The Culture War - Tim Pool - The Culture War #28 - The Economy Is In DANGER, Trump And Student Loans Spell CRISIS w/Meet Kevin
Aired: 2023-09-01
Duration: 02:04:40


=== Economic Uncertainties (15:06) ===

[00:00:00]  We got a lot going on in the economy.
[00:00:08]  There's politics.
[00:00:09]  There's warnings from certain individuals that the political crisis we're seeing with Donald Trump and with the upcoming election could be bad for the economy because it could have an effect on confidence.
[00:00:20]  I'm not so sure about that.
[00:00:21]  That seems a bit vague and nebulous.
[00:00:23]  But there's also other concerns about student loan debt.
[00:00:26]  And there's a lot that we can talk about.
[00:00:27]  So we're hanging out with Meet Kevin.
[00:00:30]  Who are you?
[00:00:30]  What do you do?
[00:00:31]  Hey, thanks for having me.
[00:00:32]  Is the camera not working?
[00:00:35]  Oh, very well.
[00:00:37]  Hey, there it is.
[00:00:38]  That's awesome.
[00:00:39]  Maybe I bumped into it on the way in.
[00:00:41]  Sorry about that.
[00:00:41]  It's been a rocky economy.
[00:00:42]  There we go.
[00:00:43]  Yeah.
[00:00:45]  So I'm a financial advisor.
[00:00:47]  I make finance videos on YouTube.
[00:00:50]  I cover stocks and real estate.
[00:00:51]  I started in real estate, real estate broker, licensed lender, licensed contractor, kind of done a little bit of everything.
[00:00:56]  You were like running for governor too or something, right?
[00:00:58]  I ran for governor in California.
[00:00:59]  Yeah, that state needs a lot of help.
[00:01:01]  But, you know, I actually resonate a lot with, I can't remember when you said this, it might have been a while ago that you said it, but this this idea of like, everybody sort of told me, Kevin, leave the Democratic Party.
[00:01:11]  You're not a Democrat or whatever.
[00:01:13]  I'm like, I'm just I feel like I'm a centrist and California needs to change.
[00:01:16]  So as soon as they hear D, they're like, Oh, I can't be friends with you because you have that label.
[00:01:21]  I'm like, I'm just a human.
[00:01:22]  Yeah, that's interesting.
[00:01:24]  When all that stuff was going on, I remember everybody was shouting you out, saying like, you could actually, this is the guy, meet Kevin, could be the saving grace of California, because you're a centrist, because you're reasonable, because you're honest, and running as a Democrat, you actually have a chance to win.
[00:01:39]  You could get nothing done if you were a Republican in California.
[00:01:42]  People look back to Schwarzenegger, but back then, Democrats didn't have a super majority control of the legislature.
[00:01:49]  Today, they control about 80% of the legislature in California.
[00:01:53]  So, if you got a Republican in, they'd just sandbag you for the two, four, six years, whatever you got lucky enough to sit in there for.
[00:02:00]  So how did that end up turning out?
[00:02:01]  I mean, did you do decently well?
[00:02:03]  Yeah, so it was a recall election.
[00:02:06]  So voters had to vote on whether or not to recall the governor.
[00:02:10]  And it was actually looking like they were going to go for voting for recalling him.
[00:02:15]  And the next best option would have been, in my opinion, myself.
[00:02:19]  I was the only one on the Democratic ticket running.
[00:02:22]  Until you had on the Republican side, Larry Elder come in, who very powerful force on the Republican ticket.
[00:02:29]  He ended up getting first place out of recall candidates.
[00:02:32]  I came in second.
[00:02:33]  So I beat all the other candidates.
[00:02:35]  But what the Democrats were able to do was brand Larry Elder as being to the right of Trump.
[00:02:41]  And as soon as they said.
[00:02:44]  Yes.
[00:02:44]  And as soon as they did that and said, you know, lockdowns are coming back and what he's going to, you know, what was it?
[00:02:52]  Larry Elder was going to kill your children.
[00:02:54]  That's what it was, because he was going to take away masks and tell everybody they don't need to get vaccinated.
[00:03:00]  And that actually then motivated Californians to come out and vote to keep Newsom.
[00:03:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:06]  It's pretty wild.
[00:03:07]  That's so awful, but I mean, you know, knowing everything that's going on in politics, I mean, do you still consider yourself a Democrat?
[00:03:13]  Oh man, I don't even know what to consider myself anymore.
[00:03:15]  I really, I consider myself first and foremost an American, which I feel proud to say because I was born in Germany.
[00:03:20]  I'm an immigrant.
[00:03:21]  When was that?
[00:03:22]  I was like 13 months old.
[00:03:23]  I was born in 92.
[00:03:28]  Oh, okay.
[00:03:28]  So, and what's crazy is, you know, as much as you can believe it, but the Wall Street Journal just did a piece where they showed a chart of hate, of how much Democrats hate Republicans and how much Republicans hate Democrats.
[00:03:39]  You said Wall Street Journal?
[00:03:40]  Wall Street Journal.
[00:03:40]  They published it within the last week.
[00:03:42]  I actually tweeted a screenshot of it, probably within the last week.
[00:03:46]  But it's a chart of hate from the early 90s, and it shows how hate for the other party has basically just gone straight up.
[00:03:54]  Like, if that could be a stock I've invested in in the last 30 years, It would be fantastic because I'm 31 now.
[00:04:00]  Just because of how much hate has accelerated for the other party.
[00:04:04]  Part of it they blame on maybe ignorance for the other people, part of it they blame on, you know, media and whatever, you know, extremism for views, whatever it might be.
[00:04:14]  But it's pretty wild how much divisiveness there's, you know.
[00:04:19]  I'm trying to find your tweet.
[00:04:21]  Yeah, let's see.
[00:04:22]  I'll try to help you find it as well.
[00:04:24]  How long ago was it?
[00:04:25]  Oh, it should have been within the last week.
[00:04:27]  And we talked about how sad it really was.
[00:04:30]  I'm going to just hit media.
[00:04:31]  Maybe that'll... Oh, here we go.
[00:04:33]  You got it.
[00:04:33]  Yep.
[00:04:34]  Wow.
[00:04:34]  Look at this.
[00:04:35]  Yeah, look at that.
[00:04:35]  See, if that was a stock I could invest in.
[00:04:37]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:04:39]  Like, if you could invest in him... You can though.
[00:04:42]  I mean, there are smart financial people who can look at that, figure out what is economically tied to this political space.
[00:04:51]  And I got to be honest, media is the obvious one.
[00:04:54]  Because Democrats and Republicans are about to dump billions into media markets for advertising because they hate each other.
[00:05:01]  That's a good point.
[00:05:02]  All the super PACs.
[00:05:03]  Yeah, when, uh, yeah, when, uh, when was Bloomberg?
[00:05:06]  Was that, was that like 2019, 2020?
[00:05:07]  Oh, yeah, yeah, Michael Bloomberg.
[00:05:10]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:11]  I mean, he put in half a billion dollars.
[00:05:13]  So, yeah, we're getting all these ads, so I'm just like, there's one of your targets.
[00:05:18]  Well, even in L.A., you had the L.A.
[00:05:20]  mayoral race just this, you know, last election cycle, and the amount of money that was spent for a mayoral race, I mean, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million, and it's just insane.
[00:05:28]  Maybe even more than that.
[00:05:29]  But you're now getting these rich billionaires who are like, okay, we gotta buy as much as we can, and they're spending a lot of money on messaging and marketing.
[00:05:38]  It's pretty incredible.
[00:05:39]  Here we go.
[00:05:39]  I think this is it.
[00:05:40]  Is this the article?
[00:05:41]  Tribalism took over our politics?
[00:05:43]  Yes.
[00:05:44]  Yeah, Jason.
[00:05:44]  Yeah, he's a good writer.
[00:05:46]  Yeah, there it is.
[00:05:47]  Wow.
[00:05:47]  Wow, we missed this one.
[00:05:48]  This was a week ago.
[00:05:49]  This is like right up our alley.
[00:05:51]  Yeah, share of those in each party who view the other party very favorably.
[00:05:55]  I'm sorry, unfavorably.
[00:05:58]  62% of Republicans, like, it's almost an all-time high.
[00:06:02]  Wow, 1984 was 21, now it's 62.
[00:06:05]  Look at that, Democrats in 95 really did not like Republicans.
[00:06:09]  And that's interesting that Democrats don't, this is surprising me, Democrats, it's 54% unfavorability, but that's lower than Republicans.
[00:06:18]  I think the issue is probably what we see in the culture war.
[00:06:22]  The woke.
[00:06:23]  Yeah, you know, drag shows and things like that are really, I don't know what's the right word, astringent, I guess, to the to the conservative mind.
[00:06:31]  Yeah.
[00:06:31]  And that's resulting in escalating anger.
[00:06:35]  But I also think, too, What we're seeing with the, you know, the politics, the indictment of Trump and all that stuff is really making people angry.
[00:06:43]  Plus, you know, we talked about this last night.
[00:06:45]  They just sentenced one of the Proud Boys or two of them to 17 years, 17 for Joe Biggs.
[00:06:49]  And then the other guy got 15.
[00:06:50]  I think his name was Jordan Rail or something like that.
[00:06:53]  And that is.
[00:06:55]  Insanely excessive.
[00:06:56]  The theory that many Trump supporters are putting forward is that they're intentionally trying to agitate and piss off Republicans and conservatives and Trump supporters to escalate the political conflict, which I think is the natural consequence of what we're seeing politically.
[00:07:14]  This article actually, I think it's the nail in the head of the hammer.
[00:07:16]  All that's going to happen is people are going to hate each other more and more and more.
[00:07:20]  You know, what I was saying is If you're a Republican politician, and you see something like this, you know your path to victory is going to be a retribution-revenge ticket.
[00:07:30]  So then, you're going to get a politician coming out and saying, vote for me and I'll go after them.
[00:07:35]  Democrats will do the same thing.
[00:07:36]  And it's very interesting you say that, that observation you had about Democrats actually becoming almost less unfavorable of Republicans.
[00:07:43]  It almost looks like that.
[00:07:44]  I wonder if how far that time goes on the right, but I wonder how much of that aligns with the indictments of Trump because one thing that I have noticed is at least on my channel, which I've always thought was very 5050.
[00:07:56]  I've noticed a lot of Democrats leaving comments when I make a Trump video saying look, I'm I'm a Democrat people will say but what they're doing the Trump is not okay and it scares me and I think that's very interesting that you're almost seeing that bridge that crossover of like, Let the voters decide, is what people are saying.
[00:08:14]  It seems that way.
[00:08:14]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:08:15]  I just... I think the... One, if you look at the Georgia indictments with, like, Fannie Willis, I think this is exactly it.
[00:08:26]  This is the, my constituents hate Trump so much, I get re-elected and I make money if I target him.
[00:08:32]  So it's not about the law.
[00:08:33]  Get Trump.
[00:08:34]  Right.
[00:08:35]  Exactly.
[00:08:35]  And then the response from the right is we're now hearing all the Trump supporters and conservatives say, do something to members of Congress, which means come 2024, or even now-ish, you'll start seeing people who are going to be running for primaries for a congressional ticket, and they're going to be campaigning on, I will file subpoenas, I will issue criminal referrals, and we will go after them.
[00:08:59]  Neither side, I think.
[00:09:01]  Both sides think they're justified.
[00:09:03]  I think my view of it is more the indictments against Trump are obviously an overreach of the law for political power.
[00:09:11]  The conservative side, the Republicans, aren't really doing much.
[00:09:15]  They're saying, we want to have an inquiry and have a special session to question the prosecutor.
[00:09:19]  So you're going to get a reaction from Republicans.
[00:09:22]  Sure.
[00:09:22]  What do you think about Vivek's take?
[00:09:24]  Pardon Trump, put it in the past, move on.
[00:09:27]  Well, yeah, I think Vivek's fantastic.
[00:09:30]  His perspective, of course, is more aligned with what I think is the truth in that... That's his campaign slogan.
[00:09:35]  Yeah, right, you know, and I do find him to be a very honest guy.
[00:09:38]  Everyone keeps trying to get him with, like, past statements, and then he comes out and he just addresses all of them, like, bang, bang, bang, and it's... I like the guy.
[00:09:45]  I don't think he's perfect.
[00:09:46]  I mean, nobody is.
[00:09:47]  I mean, I have some complaints about his pharmacy past myself.
[00:09:50]  But in terms of if I separate the past and what he's saying now about the future, it very much resonates with what Americans are looking for in a politician.
[00:10:01]  I agree.
[00:10:01]  And I think he addresses the concerns and the things in the past.
[00:10:05]  Exactly.
[00:10:05]  And it's like you couldn't get a better answer out of the guy.
[00:10:09]  He's not making mistakes.
[00:10:10]  He's a couple.
[00:10:12]  Yeah.
[00:10:12]  They got him on that 9-11 thing, which was hilarious.
[00:10:14]  I know.
[00:10:15]  You know, all of those things, I think you almost need to hit those landmines when you're running for office because it gets you in the attention cycles.
[00:10:23]  And it just helps you in the polls.
[00:10:25]  I mean, strangely, the prediction markets have him down.
[00:10:28]  That is true.
[00:10:28]  After the debates, I will say, after the debate, after Trump skipped the debate and went for Tucker, which I don't blame.
[00:10:37]  I thought that was a really kind of funny slam at Fox.
[00:10:40]  It was like the perfect timing of that.
[00:10:41]  But I thought after Trump's performance there where he felt a little beaten up, which you can't blame him with all the stuff he's been dealing with.
[00:10:49]  He felt a little beaten up on Tucker and Vivek's performance.
[00:10:52]  I would have expected more of a fall in Trump polling and a rise in Vivek.
[00:10:58]  Didn't happen.
[00:10:58]  If anything, Trump became more popular.
[00:11:00]  Yeah, Trump went up.
[00:11:02]  Ron actually went up and down.
[00:11:04]  Yeah.
[00:11:05]  It was really weird.
[00:11:05]  During the debate, Vivek drops.
[00:11:07]  Afterwards, he skyrockets, and now he's down again.
[00:11:09]  I know!
[00:11:11]  It's so weird.
[00:11:11]  It's polling, though.
[00:11:13]  The prediction markets are people making bets.
[00:11:17]  So I'm wondering.
[00:11:18]  Now, Nikki Haley is almost in third place.
[00:11:20]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:11:21]  You like looking at predicted.
[00:11:22]  Yeah, I've actually interviewed that CEO when I was running for governor.
[00:11:26]  I had him on a channel and the predicted markets had me at like a 10% chance of winning.
[00:11:30]  And he's like, did you know that in one out of 10 alternate realities, you would be the governor of California?
[00:11:36]  And I'm like, stop flattering me.
[00:11:38]  Well, so looking at all this hate, you know, here's what I'll go back and say this.
[00:11:43]  My perspective, I think, is fairly obvious.
[00:11:47]  I see a lot of people, especially with California, the fear over, like you mentioned, they said Larry Elder's gonna kill your kids and take away masks and all this stuff.
[00:11:54]  I mean, that is a paranoid delusion in my opinion.
[00:11:59]  I got COVID, it was really bad.
[00:12:01]  I can certainly understand wanting to take precautions and I got no problem with that.
[00:12:05]  If you're on a private business and you wanna say we want masks, whatever man, I guess.
[00:12:08]  And then I can choose not to go to your business.
[00:12:11]  The mandates I think were nuts, but I think in the Democrat states, I don't know how it got so bad with the fear and the paranoia.
[00:12:19]  And then the Republican states was an inversion of it.
[00:12:21]  It's almost pure tribalism.
[00:12:24]  But I feel like when it comes to what's happening to Donald Trump, my take on Trump is he's kind of a nasty dude.
[00:12:30]  You know, he's crude and he's crass.
[00:12:32]  A lot of people really don't like him and I totally get it.
[00:12:35]  I think there's a lot of people who are in MAGA country, like people that were previously never voted before.
[00:12:41]  Trump woke them up because he's like a bull, you know, a bull in a China shop.
[00:12:45]  But then I'll talk to people and, you know, my friends from the cities and they'll say like, here's what I don't like about him.
[00:12:49]  And I'll be like, I can totally get it.
[00:12:51]  They find the way he speaks gross, like the insults, the fat pig comments.
[00:12:56]  That being said, he's not a insurrectionist who tried to overthrow the country and like the January 6th stuff is completely out of hand.
[00:13:05]  So what I end up seeing with that, as well as the fear over COVID and the paranoia and the tribal nature of the Democratic Party, It seems clear to me that while the Republican Party is mostly garbage, there is a... I don't know how we describe it because the media likes to call it the right or conservative, but it's not.
[00:13:27]  You've got disaffected liberals, post-liberal, moderate, conservative.
[00:13:31]  It's more of the...
[00:13:33]  I don't know.
[00:13:34]  I call it freedom faction.
[00:13:35]  Yeah.
[00:13:35]  Okay.
[00:13:36]  People disagree with each other, but can sit down and have conversations.
[00:13:39]  I think most Americans can.
[00:13:41]  I think that what the thing about Trump is that people either love him or hate him, but they know where he stands.
[00:13:48]  And I do think people like and respect that.
[00:13:51]  And I think that's why Vivek has some popularity now as well, because he's very clear about where he stands.
[00:13:56]  He outlines clearly, look, I believe in God, I believe in this is exactly what we should do with the Department of Education or the FBI or otherwise.
[00:14:03]  But Trump's very much like that.
[00:14:04]  Here's how I feel about China.
[00:14:06]  Here's how I feel about whatever.
[00:14:07]  He's very blunt about that.
[00:14:08]  I think people like that.
[00:14:10]  I think there is this uncertainty with, well, if Biden isn't being very clear with his positioning and we don't know who's running the White House is sort of the impression now.
[00:14:22]  Then, then people have like, well, at least I know what I'm getting with, with maybe, uh, you know, Trump or Vivek or whatever, or maybe even a combined ticket, both of them together.
[00:14:30]  And we just heard Trump say that he's open to Vivek potentially as maybe a VP.
[00:14:35]  I'd love to see that.
[00:14:36]  Yeah.
[00:14:36]  You know, Vivek said he doesn't want to do it.
[00:14:38]  Uh, well, he has to say that because then he wouldn't get donations anymore.
[00:14:41]  Of course he has to say that.
[00:14:42]  But I mean, come to primary, if he's going to lose the primary, he's not going to say no to VP.
[00:14:47]  I don't know though.
[00:14:48]  I don't know.
[00:14:48]  I mean, some people are concerned that the VP is actually a mostly do nothing position.

=== Vote For Anyone But Trump (02:21) ===

[00:14:53]  Sure.
[00:14:53]  But it sets you up for, I mean, look, Biden.
[00:14:55]  Yeah.
[00:14:55]  Right.
[00:14:56]  Biden with Obama.
[00:14:57]  And then you become president.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:59]  But Biden became president because of Trump, not because of Biden.
[00:15:02]  Okay, that's fair.
[00:15:04]  Vote for anybody but Trump back then, that's true.
[00:15:06]  You're probably right about that, yeah.
[00:15:07]  And then I think it was, you know, a lot of ground activist efforts with ballot harvesting, with universal mail-in voting, and other things, of course, procedural changes.
[00:15:18]  People are just going and saying, vote for anyone other than Trump, and so people are just filling out the ballot and sending it in.
[00:15:23]  I don't think Biden has that this time around.
[00:15:25]  Oh, interesting.
[00:15:26]  Less of that movement for Biden.
[00:15:28]  Okay.
[00:15:28]  Yeah, I mean, I don't think there was a movement for Biden.
[00:15:30]  And I think Trump supporters are completely correct when they say the enthusiasm for Biden was 26% in aggregate or whatever.
[00:15:37]  How could he have gotten all of these votes?
[00:15:39]  And then my response is always, did you look at the enthusiasm against Trump?
[00:15:43]  It was like 96%.
[00:15:45]  So when they would do these polls and talk to voters and say, Do you want to vote for Biden?
[00:15:50]  They'd say no.
[00:15:50]  Do you want to vote against Trump?
[00:15:51]  They would say yes.
[00:15:52]  And the enthusiasm against Trump was actually like a few points higher than for him.
[00:15:56]  See, I think that's what happened in California as well with Newsom.
[00:15:59]  Do you want to vote for Newsom?
[00:16:00]  No.
[00:16:01]  Would you rather have Larry Elder?
[00:16:02]  No.
[00:16:04]  I wonder, do you think if Larry Elder wasn't running, you would have or they would have at least recalled Newsom?
[00:16:10]  I think that would have been a high likelihood because we were we were polling better than the other candidates combined.
[00:16:18]  When I did a debate against the Republicans in SAC, I was against the three other leading Republicans, not including Larry Elder.
[00:16:27]  I was polling higher than all of them combined.
[00:16:29]  So if there was no Larry Elder, then I think Californians would have seen, okay, if we recall Newsom, we can try Kevin for a year, and it's still the D ticket, we can still get things done, but it's a new vision, it's a new generation.
[00:16:44]  And if it doesn't work, my pitch was, try me out for a year, trade me in if you don't like me, because it was only a one-year position.
[00:16:52]  I remember this.
[00:16:53]  I think what people were saying was, man, we'd sure love to get rid of Newsom.
[00:16:56]  This Kevin guy sounds great, but you can't risk Larry Elder.

