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March 25, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:03

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1128

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	Hello and welcome to podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 1128 on this the 25th of March 2025.
	I'm joined by Stelios.
	Hello everyone and hello Dan.
	Hello. We were going to have Matt Letiz but for some reason he couldn't make it.
	He'll come on next week.
	So that'll be good.
	Anyway, what are we going to talk about?
	We're going to talk about Gary's economics, because if any of you are using social media, he would have been thrust into your algorithm rather vigorously.
	Yeah, this is a face that looks familiar.
	Yeah. But I don't know who he is.
	Well... Sadly, it's not going to stay that way.
	We chat about that.
	What else are we doing?
	Oh yeah, diet's a racist, apparently.
	He is racist.
	Yes. That leaves me terribly conflicted because I'm not on a diet.
	Well, you want to stay body normative.
	I was actually thinking the second half of that equation, but okay.
	And also, why young women can't get married.
	Well, they can, but they just make it much more difficult for themselves.
	But obviously that's men's fault.
	So yes, we have to cover that.
	Right, so let's start off with...
	Gary's Economics.
	So, if you've been using social media over the course of the last couple of weeks, your algorithm has probably helpfully provided you with this chap here.
	For some reason, it has been decided that we need to take on board his ideas of large wealth redistribution, because, of course, that has never been tried before.
	He's had an entirely original idea that never occurred to anybody else and has never been implemented.
	And he can't believe why we're not doing excessive taxation on the rich.
	But it seems so obvious.
	Now, you say you haven't heard of this guy before, Stelios.
	This idea I have heard of before.
	Yes. Well, I mean, for those who don't know, maybe stumbled across this on YouTube or something, I run the Brokonomics channel here.
	And so basically every episode of that I've ever produced, there's been at least two or three people in the comments saying, oh, you should get this guy on.
	Okay. So I had a look in the early days, and I just thought, I honestly don't see the point of talking to him, because he has one idea.
	Which is tax the rich?
	Yes. He doesn't see the big picture at all.
	He has no concept about how the economic machine works.
	He just wants to sit at the very end of that process and apply taxes, but change absolutely nothing about the rest of the economic machine that got you to that point in the first place.
	And I agree with him that inequality is a problem.
	But inequality is not the start and the end of the problem.
	It's at the end of the entire process that got you to that point.
	Okay. What kind of inequality?
	Economic inequality?
	Oh, he just doesn't like the fact that there are some rich people and there are some poor people.
	Although he's one of the rich people.
	But he doesn't like...
	Well, he seems to like that he's rich.
	But anyway, let's play this clip because some of you may not know who he is and you'll find out a little bit about how he thinks.
	I will agree 100%.
	It is difficult to tax rich people.
	It is very, very, very difficult to tax rich people.
	I don't come here saying I want to tax rich people because it's easy.
	I know it's hard.
	I know probably I'm going to lose.
	I know our viewers' kids will live in desperate poverty.
	I know that.
	I do this because it is hard.
	If we are a country which says to ourselves, we don't try and do things which are necessary to keep our kids out of poverty because they are hard, then our kids will live in poverty.
	I don't need to be here.
	I'm a multimillionaire just like you.
	I could be an...
	I come in here because I come from a poor background and it's ordinary families like my family, like the kids I grew up with, whose kids are going to be in poverty.
	It's difficult, but it is necessary.
	Sometimes we have to do things not because they're easy, but because they are hard.
	That is what makes a rich country rich and that is what protects ordinary people.
	Listen, our grandparents lived in poverty.
	Did they say, let's not change it because it's hard?
	No, they didn't.
	They fought and they demanded healthcare, education, housing, food, and they got it.
	They got it.
	That's why my parents could live a good quality life.
	They got those things.
	They got those things and they were aware that in order to do that, you could not allow the super rich who have been living lives of luxury for hundreds and hundreds of years to eat everything while ordinary families couldn't afford to feed their kids.
	I know it's difficult.
	I know it's difficult.
	And I know I'm probably going to lose.
	I know that.
	I know I'm probably going to lose.
	Let's make him stop.
	I thought it was going to be a good Tuesday.
	And you can understand why I haven't engaged with this.
	We choose to tax the rich not because it's easy.
	We choose to tax the rich because it's difficult.
	I mean...
	When was that?
	You can see why I find this so...
	So tiresome.
	When was that released?
