doctor cataract practice with zero employees thanks to AI automation. He covers Figure AI's factory where humanoid robots build themselves, drawing an analogy to the electric motor revolution to argue that corporations need redesigning around distributed judgment rather than departmental handoffs. In a major segment on agriculture, Mr. Treat explores how laser weeding, UV pest control, and robotic harvesting could enable polyculture and permaculture at industrial scale, replacing the toxic chemical inputs and monocultural practices of modern farming. He ties these civilian applications back to military skill sets, noting that the same scout-classify-strike loop applies whether you're defending a field from blight or a battlefield from threats, meaning the most valuable peacetime professional and the most dangerous wartime operator will increasingly look the same. Next episode will tackle where the "safe" professions are and the economics of a "Prime" someone who has mastered all three core skills.

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29. James McPherson Talks Great Houses

In this episode of The Great Houses Forum, host Gregory Treat sits down with James McPherson, author of the Substack "Aegis of Zeus," a former teacher, and an edtech entrepreneur for a wide-ranging conversation rooted in the question of what gets lost when civilization loses its institutional memory. James traces his intellectual lineage from a Georgetown professor steeped in Aristotle and Hesiod, through years building boys' schools and launching STEM businesses, to his current work on AI solutions, weaving together themes of leadership, household economics, Catholic social capital, and the Zeus principle as a model for fatherhood and kingship that the modern world quietly discarded after World War I. Gregory and James explore how trusts and family legal structures mirror ancient household governance, why edtech's promise to close the achievement gap was always wishful thinking, how AI will accelerate existing hierarchies of competence rather than flatten them, and why the Ivy League's transformation from seminary-inspired formation into a prestige-signaling game represents the same kind of hollowed-out magic that runs through so much of late-stage American institutional life. Find more of James' work here: https://jalmcpherson.substack.com/ Find more of Gregory's work here: https://avaloncircle.substack.com/

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28. Will Tanner Talks Great Houses

Gregory Treat interviews Will Tanner about rebuilding “great houses” and why asset ownership matters more than wage income, using late-17th-century Virginia yeomen and planter society as a model of adaptation and competence. Tanner outlines a Virginia-style cursus honorum, from plantation management to unpaid church and county roles to the House of Burgesses, as a system for cultivating leadership, public virtue, and second- and third-order thinking. They contrast aristocracy with plutocracy and discuss how AI and emerging technologies may reward cross-domain “builders,” long-term legacy planning, and localized power.

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27. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 2

Gregory Treat continues his series on AI as an aristocratic technology, arguing that AI will collapse society's need for thousands of specialized roles down to a small handful of masterable skills — code, content, and command — allowing a single "prime" or small team to run what once required vast managerial bureaucracies. He illustrates this through military disruption: cheap drone operators using AI can now neutralize million-dollar tanks, jets, and infrastructure, meaning defense will increasingly depend on a small number of highly skilled, locally-present human commanders rather than large institutions. He argues this points toward the need for a modern cursus honorum — a deliberate training ladder — to produce these rare, high-value operators.

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26. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 1

Gregory Treat launches a new series arguing that AI is an "aristocratic" technology — one where cheap access doesn't produce equality, but instead rewards rare skill and intensive training, creating steep, durable hierarchies. He traces this pattern through history (knights, longbowmen) and more recently through CAD/3D printing, which democratized tools but ultimately consolidated value around certified experts and dominant platforms like Autodesk and Dassault.

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25. The Architecture of Trust Part 4

Gregory Treat argues that modern institutions (pensions, public schools, student loans) are failed substitutes for functions the household historically performed, and that society has run out of the trust needed to sustain them. Drawing on the ordo amoris(rightly ordered loves), the biblical concept of the "guarantor," and Ricardo's comparative advantage, he argues that mutually beneficial relationships require a shared ultimate authority — and that neoliberal economics abstracts away from the individual to the nation-state precisely because we've lost the will to sort people into roles despite being very good at it. He calls for rebuilding households, churches, and patron-client relationships as intermediary structures that can restore genuine, hierarchy-based trust — including offering people risk mitigation (education, pensions, guarantees) in exchange for loyalty and specialization.