=== Concerns About Universal Basic Income (15:16) ===

[00:16:59]  Bingo.
[00:17:00]  And so that's why Newsom didn't get recalled.
[00:17:01]  Yep.
[00:17:01]  I mean, there's something wrong with California, man.
[00:17:04]  Oh, 100%.
[00:17:05]  Yes.
[00:17:06]  No, no, there's a lot wrong with California.
[00:17:07]  And don't get me wrong.
[00:17:08]  Look, my wife led me to move to California.
[00:17:13]  I've wanted to leave California for probably about the first 10 years I lived there.
[00:17:17]  Only more recently have I come to accept that where we live in Southern California, we'd love the weather.
[00:17:22]  And we're about to have a lot of children.
[00:17:24]  We have twins on the way, plus maybe more.
[00:17:26]  Thank you.
[00:17:27]  There's a lot going on.
[00:17:28]  So we'd love that SoCal coastline.
[00:17:31]  But if we had what was happening in San Francisco or L.A.
[00:17:35]  happening in our town, which we call Ventucchi.
[00:17:38]  It still has a little bit of a conservative tilt to it.
[00:17:42]  If we had happening in San Francisco in Ventura, we would leave in a heartbeat.
[00:17:46]  We'd have to.
[00:17:47]  We couldn't live like that.
[00:17:48]  So, I mean, how long have you lived in California?
[00:17:51]  Now since 2009.
[00:17:51]  So what's going on?
[00:17:55]  Yeah, well, I think what you have is there's so much of this established political belief that we need to have incremental change at every level.
[00:18:05]  There's so much bureaucracy.
[00:18:07]  And that's why when I was running for governor, my thesis was, look, we have people dying on the streets.
[00:18:11]  Deploy the National Guard and let's solve homelessness in 60 days.
[00:18:16]  Theoretically what you need is you need homeless shelters in every part of various parts of the states wherever homeless are but the shelters where the homeless people are because they're there anyway and provide them the services they need the medical health medical services the mental health services the Potential rehabilitation or just a place to have a roof over their heads Well, I mean do you do you take them by force?
[00:18:39]  Yeah, well, so that was always the big problem with this.
[00:18:44]  Because, you know, you have a lot of the civil rights activism which says, no, you can't force people to go and people don't want to go, they don't want help, they have mental health problems.
[00:18:52]  But when you live on the street, your deterioration is so rapid and fast, you can't be helped anymore after a certain period of time, it's really sad.
[00:18:59]  And it's devastating that, you know, then the fifth largest economy in the world is basically letting people die on the streets.
[00:19:05]  So our rule of thumb was, you can do whatever you want, you just can't sleep on the streets.
[00:19:09]  That's what we ran on.
[00:19:10]  And so the idea was, if you sleep on the street, well, you need help.
[00:19:14]  We'll move you over here.
[00:19:15]  And if you want to get up, you know, take a shower and a bagel and a mental health business card and leave, go for it.
[00:19:20]  But you don't fall asleep on the street.
[00:19:21]  I wonder, actually.
[00:19:22]  I mean, this is a big challenge between civil liberties and the homelessness crisis.
[00:19:31]  So, you know, I lived in LA for a while.
[00:19:32]  I actually worked for a homeless shelter.
[00:19:33]  And so I got to experience it firsthand.
[00:19:35]  And the big problem we saw was that no matter what you do- They wouldn't come.
[00:19:38]  They would not come.
[00:19:39]  Of course not.
[00:19:40]  Yeah, of course not.
[00:19:41]  Why would they want to?
[00:19:42]  They wouldn't.
[00:19:42]  You know, freedom, no authority over them.
[00:19:45]  Many of them are doing drugs.
[00:19:46]  Yes.
[00:19:47]  And it is sad because In my experience, the majority of people who are homeless chose to be.
[00:19:53]  I'm not saying that they could decide today, like, I'm gonna go get a house.
[00:19:57]  No, I mean, they could seek help.
[00:19:59]  Not that they want to live out in the streets.
[00:20:02]  Everybody would prefer to have a home.
[00:20:04]  But it was actually rare to meet someone who would say, I lost my job and I'm desperate, please help me.
[00:20:10]  It was usually, get away from me.
[00:20:13]  We're going to go live under a bridge by choice.
[00:20:15]  And do you think that was because they had already been homeless for a while or because, you know, from day one that's how they felt?
[00:20:21]  Because I think once you've been homeless for like six months, you're so down that path.
[00:20:25]  You know, I gotta be honest, I've been homeless a couple times in my life.
[00:20:30]  Slept in a park maybe only twice.
[00:20:32]  Oh my gosh.
[00:20:32]  It was when I was younger, when I was probably, when I was around like 19 or 20.
[00:20:37]  And then eventually got a car and lived out of that.
[00:20:41]  But it was moderately short-lived.
[00:20:45]  Yeah, there's no circumstance in which I would have wanted to go with a stranger into a building because it was disruptive to my plan, to my mission.
[00:20:53]  You know, I had a job, and so it's like, often what I would do is, you work at the airline, you just sleep in the airport.
[00:21:04]  Oh, interesting.
[00:21:04]  Where did you shower?
[00:21:06]  They have showers.
[00:21:06]  At the airport?
[00:21:07]  Yeah.
[00:21:08]  So not everybody has that privilege.
[00:21:10]  Right.
[00:21:10]  So like, I try to put myself in the shoes of, you know, if you're homeless, and you want to go to work, or even want to get a job, how can you, if you don't have a bed to actually sleep to function, or a shower to be clean?
[00:21:23]  But this is my experience.
[00:21:25]  We never encountered those people.
[00:21:27]  When you worked in the shelters.
[00:21:29]  Yeah, but even throughout my life, Chicago's got a massive homelessness problem, which is weird because it gets so cold.
[00:21:36]  Yeah, no kidding.
[00:21:37]  But I lived off of Belmont in California, oh man, 15 some odd years, longer, 15 years ago, 16 years ago.
[00:21:44]  And if you walk down Belmont, there's a bridge, which is the highway, and it's homeless encampments, mattresses, sleeping bags, you're not gonna go to any one of these people and change their way of life.
[00:21:56]  It's unlikely, yeah.
[00:21:57]  So, I don't know, I think, I don't know how they get to that point, and we don't want that to be the case, but to go back to where we started on this, I wonder if you must, by force, say, If we just allow people to live on the streets, it will never change.
[00:22:16]  Correct.
[00:22:16]  And there has to be a legal and moral limit to what we allow.
[00:22:21]  That was our thesis, was that if you are sleeping on the street, you're dying on the street, and you're getting worse.
[00:22:27]  So you can live, you can do whatever you want, you have all your freedom, you just can't fall asleep on the streets.
[00:22:32]  But that's where I wonder if, and I'm not saying I know definitively, but I'm wondering if- Nobody does.
[00:22:38]  That's the problem, that's why it's not solved.
[00:22:40]  There was a story about Northern California taking conservatorship of people who are homeless or something like that.
[00:22:48]  I don't know what it was called, but they would basically, any income you had, they would control your bank accounts.
[00:22:55]  No, that's ridiculous.
[00:22:59]  But I have to wonder, man, The challenge is, if we see someone who's anorexic, do we just say, well, you have your freedom not to eat, and they die?
[00:23:07]  Or do we recognize at a certain point, we as a society have to say... That's a good point.
[00:23:12]  But this is the challenge we face because we believe in freedom so much, we allow people to gorge themselves to death or not eat to death.
[00:23:18]  But we don't allow people to jump off a bridge.
[00:23:20]  It's illegal to commit suicide, right?
[00:23:22]  So what's the line?
[00:23:24]  It's somewhere.
[00:23:25]  One's so fast it's shocking, and one's so slow we ignore it?
[00:23:28]  Yeah.
[00:23:28]  Yeah, no kidding.
[00:23:29]  I almost think that's a really good point.
[00:23:31]  Sad person's about to jump off the bridge, we must arrest them and save them from themselves.
[00:23:36]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:37]  Mental, and then they see a psychiatric, you know, person, whatever, and get help.
[00:23:43]  Now, you're homeless, and oh, whatever, and everybody just turns a blind eye to it because it's the slow decay of society is really what it is.
[00:23:50]  And it's just getting worse now with the inflation and... Oh, San Francisco's getting scary, huh?
[00:23:55]  Oh, well, and then you get the fentanyl, and oh, it's terrible.
[00:23:58]  All these videos popping up of open-air drug markets in, like, California and Philly.
[00:24:03]  That's the thing, too.
[00:24:03]  It's like, If you allow people to do drugs and defecate in the street, it is a festering mold that will absorb other people too.
[00:24:20]  I'll tell you a story.
[00:24:23]  I met an old guy.
[00:24:23]  This was back when I was like 19.
[00:24:25]  Dude probably passed.
[00:24:26]  It's been a long time.
[00:24:26]  He was probably in his 60s.
[00:24:28]  Homeless black dude in Chicago.
[00:24:30]  I had just eaten at like a pizza restaurant or whatever I'm skating and I see this guy and he's like smoking a cigarette or something and then you know, he's panhandling or something I'm like, yeah, I was like, hey you want you want some pizza?
[00:24:39]  And he was like, yeah, and I'm like cuz I it's like half a pizza, you know He he takes it and then I decided to ask I asked him I was like, hey Mike, I see a question He's like shoot and I was like, how did you how did you end up?
[00:24:51]  You're homeless, right?
[00:24:52]  And he's like, yes, sir.
[00:24:53]  I was like, how did you end up out here?
[00:24:55]  He said he worked for the post office his whole life the Eventually they started laying people off.
[00:25:02]  He gets fired from his job.
[00:25:03]  He has no other expertise.
[00:25:04]  Of course.
[00:25:05]  He's got small savings.
[00:25:07]  He starts going around trying to find a job.
[00:25:09]  Can't.
[00:25:09]  Eventually his money runs out.
[00:25:11]  He can't pay his rent.
[00:25:12]  He gets evicted.
[00:25:13]  And that's it.
[00:25:14]  And I was like, friend's family?
[00:25:16]  And he's like, he's like, man, he's like, my friends are dead.
[00:25:18]  He's like, he's like, you know, you don't understand.
[00:25:21]  You know, I'm an old man.
[00:25:22]  I knew people from my work and that's all I knew.
[00:25:25]  And my, my, my, my, my family's, Passed on, I don't got any immediate family.
[00:25:29]  And so here he is.
[00:25:31]  And that's a guy where I was just like, man, that dude is a guy who needs help.
[00:25:36]  Exactly.
[00:25:36]  That would take it, would take a job, wants a job.
[00:25:40]  But my fear is when you have these open air drug markets, where can he go to sleep at night where he feels like he won't be bothered?
[00:25:46]  Exactly.
[00:25:47]  It's going to be around other people who are, but now all of a sudden, another person is funneled into this pit of drug and despair.
[00:25:54]  Of course, and of course, eventually you fall victim to the same thing, whether it's drugs or it's alcohol or both.
[00:26:00]  It's sad.
[00:26:01]  I mean, it's devastating.
[00:26:03]  I think what'll end up happening is in the longer term, we're going to see more of, whether it's AI or innovation, replace so many livelihoods of people.
[00:26:14]  You're going to have to have universal basic income.
[00:26:17]  It's going to happen.
[00:26:18]  And I think that the economy will actually be so productive that I know a lot of conservatives now hear any more fiscal money printing is just inflationary.
[00:26:27]  In the longer term, I think our productivity will be so strong that we'll actually be able to support it.
[00:26:31]  You know, for a while I was a proponent of universal basic income for a similar reason, but I'm not so convinced right now.
[00:26:38]  I think the economy will morph again into some way where, you know, you look at X, Twitter, people are making money from posting.
[00:26:49]  So I'm not convinced that the answer is going to be universal basic income because I actually think that's a component of the problem right now.
[00:26:57]  Oh, interesting.
[00:26:57]  Well, tell me more about it.
[00:26:58]  So a component of homelessness crisis is liberal handouts, so to speak?
[00:27:04]  Yeah.
[00:27:07]  One of the reasons that, in my experience working with these homeless shelters, one of the reasons that these people remain homeless.
[00:27:12]  Another example is when I was living in Seattle, there's a group of kids they call the AvRats, Avenue Rats, outside of UW, University of Washington.
[00:27:23]  Because of the food banks and the ease of access to EBT benefits, that's how they lived and they would not stop.
[00:27:35]  It was really interesting to meet these guys, these young kids.
[00:27:39]  They would put out calls through the internet.
[00:27:42]  They would ride the rails.
[00:27:44]  They would hop on freight trains to ride to Seattle over the course of a couple days, come to Seattle because, they said, every day of the week is another food bank.
[00:27:53]  Wow, sure.
[00:27:54]  You know where to go, you do the rounds.
[00:27:56]  And you're allowed to get a box of cereal, a gallon of milk, a can of tuna, a can of beans, and then they would get, every day of the week, they'd go for free food, and then they would go back to live on the streets because they were enabled to do so.
[00:28:09]  Yeah, the enablement is a really interesting line because You know, these are two very contrasting stories that you gave.
[00:28:15]  One is the choice of essentially taking and doing nothing and being unproductive.
[00:28:23]  And then there's the forced unproductivity of the example of the person who gave pizza, right?
[00:28:29]  So how do you differentiate between the two?
[00:28:31]  How is government supposed to differentiate between the two?
[00:28:34]  Because on one extreme now, the people who are either forced unproductive or by choice unproductive end up falling victim to drugs on the streets.
[00:28:42]  It's terrible.
[00:28:43]  And I don't know that we're going to solve the solution, honestly, in our lifetimes.
[00:28:48]  It's going to be a long time.
[00:28:50]  And hopefully it doesn't lead to a greater decline in America.
[00:28:53]  But I do think the wealth gap will widen.
[00:28:56]  Absolutely.
[00:28:57]  Yeah, it's definitely going to widen a lot.
[00:28:59]  You look at a McDonald's with kiosks, and there's like one or two people who make the food.
[00:29:04]  They've eliminated half their staff.
[00:29:05]  Takes forever now, too, to get your food.
[00:29:07]  Yeah.
[00:29:08]  But we are marching towards it.
[00:29:11]  This is why I don't immediately discount universal basic income, but I think there's probably too many pitfalls, and maybe we can find a better solution.
[00:29:18]  But the more we see automation, especially with low-skill jobs... Oh, for sure.
[00:29:24]  I'm really excited for automating away journalists.
[00:29:26]  I'm half kidding.
[00:29:28]  But you know, we're doing it with chat GPT.
[00:29:30]  Yes.
[00:29:31]  You're going to have one guy who owns a McDonald's who has the capital to start it for whatever reason.
[00:29:35]  Maybe it's inherited.
[00:29:36]  Maybe this guy worked for 10 years.
[00:29:38]  But now his profit margins are going to be through the roof because have you seen these videos where the robot makes the burger?
[00:29:44]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:29:45]  They can automate the full thing.
[00:29:47]  There's a there's a pizza vending machine in Vegas.
[00:29:50]  Gosh, of course it's Vegas.
[00:29:52]  Right?
[00:29:52]  And it's in a parking garage.
[00:29:54]  And a slice of deep dish comes out fresh and hot, or you can get it cold.
[00:29:58]  So they have a machine, they have assembly lines, auto manufacture the pizzas.
[00:30:02]  But you still have a delivery guy for them.
[00:30:05]  But, you know, everybody's seen the robot ice cream man.
[00:30:08]  He grabs the cup, or the robot grabs the cup and then pulls the lever down.
[00:30:12]  What happens when you combine the high rate of low-skill immigration that's happening on the southern border with the total automation?
[00:30:21]  Competition will be so severe.
[00:30:22]  And the lack of schooling, right?
[00:30:24]  Schools are a complete failure in America.
[00:30:25]  Complete failure!
[00:30:27]  Absolutely.
[00:30:27]  I wish that wasn't true.
[00:30:28]  You combine all of that?
[00:30:34]  Here's my fear with universal basic income.
[00:30:36]  Take into consideration all the automation.
[00:30:38]  Some 25-year-old guy, sitting in his apartment, playing World of Warcraft.
[00:30:43]  Hey, I played WoW, okay?
[00:30:45]  Me too.
[00:30:45]  What were you?
[00:30:47]  Rogue?
[00:30:47]  No, I started as a Rogue.
[00:30:49]  I went to Druid.
[00:30:50]  Druid's good, because it's versatile, but I played Vanilla early on.
[00:30:54]  Wow.
[00:30:55]  Did you get to Naxx?
[00:30:57]  An axe?
[00:30:57]  Naxx.
[00:30:58]  Noxoramus.
[00:30:59]  Oh, man.
[00:31:00]  I think I may have got... No, no, no, no.
[00:31:02]  I think I got invited to one NEX.
[00:31:04]  I've never done NEX.
[00:31:05]  I was more PvP.
[00:31:06]  I had Tier 2 PvP gear.
[00:31:08]  Oh, that's actually pretty impressive.
[00:31:09]  Warsong Gulch and Arathi Beast.
[00:31:11]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:11]  Did you do Burning Crusade?
[00:31:13]  Yes.
[00:31:14]  Oh, okay.
[00:31:14]  That was my peak.
[00:31:15]  Illidan, Burning Crusade.
[00:31:16]  Alterac Valley was my favorite.
[00:31:18]  Oh, you liked AV.
[00:31:19]  Were you Alliance then?
[00:31:20]  I think you'll find listless young people who are disassociating.
[00:31:24]  - No, the whole got crushed every time.
[00:31:26]  What were we just talking about? - Universal.
[00:31:29]  - Oh, right, right, right.
[00:31:29]  I think you'll find listless young people who are disassociating.
[00:31:34]  - Yes, yes, yes.
[00:31:34]  - Sure, yeah.
[00:31:35]  - They might have apartments.
[00:31:36]  But my fear is effectively people living in pots.
[00:31:42]  Yeah, sure.
[00:31:42]  Well, I mean, think Ready Player One.
[00:31:44]  You know, Ready Player One pods.
[00:31:46]  Well, and I think that's almost where you have to, you have to almost combine, like, I think it's a disgrace that we graduate high school today and we don't know any skill, really.
[00:31:56]  There's no practical skill that we can do outside of high school for the vast, for 90 plus percent of people.

=== Financial Education Inequality (00:56) ===

[00:32:02]  I mean, 99%, I would say 100% of people need to know a financial education, yet we graduate people with maybe like 5% of people with a financial education in school, but everybody takes a biology class.
[00:32:16]  It's like, it's inverse.
[00:32:17]  It's the opposite.
[00:32:18]  I know about the phases of frog metamorphosis, but I don't know how to open a bank account.
[00:32:24]  Yeah.
[00:32:26]  How's, you know, mitosis or meiosis going to help me make money?
[00:32:29]  You know, come on, man.
[00:32:30]  It's crazy, isn't it?
[00:32:31]  It is.
[00:32:31]  It is.
[00:32:32]  So I think you need a car.
[00:32:33]  Like, I mean, really, there's a lot to fix, and that's why it's going to take forever to do it.
[00:32:36]  And that's why I think wealth inequality is going to explode.
[00:32:40]  So the rich are going to get a lot richer, and the poor are going to get a lot poorer, unfortunately.