	Was it released?
	Oh, that was in the last few days, because he did something to you that was the exclusive for blowing this up on the 21st of March, a couple of days ago.
	Nothing to do with JFK files, so he used the rhetoric.
	No, I don't think so.
	I think that was accidental.
	So basically, what he says is you can have a rich society by taxing the rich.
	Excessively. Yeah, he skips so many steps.
	He's not happy with the taxation we already have.
	Before I get on to deconstructing this tiresome tirade, I'll just point out that, bear in mind, in that clip, within a few seconds, he went from explaining how he's a multi-millionaire to friends of his can't afford to feed their kids.
	If your philosophy...
	The problem is that rich people have too much and poor people don't have enough, and that you can fix the world problems by taking money from the rich people to the poor people.
	Why doesn't he just give his own money to his friends that are poor?
	That is, after all, his own philosophy.
	And I've had these discussions, and they're so tiresome.
	I've had these discussions with lefties before, and what they will instantly shoot back with is, oh, why don't you do it?
	And I'll just say, well, that's not my philosophy, because I don't think that's how it works, and I don't think it will change anything.
	And then, if you push them more, they'll say, oh, well, it won't make a difference if just I do it.
	Everybody has to do it.
	Well, you're not going to make everyone in the world rich, are you?
	You're not going to fix the world's problem.
	So, by definition...
	Even if, in your fantasy delusion, in your own head, this worked, you still wouldn't be fixing everybody.
	So, I mean, just...
	This is the difference with right-wing philosophy and left-wing philosophy.
	Right-wingers think that if something is right, they do it individually.
	Left-wingers don't do a damn thing until they can force everybody to do it.
	Left-wingers say that they want to do what they say, but they constantly put the caveat, until...
	The classless society has been rich.
	I can't be actually moral.
	Yeah. It's not up to me.
	I thought I'd go from examples because Gary genuinely thinks he's discovered a new idea here, something that hasn't been tried before.
	So let's go through some examples I dug up.
	United Kingdom from the 1950s to 1970s, called the super tax era, had a top marginal tax income rate of 83%.
	And then you had an additional investment income charge on that of another 15%.
	So actually for some people their effective rate of tax was 98%.
	98% tax.
	And what happened?
	Well, eventually Thatcher came in and she lowered the rate of tax and tax receipts went up.
	You load the rate, she took it down to something like 70%, then 50%, then 40%.
	And every time that happened, the amount of tax actually collected went up.
	So punitive tax rate don't work.
	United States.
	So when was it?
	So post, I think it was, yeah, 1950s, early 1960s, they had a tax rate that peaked at 94%.
	Right, so this has been tried before.
	And again, what happened?
	So this time it was under JFK, it dropped to 70%.
	Tax receipts went up.
	Then Reagan dropped it to 50% and then 28%.
	And every time tax receipts went up.
	I'm curious to see what kind of examples he has to show because he says that...
	Oh, no, he doesn't show examples.
	He's above it.
	Well, he's already got the solution, so why would he bother with things like evidence?
	This is a basic idea, but I'm going to stick it out there anyway.
	This is the Laffer curve.
	So basically it says, look, how much tax do you actually collect is the blue line.
	If the tax rate is zero, well, zero tax is collected.
	But if the tax rate is 100%, well, nobody bothers working.
	So you also collect zero.
	I mean, why would you go to work every day, unless you're a porn star, why would you go to work every day if your tax rate is 100%?
	You just wouldn't bother, would you?
	And actually, the Laffer curve doesn't really look like that.
	It's difficult to know exactly what the apex revenue maximising rate is, but it's probably around 15% tax.
	And yet we commonly have tax charges of 40%.
	Across the Western world.
	Because even though they know that it's political, you know, they want to keep tax rate higher because, you know, people understand it.
	Sweden, the tax hell years.
	So top marginal tax rate exceeded 85%.
	And in some cases, and then they added other bits of tax to it as well, you could have a greater than 100% tax rate.
	So one example was they had an author, Pippi Longstocking or something, which sounds like a hobbit, but apparently that's a Swede.
	She was taxed 102% of whatever she earned.
	How does that work then?
	Why? Yes.
	Yeah, why work then?
	Yes. Unless you just really like writing about whatever Mrs. Longstocking's like to write about.
	And again, same thing.
	So basically people just left with all of these things.
	People just leave and go somewhere else.