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24. The Valerian Gens Part 2

This episode continues the story of Gens Valeria, one of Rome's oldest and most distinguished houses, tracing its arc from the height of the Republic through its decline under the Empire.

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23. The Valerian Gens Part 1

Continuing the Ancient City Series, Gregory examines House Valerius — Rome's oldest patrician family and the architects of Roman liberty. From the founding oath sworn over Lucretia's body to the Lex Valeria (Rome's first right of citizen appeal), the Valerii built their power by publicly surrendering it. Gregory profiles Publicola, who demolished his own house to prove he wasn't a tyrant, and Corvus, who ended a military mutiny through amnesty rather than punishment. The episode argues that the Valerian method — converting power into trust through visible self-restraint — is the root technology of classical liberalism, and explores both its remarkable 500-year run and the limits that ultimately made it obsolete.

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22. Mike Faulkner Talks Great Houses

In this episode, Greg sits down with Mike Faulkner — a British-born financier who built and took multiple companies public — to explore the intersection of faith, wealth, and kingdom-minded leadership. The conversation centers on Romans 12 giftings as the foundation of good business: the leader's primary job is placing people in roles that match how God designed them. From there they discuss covenant as a practical technology for protecting families and businesses, the importance of "getting clean" before covenanting, and why unequal measures and fools in the org chart are the two most common deal-killers Mike sees. The episode closes with a vision for a kingdom investment company — a holding structure that lets kingdom-minded businesses access capital, share equity with employees, pay dividends, and give Christians a way to go long on their community rather than short it.

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21. Silas Mähner Talks Great Houses

In this episode, Greg Treat sits down with Silas Mähner, Catholic entrepreneur and founder of Catholic Founders, to discuss long-term employment relationships, corporate lifers, and what it takes to build institutions that compound over generations. Drawing on Japanese firm models, Dunbar's number, and the economics of defection, they explore why short-termism hollows out companies and communities alike — and what the covenant-based alternative looks like. The conversation covers the spiritual, legal, and economic pillars required to make lifer employment work; how AI is accelerating idiosyncratic corporate stacks that will demand deeper specialization; and why the coming economic order will likely resemble feudalism — with Christianity, Confucianism, or caste as the only real frameworks to choose from. The episode closes on how beauty, walkabout traditions, and keeping your own children are the real drivers of a lasting great house.

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20. The Architecture of Trust: Part 3

In this episode, Gregory Treat continues the "Architecture of Trust" series, exploring why modern communities trap themselves in poverty by boosting demand and restricting supply without capturing any of the upside. Greg walks through the Cantillon effect, three types of economic loops, and what it means to "short" your own family by betting on the system instead of your children. Drawing on Jewish, Amish, and Japanese corporate models, he argues that closing the loop requires mediators with skin in the game, internal stores of value, and pre-negotiated chains of mutual obligation — and challenges builders to create the infrastructure that makes betting on your family economically rational.

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19. The Architecture of Trust: Part 2

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18. The Architecture of Trust: Part 1

This episode explores trust through the lens of two Substack articles: one critiquing African funeral traditions for keeping people poor, and another on how to become trustworthy. Gregory Treat uses cryptocurrency concepts — proof of work and token burning — as an extended metaphor to argue that what looks like "wasted" wealth in kinship rituals is actually a conversion into social currency on a different ledger. Central to the discussion is the distinction between traders' games (short-term, transactional, frictionless) and farmers' games (long-term, consistent, relationship-based). Gregory argues that modern financialism has tried to convert everything into traders' games, but many of life's most important things — parenting, marriage, elder care, community — only work as farmers' games, sustained by multi-generational family structures.

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17. Colton Murray Talks Great Houses

This episode features a conversation with Colton Murray, a second-generation entrepreneur whose father built and sold major candy brands including Dynamic Confections and Tru Fru (acquired by Mars). Colton shares how his family's identity was shaped by ancestor stories, faith, and a deep sense of stewardship — and how he came to understand these as rare and intentional practices only by contrast when meeting other families.

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16. Rebuilding a Great House: The Fabian Gens Part 2

In this episode, Gregory Treat concludes the series on the Fabian gens — one of Rome's six Gentes Maiores — by tracing how the trauma of near-total family annihilation at the Cremera River forged a unique countercultural virtue: disciplined patience over aggressive courage.

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