=== National Vision and Identity (15:54) ===

[00:32:44]  Hunger Games.
[00:32:46]  Essentially, yeah.
[00:32:47]  That's a good point, and it's almost like you've got, what is it, it's like Battle Royale.
[00:32:52]  The fire's coming in from the outside, more homelessness coming, it's terrible.
[00:32:57]  But I think the only way out of that is building more houses, fixing schooling, and then helping people who have fallen beyond the level of being able to be helped.
[00:33:07]  You know, I think we needed purpose.
[00:33:09]  That would be useful, too.
[00:33:10]  Vivek's running on that.
[00:33:12]  Right.
[00:33:12]  A national vision.
[00:33:13]  Can you teach purpose?
[00:33:16]  Like, can you convince somebody who doesn't feel like they have purpose to have purpose?
[00:33:20]  Yes.
[00:33:21]  Really?
[00:33:22]  I do believe so.
[00:33:23]  Man, you know, a lot of people rag on Vivek, but whatever you think about the dude, he's thought this through.
[00:33:29]  He definitely has.
[00:33:30]  And his support of Trump, by the way, Yeah, he's playing it so perfectly.
[00:33:37]  But national identity and national vision is a core problem.
[00:33:41]  My fear is people don't recognize how right he is.
[00:33:44]  Oh yeah, that's a good point.
[00:33:46]  We talk about the laws being broken, and I'm like, culture is everything.
[00:33:50]  You know, one of the big things we've been talking about over the past couple of weeks is in Florida, it's illegal for women to skydive on Sunday.
[00:33:56]  What?
[00:33:56]  Yep, yep.
[00:33:58]  Where do you find this stuff?
[00:33:59]  They're called like blue laws or whatever, but you Google search it, you find this law and it's a really good example of there's a lot of illegal things that no cop will arrest you for.
[00:34:07]  Sure.
[00:34:08]  And that's weird though, isn't it?
[00:34:09]  Yeah, I mean, that's a good point.
[00:34:10]  That means we all recognize we're all breaking the law all the time and the cops and the government will never do anything about it.
[00:34:15]  That's true.
[00:34:15]  So the real issue is cultural.
[00:34:18]  We need national identity and national purpose.
[00:34:20]  I do think you can bestow it among people.
[00:34:22]  Interesting.
[00:34:23]  The challenge right now I guess is...
[00:34:25]  There is no central commanding narrative or authority in this country.
[00:34:30]  There's no leadership, really?
[00:34:31]  Yes.
[00:34:32]  That vision that's pushing the whole nation forward, that unifying vision, that's a good point.
[00:34:36]  It is unfortunate that the best we got in a long time was Trump.
[00:34:40]  The Artemis Project, going to the moon, creating a moon base to slingshot to Mars, is the kind of thing.
[00:34:46]  And then you have Elon Musk with a starship.
[00:34:48]  Did you like Obama?
[00:34:50]  Ugh, man.
[00:34:51]  Okay, we don't have to go there.
[00:34:52]  Well, look, I voted for Obama the first time, really hoping that he was the outsider who was going to change things.
[00:34:59]  But here's the problem for me with Obama.
[00:35:02]  I come from the anti-Bush generation, with Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:35:06]  Of course.
[00:35:06]  Lies getting us into these foreign conflicts.
[00:35:09]  Oil, man.
[00:35:10]  And then what does Obama do?
[00:35:11]  He exacerbates, proliferates.
[00:35:13]  Drone strikes like crazy.
[00:35:14]  Drone strikes, the killing of American citizens, and I'm just like... Collateral damage, yeah.
[00:35:19]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:20]  I don't I don't think that Obama gave us a national vision or identity at all.
[00:35:23]  Interesting.
[00:35:24]  That's a good point.
[00:35:24]  Like what?
[00:35:25]  Hope and change.
[00:35:26]  But what was it?
[00:35:26]  Right.
[00:35:27]  But that was the campaign message.
[00:35:28]  You're right.
[00:35:28]  But then what was that?
[00:35:30]  Actually, that's interesting.
[00:35:31]  Now, on the surface, Trump gave us MAGA, which is nebulous.
[00:35:35]  Make America Great Again.
[00:35:36]  Okay, this vision that people post these old ads from the 50s of like the dad coming home with a briefcase and the kid running up and hugging him.
[00:35:44]  Yes.
[00:35:45]  And the left calls that racist.
[00:35:47]  What?
[00:35:47]  Yeah.
[00:35:48]  No, they don't.
[00:35:48]  Well, it's because all the ads are white WASPy families.
[00:35:51]  Oh, I'm so tired of this stuff.
[00:35:52]  I know, I know.
[00:35:52]  And that really bothers me because I'm like, dude, We want all families of all backgrounds to experience the love of their children coming home from a hard day.
[00:36:00]  Did you hear in California they were thinking about doing reparations of like up to what was like 1.7 million dollars for each descendant of slavery or something like that?
[00:36:08]  But the board that voted on it, I want to say, I put this on Twitter somewhere, it was like California is like less than 16% black, but that board that voted for reparations was like 86% black.
[00:36:21]  Well, this is the issue.
[00:36:22]  What's going on?
[00:36:23]  This is this is like the issue for me with the Democratic Party is it feels very superficial.
[00:36:30]  The the the noble messaging.
[00:36:32]  Yeah.
[00:36:32]  Yeah.
[00:36:32]  It's the noble white savior being virtual signaling virtue signaling.
[00:36:36]  Yeah.
[00:36:36]  Yeah.
[00:36:36]  That a lot of these Democrats that they describe each other as white saviors.
[00:36:40]  No.
[00:36:41]  And yeah, but of course, you go to any body of people and say, we're gonna give you free money for whatever reason, they're gonna be like, I'll just take it, keep your mouth shut, right?
[00:36:49]  And so, I think the racial lines create tensions there.
[00:36:53]  But to go back to what, you know, Vivek's talking about with the vision, the vision.
[00:36:56]  So how is he gonna do that?
[00:36:57]  I mean, like abolishing the FBI, the Department of Education, like, and he's picking, like, that's obviously, these are extreme things to say, but that's his point.
[00:37:06]  He's actually embracing extremism.
[00:37:07]  He wants people to call him extreme, he says, because he says we need extreme change.
[00:37:11]  Then you look at how similar he is.
[00:37:13]  Instead of drain the swamp, his thing is turn the log over and bring the pesticide.
[00:37:19]  You know, he's modeling right after Trump, which makes no Trump supporter be able to really hate Vivek.
[00:37:26]  Well, also, he's the perfect VP.
[00:37:28]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:37:29]  He's brilliant.
[00:37:30]  He's defended Trump in all of the right ways.
[00:37:32]  Yep, yep, yep.
[00:37:33]  And when he announced, when Ron DeSantis was in the talks, it was like a year ago, and he was in the prediction markets two to one.
[00:37:41]  Oh, for sure.
[00:37:42]  I don't know how DeSantis screwed up, man.
[00:37:44]  Oh, I know.
[00:37:44]  Everything we said is what Vivek is now doing.
[00:37:46]  Yes.
[00:37:47]  I was saying, you know, DeSantis' strength is that he's younger.
[00:37:50]  Yep.
[00:37:50]  He's got a lot of the Trump policies, but he's more tactful.
[00:37:54]  And of course, they'll smear him.
[00:37:56]  But Ron DeSantis' path to winning the primary in the general is to say, I love Trump.
[00:38:01]  I'm only here because of Trump.
[00:38:04]  But I do think we're going to do things a little bit differently while, you know, taking the road that he started, paving the path forward.
[00:38:10]  I think we can reach voters that Trump might miss, but we love the man.
[00:38:13]  Instead, it became flame wars.
[00:38:15]  The Disney stuff.
[00:38:17]  Yeah.
[00:38:17]  What's your take on all that?
[00:38:18]  And you know, I mean, this crusade against Disney.
[00:38:21]  It's boring and uninteresting for the most part.
[00:38:24]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:25]  I do think, like, we're talking about national vision and identity and purpose.
[00:38:28]  This is the core of everything.
[00:38:29]  And opposing these corporations that have bad values is paramount.
[00:38:33]  Sure.
[00:38:34]  Laws only get enforced if the culture determines the law should be enforced.
[00:38:38]  Yeah, that's good.
[00:38:38]  So when Disney has, you know, middle-aged fat men dressed as fairies.
[00:38:44]  Right, okay.
[00:38:45]  You know, okay, like, we'll slot on there a minute, right?
[00:38:48]  Half of me is kind of like, I don't necessarily care if a company privately wants to do this, but a company as big as Disney, who's putting these values in their shows, it's an important thing to push back on.
[00:39:00]  However, It seems weird that Ron DeSantis took a political approach to a cultural issue in this way that I don't think the jigsaw, don't think the puzzle piece fits.
[00:39:09]  That's interesting because that was sort of, I mean, you said that so eloquently to what my suspicion was, should we be weaponizing all of the political efforts of Florida to basically get Disney?
[00:39:19]  And it almost felt like it almost, that was almost the point where he started derailing his campaign.
[00:39:23]  Whereas I like what you're saying a lot better, which is redefining it or proper, I should say, properly defining it as a cultural issue.
[00:39:31]  Right, Bud Light, Target, Richmond, North of Richmond, Sound of Freedom.
[00:39:36]  These are cultural issues that will help create national purpose and reshape this country, but it can't be done at a political level.
[00:39:43]  It has to be the willpower of the grassroots and the individual.
[00:39:45]  Now, what's your take?
[00:39:46]  See, I read the Target earnings call last week.
[00:39:48]  I mean, I read company finance guys.
[00:39:50]  I read this boring... I mean, look, I'm dressed like finance bro, right?
[00:39:53]  I know, that's my real estate company, whatever.
[00:39:58]  But in their earnings call, they spent a good page in the transcript complaining about how we were seen as a safe space for LGBTQ, and now we have people coming into our stores harassing our staff to where we have to basically take those things down.
[00:40:16]  So, this is where, like, where's the balance?
[00:40:19]  Is it, should a company be providing that safe space?
[00:40:22]  I personally, I'm just, as a father, gonna say, I get annoyed when I'm trying to find where the boy's clothing is because I'm trying to find a bathing suit for my son and it's, it's, here's a dress, here's boy clothes, here's a dress.
[00:40:35]  It's because they don't have a boy and girl clothes section anymore.
[00:40:37]  It's all children's now.
[00:40:39]  It's like, come on!
[00:40:40]  Right, these companies are beholden to social media, which they think is culture, and it's not.
[00:40:49]  Oh, that's a good line.
[00:40:51]  Right, so we are moving towards this, but I think there's a massive resistance to it.
[00:40:57]  Culture is everything.
[00:40:59]  Like I've already said 50 million times, law doesn't matter if the culture won't enforce the law.
[00:41:03]  Absolutely.
[00:41:03]  And certain, like, this could be really, really bad stuff.
[00:41:06]  Like we saw rioters in 2020 not getting arrested, getting lawsuits, because the culture is allowing it.
[00:41:13]  So Target sees this corporate zeitgeist of, we're all safe spaces now.
[00:41:18]  But this is realistically a single digit portion of the entire economy.
[00:41:23]  Yes.
[00:41:23]  So what happens?
[00:41:25]  For the longest time, you've got the liberal sensibilities of, we support our LGBT allies.
[00:41:31]  Absolutely.
[00:41:31]  Which is a total of between like two and seven percent of the population, depending on what your metric is.
[00:41:36]  Republicans eventually fall into the camp of, you know what, we really just don't care about what people are doing in privacy.
[00:41:42]  Don't put it on my children.
[00:41:43]  Don't put it on my children.
[00:41:45]  But what ends up happening is that social movement, you know, back in 2008 to 2012 with gay marriage and all that stuff, created this corporate perception of, hey, this is really popular among our urban audience.
[00:41:58]  We should embrace it with no checks and no balances.
[00:42:01]  So it goes to the extreme.
[00:42:02]  Goes to the extreme and you end up with the target phenomenon The media lies, and the media's lies don't matter to reality.
[00:42:10]  And the reality was, the media is saying that right-wing individuals are harassing Target employees.
[00:42:16]  However, the conflict in Target started before the anti-establishment, anti-woke movement ever caught wind of what Target was doing.
[00:42:27]  So, when the story first broke that Target had to move their LGBT items to the back of the store, you already had instances where parents had complained to staff about it.
[00:42:37]  Then, the culture war right, or whatever you want to call it, picks up the story.
[00:42:42]  Interesting.
[00:42:43]  It was parents.
[00:42:43]  Right, right, right.
[00:42:43]  The media narrative becomes that right wing influencers were pushing this when in reality it was parents.
[00:42:49]  It was it was right or whoever.
[00:42:51]  Right, right, right.
[00:42:52]  But it started before there was a cultural conflict.
[00:42:55]  The 95 percent of American culture was saying, hey, you know, this is either confusing or we don't like this or whatever.
[00:43:01]  But then it's been labeled.
[00:43:04]  I mean, look at Bud Light.
[00:43:07]  30% or whatever drop in their market, or $30 billion.
[00:43:11]  20 to 30% drop in sales.
[00:43:13]  Oops.
[00:43:14]  That's going corporate to the extreme.
[00:43:16]  And you saying immediate lies, by the way, brings me back to my campaign.
[00:43:20]  CNN ran a headline saying, no Democrats challenge NISA.
[00:43:28]  And I'm like, what the hell?
[00:43:30]  I'm like the top polling Democrat in the recall elections.
[00:43:33]  We had to send them a cease and desist letter.
[00:43:35]  They're so willing to just lie.
[00:43:38]  Oh, I think it's obvious to anybody who's paid attention for a long time, they're just in the bag for the Democratic Party.
[00:43:45]  That's crazy.
[00:43:46]  Or the establishment, whatever you want to call it.
[00:43:48]  You know, the more extreme view is Mockingbird.
[00:43:50]  Oh, yeah.
[00:43:52]  They're actually intelligence infiltrated, trying to prop up their establishment wing.
[00:43:57]  Sure.
[00:43:57]  But look at Gavin- The George Soros kind of thing?
[00:44:00]  I don't think George Soros is necessarily in that ballpark.
[00:44:03]  Okay.
[00:44:04]  Soros I view as like an extraneous, massively influential political activist.
[00:44:08]  He's got a lot of money, he's donated billions of dollars.
[00:44:10]  Yeah, but you know the CIA infiltration of media agencies, which is a fact, I don't know about today, that's the argument, but I don't see why they'd stop.
[00:44:19]  But that's, you know, it's different but similar.
[00:44:22]  But you look at where Gavin Newsom's at right now, And the theory is he's going to run 2024 and somehow Biden takes an exit.
[00:44:29]  Yes.
[00:44:30]  So you were in the way.
[00:44:33]  Newsom needs his arc.
[00:44:34]  Well, you're right, because if he lost, he wouldn't become president.
[00:44:37]  Yep.
[00:44:37]  Where would he be right now?
[00:44:39]  On his vineyard somewhere.
[00:44:40]  And the funny thing is, if you won that recall, I genuinely believe California would be doing a lot better.
[00:44:47]  And then you might actually find yourself, people asking the questions, is me, Kevin, gonna be the candidate for president?
[00:44:54]  I mean, who does the Democratic Party have?
[00:44:57]  That's interesting.
[00:44:58]  Even Newsom is not that great.
[00:45:00]  Right.
[00:45:00]  But he's the best that anyone can hypothesize.
[00:45:04]  It's true.
[00:45:05]  Maybe Trudeau can come down.
[00:45:09]  But I think, you know, in your situation, what we saw during the recall was there's a lot of people who say, I'll never vote Democrat.
[00:45:17]  I'm just, I'm sick of the Democratic Party and empowering anybody who's a Democrat just gives the Democratic Party power.
[00:45:22]  But then you pop up and you're saying the things that Democrats are supposed to be saying in a similar but relatively different way to what we're seeing now with RFK Jr.
[00:45:31]  Oh, interesting.
[00:45:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:32]  Right.
[00:45:33]  RFK Jr.
[00:45:33]  has got his more Medical approach and anti-establishment and lockdown approach.
[00:45:39]  You are like you're you are from a kind of a different time period.
[00:45:42]  But I think there's a similar view in, hey, this guy actually might save the Democratic Party and reintroduce a moderate approach and push this bad stuff out.
[00:45:50]  We need is moderatism in politics.
[00:45:53]  This is getting a little extreme.
[00:45:54]  But then but then that also then we question, do we need that extremeness?
[00:45:58]  Because that's basically Vivek's platform.
[00:46:00]  It's let's go, right?
[00:46:01]  So it's like, ah, like, so we want Democrats to be moderate, but then no, we need the extreme.
[00:46:05]  So do you need an extreme to fight the extreme?
[00:46:07]  And does it just that hate chart keep going?
[00:46:09]  But look at RFK, I think is more similar to Vivek in a lot of ways.
[00:46:14]  Well, I believe that.
[00:46:14]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:15]  But well, that's why people are calling him a Republican in sheep's clothing.
[00:46:18]  I mean, it's the same thing they told me.
[00:46:20]  And that's the winning path forward.
[00:46:22]  Interesting.
[00:46:23]  Maybe I'm wrong about that.
[00:46:24]  Maybe it's not true.
[00:46:25]  If If RFK goes for the approach of, let's try and get as many Republicans as possible to support us, that will pull from Trump's base, or will pull the Never Trumpers, and the Democrats who don't think Biden can run, he's too old and he's not appropriate, might actually go for RFK Jr.
[00:46:41]  The media has to lie about RFK then.
[00:46:43]  However, part of me then looks at this Wall Street Journal tribalism thing and I'm like, I don't know.
[00:46:50]  Maybe the Democrat who wins is going to be the, I will destroy Donald Trump and everything around him if you vote for me.
[00:46:59]  I wonder if Newsom was running, how that would look because Trump doesn't really attack Newsom.
[00:47:07]  Trump.
[00:47:07]  He called him a nice guy.
[00:47:08]  I know and that they get along or have gotten along.
[00:47:12]  That's smart on Trump's part.
[00:47:13]  It kind of is.
[00:47:14]  Yeah.
[00:47:15]  Could there be a like because then you almost somewhat could potentially win over some of the Dems.
[00:47:19]  Yep.
[00:47:20]  Who really don't want to see California apply to the rest of the country.
[00:47:22]  Donald Trump is going to win Donald Trump's base, and there ain't nothing you can do about it.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, that's for sure.
[00:47:27]  His support is unwavering.
[00:47:28]  Yes, it is.
[00:47:30]  But then you've got people that are in a position like me, where I was pretty far left when I was a lot younger, and then I've always been urban Democrat.
[00:47:39]  Like college time-ish?
[00:47:40]  I mean, when I was a teenager, it was like anarcho-punk rock, skateboard, you know, like lefty anarchy.
[00:47:47]  And then, you know, I know how to play Baby I'm An Anarchist on the guitar and still do.
[00:47:52]  And but, you know, it's really interesting.
[00:47:54]  Buffalo Springfield, you know, kind of.
[00:47:56]  Do you know the song Baby I'm An Anarchist?
[00:47:58]  Oh, yeah.
[00:47:59]  That song helped push me away.
[00:48:02]  From the far left.
[00:48:03]  Because I got really pissed off at that line, when it came time to throw bricks through the Starbucks window, you left me all alone and you're a spineless liberal.
[00:48:09]  And I was like, hold on, dude.
[00:48:12]  I was like, if we're trying to solve these problems and bring about this, you know, cooperative utopia, I don't understand why you're telling me to go smash windows.