	Or they stop producing.
	If you've got more of your own money to spend, well, you can then spend it on things like Lotus Eaters merch.
	You can't buy the Islander because we sold out.
	We did warn you that it was going to sell quickly, but...
	But, you know, it has.
	So you've all missed out if you haven't bought a copy yet.
	But you can still buy the merch.
	So go onto the merch store and buy some of this limited edition lovely merch with the word Islander and some pictures and stuff on it.
	Right. France.
	France is a good example.
	Do you remember that Holland bloke?
	He was appalling.
	Yeah, but he was very left-wing.
	And this is only a few years ago.
	So those examples I used before were a few decades ago.
	I mean, this was only 2012 to 2014.
	So he put the tax rate up to 75% on rich individuals.
	And they were expecting to raise trillions.
	What they actually raised was 200 billion.
	And then loads of rich people left.
	This is garden-variety Marxism.
	Yeah. There's nothing new in it.
	Yes. This is tax of rich.
	But the most astonishing thing is this has been tried again and again.
	In fact, it was this bloke, wasn't it?
	So he was the sort of poster boy for it, but apparently he's a...
	Help me out with the pronunciation.
	Gerard Departier, I think.
	Departier. Okay, so he was the poster boy for it.
	I'm leaving France then.
	Yeah, he left France.
	I think he went to Russia.
	Something like that.
	He's got a quote that I found in this article which I quite liked.
	He said that France is like to become a Disneyland for foreigners populated by imbeciles making cheese and wine for tourists.
	Fair enough.
	I mean, when a Frenchman says it, the French have to listen.
	Yes. Anyway, so what happened in France?
	Well, basically they realised that all the people who could afford to pay the tax were just leaving.
	Yeah. So they quietly dropped it.
	Why should they stay?
	Exactly. Yeah, but the leftists, what Gary Stevenson is going to tell you, I want world government because I want all the governments to team together.
	Oh, something like that.
	And make it impossible for people to move.
	I mean, he just doesn't even...
	I've seen him address the point.
	I've seen him basically say, oh, they're not going to leave.
	They're not going to leave.
	Yeah, they will.
	I'll come on to it later down, but there's, you know, huge numbers of people.
	Before you move on, sorry, because I can't understand what the fuss is about with him.
	It looked like, was it the case that there was a gap in the left, in the market of the left, for someone saying tax the rich, and somehow he failed it by saying...
	Something like that, yeah.
	That's weird.
	Because, I mean, a lot of people...
	I mean, the way he's got there is he arrived at a conclusion.
	And then basically just works around it in ever-diminishing circles.
	I mean, I'll get on to the whole economic logic in a set and deconstruct all of it.
	But, yeah, he's arrived at a conclusion.
	But there was a lot of people for whom that conclusion is the one they want to hear, including lots of members of the Labour Party, to be fair.
	They're promoting him as well.
	You know, they're apparently saying that they want to go on his show and make a pitch to his audience and stuff.
	Because, I mean, they agree with his conclusions.
	Rather than me explain, I'm going to explain how the economic system works, but I thought I'd let Yes Minister explain how taxes work.
	This is something that Gary would do well to understand.
	This is a bit of old comedy, but it's entirely true.
	Let's play this.
	What does that surprise you?
	Because he's advised by the Treasury, and the Treasury don't believe in giving money back.
	It's not theirs.
	It's the taxpayers.
	That is one view.
	It's not the view the Treasury does.
	Not once they've got their hands on it.
	But if they don't need it.
	Sorry? If they don't need it.
	Taxation isn't about what you need.
	What is it about?
	Prime Minister, the Treasury doesn't work out what they need to spend and then think how to raise the money.
	What does it do?
	They pitch for as much as they think they can get away with and then think what is happening.
	If you start giving money back because you don't need it, you're breaking with centuries of tradition.
	Yes, that is exactly how they work.
	Governments are trying to pitch for as much as they possibly can, however they can, and what they have found consistently is if you put tax rates up, you collect less.
	There's a persistent fallacy.
	A few weeks ago, Chuck Schumer in the US says basically, how dare you want to keep your money?
	Went to The View and said this.
	You're selfish if you want to keep your money.
	You're a bad person.
	You say you produced it.
	You want to keep it.
	How dare you want to keep it?
	Because it belongs to all of us.
	Your point about people will just leave.