=== Trump's Unshaken Base (01:43) ===

[00:48:20]  And that message in the song, I never liked and that pushed me away.
[00:48:24]  But I kind of forgot where I was going with, oh yeah, Trump's, he's not going to lose his base.
[00:48:29]  But if Trump says, you know, Newsom's a nice guy.
[00:48:33]  I worked with him and we got along really, really well.
[00:48:36]  And if he takes that approach, Trump's base is just going to immediately be like, how honorable of Donald Trump.
[00:48:42]  We love him for doing this.
[00:48:44]  Then you're going to get more middle of the road people.
[00:48:46]  And political memory is very short.
[00:48:49]  Oh, for sure.
[00:48:50]  You're going to get middle of the road people being like, Trump's reasonable.
[00:48:52]  Yeah, he's being more reasonable.
[00:48:54]  He's trying to work with the urban liberals who hate Trump will always hate him.
[00:48:58]  Yeah.
[00:48:59]  His base will always like him.
[00:49:00]  But the people who are now being initiated into politics because of an economic crisis or because of war, whatever, are going to hear a more moderate Trump praising a Democrat.
[00:49:09]  I think it's a smart move on Trump's part.
[00:49:10]  And they decide elections.
[00:49:12]  I think everybody frequently forgets it's not all of the ones who are the base on the right or the base on the left, it's that middle group.
[00:49:20]  Where are they voting?
[00:49:21]  That seems to decide.
[00:49:22]  Yeah, I'm never voting for a Joe Biden.
[00:49:25]  I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.
[00:49:26]  I laughed in 2016 at the idea of Trump and Hillary.
[00:49:30]  Because I'm like, you got crazy warmonger and you got goofy reality TV guy, count me out.
[00:49:35]  But then when it comes down to it, it's like... So you just don't vote then?
[00:49:38]  Yeah, I didn't vote.
[00:49:39]  And then 2020, I voted for Trump.
[00:49:40]  And I was just like, no wars, you know?
[00:49:43]  But yeah, I wonder if Trump's approach works.
[00:49:47]  I think the important thing to consider is that Trump only lost by about 42,000 votes in 2020 between three states.

=== Landlords and Rising Interest Rates (15:29) ===

[00:49:52]  In those particular battleground states, right, right, right.
[00:49:54]  Combined.
[00:49:54]  But if he won those states, he would have won.
[00:49:55]  Exactly.
[00:49:56]  Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:57]  So it's close.
[00:49:58]  So what do you think about the economy going forward?
[00:50:01]  Yeah, let's talk about the economy, man.
[00:50:03]  I don't know.
[00:50:03]  I'm not an economic guy.
[00:50:05]  But we've had Shark Tank guy say there's gonna be a rebalancing, he called it.
[00:50:10]  Oh, okay.
[00:50:11]  But he's a bit, he's been a little back and forth.
[00:50:12]  I'm seeing new articles pop up now where he's like, no, no, it's gonna be fine and Michael Burry's wrong.
[00:50:17]  Then you get Michael Burry, for those that aren't familiar of the, of Scion, what is it, Scion Management or whatever?
[00:50:21]  Yeah, yeah, Wealth Management.
[00:50:22]  Wealth Management.
[00:50:23]  He's betting against the market.
[00:50:26]  I heard this yesterday, I don't know if it's true, someone super chatted us that Citigroup and Bank of America have a massive multi-billion dollar short position against the U.S.
[00:50:33]  economy.
[00:50:35]  I mean, here's the thing.
[00:50:37]  All of the banks have to hedge, right?
[00:50:39]  So it's easy to look at their balance sheets and say, of course they have a, you know, notational multi-billion dollar short because they're hedging their long positions.
[00:50:48]  But what's remarkable is even though you have a lot of this bearish discussion, I was just reading some statistics put out by, oh gosh, Vandertrack, I believe, put this out.
[00:51:00]  They're a research firm and they look at all this data.
[00:51:02]  And I say, hedge funds and the banks, they're talking about how concerned they are and how they want to, you know, hedge the market.
[00:51:10]  But then when you look at their actual positioning, they're heavily exposed to just the big mega caps and the S&P 500 and, you know, the NASDAQ because the long-term trajectory is probably up.
[00:51:20]  So the big short was trending on Netflix.
[00:51:21]  Yes, of course.
[00:51:22]  And I'm sure you've seen it.
[00:51:23]  Yeah, of course.
[00:51:24]  You probably knew about it well before the movie even came out.
[00:51:27]  But there's a really interesting part of the movie where the protagonists are dumbfounded that their credit default swaps are not You know, going into the positive territory for them, despite the fact that defaults are on the rise, the mortgages are collapsing, the securities are collapsing, and they go to the banks, and they're like, what's our position?
[00:51:45]  And they're like, unchanged.
[00:51:46]  Like, how is that possible?
[00:51:47]  Because the banks were offloading their exposure to unsuspecting smaller banks and individuals, and then as soon as they were clear, they went, oh yeah, it's over, everything's collapsing.
[00:51:59]  Well, I mean, the same thing happens today every single day with IPOs.
[00:52:01]  I mean, you could look at VinFast or or even probably what's going to be the Arm IPO.
[00:52:05]  Almost all these IPOs are just insiders offloading and just ripping off the normal investor.
[00:52:11]  And it's sad.
[00:52:12]  It's really hard to build wealth.
[00:52:14]  I saw that.
[00:52:14]  Yeah, I saw the stat that defaults are rapidly on the rise.
[00:52:20]  Yes.
[00:52:20]  Yeah.
[00:52:21]  What are we?
[00:52:23]  Are we looking at something akin to 2008?
[00:52:26]  No.
[00:52:27]  So what we're looking at is a lot of a normalization because you had basically it was impossible to default during COVID.
[00:52:35]  Right.
[00:52:36]  Even now, you know, there's this fear about us hitting a wall with the student loan crisis.
[00:52:41]  But whether it's right or not, the Biden administration has made it that we can not make our payments for an extra year with no impact to our credit or otherwise.
[00:52:50]  So, about 50% of people, based on the latest Bloomberg survey, are expecting not to even start making payments.
[00:52:55]  Right.
[00:52:56]  They're calling it the on-ramping or whatever.
[00:52:58]  Right.
[00:52:58]  So, it'll probably be a slow, kind of like it's going to hit consumer spend over the next year, right?
[00:53:03]  But, if repayments start, and people won't start paying it back right away, So the first thing is interest rates kick in, I think, today.
[00:53:14]  Yes, you are going to owe interest.
[00:53:17]  But the first payment isn't due until the next cycle.
[00:53:20]  Technically it's due, but they're not going to ding your credit or file fees against you or whatever.
[00:53:24]  But your loans will get bigger.
[00:53:26]  Yes, they will.
[00:53:27]  Doesn't that lend itself to as soon as this unramping period is over, the delinquencies are masked and there will be a big shock to the system when all of a sudden the debt spikes massively for these people?
[00:53:39]  There will be a massive debt bubble, like great reset at some point in the future.
[00:53:44]  I don't know if it'll be in our lifetimes.
[00:53:46]  I think, you know, fiat currency, every fiat currency that has ever existed has collapsed.
[00:53:50]  The amount of debt that exists today.
[00:53:52]  I mean, that's scary, right?
[00:53:54]  It's like, where's my gold now?
[00:53:55]  You know, golden bullets, man, you know, but yeah, well, then and then you look at the massive amount of debt that we have.
[00:54:06]  But what's remarkable is what you're seeing today is rich get richer, and that could actually keep us going for much longer.
[00:54:13]  So here's something crazy.
[00:54:14]  Interest rates have gone straight up, right?
[00:54:17]  Net interest payments in the country on corporate debt have fallen.
[00:54:21]  And that's because, guess what the richest companies are doing today?
[00:54:25]  The richest 10%.
[00:54:26]  Think the apples of the world.
[00:54:28]  They're able to borrow money at 10, 20 years at 4%.
[00:54:33]  Then they deposit it into money markets and they earn 5%.
[00:54:37]  Wow.
[00:54:38]  So net, even though interest rates are going up, net interest payments are going down.
[00:54:44]  How do I do that?
[00:54:45]  I know, right?
[00:54:46]  Well, the way you do it is, you know, you bought, what you do is, I mean, I guess, see, the problem is as an individual, you really can't.
[00:54:53]  I mean, you used to be able to with a home mortgage, but now if you try to get a mortgage, it's like 8%.
[00:54:58]  See, Apple can borrow for 20 years at basically 4%.
[00:55:02]  We can't do that.
[00:55:03]  Rich corporations can.
[00:55:04]  How are they able to do that?
[00:55:05]  Well, because they can borrow at essentially no premium over the 10-year bond market, because they're basically deemed just as risk-free, like an apple, less likely of defaulting, almost less likely of defaulting as our dysfunctional Congress, you know, in a 10-year treasury.
[00:55:21]  It's a free money machine.
[00:55:22]  It's free money.
[00:55:23]  It's absolutely free money.
[00:55:23]  It's crazy.
[00:55:24]  Yeah.
[00:55:24]  And so now what happens is... But like the Black Rocks, the State Streets, Vanguard, they're doing all this?
[00:55:29]  Well, of course, because think about it.
[00:55:31]  I mean, these pension funds and these institutional investment companies, they need to earn their 5, 6, 7%, which you can now get basically risk-free in treasuries.
[00:55:40]  It's insane.
[00:55:41]  I mean, you can now get 6% on a three-month CD with your bank.
[00:55:46]  It's insane.
[00:55:48]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:50]  So Apple was advertising their 4.15% savings account.
[00:55:54]  Yep.
[00:55:55]  And now they're all stepping over each other.
[00:55:56]  Who can offer more?
[00:55:57]  Right?
[00:55:59]  I think SoFi's got a four and a half.
[00:56:01]  Yep.
[00:56:02]  UFB's got a 5.25.
[00:56:04]  JPMorgan said if I wire them at least $2 million, they will give me 6% for a year.
[00:56:11]  They'll lock me in at 6% for a year because they want the capital.
[00:56:14]  Yeah.
[00:56:14]  I mean, is it really worth it?
[00:56:16]  I mean, is inflation worse than this?
[00:56:18]  I mean, this is my question, right?
[00:56:22]  You know, obviously, we are a company here, we invest, we have our reserves, we have our assets.
[00:56:28]  And the question is, if we keep, you know, finances liquid cash in a savings account at 4%, are we just losing money?
[00:56:36]  It's probably prudent.
[00:56:38]  To have obviously some form of a balanced portfolio where you have your longer term investments, real estate and stocks, right?
[00:56:44]  And expanding your business.
[00:56:45]  But it's also good to have cash because we don't know what could happen next year.
[00:56:49]  The big bear fear is that the inverted yield curve today, the fancy bond market red flag, is that we're going to have mass joblessness next year.
[00:56:57]  And that mass joblessness is going to lead the Federal Reserve to cut rates, which will lead to inflation again.
[00:57:03]  That is the bear thesis right now.
[00:57:05]  And that's the great reset, the markets collapsing thesis.
[00:57:08]  And do you think that's the case or no?
[00:57:09]  I don't.
[00:57:10]  So the reason I don't think that's the case is mostly because if we look at the last 40 years, we've been on a path of lowering inflation and lowering interest rates.
[00:57:21]  We printed way too much money, excessive amounts of money during COVID.
[00:57:25]  So I think that when we're in 2030, we're going to look back and go, well, no, duh.
[00:57:29]  We had massive inflation after we printed all that money.
[00:57:32]  Of course, if they're right about.
[00:57:36]  If you're wrong about the economy, they're right about joblessness and inflation.
[00:57:40]  Yes.
[00:57:40]  Trump wins 100 percent.
[00:57:44]  And so that's what's going to be very interesting is if we're not in a recession, who wins that?
[00:57:50]  Yeah.
[00:57:51]  It's hard to know for sure, especially with the political games that are being played, but there's a big incentive right now to at least do whatever they can to hold up the popsicle sticks so that everything doesn't come crumbling down.
[00:58:04]  Oh, well, of course.
[00:58:04]  I mean, there's also that element of, like, well, the data could be, you know, rigged, so to speak.
[00:58:09]  I mean, nobody believes, really, the inflation numbers, or CPI, or jobs, or these numbers.
[00:58:13]  They always get revised down.
[00:58:14]  And so there's, of course, the jaded POV that, hey, like, we could be in a way worse situation than we actually think.
[00:58:20]  And to some extent, history says that's true.
[00:58:22]  History says joblessness comes way after.
[00:58:27]  Let's talk about this.
[00:58:28]  I want to go back to the 6% thing because I think the average person probably wants to understand this because I do.
[00:58:33]  Yeah.
[00:58:33]  Yeah, let's talk practical.
[00:58:34]  Two million dollars.
[00:58:35]  Yes.
[00:58:36]  And you put it into a savings account or what?
[00:58:38]  Yeah, so it's CD.
[00:58:40]  A CD, right.
[00:58:40]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:58:41]  So what is that?
[00:58:43]  It's basically, exactly.
[00:58:44]  It's basically a way of saying, here bank, here's my money.
[00:58:47]  I promise to leave it here for a period of 1, 3, 6, 12 months.
[00:58:52]  And you will get 6%?
[00:58:54]  For doing nothing.
[00:58:55]  So, we're talking 120 grand.
[00:58:58]  Uh-huh, yes, and on 2 mil, yes, exactly.
[00:59:00]  You don't need a job.
[00:59:02]  No, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:59:04]  This is, you know, when I'm younger, I'm wondering, how does this work that you can just make money by having money?
[00:59:10]  I mean, there's the famous, I shouldn't say famous, but there's the quote from 30 Rock where Liz Lemon goes to Donaghy and she's like, I wanna do the thing rich people do where they make money from money.
[00:59:21]  Yes.
[00:59:22]  What do I do?
[00:59:24]  Right.
[00:59:24]  So, and I think that's where practical finance is so useful.
[00:59:27]  And that's, I'm a big fan of that on my channel.
[00:59:29]  And it's, you have to control assets because I really believe no matter what happens in the economy over the next year or two, nobody knows.
[00:59:37]  It's a crystal ball.
[00:59:39]  It's a crystal ball what's going to happen over the next two years.
[00:59:41]  It's either we're going to go into recession, shallow recession, or no recession.
[00:59:44]  It doesn't matter.
[00:59:46]  The one thing that we know, and I think we've agreed on multiple times in this, is that wealth inequality is going to grow.
[00:59:50]  Oh yeah.
[00:59:51]  So how do you prevent being stuck on the side that's not growing your wealth?
[00:59:57]  And the answer is, you have to own the means of production.
[01:00:01]  Which are, I know, you have to be an owner.
[01:00:03]  Which sounds intimidating, but it's really It's buying your first house.
[01:00:08]  It's turning that into a rental property when you buy your next house.
[01:00:12]  Right.
[01:00:12]  Buying and controlling more real estate.
[01:00:14]  It's buying stocks.
[01:00:16]  It's starting businesses.
[01:00:17]  Or, if you're not starting businesses, because not everybody's an entrepreneur, it's taking your salary and using that salary to buy real estate.
[01:00:25]  The richest firefighters and police officers, because I was a police explorer for three years and volunteered with firefighters as well.
[01:00:31]  The richest ones were people who said, I make the salary plus my overtime.
[01:00:36]  My salary is maybe 60 with overtime.
[01:00:37]  I'm at 90 or 100.
[01:00:38]  I'm going to have a pension after 20 or 30 years, depending on the department.
[01:00:42]  The richest ones were the ones who said, I'm going to keep my debt low.
[01:00:45]  I'm going to use my salary, my W2 income and buy real estate.
[01:00:49]  Yeah.
[01:00:51]  Hands down.
[01:00:52]  I've heard a lot of stories about that, actually.
[01:00:53]  Firefighters who are landlords.
[01:00:55]  I think being a landlord sucks.
[01:00:56]  It does.
[01:00:57]  It's hard.
[01:00:58]  I don't want to go anywhere.
[01:00:58]  That's why there's money to be made there.
[01:01:00]  Right.
[01:01:01]  Because somebody has to supply rentals.
[01:01:02]  Imagine there were no... Everybody hates landlords.
[01:01:05]  Everybody hates landlords because 99% of them suck.
[01:01:07]  There's greed, there's slumlordness, there's low quality renovation work.
[01:01:12]  It's a disgusting business.
[01:01:14]  And most people hate landlords.
[01:01:16]  But if there were no landlords, there would be no rental property.
[01:01:19]  We need landlords.
[01:01:20]  You need landlords.
[01:01:21]  We love our landlords.
[01:01:22]  Well, because how could you rent otherwise?
[01:01:24]  Right, this is the funny thing that, you know, the left very much mocks the idea of landlords.
[01:01:29]  They say abolish landlords.
[01:01:30]  And I'm just like, you know, when they, going back to like homelessness.
[01:01:33]  Oh yeah.
[01:01:34]  The one thing that annoyed me more than anything was when they said, I get these friends of mine or activists being like, did you know that there are more empty houses than homeless?
[01:01:42]  And I'm like, tell me what that means.
[01:01:44]  You think that means you can take a homeless person and put them in a house?
[01:01:46]  Do you know what happens if you do that?
[01:01:48]  The house just falls apart.
[01:01:49]  The homeless person doesn't, their circumstances don't change.
[01:01:52]  You're basically hiding the homeless person and their problems.
[01:01:55]  Right, right.
[01:01:57]  Houses have to be built, maintained.
[01:01:59]  Like, property taxes are used for a variety of things, and we can absolutely say it's BS to force people to pay tax or whatever, but there's sewer systems, there's roads, there's public infrastructure and electricity, and then you have maintaining the house itself.
[01:02:16]  People who don't own property, imagine what happens, and you know this exactly, you buy a house and then you forget about it.
[01:02:23]  What happens in six months?
[01:02:24]  Oh my gosh, everything breaks.
[01:02:27]  If you just leave it there, you'll come back to mold, bugs, water damage.
[01:02:31]  In fact, you might even come back to find the house is razed because a fire started and nobody knew it happened.
[01:02:35]  So you need somebody who's in it.
[01:02:38]  It has to be used, it has to be utilized.
[01:02:40]  And the landlord, I know it's such a dirty term for the political left, it's, yeah, they're slumlords.
[01:02:46]  They're bad landlords.
[01:02:47]  Oh my gosh, yeah.
[01:02:47]  And then there are people who are retirees who saved up money to pay for the creation of a home that you, starting out your life, can't afford to build.
[01:02:57]  Exactly.
[01:02:58]  And then you pay rent.
[01:02:59]  And then the argument comes, they're like, why is the rent more than the mortgage?
[01:03:03]  Like, why are they making money off me?
[01:03:04]  Well, they're doing work.
[01:03:05]  Sure.
[01:03:05]  And that's not true today with interest rates where they are now.
[01:03:09]  Oh, right, right, right.
[01:03:10]  But yes, generally what you're saying is correct.
[01:03:11]  Yes.
[01:03:12]  The general concept... They're providing value.
[01:03:15]  Right.
[01:03:15]  The pure idea of a landlord, which perhaps has been corrupted, is let's go back in time.
[01:03:21]  Me and my friends get together and take our extra wood and materials and time and we build a house.
[01:03:27]  Someone who did not have the resources to do it says, I need a place to live.
[01:03:30]  And we say, we'll let you live here.
[01:03:32]  Just you're going to pay us for everything we did to build this.
[01:03:35]  Exactly.
[01:03:36]  And then you end up making a couple hundred bucks, if that, a month.
[01:03:40]  Right.
[01:03:40]  You know, I don't know how much it, what I can tell you is that when I was renting, I had a house, we moved out of it.
[01:03:46]  And I said, what do we do with it?
[01:03:47]  And I was like, let's just rent it out.
[01:03:48]  Sure.
[01:03:49]  And the responsibility is too great.
[01:03:50]  It's a pain in the butt, especially if you're not doing it at scale.
[01:03:53]  It's a pain in the butt.
[01:03:54]  Absolutely.
[01:03:54]  For me, it's like I run this business.
[01:03:56]  I absolutely cannot be managing or trying to maintain or even have another text.
[01:04:01]  Hey, furnace is out again.
[01:04:02]  Furnace is out.
[01:04:03]  Air conditioning is breaking.
[01:04:04]  And I'm like, you know, storm comes, tree falls over.
[01:04:06]  And I said, would you like to buy this house?
[01:04:10]  It's a lot of work and it's not easy.
[01:04:12]  And it's a full time job if you're managing properties.
[01:04:15]  What a lot of people don't realize when they're renting is owning a house comes with a lot of hard work and responsibility to maintain that property.
[01:04:22]  So you can hire someone to do it for you.
[01:04:25]  Oh, yeah.
[01:04:25]  You gotta pay for that, then.
[01:04:26]  Then you're paying for it.
[01:04:27]  So then I guess it comes down to this practical problem, though, because now what's really popular on social media is this talk about, oh, we're worse off today than we were in the Great Depression, which is mostly based off cherry pick data anyway.
[01:04:40]  Let me let me pull up that tweet.
[01:04:43]  We have it somewhere.
[01:04:43]  Here we go.
[01:04:44]  So this is Isabel Brown.
[01:04:46]  We like Isabel.
[01:04:47]  She's cool.
[01:04:47]  She's cool.
[01:04:48]  She made this.
[01:04:48]  She has this clip where she copied off another TikTok.
[01:04:51]  I'm sorry to say it, but she there was another one that went viral before hers that I reacted to.
[01:04:56]  And then I saw hers go viral and I'm like, she's the same data.
[01:04:59]  Stop it.
[01:05:00]  No.
[01:05:00]  Let's let's let's play.
[01:05:02]  This is audio.
[01:05:02]  I heard a new term on TikTok today that made me stop in my tracks.

=== Mobile Obligation Crisis (05:06) ===

[01:05:06]  We are living in the silent depression.
[01:05:07]  This guy believes we are not just living in worse than the Great Depression, we're living in the silent depression.
[01:05:13]  The average annual income in 1930 for an American individual was a little over $4,800.
[01:05:18]  Sounds like nothing, but if you adjust that for inflation, a little over $4,800 a year in 1930 is equivalent to almost $85,000 annually for the average salary for one person.
[01:05:31]  Right now, the average annual salary is $56,000 a year.
[01:05:35]  We currently are making less than the height of the Great Depression.
[01:05:40]  In 1930, gas was on average 10 cents a gallon.
[01:05:43]  That would be about $1.73.
[01:05:43]  Alright, so we'll stop there because what you just said was wrong.
[01:05:48]  And there's a Community Notes fact check on it.
[01:05:50]  Oh, there is now!
[01:05:51]  Thank you, Alan.
[01:05:52]  Community Notes for the win!
[01:05:54]  Let's go!
[01:05:55]  And it proved you right.
[01:05:55]  Yes!
[01:05:56]  No way!
[01:05:57]  Your tweet is, inflation adjusting to $24,000, or half of today's income, and the Community Note actually links to, I think it's the Foundation for Economic Education, is that what it's called?
[01:06:08]  F-E-E?
[01:06:08]  And it says the same exact thing.
[01:06:11]  The $4.2k salary from the video, adjusted for inflation at $95k today, is pulled from IRS taxable returns, which only accounted for 1.3% of the population.
[01:06:19]  The real inflation adjusted salary from 1933 would be $24,500.
[01:06:21]  Here's the interesting thing about all this too, though.
[01:06:27]  People don't take into consideration the advantages and necessities that come with technology, how it changed our world and created different economic requirements.
[01:06:38]  So, yo, my dad didn't have a cell phone or a TV.
[01:06:43]  - Right.
[01:06:43]  - Those expenses did not exist.
[01:06:45]  - Right.
[01:06:46]  - So-- - Expenses or tools?
[01:06:48]  I guess is the way you look at that, huh?
[01:06:49]  - They're both, really.
[01:06:50]  - They're both, that's true.
[01:06:51]  Okay, fair.
[01:06:52]  - But cell phone's an obligation.
[01:06:53]  - Yeah, that's true.
[01:06:54]  - If-- - You gotta get Mint Mobile, man, it's like 15 bucks a month.
[01:06:56]  - It's getting cheaper and it's getting more accessible. - And you know that's just T-Mobile rebranded.
[01:07:01]  Well, T-Mobile did buy them, but before T-Mobile bought them, sorry for the tangent, before T-Mobile bought them, Mint Mobile was just a way to sell T-Mobile bands to people who wouldn't pay the 90 bucks a month for T-Mobile.
[01:07:15]  Cricket, Metro, it's all the same thing.
[01:07:16]  It's charging people based on what they're willing to pay, which is the best thing a corporation could do from a corporate point of view, is charge people who are willing to pay $90, $90, and the people who can only afford $15, $15.
[01:07:26]  Now, to be fair though, We went with T-Mobile because when you go for these contract networks or whatever, that's like it's part of the T-Mobile network, they'll give you a data cap.
[01:07:40]  They prioritize their core base.
[01:07:42]  Yes.
[01:07:43]  Okay, so if you need a lot of data, this is true.
[01:07:45]  And then the prioritizing I think they're building enough antennas.
[01:07:48]  But yes, you are correct.
[01:07:49]  That's how what they say.
[01:07:50]  Yes.
[01:07:50]  Sorry for the tangent.
[01:07:51]  But so so right now, you know, the real hack, by the way, is to do all all of them.
[01:07:58]  So I'm a YouTuber.
[01:08:00]  So on each phone, I have two Sims.
[01:08:03]  They're eSims.
[01:08:04]  Yeah.
[01:08:05]  So when you look at the top, which has an airplane mode now, I actually have like AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile.
[01:08:10]  And that way I always have data.
[01:08:12]  Right.
[01:08:12]  But I need it for my job.
[01:08:14]  I just can't stand AT&T.
[01:08:16]  No, it sucks.
[01:08:17]  But when T-Mobile and Verizon are down, I love it.
[01:08:19]  Right.
[01:08:20]  Yeah.
[01:08:20]  So, you know, back in the day, I had every one of them.
[01:08:22]  Yeah, you needed it.
[01:08:23]  Building mobile tech.
[01:08:24]  Well, you were mobile then.
[01:08:25]  I mean, you wore your body cam before there were body cams.
[01:08:28]  Right.
[01:08:28]  We had hotspots.
[01:08:30]  Yeah.
[01:08:30]  I had a hotspot for every network.
[01:08:32]  Yeah.
[01:08:32]  Remember WiMAX?
[01:08:33]  Oh, my gosh.
[01:08:34]  No, I don't.
[01:08:35]  It was one of the first 4G networks.
[01:08:37]  Oh, wow.
[01:08:38]  It hit around one to two megabits up and down.
[01:08:41]  Yeah.
[01:08:42]  But it was like, you know, Sprint was trying to get out with 4G fast, and anybody, WiMAX is basically gone.
[01:08:48]  Yeah, sure.
[01:08:49]  Sorry for the tangent.
[01:08:49]  No, but people are probably like, what is that even?
[01:08:51]  So here's my thing about the current salaries that I think people should consider, and I don't know what it ultimately means, but my dad did not have to buy a cell phone or a cell phone plan.
[01:09:03]  That expense didn't exist.
[01:09:05]  You try to apply for a job at Starbucks and they're going to say, what's your cell phone number?
[01:09:09]  And you're going to say, I don't have a cell phone.
[01:09:10]  They're going to say, are you kidding?
[01:09:11]  Right.
[01:09:12]  How do we get in touch with you?
[01:09:13]  Right.
[01:09:13]  Like call me at home.
[01:09:14]  I have a landline and they're going to be like, yeah, okay.
[01:09:17]  That's nuts.
[01:09:18]  I'll text you.
[01:09:19]  Oh, wait.
[01:09:19]  Yeah.
[01:09:21]  Most, I think most companies are going to say, they don't have, they don't have a cell phone.
[01:09:26]  What's, we can't hire them.
[01:09:27]  Probably.
[01:09:28]  Are you gonna get a cell phone?
[01:09:29]  Can we get you a cell phone?
[01:09:30]  Like, what's the deal?
[01:09:31]  And so, the salary may be better, but I do think there's more expenses associated with modern living.
[01:09:36]  Well, and housing's way more unaffordable today.
[01:09:39]  Right.
[01:09:39]  And so, you're right.
[01:09:40]  There are a lot more expenses that we have, plus housing more unaffordable.
[01:09:43]  Now, we can work remotely, and so maybe we have less of a commute.
[01:09:46]  You know, the cost of a TV is a fraction of what it used to be, and whatever.
[01:09:50]  But you're right.
[01:09:50]  You have more of these societal obligations, and probably the biggest one is housing, too.

=== Medical Assisted Dying Controversy (09:11) ===

[01:09:55]  Healthcare.
[01:09:56]  Oh my gosh, that's another big problem.
[01:09:58]  But what do you do?
[01:09:59]  Do you turn into Canada, where you have to wait six months to get a frickin' exam because they have universal healthcare?
[01:10:04]  Do you turn into Germany, where they have great healthcare, but again, you know, now you're paying 55% in taxes all over?
[01:10:09]  Right?
[01:10:10]  And then Canada attacked on the, if you don't want to wait, we can always kill you.
[01:10:13]  No, no.
[01:10:15]  You saw that, right?
[01:10:15]  No, I didn't.
[01:10:16]  Medical assistants and dying.
[01:10:19]  Tons of stories of this.
[01:10:19]  There's a veteran who needed a chairlift and they said, we, it'll take, you know, X amount of time to build the chairlift or have you considered medical assistance in death?
[01:10:26]  No way.
[01:10:28]  Yeah.
[01:10:28]  There's a story of a woman.
[01:10:30]  She did a commercial where she's like, this is my choice.
[01:10:33]  I'm choosing to go my way.
[01:10:35]  And the story was that she went for medical health.
[01:10:38]  She went, she went to the, to the system for treatment.
[01:10:41]  They triage you.
[01:10:42]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:10:43]  They said, no.
[01:10:44]  And they said, but we can't kill you.
[01:10:46]  And she said, then I choose death because I can't live with this anymore.
[01:10:50]  So there's a lot of questions about this.
[01:10:52]  Oh my god.
[01:10:52]  First of all, I think medical assistance dying is, with the degree they're going from, they're going in Canada now, mental health issues, warrants it, and they're even allowing in some, they want to make it so that kids can get it without parental consent.
[01:11:03]  Oh my god.
[01:11:04]  Right, it's getting crazy.
[01:11:07]  I'm getting chills thinking about that.
[01:11:09]  Please keep all this shit away from kids under 18.
[01:11:12]  Oh yeah, but they're not.
[01:11:15]  And so, here's the thing to consider though.
[01:11:17]  Your dental care today, as a poor person, is better than Rockefeller's dental care.
[01:11:23]  Oh, that's interesting.
[01:11:24]  The technical, I mean, look, how many people had refrigerators and air conditioning in the 40s?
[01:11:29]  Ice blocks back then, you know?
[01:11:31]  It's really amazing when you go to these old houses out here in Appalachia, Civil War territory, and you can go tour these homes and they're like, here's the cooling cellar where they kept their meat.
[01:11:40]  And I'm like, it's literally just the basement.
[01:11:43]  Yes, they would hang meat in the basement.
[01:11:45]  Salt it.
[01:11:46]  Salt it and hang it.
[01:11:47]  And then try and eat it as fast as you can.
[01:11:49]  In fact, one place I checked out.
[01:11:52]  Now we call that curing.
[01:11:53]  Yeah.
[01:11:54]  The meat storage was upstairs.
[01:11:56]  And I'm like, it's going to get hot.
[01:11:58]  And then they would carry it down this little spiral staircase.
[01:12:02]  There was a cup.
[01:12:03]  It's so crazy.
[01:12:03]  There's a cupboard in the kitchen.
[01:12:05]  That's like two feet wide.
[01:12:06]  And when you open it, it's this extremely narrow spiraling staircase to go up to the meat room, to grab the meats, to bring them down to the kitchen without obstructing the flow of the house.
[01:12:14]  So the chef wouldn't walk into the master dining area and it bother anybody.
[01:12:19]  But my point is, we have tremendous technological advancement that benefit our lives in ways that never before.
[01:12:29]  But we're also still miserable, too.
[01:12:31]  And how do you figure out where that point is, right?
[01:12:34]  So Isabelle does this video where she says we're actually in a silent depression.
[01:12:37]  She's hitting on a very real sentiment, is what it is.
[01:12:41]  Even though the information is factually wrong, the sentiment is 100% correct.
[01:12:46]  It's the Richmond song, right?
[01:12:48]  It is the sentiment that, look, everything has gotten more expensive.
[01:12:52]  Everything's 30% more expensive now over the last few years.
[01:12:54]  It is more expensive for housing, for rent, for a mortgage, for your credit cards, for your car, for groceries.
[01:13:01]  So she's hitting on something that's accurate.
[01:13:04]  Unfortunately, the question is, how do we fix that as an individual, like practically?
[01:13:09]  It's mental.
[01:13:10]  It's not completely, but I'll give you an example.
[01:13:13]  There was a story I read where a kid had a genetic disease for which there is a cure.
[01:13:19]  The cure is an expensive gene therapy.
[01:13:21]  It costs a million dollars.
[01:13:23]  The family demanded the state pay for it.
[01:13:26]  The state said, we can't pay a million dollars for one person's treatment.
[01:13:31]  If that treatment did not exist, there's no complaint.
[01:13:34]  There's simply grief and fear.
[01:13:37]  Now a treatment exists and there's hope.
[01:13:39]  And with that hope comes the demand that it be paid for because we can.
[01:13:43]  So I take a look at modern healthcare costs.
[01:13:46]  And they talk about the treatments that people should get, the medication they should get.
[01:13:49]  Not to mention, a lot of this, I think, is BS, weird mental drugs.
[01:13:51]  But outside of that, when these treatments did not exist at all... You mean, like, over-diagnoses of certain disorders?
[01:13:58]  Well, as a separate issue, you have people who are on all sorts of medical, mental prescription stuff.
[01:14:03]  Right, right, right.
[01:14:03]  For our social appeals.
[01:14:04]  Causing more problems than helping, potentially.
[01:14:06]  Right.
[01:14:06]  Okay, okay, okay, yes, I understand.
[01:14:07]  But there are, you know, treatments for diseases today that did not exist a hundred years ago.
[01:14:12]  And so, when you got the consumption, you died.
[01:14:15]  Terminal.
[01:14:16]  And there was no complaining about what you were owed, or your medical bills, because it didn't exist.
[01:14:22]  Right.
[01:14:23]  Now that the treatments exist, and they're hard to produce and they're expensive, there's a demand we get them for free.
[01:14:27]  Interesting.
[01:14:28]  Which creates a weird circumstance.
[01:14:31]  If we were to, today, strip away all of the cures and all the medical advances, from these from these diseases and we just said we simply cannot cure any of these diseases there's no left-wing outrage over medical care interest it simply does not exist but they do exist so what do we do and and that's where it gets interesting yeah i this is where when it comes to like universal health care this is where i'm like basic health care i think i agree with yeah i don't bernie guy well i used to be Okay, okay.
[01:15:00]  But not his healthcare stuff.
[01:15:01]  Nuts.
[01:15:02]  Okay.
[01:15:02]  He wants it to go to an extreme that no other country wants to go to.
[01:15:05]  Got it.
[01:15:05]  But my view is always, if you get the flu, if you break your bone, I think that's the basic level of coverage that we provide.
[01:15:11]  Okay.
[01:15:12]  It's horrible when you hear about a seven-year-old kid who got the flu and died.
[01:15:15]  Right.
[01:15:15]  And it's like, are you kidding me?
[01:15:16]  We can treat this stuff with fluids and put them in the hospital and they live.
[01:15:19]  But because of the expense, but then you get cancers, really advanced terminal diseases that are beyond the scope of- Basic healthcare.
[01:15:29]  Right.
[01:15:30]  And then how do you, how do you take care?
[01:15:31]  We can't give everyone the cure for this.
[01:15:34]  We can't give everyone this million dollar treatment.
[01:15:36]  Yeah.
[01:15:36]  But if people know it exists and people don't want to die and I can respect them not wanting to die, that makes sense.
[01:15:41]  Of course, yeah.
[01:15:42]  Knowing it exists means I need to get it.
[01:15:43]  Yeah.
[01:15:45]  So, I'm not saying people are wrong for wanting access to these things, but if you look at it holistically, if you zoom out and you look at humanity outside of the perspective of a sympathetic, individual, empathetic human being, you say, well, if we have 100 doses of cure and 10,000 people who would like a cure, universal healthcare does not exist.
[01:16:07]  It is impossible.
[01:16:09]  So, how do you do it?
[01:16:10]  Right, I mean, it's like everybody would like to live in Los Angeles, but it's so expensive, not everybody can.
[01:16:16]  And then there's this idea, well, then we should have more affordable housing because I'm owed to live in L.A.
[01:16:21]  When the reality is, no, you're not, you need to leave L.A.
[01:16:24]  So, there's capitalism versus, you know... Utopianism?
[01:16:29]  Yes, yes.
[01:16:30]  Outside of the practical questions of how do you distribute cures, you have the issue of perception and happiness.
[01:16:37]  Happiness is always fleeting, though.
[01:16:39]  I think there's almost this belief that everybody should be happy all the time.
[01:16:43]  People in the 1700s who had no air conditioning and lived in Florida were happy.
[01:16:50]  Why Florida?
[01:16:51]  Because they built a statue to the guy who invented air conditioning in Florida.
[01:16:54]  Oh, okay.
[01:16:54]  I grew up in Florida, so that's interesting.
[01:16:56]  I mean, come on.
[01:16:57]  I couldn't imagine living in Miami without A.C.
[01:16:59]  It's nuts.
[01:17:00]  It's impossible.
[01:17:01]  You go from AC to AC, basically, when you're in Florida.
[01:17:04]  All the windows are drenched with humidity.
[01:17:07]  But they did for generations.
[01:17:09]  That's interesting.
[01:17:10]  Hundreds of years.
[01:17:11]  And then now it's like, well, we got to have AC.
[01:17:13]  People will die without it.
[01:17:14]  Oh, yeah.
[01:17:15]  Isn't that crazy?
[01:17:16]  That is interesting.
[01:17:17]  People who didn't have heat or AC before would just die.
[01:17:20]  And it was a normal part of life.
[01:17:21]  Now that we have the technology, it's a requirement.
[01:17:24]  It costs money to make, it costs money to build, it costs money to implement.
[01:17:27]  And to run.
[01:17:28]  It's expensive.
[01:17:29]  So I wonder now if the reason we feel like we actually are in a depression is because the amount of things we expect to have have massively increased.
[01:17:38]  Oh, our expectations are so much higher.
[01:17:40]  Because of social media, maybe?
[01:17:41]  But they're partially necessities.
[01:17:43]  Oh, yeah.
[01:17:44]  If you're elderly, you need AC.
[01:17:46]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:17:47]  But when we didn't have AC, the elderly would just die.
[01:17:50]  Or we or we have different social customs for protecting them like watering holes or making sure they were you know people would check in on them Now that we're in the era of ubiquitous air conditioning It's something we must have to live and the people who do have access to it live a better example would be refrigeration Okay, when nobody had refrigeration People would just die of diabetes.
[01:18:11]  It was an illness that would affect kids and older people and they would just die.
[01:18:15]  And then someone finally, I can't remember, I read the story a while ago, isolated insulin and then all of a sudden the children were cured!
[01:18:21]  Sure.
[01:18:21]  And it was like, wow.
[01:18:22]  So you could keep insulin at home.
[01:18:23]  You gotta refrigerate it.
[01:18:25]  So, going back to what Isabel was saying about the salary being 54k, that's double the depression era, but we also gotta consider what we expect to be a necessity for us, including refrigeration, clean running water, sewage, all of that stuff.
[01:18:39]  Cell phone, internet.
[01:18:40]  Yup.
[01:18:41]  Can you live in society and have a job and make $54,000 a year if you don't have a cell phone, don't have the internet, don't have air conditioning, don't have clean running water?
[01:18:48]  I think if you're making $54K, your goal should be, how can I make more?