	I now want to get on to the fact that people are leaving.
	So what are the figures that I dug out?
	Since 2017 to 2023, which is what this article covers, 16,500 millionaires left the UK.
	And that was at that time.
	I think we've now got about, I think it's about 10,000 a year at the moment leaving under Labour.
	The vast numbers of millionaires are just getting the hell out of the country.
	And this is a sort of leftist reaction to it, which is basically to say good riddance.
	Yeah, but what the person you showed me doesn't understand is that he says on the one hand that his friend doesn't have the opportunity to work and provide for himself.
	Probably does.
	Yeah, but when you said that, yeah, why don't you pay for him?
	He may say that, well, I do pay for him, but he doesn't have the opportunity to fend for himself.
	I bet he doesn't give his mate money.
	Well, maybe.
	But let's say, even if he did, by capital fleeing, there are less opportunities.
	There's less circulation of money, less investment, less opportunities.
	So his friend, who he laments that he cannot, when he laments that his friend can't find opportunities, He's actively promoting the policies that reduce the opportunities for his friends.
	Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
	But he doesn't care.
	That's the issue.
	He just won't sell books.
	Talking here about the tens of thousands of millionaires who are fleeing the UK, I mean, some of them were probably just retired or something, but some of them would have been providing jobs.
	In fact, probably all of them were spending...
	A decent chunk of money every year that then would have been going into the tills of businesses all over the country.
	But, you know, the Guardian's attitude here is a good thing that these people are leaving because they think rich people are negative on the country that they're living in.
	They're just sucking up wealth somehow.
	And if they leave the country...
	I mean, what do you even do with a philosophy like that?
	You ban it from schools.
	This is how the economy actually works.
	So this is the very first episode of Brokonomics in which I lay out the entire thesis and then every episode since then I've basically just been building on it or exploring bits on it.
	This is the first episode which is free so even if you're watching on the YouTube you can just go onto our site and you can watch this whole thing for free.
	It explains everything.
	It's my first episode and I'm a bit new to the camera at that point so there's a box of ums and errs.
	It's a bit bloody irritating.
	I'm fine when I go back now.
	But he's got the whole thing there.
	But, yeah, I did promise I was going to explain a bit more about why Gary's gone wrong like this.
	So, as we've established, he's got nothing.
	He doesn't have a full understanding of the big picture.
	I find that when he drills down into a particular mechanism, he's actually quite good.
	So his point, when he's explaining, I don't know...
	Bloody dollar-yen movements or something.
	He's fine when it comes to that stuff, or individual mechanisms, but he can't seem to put them all together into a consistent big-picture theme.
	Quick point on how he made his money, because I see some people in the chat questioning as to whether he really is quite rich.
	Yeah, so he was a short-term interest rate trader.
	So how do I explain that?
	So basically, he was making bets on the movement in interest rates, and he was doing this pre-2008.
	And then in the years following as well.
	And basically during that entire period, interest rates just went down and down and down to zero.
	So I already know how he made his money.
	He made his money by basically being long short-term bonds that kept on, the yield on them kept on going down.
	So the existing stock of bonds would have gone up in price.
	And he's described his philosophy.
	He came to the conclusion that because inequality, interest rates were going to stay low and asset prices were going to stay high.
	He was right about that, but for the wrong reason.
	It's got nothing to do with inequality, but that is what happened.
	Interest rates were low.
	It's because governments were spending more than they collected in taxes.
	And they can't afford to refinance their debt at 4 or 5%, but they can afford to refinance it at close to 0%.
	That's the mechanism that was happening.
	So he correctly predicted...
	What was going to happen, but for complete fantasy reasons.
	But nevertheless, if he's predicting the right mechanism, that's how he's able to make so much money.
	Also, making money in one investment doesn't mean that you know how the system works.
	No, I mean, at the end of the day, he came to the conclusion, like I said, that interest rates were going to keep going down and asset prices were going to keep going up.
	Because, in his mind, inequality.
	But that's not actually what happened.
	That's just the end result of it.
	Yeah, he doesn't consider the big picture.
	Let me try very, very briefly.
	And you should watch the Brokeconomics if you want to understand the full mechanism.
	But what's really going on is that the economic model has changed.
	So think back.
	Let's think about the factors of production, right?
	You know, people, capital, land, and so on.
	Start off with hunter-gatherers.
	The only factor of production that matters here is people.
	If you've got more people, you win.
	You move to the agricultural age.
	The key factors of production now are land and people.
	And that's why the power of the structures at the time was the bishop and the lord, because the bishop controlled loyalty.
	And the lord controlled the land.
	You put those two mechanisms together and you've got the factors of production that make you win in the agricultural age.
	Transition to the industrial age.
	The bishop and the lord, they start to lose their position.
	And who rises instead?
	It's the politician and the moneylender.
	Because now the factors of production are people and capital.
	So the moneylender controls capital.
	And the politician controls consent.
	So effectively, again, people and capital.
	We've just had the same transition to a new age, which is the digital age, where the mechanisms now are going to be leverage and knowledge.
	So knowledge you can think of, well, code is a type of knowledge, but effectively all kinds of knowledge.
	And leverage is, again, a play on the people, the amount of leverage you can get off the number of people.
	So you could think of what we do as...
	Analogous to the 14th century farmer, except we're now farming for eyeballs rather than turnips.
	And our liege lord is whoever owns Stripe or X or YouTube or whatever it is.
	We actually own our own platform here, so we're our own little mini lord.
	Well, Carl is anyway.
	But, you know, it's the same sort of mechanism.
	Now, the question I would have for Gary...
	And people keep asking me to get him on.
	He's not going to come on Proconomics.
	Left-wingers never, ever come on right-wing shows.
	So I'm not going to bother inviting him because I just know that he's not going to do it.
	I mean, how many times have we extended invites to lefties and they never come on?
	Many. Yeah, yeah.
	So it doesn't work.
	So the challenge I'd put to Gary is if it works the way you think it works instead of the way that I think it works, explain Blockbuster Video.
	Because Blockbuster Video, you take that back to whatever it was, like 2005.
	They had something like 20,000 stores, like 90,000 employees.
	They had a lot of capital.
	They had a lot of stuff.
	And within a couple of years after that point, they were effectively replaced by Netflix.
	Now Netflix is one of the biggest companies in the world.
	And Blockbuster...
	I mean, have they gone bust?
	I don't know.
	Maybe they're floating around somewhere, but maybe there's like one store open.
	Haven't heard them in ages.
	Yeah, but they're probably defunct at that point.
	Now, in Gary's mind, as if the old model, and I don't particularly blame Gary for this, because most politicians are still using the old model, right?
	They still think that it's all about capital and people.
	But if that is your mindset...
	It explains to me how Blockbuster failed.
	Whereas if you apply my framework, which I put out through Brokonomics, which is now we transition to a new system, which is knowledge and leverage, well, it explains perfectly why Netflix replaced Blockbuster.
	And his framework can't do that.
	It also explains why the politicians, who basically are thinking like Gary as well, they're operating on the old model, they're trying to stuff more...
	They can see that their economic model is failing, so they're trying to stuff more people...
	and capital through the system and they're doing that by importing as many people as they possibly can and adding as much debt as they possibly can.
	Something that Marxists have completely been wrong about was how the economy would be transformed because now most people work in services, at least in Western economies.
	They didn't predict that.
	They thought it was a much more monolithic agricultural and industrial worker.
	Full stop.
	And capitalists.
	Full stop.
	Yeah, I mean, that's another thing.
	I mean, we've outsourced all the manufacturing to China, so why do we need cities anymore?
	But also, they didn't predict the amount of the economy that services would take.
	They're talking about a different age, and they were wrong about the age that we're talking about as well.
	Yeah. I mean, the other thing that he doesn't acknowledge in any way is, you know, massive liquidity.
	So, basically, since 1971.
	In fact, I'll show you a bit of that now.
	So, this is a website, what happened in 1971.
	I mean, I'll tell you what happened.
	So, before that time, money was essentially backed by gold.
	I mean, there'd been a bit of...
	It started to drift a bit away from that, but essentially, money was backed by gold.
	And in 1971, that link was broken.
	And you can see the difference in the charts.
	So, before that...
	Compensation, so basically wages, grew in tandem with the productivity of the economy as a whole.
	And then after 1971, the two things detached.
	So it's this massive surge of liquidity, or the amount of money in the system, cheap money, that's driving a lot of this inequality.
	So this is the thing.
	If I was going to fix this system, I would go back multiple steps.
	Right back to the money system.
	And there's other things that I'd do.
	And then it wouldn't produce that difference in inequality at the end.