=== Vivek's Vision: VR & Gaming (08:45) ===

[01:18:52]  Yeah.
[01:18:53]  But then you go back to, well, high school, and it's like, well, what did I learn?
[01:18:57]  That's tough.
[01:18:58]  That's a problem.
[01:18:59]  Oh, yeah, that's why I stopped going.
[01:19:00]  Oh, I don't blame you.
[01:19:02]  Yeah, you know, I remember, you know, I'm told everything will be different in high school.
[01:19:06]  Sure.
[01:19:06]  And then it's just, here's an interrogative sentence.
[01:19:09]  Oh my gosh.
[01:19:10]  Yeah, the same garbage.
[01:19:11]  And I'm just like, tell me one time I'll remember.
[01:19:13]  Can we move on?
[01:19:14]  Can we learn?
[01:19:14]  Nah, it was just a waste of time.
[01:19:16]  So what do you think then about AI?
[01:19:18]  Do you think we're going to go with AI towards more of this displacement, more homelessness?
[01:19:23]  Yes.
[01:19:23]  Yeah.
[01:19:24]  But I wonder if we will all live in the pods, own nothing, and be happy.
[01:19:28]  Oh, interesting.
[01:19:29]  Okay, you will own nothing and be happy.
[01:19:31]  That's a pretty common thing on social right now.
[01:19:33]  Have you seen... Rent everything.
[01:19:36]  I went to a GameStop just the other day.
[01:19:38]  Why?
[01:19:39]  I went to the eye doctor.
[01:19:41]  Okay.
[01:19:41]  GameStop was next door.
[01:19:42]  Okay.
[01:19:43]  Well, that's fair.
[01:19:43]  Yeah.
[01:19:44]  I used to go to the midnight releases at GameStop and I applied to GameStop to work there like 17 times and they rejected me every time.
[01:19:49]  Why would you go to GameStop?
[01:19:50]  That's a good question, actually.
[01:19:52]  As an aside, I think GameStop should be doing more to create community.
[01:19:55]  Yes.
[01:19:55]  And that's their path to monetization.
[01:19:56]  Yes.
[01:19:57]  Selling games.
[01:19:58]  Come on.
[01:19:58]  She partnered with Dave & Buster's.
[01:20:00]  GameStop's in every Dave & Buster's entertainment.
[01:20:02]  That's a good idea, actually.
[01:20:03]  But I think for GameStop, it's less about selling a product and more about selling the space.
[01:20:08]  Oh, 100%.
[01:20:08]  I used to do GameStop competitions.
[01:20:11]  Like, I'd go do Call of Duty competitions at the GameStop.
[01:20:13]  They should have gaming tables, card games, they should have Pokemon cards, they should have video game contests.
[01:20:17]  But anyway, I digress.
[01:20:18]  I was talking to the guy.
[01:20:20]  There's a new chat GPT mod for Skyrim.
[01:20:23]  Oh no, yes, okay.
[01:20:25]  - Talk to your, not to all of them, I think it's a companion.
[01:20:30]  - Okay, okay, okay. - You can literally, my understanding, I could be wrong, but it's like, you could put on a headset and as you're playing, you can say your command's name is like John.
[01:20:36]  You can be like, John, come with me.
[01:20:38]  And he'll go, you got it.
[01:20:40]  And then you can say something like, John, what do you think about the current phase of the moon?
[01:20:43]  And he can say, you know, I haven't thought too much about it.
[01:20:44]  It's a natural, predictive response.
[01:20:48]  And the guy there was telling me that he played it and you can actually bump into the character and they will give you a unique, hey, knock it off.
[01:20:55]  You keep hitting me, stop hitting me.
[01:20:57]  And you're just, it's incredible.
[01:20:59]  As life gets depressing for so many people, and social interaction becomes harder, the wealth inequality is going to be the owner class and the VR gamer class.
[01:21:13]  People who are poor and own nothing will have a small pod Which could could technically be like a bachelor style apartment.
[01:21:20]  Yeah.
[01:21:20]  Where they strap into VR and live in a world where they can be happy and have everything they've ever wanted and feel emotionally satisfied.
[01:21:27]  And that's and that's how you placate a distressed populace.
[01:21:30]  Now then then I wonder though is that like so I mean it's very Ready Player One-esque is I mean it to some extent sounds very depressing because it's like well we shouldn't need that but then on the other hand does that take away the hardship that you would otherwise have in life In any level of life.
[01:21:47]  I don't know.
[01:21:48]  Yes.
[01:21:49]  Hardship is good.
[01:21:51]  Yeah.
[01:21:51]  I see all these parents.
[01:21:52]  They're like, my kid will never be poor.
[01:21:54]  I'm like, that's a mistake.
[01:21:55]  Yeah.
[01:21:56]  Yeah.
[01:21:56]  Failure is a good thing.
[01:21:58]  Failure is a good thing.
[01:21:59]  And it is really funny when you think about the philosophy of it.
[01:22:03]  People assume it's bad to fail.
[01:22:04]  It's good to fail.
[01:22:06]  Absolutely.
[01:22:06]  Yeah.
[01:22:07]  Like the path of success is through failure.
[01:22:08]  A hundred percent.
[01:22:09]  If your kids never experienced failure, what do you get?
[01:22:11]  Oh my gosh, you get a Brad-spoiled high expectation.
[01:22:14]  Oh, there's the expectations word.
[01:22:15]  Yeah.
[01:22:16]  Wow, that's funny.
[01:22:17]  So I have an eight-year-old now, he just had a birthday yesterday, and a five-year-old, and when they play Roblox, and it's just constant dopamine, dopamine, dopamine of positive, positive, positive, positive, everything else in their life is miserable.
[01:22:32]  Yep.
[01:22:33]  Like, getting up is miserable, going to the bathroom is miserable, going on a walk, getting on go-karts, going on your bike, everything is miserable.
[01:22:40]  So we took away Roblox.
[01:22:41]  Good.
[01:22:42]  Now they draw.
[01:22:45]  And they're happy and we wrestle and we play.
[01:22:48]  It's insane.
[01:22:49]  The scary thing with Roblox is, I shouldn't single them out, the scary things with kids playing video games is the predators who go on.
[01:22:56]  And when you're not paying attention, you think the kid's just playing a video game.
[01:22:59]  You got some creepo whispering in their ear.
[01:23:01]  Oh yeah, I don't know what to think about that.
[01:23:03]  You're right.
[01:23:04]  Oh my gosh.
[01:23:05]  That's been a big thing.
[01:23:05]  So how long until we get pods?
[01:23:07]  Or is there a way to economically solve this?
[01:23:12]  Solve this silent depression that may or may not exist?
[01:23:15]  Pods are coming, man.
[01:23:17]  We got one of those VR treadmills.
[01:23:21]  Just like last week.
[01:23:21]  We haven't set it up yet.
[01:23:23]  You, it's a bowl you stand on, you put on special shoes, you strap yourself to a harness, which is mounted as part of the thing, and then you can run in any direction, strapped in, put the VR goggles on, take the controllers, and you can play Skyrim.
[01:23:38]  Imagine what's going to be like when we have VR multiplayer, MMO, like World of Warcraft VR, and you're in one of these things, and it's out of movies, but I already look at a lot of these MMORPGs, especially with how big World of Warcraft is, and it's constant dopamine.
[01:23:55]  It's addiction.
[01:23:56]  Oh my gosh.
[01:23:57]  It's funny when you see these, like, farming simulator.
[01:24:00]  We're talking about how much we want to do short films, sci-fi, dystopian stuff here, and we just, like, aren't getting around to it, so it'll probably never happen, but we can dream.
[01:24:09]  But one of the ideas we had is because we constantly talk about this, Is, uh, imagine a show where it's short film, this guy is talking with his friends about how they're gonna win the, uh, sim contest, this video game, and then you get scenes of someone being, like, last year's champion, $10,000 prize, first place, video game champions, and they're practicing, and the game they're playing is Farming Simulator.
[01:24:35]  Because it's a strategic game.
[01:24:37]  It's like Farmville?
[01:24:38]  Yeah, well, they have Farm Simulator 22 just came out.
[01:24:41]  Oh, interesting, okay.
[01:24:42]  Right, 22.
[01:24:43]  People love this game.
[01:24:45]  And they have Police Simulator.
[01:24:46]  But so, these guys are like, they're working on how they can maximize the game strategy so that the game is played over a few days, and then they have the highest revenue, and they have the lowest costs, and they have the maximum produce.
[01:25:01]  And then you see this big tournament where you have all these different teams, and there's TV screens playing the simulator.
[01:25:07]  And everyone's cheering and they're all like, you know, the Phoenixes out of Detroit have generated 2.7 million already on their sim and they are leading the pack.
[01:25:17]  And then you've got people coming in, sponsors being like, guys, you've got to pick it up.
[01:25:20]  Have you considered it?
[01:25:22]  There's another team that's losing.
[01:25:23]  And then the reveal is...
[01:25:25]  It shows an actual farm being operated by AI, which the video game players are actually controlling.
[01:25:31]  They're doing the labor for free, not realizing it.
[01:25:35]  So it's like CAPTCHA, right?
[01:25:37]  You're training in AI by doing that every time.
[01:25:40]  CAPTCHA has always been this.
[01:25:42]  So the first CAPTCHAs were the texts that were weird looking.
[01:25:45]  Yeah, I hate these things.
[01:25:46]  You know what that was?
[01:25:47]  It was they scanned a book.
[01:25:49]  And the text was weird looking and computers couldn't recognize it, but humans could.
[01:25:53]  So when it was like, in order to proceed, what they would do is one word would be intentionally obfuscated that the computer knew, and one would be from a book the computer couldn't understand.
[01:26:02]  And so you would then type in both words and teach the AI how to see letters that it couldn't understand.
[01:26:08]  So you were doing free labor.
[01:26:10]  Imagine the greater, you know, extension of this.
[01:26:13]  People playing video games like a simulator thinking that it's just a game, but they're actually running the farm and making profits for the owner of the farm.
[01:26:22]  I mean, imagine that.
[01:26:23]  You talk about there's going to be the owners and the non-owners.
[01:26:26]  Oh, yeah.
[01:26:27]  Imagine if someone created, you know, Burger Chain Sim.
[01:26:31]  Sure.
[01:26:31]  And they send out all these apps.
[01:26:33]  Or people download the apps and then there's like a wait list.
[01:26:36]  It's like, when do you get to play the game?
[01:26:37]  And someone finally gets like, your account has been activated.
[01:26:40]  And what really happened is a new chain opened up and someone has to manage it.
[01:26:45]  And so then these people playing the game are actually... What this relates back to is your message earlier of that purpose, which is that back to Vivek's message.
[01:26:53]  In playing those competitive games, you've now given folks a purpose.
[01:26:57]  Whereas maybe now, because of this silent oppression idea, it's this feeling of this lack of purpose.
[01:27:06]  I remember when I played World of Warcraft, I felt like I had a purpose, I had to be there for my clan, I had to heal!
[01:27:10]  Or in PVP, I had a job!
[01:27:13]  I think a component of it might be that a couple generations ago, your purpose was your family.
[01:27:19]  Yeah.
[01:27:20]  People were like, get married, have kids, and then you're there for your kids.

=== Chickens in Leachfield (03:10) ===

[01:27:23]  So everything you do is in service of having a family, raising those kids.
[01:27:26]  Now, these people who are upset don't have kids.
[01:27:30]  Not all of them, some of them do.
[01:27:30]  What do you think about that?
[01:27:31]  Declining birth rates, declining want for children?
[01:27:35]  Man, I don't know.
[01:27:36]  I think it's catastrophic.
[01:27:42]  I think cities are too dense.
[01:27:45]  For sure.
[01:27:46]  Right, this is the overpopulation question.
[01:27:48]  I say... There's no overpopulation here.
[01:27:52]  Right.
[01:27:53]  Lots of land in the country.
[01:27:56]  But maybe, I don't know.
[01:27:58]  The thing about, here's the way I put it.
[01:28:01]  We got chickens outside.
[01:28:02]  Yes, you do.
[01:28:03]  They wake you up at 4 a.m.
[01:28:04]  They're yelling.
[01:28:05]  That's what they do.
[01:28:06]  They like to scream.
[01:28:07]  But if you have chickens out in the field and they poop all over the place, it's really good.
[01:28:13]  Sure, it's fertilizer.
[01:28:14]  It fertilizes.
[01:28:15]  And then we have this big patch of dirt from the old chicken city.
[01:28:18]  And the plants grow like crazy.
[01:28:21]  That's why you wanted the septic leech field where you were growing your vegetables.
[01:28:25]  That sounds nasty.
[01:28:26]  No, you don't actually.
[01:28:27]  What?
[01:28:27]  Yeah, septic leech field.
[01:28:28]  Somebody told me the wrong thing.
[01:28:30]  Yeah, you don't want to grow on leech.
[01:28:32]  Probably, but like all the grass and everything grows well.
[01:28:36]  It does.
[01:28:37]  Oh, chemicals, but that's different.
[01:28:38]  So I'm thinking like cesspool days where there are no chemicals.
[01:28:40]  Right, the septic stuff these days... No, today is bad.
[01:28:44]  Like, the old school, just like, you know, poop and urine, and then it fertilizes as it percolates and spreads out.
[01:28:51]  But what happens if you take all of the chicken crap and put it in one spot?
[01:28:55]  Oh, well, that's too concentrated.
[01:28:57]  It's poisonous.
[01:28:58]  The rain won't wash it away.
[01:28:59]  Everything dies.
[01:29:00]  It smells horrible and people avoid it.
[01:29:02]  That's a city.
[01:29:04]  Ah, look at that.
[01:29:04]  How interesting.
[01:29:05]  That's why we can always test COVID in those sewers, I guess.
[01:29:08]  I mean, yes, it's a hyper concentration of waste that can't be properly dissipated into the environment.
[01:29:15]  So if people move away from these cities, then you can manage it.
[01:29:19]  But then there's so much like pooping on urban sprawl.
[01:29:23]  Like, oh, we don't want urban sprawl!
[01:29:25]  It takes away the character of a city and a downtown.
[01:29:27]  But isn't to some extent kind of what people need is their own house and their yard and there's your school and your fire department, your police station.
[01:29:36]  We should dissuade people from moving to cities.
[01:29:39]  I totally agree.
[01:29:40]  Remote work is good.
[01:29:41]  Yeah, sure.
[01:29:42]  If you took all the people from the cities and spread them out over like an acre or so, or maybe, you might need a couple acres, two or three.
[01:29:50]  They could have their own septic system in Leachfield.
[01:29:52]  Interesting.
[01:29:53]  Then you've solved a lot of the human waste problem.
[01:29:56]  Like in Chicago, they dumped the sewage into the lake.
[01:29:58]  Oh, wow.
[01:29:59]  Then people swim in the water and get sick.
[01:30:00]  Yeah, sure.
[01:30:00]  Because what are they gonna do with it?
[01:30:01]  It's so concentrated, like you said.
[01:30:02]  Oh, it's insane if you think about it.
[01:30:04]  It's nasty.
[01:30:05]  10 million people in the metro, you got 2 million, 2.5 or whatever in the city.
[01:30:08]  Go to the beach and look at all those buildings.
[01:30:10]  You have to ask yourself, where does that poo go?
[01:30:13]  That's nasty.
[01:30:14]  That is interesting, the concentration.
[01:30:15]  I mean, and the way you could also solve that is better commuting because, you know, highways and traffic are just a disaster.

=== Lane Swerve Crisis (04:28) ===

[01:30:21]  I really like the Elon tunnels because of that.
[01:30:23]  Right.
[01:30:23]  You know, because then you could have You know, master plan communities outside of cities that are actually affordable and functional for you to have a family in at an affordable price.
[01:30:32]  And if you need to go into a city to commute, you could do so in the tunnel.
[01:30:35]  Those tunnels are scary, though.
[01:30:36]  Yeah, well, that's the other thing is, I mean, we're so unfamiliar with tunnels, right?
[01:30:40]  You know, what's going to happen?
[01:30:41]  Yeah, I watched that video of the tunnel that it's in L.A., right?
[01:30:46]  Uh, the first test for the boring tunnel?
[01:30:47]  Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[01:30:49]  Super single lane, one direction only?
[01:30:51]  Right, yes, yes.
[01:30:52]  It's just a capsule, man.
[01:30:53]  And what if you get, yeah, like what if you get jammed in there and you're just like... What do you mean?
[01:30:58]  Full self-driving never has problems.
[01:30:59]  I don't want to get jammed in there.
[01:31:00]  That sounds scary.
[01:31:01]  Do you have a Tesla?
[01:31:02]  Yeah.
[01:31:03]  Okay, which one do you have?
[01:31:04]  Uh, I have a Model S and a 3.
[01:31:06]  Would you get the Cybertruck?
[01:31:08]  Yes!
[01:31:08]  Do you like Elon?
[01:31:09]  Uh, yeah.
[01:31:10]  Okay.
[01:31:11]  Uh, do you like Elon?
[01:31:12]  Oh, yeah.
[01:31:12]  Yeah.
[01:31:13]  He's cool, dude.
[01:31:13]  Uh, nobody's perfect.
[01:31:15]  It's always weird when you're like, wow, Elon's doing some great stuff.
[01:31:17]  And then someone's like, yeah, well, look at the bad thing.
[01:31:19]  And I'm like, that's true.
[01:31:19]  He did a bad thing.
[01:31:20]  Sure.
[01:31:20]  There you go.
[01:31:21]  Well, everybody's got something that they've done wrong.
[01:31:23]  Nobody's an angel.
[01:31:24]  I'm perfect.
[01:31:25]  Yeah.
[01:31:25]  We have, uh, I don't, I, I love and hate the full self-driving.
[01:31:29]  Okay.
[01:31:29]  It's nearly killed me.
[01:31:30]  Oh, no.
[01:31:31]  Yeah.
[01:31:32]  How long ago?
[01:31:33]  It's been it's been a while since we've actually had any issues with it.
[01:31:36]  OK, so it's gotten better is what you're saying?
[01:31:38]  It's absolutely gotten better.
[01:31:39]  But we've had some scary moments.
[01:31:41]  It tried to swerve me into oncoming traffic once.
[01:31:43]  Is this on like the one way roads?
[01:31:45]  So right.
[01:31:46]  Double yellow line.
[01:31:47]  Yes.
[01:31:48]  And it tried to jump into the other side.
[01:31:49]  Now I'm holding the wheel.
[01:31:51]  I don't do that stupid.
[01:31:52]  So many dumb people that will put the they put weights.
[01:31:54]  You gotta be very careful.
[01:31:55]  I'm not doing that.
[01:31:56]  It's crazy.
[01:31:57]  We had one where.
[01:32:00]  I would say maybe four or five times it slammed its brakes on full stop in the middle of the highway going 65 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour.
[01:32:07]  And that's terrifying.
[01:32:09]  Yeah, it is.
[01:32:10]  One time what happened was two circumstances.
[01:32:15]  For a while, I think they fixed this.
[01:32:18]  So this is funny.
[01:32:19]  The street light had signs.
[01:32:21]  It would think were street lights and it would start to break, but it would break normally.
[01:32:26]  And that's kind of funny.
[01:32:27]  But then we had a street light, a head sign with yellow flashing lights.
[01:32:32]  And as soon as we'd come up the hill and see it, it would slam the brakes on.
[01:32:35]  Oh, wow.
[01:32:36]  But I'm aware of it, so I tap the brakes.
[01:32:38]  Then there was one, probably the scariest, outside of trying to swerve into the oncoming traffic.
[01:32:42]  Yeah, yeah, that's peak scary.
[01:32:44]  And so I'm like, I have my arms firm to not let it, I'll let it go to the right.
[01:32:49]  But it's only happened a handful of times.
[01:32:51]  There's like an eight lane highway somewhere over here.
[01:32:55]  Four going one way, four going the other.
[01:32:57]  And there is a turn median in the middle for U-turns.
[01:32:59]  Okay.
[01:33:00]  And for... Cops only or for everyone?
[01:33:02]  Everyone.
[01:33:02]  Okay.
[01:33:03]  So if you're trying... It's a crazy, it's a crazy road.
[01:33:06]  It might be three on each side, I don't know about four.
[01:33:08]  But if you're trying to come out of the neighborhood and cross and then turn left... Oof.
[01:33:13]  It's kind of nuts.
[01:33:14]  So what you do is you pull out, you stop in the median.
[01:33:16]  Of course.
[01:33:16]  A truck did that.
[01:33:18]  We were, we had, there was the left lane and we were in the middle lane.
[01:33:22]  Oh, I know.
[01:33:23]  And as soon as the Tesla on the screen saw it, it slammed the brakes on full stop.
[01:33:28]  And we're like, we lunged forward like, and then I, you gotta tap the gas to make it stop.
[01:33:32]  Exactly.
[01:33:33]  I'm like, we are lucky we didn't get rear-ended.
[01:33:36]  Sure, oh yeah.
[01:33:37]  But you know what it does now is a prompt pops up and says, tell us what happened.
[01:33:43]  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:33:44]  You press the button and you're like.
[01:33:45]  Explain it.
[01:33:47]  I'm just like, hey Elon, how's it going?
[01:33:49]  Love the car, it's been great.
[01:33:50]  It just tried to drive into oncoming traffic again.
[01:33:52]  You know, we took control, it's okay.
[01:33:54]  How long ago was the last time you've had this issue?
[01:33:56]  Yeah, it's been like six months.
[01:33:57]  Okay.
[01:33:58]  Yeah, so.
[01:33:58]  So you think the latest updates are helping?
[01:34:00]  I guess.
[01:34:01]  Okay.
[01:34:01]  I haven't had any issues.
[01:34:02]  It's been, it's been pretty good.
[01:34:03]  Do you actually drive much though?
[01:34:05]  Uh, I mean, well, yeah, we're in, we're in, uh, you know, we're in the tri-state West Virginia area.
[01:34:09]  It's a lot of driving.
[01:34:10]  Okay.
[01:34:10]  Okay.
[01:34:11]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:34:11]  Okay.
[01:34:12]  But, uh, let's clarify.
[01:34:14]  Do I drive much in, am I often in a car driving to places?
[01:34:17]  The answer is yes.
[01:34:18]  Am I the one behind the wheel often?
[01:34:21]  No.
[01:34:21]  Yeah.
[01:34:21]  Okay.
[01:34:22]  Yeah.
[01:34:22]  So I'm, I'm usually the passenger seat, you know, doing something.
[01:34:25]  Yeah.
[01:34:25]  That makes sense.
[01:34:26]  But yeah, it is curious to see the automation of everything and ultimately where it leads us, especially politically.