	All Gary wants to do is keep the whole system the same and then just sit right at the end and tax people.
	You're correct.
	I have another issue on this because when people say they have an issue with inequality, the question is how much of inequality is an issue for you?
	Because inequality isn't the only thing that matters.
	In some cases, if it becomes too widespread, it is corrosive for our society because it weakens social bonds.
	But that doesn't mean that the only cure to it is flat-line egalitarianism.
	Yeah, inequality in itself is not an issue because there was less inequality between a medieval lord and his peasant than there is now between, say, me and...
	Jeff Bezos.
	But I'd rather be me today than a medieval lord.
	Overall, a better standard of living.
	Irrespective of the level of...
	But I do think there is an inequality problem, and it's expressing itself through the fact that, you know, if you're a boomer, you can have a second home whenever you want one, and if you're a Zoomer, you've got no chance of, you know, you can barely cover your rent.
	So there is a whole bunch of inequalities that should be addressed.
	But you don't get there by taxing people.
	You get there by fixing what was causing these issues to take place early on.
	And I don't really have time to go into it now, but by all means, watch Brokernomics if you want to get deeper into it.
	But yeah, and just to make the point that...
	Politicians are making this same mistake.
	Which is why they're adding so much debt at the moment and importing so many people, because they're desperately trying to keep the old system alive, because they think it's still about capital and people, not about knowledge and leverage, and that's why it's just not working for them.
	The more debt they add is not having the growth in GDP they expect it to have, and the people that they're bringing in are not growing GDP like they expect to, even though economics say they would.
	So, yeah, that's my very short take on Gary's economics.
	If people really want me to, I'll do a Brokernomics on it.
	I don't really want to, because I just find it so tiresome and vacuous, debating Marxist, but, you know, do let me know if that's what you want.
	Right, so...
	Okay, so...
	Sorry, we need to cut.
	Yeah, so...
	I regret to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that diets is racist.
	Do you want to go on a diet, Dan?
	Well, maybe now.
	Okay. Do you have an allergy towards personal responsibility?
	Um, no.
	Do you want to be body normative?
	What does that mean?
	I don't know.
	I hope you knew what it meant and you would carry along.
	Body normative?
	No idea.
	It came up in an article I was reading today.
	Okay. Right, so Lizzo has caused an earthquake.
	And she did so by actually losing weight.
	And I really like the new Lizzo, I must say.
	This is Lizzo before, and this is Lizzo after.
	Okay, that is much improved.
	To be fair, if I'd look at the right-hand image, I'd still think you're fat.
	But now I've seen the left-hand image, I've got to be impressed.
	Well, it's impressive, and it's good to incentivize people who are making a difference.
	Did she do that just because of South Park?
	I've no idea, but she denies using a Zen pick.
	Oh, right.
	Yeah, people love his Zen pic now, don't they?
	Yeah, and she's very happy.
	And I'll show you a video here.
	I was told to warn you that it contains some explicit language.
	Not what you'd expect, but let us see here being very happy.
	You look good, Queen.
	Hold on!
	Hold on, let me show the fit then!
	Let me give you the fit details, because you already know.
	She has lost a lot of weight.
	Okay. And now she's happy.
	Yeah. But she wasn't...
	Well, she's no longer dying of diabetes.
	Yeah, and she's doing the twerk dance.
	She can actually look at her own arse now.
	Yeah, but she has caused an earthquake because a lot of people...
	Fell over?
	No, no, no.
	Or she lost the weight?
	No. Actually, it wasn't her.
	Right. But a lot of people have taken issue with her weight loss.
	Oh, hang on.
	Some people have taken...
	Some people are sensible and others are not so sensible.
	Are you going to tell me that lefties are hating on her because she lost weight?
	Yes. Crushed.
	And we are going to talk a lot about wokeness because this has all sorts of ramifications for the culture we're living in.
	But I'll start with Dadbod Steve.
	He is a fitness instructor online and he actually started...
	Criticizing her, saying, well, you're constantly talking about body positivity and wanting to be body normative.
	So what happened?
	Looks like for years now you're trying to lose weight on your individual life, but publicly you're constantly saying how everyone is okay, however much they weigh.
	So I just looked up what body normativity is, and apparently it's the idea that certain bodies are normal.
	Okay. But, I mean, that's literally what the word means.
	Okay, then maybe it's a bit more sensible than they took it to be.