=== California's Roller Coaster Ride (09:48) ===

[01:34:33]  You mentioned that wealth inequality is going to get a lot worse.
[01:34:36]  Way worse.
[01:34:37]  My view is that leads to political instability.
[01:34:39]  100%.
[01:34:40]  But I'm curious, if you think it's going to get worse, what do you think the next year looks like or what happens?
[01:34:47]  I think that California might be one of the first places to actually break if they keep going down this path.
[01:34:53]  I find myself generally to be pretty moderate and not super conspiratorial, but I think that if there were one place to have a revolution, it would be California.
[01:35:03]  Yeah, and it almost needs one.
[01:35:05]  Okay, so but but not yet almost it like no no no it needs it But it's not gonna happen until that San Francisco problem spreads everywhere when that happens everywhere in California.
[01:35:17]  It's revolution I mean, Sacramento's got it pretty bad, too.
[01:35:20]  But yes, I mean, L.A., Santa Monica, San Francisco, San Diego's better, right?
[01:35:25]  But it's still not ubiquitous enough.
[01:35:28]  But I think that's where you get your first break is California.
[01:35:31]  And I don't think America is ready for a California governor becoming president.
[01:35:38]  But it would be very interesting to see how a Newsom versus Biden would go.
[01:35:42]  That would be interesting.
[01:35:43]  Newsom wins.
[01:35:44]  I know.
[01:35:44]  I actually think that could happen.
[01:35:48]  There is one thing that I think could stop Newsom from winning, and it's that if, during the bait, his fake human mask falls off and reveals the lizard man behind it.
[01:35:57]  Yeah, the robot's exposed.
[01:35:58]  Right, right.
[01:35:59]  So short of that happening, yes, yes.
[01:36:02]  Yeah, but as otherwise, as far as the next year, yeah, it's, you know, I think the best thing for an individual listening, your audience, maybe they might not know me, is I think to myself, do what you can over this next year, two years, to create as much value in your life as possible, because you need to get on the roller coaster.
[01:36:26]  Not going to say it's going to be easy, it's not for everybody, but if you're not on the roller coaster, you're going to get left behind.
[01:36:31]  And so figure out, how can I get a license?
[01:36:33]  How can I get a better education?
[01:36:36]  If it's not building your resume, stop doing it.
[01:36:40]  If we get to that point, if wealth inequality expands, absolutely with AI, no question.
[01:36:47]  For example, somebody opens a new chain restaurant, a fast food restaurant, and they have only 7 employees instead of the typical 40.
[01:36:55]  Now you've got people with no jobs, that person who owns it is making more money.
[01:36:58]  That's effectively transferring money from the poor straight into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy at a faster rate.
[01:37:03]  I mean, theoretically, prices of the food should come down, but yes, there'll be more profit, too.
[01:37:08]  I don't think the prices will come down.
[01:37:09]  Yeah, yeah, you're probably right.
[01:37:10]  They're gonna be looking at it like, everybody knows a burger's a buck.
[01:37:14]  That's true.
[01:37:14]  I've cut my costs, the burger stays a buck.
[01:37:16]  I just make more money.
[01:37:17]  Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, yeah, you're right.
[01:37:19]  And that's the other thing, too, is like, I think people are looking for inflation to come down.
[01:37:23]  It's not gonna come down.
[01:37:24]  People are like, oh, you know, inflation, like, how is inflation going to get better?
[01:37:27]  The prices are so expensive, they're supposed to come down.
[01:37:29]  No, that's actually the job of the Fed is to make sure we keep having inflation.
[01:37:33]  The job of the Fed is to make sure we stay at 2%.
[01:37:36]  If they wanted prices to come down, the job would be to go negative.
[01:37:39]  Right.
[01:37:40]  So then I wonder if there's a scenario in the next year or two where the have-nots go to war with the haves.
[01:37:47]  Maybe not in a year, but if we get to this point where you have an owner class.
[01:37:50]  It's depressing.
[01:37:50]  That's on the roller coaster.
[01:37:51]  Yes.
[01:37:52]  And the people who missed the, you know, they were either waiting in line for the roller coaster and they didn't make the cut.
[01:37:58]  Yeah.
[01:37:58]  Yeah.
[01:37:59]  Those people aren't going to just say, I guess I lose.
[01:38:01]  They're going to say, nah, I'll figure out another way to win.
[01:38:03]  And that's going to be.
[01:38:04]  Revolution.
[01:38:04]  Yeah.
[01:38:05]  That's almost like Vivek style.
[01:38:07]  Uh, yeah.
[01:38:08]  Interesting.
[01:38:08]  I agree with you.
[01:38:09]  Uh, or pod or gimme pod.
[01:38:13]  Pod-living?
[01:38:14]  You will own nothing, you'll be happy?
[01:38:16]  Well, we're trending in that direction.
[01:38:18]  I don't know when it'll happen, yeah, that's true.
[01:38:21]  I don't know when, but I think we're slowly going to come more and more into that.
[01:38:25]  There's so much hope.
[01:38:27]  For example, I'll put it this way.
[01:38:28]  If somebody wanted to start a YouTube channel, somebody who's watching your videos right now or the live or however, they wanted to start a YouTube channel.
[01:38:34]  If you want to get a lot of views right now, just tell everybody the market's going to crash.
[01:38:38]  Tell everybody there's going to be this great, glorious reset, and you're going to have your chance to buy that gorgeous $100,000 four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath with a pool.
[01:38:47]  And you're going to be okay.
[01:38:48]  And you're going to get rich in the stock market.
[01:38:50]  But it's all going to happen after this giant crash and after all the suits go to hell.
[01:38:55]  That is how to get a lot of views right now, because it's echoing the sentiment.
[01:39:00]  of really Richmond, North Virginia, the political corruption, all of that.
[01:39:03]  The question is, is that actually going to drive meaningful change?
[01:39:08]  How many of these anti Richmond North of Richmond people do you think would join the Richmond North of Richmond the moment they got the opportunity?
[01:39:19]  They would in a heartbeat.
[01:39:21]  Like doing about most people or Every single person would.
[01:39:23]  Every single person would?
[01:39:25]  100%.
[01:39:25]  Man, that's sad to think, though.
[01:39:27]  Well, yes.
[01:39:28]  I guess there are two ways to look at it.
[01:39:32]  There's the way to look at it of all the politicians are corrupt, all the rich corporatists are corrupt.
[01:39:41]  Uh, and then there's the, well, if you started a startup and it became a billion dollar company, now you're a rich corporatist.
[01:39:49]  Did you get there on bad intentions?
[01:39:52]  Maybe not.
[01:39:52]  Maybe you actually had a good product and only fans capital.
[01:39:55]  Right.
[01:39:55]  Capital.
[01:39:56]  I mean, he just made like 300, $400 million in last year, cashed out and options or whatever.
[01:40:00]  Uh, that guy's like killing it.
[01:40:02]  But anyway, so is he a bad person because now he has hundreds of millions of dollars and he's way richer than the next, you know, uh, you know, 10,000 people next to him.
[01:40:12]  He's the Alfred Nobel of our generation.
[01:40:14]  I don't know that reference, which is probably bad.
[01:40:17]  Nobel, he made, I think, dynamite?
[01:40:19]  TNT or something?
[01:40:20]  Oh, interesting.
[01:40:21]  And his vision for it was to help people who are in the mines.
[01:40:24]  Yeah, sure.
[01:40:25]  Exploration.
[01:40:26]  You plant the explosives, you leave, you blow them up, nobody gets crushed or anything.
[01:40:31]  Exactly.
[01:40:32]  His obituary was published early by accident and they called him the Merchant of Death.
[01:40:36]  He got so shocked by that he created the Nobel Prize so that he would be remembered for something different.
[01:40:43]  Oh, that's brilliant.
[01:40:44]  The OnlyFans guy tried to stop the pornography on the platform.
[01:40:50]  And no, they weren't having it.
[01:40:52]  The users, I guess the investors.
[01:40:54]  And so now you're the Mecca of it.
[01:40:57]  Now you are the preeminent digital prostitution ring.
[01:41:00]  Yes.
[01:41:00]  And this guy is going to be like, we just wanted to make it so that musicians could be with their fans and their fans could help support them.
[01:41:07]  And now you are the King Daddy Pimp.
[01:41:10]  Well, I think it goes back to the, what is it?
[01:41:14]  Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
[01:41:16]  Well, so the challenge there is, I'd be willing to bet that if you went to the dude who founded OnlyFans and you tried to shame him over being a porn ring, he would absolutely defend it.
[01:41:29]  Of course!
[01:41:30]  He's gonna say all this stuff like, people have a right to purchase, I'm libertarian.
[01:41:34]  But deep down inside, he's just like, I have to maintain Because I feel like if you watch your creation become this monster you try to stop, you're honestly gonna, you know, deep inside be like, ugh, here's the question.
[01:41:47]  Is he a bad guy for allowing it to happen?
[01:41:50]  If he did a full stop and said, I will never allow this to take place, this is destructive to our culture, to our economy, we can't have it, they'd just remove him.
[01:42:00]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:42:01]  And so does he just say, then cash me out, I'm done.
[01:42:04]  And then do we get mad at him for having done it?
[01:42:05]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:42:07]  Well, yeah, ultimately, then the question is, so what's his job as a CEO?
[01:42:10]  It's to make money for shareholders and investors.
[01:42:12]  Yeah.
[01:42:12]  And that answer is, you lean into that kind of stuff.
[01:42:15]  So then the question is, okay, what's the job of a politician?
[01:42:19]  Well, it's to get reelected.
[01:42:20]  Well, how are you going to get reelected?
[01:42:22]  Are you going to get reelected by, you know, going out and helping people who aren't donating to your campaign or the people who are donating millions of dollars to your campaign because that's how you stay in your job?
[01:42:33]  So of course, you know, it's when we go to the nitty gritty of it, every corporatist is like, well, I got I need more earnings for my company.
[01:42:41]  So we got to keep prices high and lower expenses, which means laying people off.
[01:42:45]  You know, now we're talking about instead of silent quitting, we're talking about silent layoffs, which is where, you know, if Amazon doesn't want to fire you because of the PR of that, they assign you to a department that you don't want to work in and then you quit.
[01:42:57]  And then they don't replace you, right?
[01:42:59]  So now that the executives are doing what's good for the shareholder, which is more earnings, but then that's bad for the individuals because they're getting laid off.
[01:43:06]  But everybody would probably do that in that situation.
[01:43:08]  Yep.
[01:43:09]  That's the thing, you know, people complain about the CEO.
[01:43:12]  They say, insert company, insert CEO.
[01:43:14]  And I'm like, you remove that CEO, they're replaced in two seconds.
[01:43:16]  Of course.
[01:43:17]  And nobody thinks they're the villain.
[01:43:18]  Everyone thinks they're doing the right thing.
[01:43:20]  I remember watching this video where anti-oil protesters went to a CEO's home and he came out and sat down with them and said, tell me what we should do.
[01:43:31]  And then they had a conversation and he said, I agree with everything you've said.
[01:43:35]  And they were like, well, then why are you doing it?
[01:43:36]  And he was like, okay, well, I would like to do everything you said, but...
[01:43:41]  Benny starts pointing out like, how many people would die if we reduce oil production in this city?
[01:43:45]  How much energy loss would result in how much death?
[01:43:48]  And it was just constantly like, we want to save the world.
[01:43:52]  If we reduce oil production, 40,000 people will die in a month.
[01:43:55]  Oh, we're screwed.
[01:43:56]  It's just, it's really interesting because people don't make that direct correlation.
[01:44:00]  Of course.
[01:44:01]  That, you know, like Greta Thunberg says, we want to shut down all fossil fuels by 2023 or whatever.

=== California's Energy Crisis (14:51) ===

[01:44:06]  Yeah, okay, I think six million die in the first month or something like that.
[01:44:10]  Uh, loss of power, air conditioning.
[01:44:13]  And so there's a question of we can't let people die.
[01:44:16]  So we have to keep doing this.
[01:44:17]  Look at California as an example in this.
[01:44:20]  When I ran for governor, I ran on more fracking, more oil.
[01:44:27]  I know that pissed people off, right?
[01:44:28]  Of course it did.
[01:44:31]  Uh, so, but here's why.
[01:44:34]  In California, we have these rolling blackouts every summer.
[01:44:40]  The electricity grid isn't stable.
[01:44:42]  Part of the reason for that is we don't have enough natural gas peaker plants that are capable enough for the demands we have now.
[01:44:48]  Okay, so you look at the natural gas peaker plants and you say, okay, well, why don't you make your systems better?
[01:44:53]  And they say, we would love to.
[01:44:55]  In fact, we're running 1970s technology and we'd love to have more efficient technology that could actually lower emissions.
[01:45:03]  So we go to the state of California and go, can we please get a permit to have a more efficient facility?
[01:45:08]  The state of California says, is it 100% green?
[01:45:12]  No, but it's more green.
[01:45:14]  Nope, it's gotta be 100% green.
[01:45:16]  So you're left with the old crap and not the efficient crap.
[01:45:19]  So what you should have is the most efficient fossil fuel burning stuff that you can have now while trying to transition To, yes, a more sustainable future, whether that's nuclear or whatever.
[01:45:33]  And then the activists celebrate their victory.
[01:45:35]  Yes.
[01:45:35]  They come out and they- We stopped the peaker plant from expanding!
[01:45:38]  Great, enjoy your blackouts.
[01:45:39]  Enjoy your wildfires.
[01:45:42]  Yep.
[01:45:44]  You know, this is the harsh reality of, I suppose, how our system works.
[01:45:51]  There are- I've worked at these environmental nonprofits.
[01:45:54]  I don't think they actually care about anything.
[01:45:56]  Tell me more.
[01:45:57]  Oh, I mean, come on.
[01:45:58]  You know, the starting of Greenpeace was, save the whales, these nuclear tests are bad.
[01:46:03]  You know, right?
[01:46:04]  And so, a very noble cause.
[01:46:07]  Taking a boat, going to where they're going to blow up a nuclear bomb, and sitting there.
[01:46:11]  Right, the ocean test, ocean-based nuclear test, exactly, yes.
[01:46:14]  And then it just turns into, okay, how do we convince more people to give us more money?
[01:46:20]  And now they oppose nuclear power plants.
[01:46:21]  Sure.
[01:46:22]  It's like, okay, nuclear power plants is green.
[01:46:25]  Nuclear energy is carbon neutral.
[01:46:27]  Exactly.
[01:46:28]  And it's got, I think it's the best energy return on energy invested.
[01:46:32]  100%.
[01:46:33]  So why don't we have more of these?
[01:46:35]  Well, now the complaint is, where do you store it?
[01:46:37]  And countries in Europe have figured this out.
[01:46:38]  You just go, you know, 10 miles down into the... The waste proxy, you mean?
[01:46:42]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:46:43]  So you just go 10 miles down and you store it in a nuclear waste, like, facility, basically, that's just casing concrete and it's bought.
[01:46:49]  And the reality is, the amount of nuclear waste, I believe, the amount of nuclear waste that you would...
[01:46:56]  create your entire lifetime would fit inside this pen.
[01:47:00]  Well, per human.
[01:47:01]  But I do think the modern nuclear generation, the latest generation of nuclear tech is like 99.9% recycled materials.
[01:47:09]  Oh, yeah.
[01:47:10]  And then thorium salt reactors are very promising.
[01:47:12]  Oh, wow.
[01:47:13]  Okay.
[01:47:13]  But it's just maybe, this is why a lot of people don't believe in climate change.
[01:47:18]  Oh, of course.
[01:47:19]  I should clarify, the climate change agenda.
[01:47:21]  Well, I think that's what this this the nonprofitism what you mentioned is you need basically more donations.
[01:47:27]  You need you need a something to fight against because if you can't if you don't have anything to fight against you don't get donations because you don't get attention.
[01:47:33]  Yeah.
[01:47:34]  So, the attention gets you donations.
[01:47:36]  Non-profits are funny because they are absolutely for profit.
[01:47:40]  Because think about it, non-profits are just paying payrolls to everyone who's working there.
[01:47:45]  The CEOs of some of the non-profits are making half a million bucks a year.
[01:47:48]  More than that.
[01:47:48]  Or more.
[01:47:49]  Millions.
[01:47:49]  They're making plenty of money.
[01:47:51]  The corporation is deemed non-profit because you just keep reinvesting.
[01:47:55]  But who cares?
[01:47:56]  Everybody can start a non-profit.
[01:47:58]  And then pay yourself a fat salary.
[01:47:59]  One of the clever moves that a lot of these nonprofits do is you create a 501c3 and a 501c4.
[01:48:04]  So for those that aren't familiar, one is all the revenue streams are disclosed and it's tax deductible.
[01:48:12]  One, it is not tax deductible and revenue streams are not disclosed.
[01:48:15]  And so what they'll do is they will take the money into the 501c3 Crap loads of money.
[01:48:23]  Let's call the 501c3, let's call it the Foundation for Accepting Greatness into Our Hearts Foundation.
[01:48:32]  Then, you create a 501c4 called Fight for Trees.
[01:48:39]  You go out, you make your phone calls, and you say, I'm with Fight for Trees, and we would like donations from you.
[01:48:46]  But when they fill out the form, the donation goes to whatever I said the first one is.
[01:48:49]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[01:48:51]  What they can do then is, or it might be the other way around too.
[01:48:54]  However, yeah.
[01:48:55]  Depending on, they might, I think a lot of them will have the money go to the 501c4 where they can obfuscate their revenue.
[01:49:00]  Sure.
[01:49:01]  And what they'll say is, because we engage in politics and lobbying, it's not gonna be tax deductible.
[01:49:07]  So, and they go, oh, okay, right, right.
[01:49:09]  But if you want us to fight for this, then it's worth making the donation.
[01:49:13]  Yeah.
[01:49:14]  The 501c4, or like whatever their front organization, their shadow organization is, will make, let's say $100 million.
[01:49:21]  It will then donate to the front-facing organization $5 million.
[01:49:27]  Then when it comes to their fundraising, they'll say, we only brought in $5 million last year, and then get away with it.
[01:49:34]  Man, I used to work for these nonprofits and I was just like, these people are evil.
[01:49:38]  A lot of it is just a game.
[01:49:39]  And I think that's it's an interesting message that Vivek, for example, is hitting on.
[01:49:43]  It's it's you know, the climate change agenda is killing more people than climate change.
[01:49:48]  I think it's a little extreme what he's saying, because I don't know how the agenda is killing people.
[01:49:51]  But from a sentiment point of view, the sentiment is killing me on the inside, because it's just like I think he's right.
[01:49:58]  The way it's set up.
[01:49:59]  I think he's right, and you gotta look at it.
[01:50:00]  But what does he mean with killing people?
[01:50:02]  So, economically?
[01:50:03]  They're stealing from people, I think is the better answer.
[01:50:06]  So the question is, if the economy declines by X percent, what is the correlated amount of death from economic downturn?
[01:50:13]  Ah, interesting.
[01:50:14]  Okay, okay.
[01:50:15]  Because of the inflation that you create by supporting these projects that aren't fruitful.
[01:50:18]  And therefore now you go into a recession, potentially, and that leads to death because you've lost your job, you turn homeless, you get afflicted with drugs, and you die.
[01:50:25]  Okay, interesting.
[01:50:26]  Wow.
[01:50:26]  Various things like that.
[01:50:27]  Or, you know, someone gets sick and they can't afford their medicine, someone is diabetic and they can't pay.
[01:50:32]  So it's a long circuitous path.
[01:50:34]  Yes.
[01:50:34]  But if the issue is how many people die from discernible extreme weather events or extreme weather, I'll say this, I don't know if he's correct, but what he's saying makes sense.
[01:50:45]  die from the economic ramifications.
[01:50:47]  I think I'll say this.
[01:50:49]  I don't know if he's correct, but what he's saying makes sense.
[01:50:52]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:50:53]  It's intuitive in the lines.
[01:50:54]  That's that's a good point.
[01:50:55]  It's it's it is incredible.
[01:50:57]  There's a lot of I think there's a lot behind the scenes that would make a lot of folks go, oh my gosh, what is actually going on here?
[01:51:04]  And it's sad, but from a practical point of view, I think there's little from an individual point of view we're going to do.
[01:51:10]  I think from an individual point of view, everybody's goal needs to be, what can I do to get to, to not be left behind?
[01:51:17]  I think people have to reject the assumptions.
[01:51:23]  You know, and a lot of what I get out of our conversation so far is, especially with the way these companies are just operating, politicians won't change because they want to get re-elected.
[01:51:30]  So that means the... What were the plants called that you were talking about?
[01:51:34]  Oh, the peaker plants.
[01:51:37]  They're not going to get built, though they need to be, because the politicians want an environmental victory.
[01:51:41]  It would actually cause more environmental problems.
[01:51:43]  And the only way anything changes is if a politician actually comes out and says, guys, it's not good that we're not doing this.
[01:51:48]  These are more efficient.
[01:51:50]  We have to get from point A to point B, or we have to get from A to C, and that means stopping at B. And there's no other option.
[01:51:55]  People have to just say it and break the system and be like, I'm not going to play that game.
[01:51:59]  But as soon as you say that, the billions of dollars from those climate non-profits go into ads going, ALL THEY WANT IS OIL!
[01:52:06]  Don't vote for that person!
[01:52:07]  Look what oil causes!
[01:52:08]  Smokestack death!
[01:52:10]  But you have to just do it.
[01:52:12]  Because then eventually there's no options and everyone's just saying, I don't care what the ads are saying.
[01:52:16]  Like, we're telling you this is the case.
[01:52:17]  Like, we want to improve things.
[01:52:19]  Truth is really missing a lot in our discourse.
[01:52:22]  And I think that's why I strongly believe that 99% of Americans, whether they're Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Authoritarian, whatever, they can sit together and probably agree on 99% of things.
[01:52:32]  And I know it sounds extreme, but I really believe most people can sit down at a bar, have a realistic conversation, and agree on a lot of priorities that we can focus on.
[01:52:43]  Here's my view of the culture war.
[01:52:45]  In my experience, which I'm sure we'll get a lot of backlash from leftists and liberals.
[01:52:50]  How do you deal with all that backlash?
[01:52:51]  I don't know, ignore it.
[01:52:53]  Okay.
[01:52:53]  I go to a bar.
[01:52:54]  Okay, okay.
[01:52:55]  And I sit down with a regular person.
[01:52:57]  Okay.
[01:52:57]  And they'll say, I hate Donald Trump.
[01:52:58]  And I'll be like, fair point, you're allowed to, you know, whatever.
[01:53:00]  Yeah.
[01:53:01]  And we'll talk and I'll say like, yo, I don't like Joe Biden.
[01:53:04]  And they'll be like, why?
[01:53:04]  And I'll say, here are the legitimate reasons.
[01:53:06]  Like, oh, okay.
[01:53:07]  You ask the average person, I'm not talking about these bits where people go to Times Square and find stupid people and ask them.
[01:53:11]  Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah.
[01:53:12]  You look at the political class of commentators and what will you find?
[01:53:15]  In the anti-establishment wing, the majority is an honest conversation with some grifters.
[01:53:17]  And it's the most dramatic stuff, of course.
[01:53:19]  But that's YouTube.
[01:53:20]  You look at the political class of commentators.
[01:53:24]  And what will you find?
[01:53:25]  In the anti-establishment wing, the majority is an honest conversation with some grifters.
[01:53:30]  The other side is majority grifters and sometimes some honest conversation.
[01:53:34]  Okay, wow.
[01:53:35]  So that makes things untenable, I guess, and makes me feel like we're headed towards an inevitable collision.
[01:53:45]  because it's almost like it's yin yang.
[01:53:49]  Oh yeah.
[01:53:50]  We're looking into the face of what I would describe as the banality of evil and abject evil.
[01:53:56]  Example, Joe Biden and Burisma.
[01:53:58]  Okay.
[01:53:58]  Oh yeah, Hunter.
[01:53:59]  Joe Biden's on camera saying, if you don't fire the prosecutor, you're not getting the money.
[01:54:03]  Yes.
[01:54:04]  And I will speak to people who are liberal or leftists and say, that never happened.
[01:54:08]  And I'm like, I'm just going to get the video for you and play it for you and then you can give me your opinion on it.
[01:54:12]  It is a pretty clear implication, yeah.
[01:54:14]  But you look at some of these prominent personalities and they'll either repeatedly deny its existence, say it never happened, knowingly lying, Or, and that's the abject evil, the banality of evil in they just believe MSNBC and they won't actually Google search it.
[01:54:28]  Oh, interesting.
[01:54:29]  This has been my experience consistently since the culture war became, you know, front facing and dominant mainstream.
[01:54:36]  I sit down with Trump supporters.
[01:54:38]  I was, I sat down in San Francisco in like 2016 or whatever with Trump supporters for this big dinner and they were like, you know, come, come, come, come, you know, we know that you're like a lefty guy, you're like Bernie, but you know, we want to talk.
[01:54:49]  And I'm like, oh, I'm always interested to talk.
[01:54:51]  And they started laughing about the idea of systemic racism.
[01:54:55]  And then they were like, that's a lie.
[01:54:57]  And I was like, I was like, no, I think it's real.
[01:54:59]  I just think it depends on who you're talking to and how it's being defined.
[01:55:02]  And you got to make sure you got a clear understanding of what the, what the phrase represents.
[01:55:05]  And so I explained to them basically how Ferguson happened.
[01:55:12]  The long story short is it was rooted in racial covenants, barring black people from moving to certain areas.
[01:55:18]  Redlining and yeah.
[01:55:19]  Yeah, like redlining was in Chicago, they said this area, the real estate companies were like, this area is specifically where we're gonna sell to black people.
[01:55:26]  With Ferguson, you had Pruitt-Igoe, you had government housing, poverty, the welfare stuff didn't work.
[01:55:33]  And so white people moved out of the cities where there was crime and then created small suburbs.
[01:55:39]  St.
[01:55:39]  Louis is now comprised of like 90 some odd suburbs.
[01:55:41]  It's not a big city, it's actually a whole bunch of small cities.
[01:55:45]  Then they passed a covenant saying nobody can live here anymore.
[01:55:48]  Like that's it.
[01:55:48]  No one's allowed to move in.
[01:55:49]  Yeah.
[01:55:50]  So what ends up happening is you have...
[01:55:54]  Lower income, a disproportionate amount of lower income people who are black for historical reasons.
[01:56:00]  And when they can't, example, their taillight goes out and they don't know.
[01:56:05]  They're driving from their home to their place of work 10 miles away and they drive through four different cities.
[01:56:10]  Yeah, and you get pulled over.
[01:56:11]  Pulled over four times.
[01:56:12]  Yeah.
[01:56:13]  And so what I said to these guys is, I am not saying any one of those cops are racist.
[01:56:17]  Those cops don't think they're racist.
[01:56:18]  Those cops didn't pull that guy over for being black.
[01:56:20]  But there is a system in place that began in the pre-civil rights era that created a disproportional racial impact.
[01:56:27]  The Trump supporter guys go, oh... Oh, interesting.
[01:56:31]  And they're like, I see what you're saying, but I would disagree with the phrasing because it makes it seem like they're... I'm like, totally understand.
[01:56:35]  Totally understand.
[01:56:36]  Yeah, I guess when people hear systemic, maybe they're not thinking of system, because really what you've described is exactly true.
[01:56:44]  It's called the concentration of poverty.
[01:56:46]  So when you are in poverty, you are twice as likely to either commit or be a victim of crime, but you are also twice as likely to be a minority, specifically black or Hispanic in some cases.
[01:57:01]  You know, so I tell these guys, I'm like, I don't think Trump supporters are racist.
[01:57:05]  I don't think cops are racist.
[01:57:06]  I think there are racists.
[01:57:07]  I think there are racist Trump supporters.
[01:57:09]  Absolutely.
[01:57:09]  But if you have this system that was built a long time ago and based on racial tension, that results in people who have less generational wealth, which disproportionately tend to be black, you will end up with more black people experiencing... What happens is they get pulled over four times.
[01:57:24]  Then when they can't pay that bill, they get arrested for it.
[01:57:27]  But here's the worst part.
[01:57:28]  You get a $50 ticket for a busted taillight, you don't pay.
[01:57:29]  Or your taillight went out and you didn't know.
[01:57:30]  on a suspended license, you knew about it, you go to jail.
[01:57:32]  But here's the worst part.
[01:57:33]  You get a $50 ticket for a busted taillight.
[01:57:36]  You don't pay.
[01:57:37]  Or your taillight went out and you didn't know.
[01:57:38]  You don't pay it because you're like, I got to pay rent, food.
[01:57:42]  It's poverty.
[01:57:43]  Then the police show up and say, because you didn't pay a moving violation, you're getting two days in jail.
[01:57:49]  It's a slap on the wrist.
[01:57:50]  Then you lose your job.
[01:57:51]  But when you get out on Monday, the next city's police department is waiting for you because you owe them 50 bucks you didn't pay.
[01:57:59]  Because of the fractured system of how there's so many different suburbs and police jurisdictions, one violation turns into four.
[01:58:06]  And so I'm like, now you need to understand how they're perceiving it.
[01:58:09]  They're perceiving black people are getting pulled over too much.
[01:58:13]  I think it's a class issue and we should try and alleviate the race, but my point ultimately is not to rehash that story.
[01:58:18]  It's to point out that Trump supporters sat down, have no problem having that conversation, listening to what I had to say, giving their thoughts on it, and then we all smile and eat, you know, cheeseburgers.
[01:58:28]  Well, and that's ultimately, I think, what every reasonable American should be able to do is have that kind of discussion.
[01:58:34]  And the reality is when you fall into poverty, the first thing people usually do is they have to move to a poor area.

=== Why Liberals Avoid TimCast? (05:59) ===

[01:58:40]  And then what's in a poor area?
[01:58:41]  Well, the ERs are full.
[01:58:43]  Can't get medical attention.
[01:58:44]  The schools are even lower quality.
[01:58:46]  And then what happens?
[01:58:47]  Your children can't get a good job.
[01:58:49]  They can't go to college, whatever.
[01:58:50]  And so then they have to move to a poor area.
[01:58:53]  And it just gets worse and worse and worse.
[01:58:55]  It's terrible.
[01:58:56]  And so ultimately what it brings me, the reason I bring the story up is, we struggle to get prominent liberals and leftists to come on this or Tim Guest's irony shows.
[01:59:05]  They won't do it.
[01:59:06]  Ah, that's unfortunate.
[01:59:07]  One thing I respect about Vive, is he goes on everything.
[01:59:10]  Yeah, MSNBC, man.
[01:59:11]  The wine's done.
[01:59:12]  But, you know, there's a handful of liberals and leftists that we're fans of.
[01:59:16]  We like, you know, I always shout out Crystal Ball and Kyle Kalinske.
[01:59:19]  They're good people.
[01:59:19]  We disagree on like... Crystal Ball from Breaking Points.
[01:59:22]  Yeah, she's great.
[01:59:24]  Disagree with her on a lot of things.
[01:59:27]  But she's an honest person.
[01:59:29]  And Kyle Klinsky as well.
[01:59:31]  But the problem is, too many of these... I think the issue is, if you bring in a prominent left personality into an actual conversation like this, their entire framework is ripped to shreds.
[01:59:45]  And not for political reasons, for matters of fact.
[01:59:49]  Oh wow.
[01:59:50]  Right, so like talking about Joe Biden in Brisbane, we had a guy come on TimCast IRL, And I mentioned, yeah, but Joe Biden said, you know, he's like, Trump did a quid pro quo.
[01:59:58]  I'm like, he's sort of Biden.
[01:59:59]  Biden said, if you don't fight the prosecutor, you're not getting the billion dollars.
[02:00:01]  The vice president doesn't have the authority to withhold congressionally approved loan guarantees.
[02:00:04]  And he smirks and goes, that never happened.
[02:00:07]  And I'm like, hey, we're live.
[02:00:08]  I played the video for him.
[02:00:11]  And then he's like, uh oh.
[02:00:12]  So people, they don't want to come in here and know that- - Well, because then you get ambushed in that sense.
[02:00:16]  Oh, that's really interesting.
[02:00:17]  But see, that's a problem because then you can't have a real dialogue and then you can't actually figure out, well, what are the real grievances and what are the real solutions?
[02:00:24]  And so then you get the extremism.
[02:00:25]  Everybody stays on their own echo chamber basically.
[02:00:28]  And that's a real big issue because then hate goes up like we had on the chart. - So I got one last question for you.
[02:00:33]  Please.
[02:00:34]  Who are you going to vote for in 2024?
[02:00:35]  Oh man, you know, it actually really is.
[02:00:39]  Uh, yeah, I really, I don't know that Joe Biden's going to make it to the election.
[02:00:47]  I agree.
[02:00:49]  Uh, I, so, you know, Biden versus Trump rematch, I don't actually know that we're going to see that.
[02:00:57]  Uh, I don't, I mean, Trump's not going to be done with any of his, his, uh, you know, prosecutions or whatever.
[02:01:03]  All those are going to probably continue throughout the entire election because even if he were found guilty, let's say in the Georgia thing, which is conveniently happening before Super Tuesday, but nobody, you know, that's obviously not planned.
[02:01:15]  Being sarcastic.
[02:01:16]  But anyway, any kind of sentencing or whatever, even if you were found guilty, wouldn't probably happen until after the election.
[02:01:21]  So ultimately, American voters are going to decide.
[02:01:24]  I think you get Trump of Ake, if I had to decide today, you get a Trump of Ake, and you probably get a Newsom.
[02:01:31]  That would be very interesting.
[02:01:33]  Would you vote for Newsom?
[02:01:36]  I don't want to say what I would do because I don't even know.
[02:01:42]  Let's put it this way, I really hate what Newsom has done in California, okay?
[02:01:47]  And I don't want to see that happen to America.
[02:01:50]  I'll say that much.
[02:01:51]  - And you don't wanna vote for Trump. - I don't want, so look, if I say what I would vote for, and I honestly, I don't think I could say it.
[02:02:01]  I think I have to respect as much of the impartiality that I try to provide to my channel, because I truly believe I'm so 51-49, Let me put it this way.
[02:02:12]  Do I really think the trajectory of America is going to substantially change whether it's Newsom or Trump or Vivek?
[02:02:20]  Probably not.
[02:02:21]  Yeah.
[02:02:22]  Because of the way the system of government is set up.
[02:02:25]  Because our founding fathers really set up our republic to change very little.
[02:02:32]  Yeah, you know, I absolutely can respect that.
[02:02:36]  I think Abstaining is reasonable to me.
[02:02:41]  Like, I'm not saying you're abstaining.
[02:02:42]  I'm saying if someone came to me and said, dude, I don't want to vote for anybody, I'd be like, I get it.
[02:02:45]  I get it.
[02:02:46]  This is a disaster.
[02:02:47]  It all sucks.
[02:02:48]  But I'll put it this way.
[02:02:50]  I'll vote.
[02:02:52]  And I will always say, you know, the pros and cons on each side.
[02:02:57]  But, you know, I don't want to be associated with a side, even though obviously I'm of a party.
[02:03:04]  I don't have to commit to that party affiliation with how I vote.
[02:03:07]  I think that's good.
[02:03:07]  I think, uh, I think, you know, when you talk about how you like the things Vivek has said or in certain ways or whatever, I think we need as much as possible for people who, uh, You know, people, wherever they find themselves, especially people who aren't in, like, hardcore politics, what you're doing, I think, is fantastic.
[02:03:30]  Just give people the opportunity not to have to put you in a camp, and then you can talk to them, and then they can try and make their own mind.
[02:03:35]  Sure.
[02:03:36]  You know?
[02:03:37]  This has been a blast, man.
[02:03:38]  That was really, really awesome.
[02:03:38]  Good conversation.
[02:03:39]  Thank you so much.
[02:03:40]  You want to shout anything out?
[02:03:41]  Yeah, hey, I'm Meet Kevin.
[02:03:43]  You can follow me on YouTube.
[02:03:45]  I post about the economy and probably I'd say 70% of my videos are about stocks, the economy, the Fed, what's going on, how things are changing.
[02:03:54]  And then 30% I add my political commentary, which my finance people are like, Kevin, stop talking politics.
[02:03:59]  And I'm like, I actually think it's important because I'm a big fan of trying to find that truth.
[02:04:05]  And hey, like what we showed with the Isabel thing or whatever, like where's the truth?
[02:04:10]  And really, ultimately, I think everything comes to money at the end of the day, because that helps everyone individually succeed.
[02:04:16]  So I think it all relates to finance.
[02:04:18]  So I'm a finance guy, but I'm going to add my perspective.
[02:04:21]  Right on, man.
[02:04:21]  It's been a blast.
[02:04:22]  Thanks for hanging out.
[02:04:23]  Thank you.
[02:04:23]  Appreciate it.
[02:04:23]  For all the rest of you, get tickets to our event in Miami.
[02:04:26]  If you go to TimCast.com, the Miami event tickets are available right now.
[02:04:29]  We got Patrick, Bet David, Trump Jr., Matt Gaetz, me and Luke Rutkowski, as well as Ian Crossland will be there.
[02:04:35]  We got a pre-show.
[02:04:36]  We got an after show.
[02:04:37]  We look forward to seeing you there.
[02:04:38]  You can follow me at TimCast everywhere.