	Right, so dad bod Steve, I think, had some good points to make.
	You can't be a hypocrite, essentially.
	Because she tried for years to lose weight.
	Yep. That she was preaching to people that they should feel happy, however they are, and that they...
	Well, and also she was probably throwing an awful lot of corn syrup and sugar down her throat.
	Yeah. And what happens here that I want to share with you is that she had previously talked openly about making people comfortable in their skin, telling Vogue in 2020 that she wanted to redefine the body positivity movement as she feared larger girls were no longer being included.
	So the poster girl for body positivity was trying to lose weight for so many years.
	I mean, I can imagine that she was comfortable in her own skin because basically she was her own beanbag wherever she went.
	And she said, she continued, what I don't like is how the people that this term was created for are not benefiting from it.
	Maybe they could benefit from a diet.
	Girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren't separated that overlap.
	Girls with stretch marks, you know, girls who are in the size 18 plus club.
	Oh, dear Christ.
	Yeah, but she was trying to lose weight all along.
	Was she?
	How can you...
	Yeah, and she lost weight.
	She lost, you see?
	I don't think...
	When she was playing that bloody flute thing, I don't think she was trying to lose weight then.
	Well... I mean, all credit to her.
	I mean, it is quite heartening.
	Yep. When...
	Fatties get thin.
	Yeah, it's good.
	I said we should support it.
	I support it.
	I'm happy and I hope she gets even healthier.
	But you just forget that lefties exist and they're going to hate you if you do that.
	Yeah, but also it's good if you are actually not contributing to leftist thinking that way because with her media presence and her contributions to the scene she was actually making people...
	Basically she's getting a taste of her own medicine.
	Because by being the poster girl for the body positivity movement, she helped foster the mindset that comes now and bites her in the bottom, telling her, you're a bad person.
	You is a racist for losing weight.
	She's racist for losing weight?
	Yeah. So, let's look at this.
	The other side of lezo-criticism.
	Okay. So, dad bod Steve.
	Had good points to make.
	She was hypocritical.
	Some other people are a bit less sensible, I would say.
	I'd put it politely.
	Let's hear this.
	The same diet says white women, we lose less weight and we lose it slower.
	Even when we're following the diet than our white women counterparts.
	It's literally that.
	The racism that you're experiencing and the struggle to make ends meet actually means the diet don't work for you the same.
	Okay, so...
	I mean, that's bollocks.
	Yeah, but...
	The idea that black women have to follow different diets to white women, that's not what's going on.
	What is relevant is a simple physics problem.
	It's the amount of calories you take in.
	Calories in, calories out.
	Yeah. You could diet by having...
	A calorie deficit if all you eat was Mars bars.
	It doesn't matter.
	And you can get fat if you have a calorie surplus made up entirely of lettuce.
	I mean, you don't have to eat a shit ton of lettuce, but...
	Yes, but have you considered racism?
	So, I want the audience to tell me if they want me to play the video again, if they want to hear this.
	So, I want to see in the chat if you think that we should replay it.
	But I want to focus on...
	Two things she says.
	So she says, we lose weight and we lose less weight and slower even when we're following the diet of our white women counterparts.
	We'll run your ass around the block a bit there.
	Wait, but this is, I think that's a lie.
	Most probably that's a lie.
	Again, it's a physics problem.
	All the excuses are appealed to when people don't, when people deviate from the diet.
	It's cope.
	Yeah, not when they stick to the diet.
	So, then she says, the racism you're experiencing and the struggle to make ends meet means diets don't work for you the same.
	Okay, so, point.
	Here we have to unpack this scientific statement.
	Because from a scientific perspective, I think she's wrong.
	Now, if she sticks to the diet and she loses less weight, probably is a biological issue.
	All the social aspect of it is completely relevant because the social aspect is contributing to people not sticking to the diet.
	It's conceivable, as I say, that in several social conditions it's much more difficult to stick to a diet.
	But she's saying even when we're following the diet, it's racism.
	Yeah, she's not following the diet.
	It's just if that's the case and she loses less weight and slower.
	Then white women, when she's following the diet, it's biological.
	And this takes me to the next step, which I think is really important to understand, the heart of leftism.
	Can I give you a quick anecdote here?
	And the weight of leftism.
	Can I give you a quick anecdote here?
	Because, I mean, basically, what is happening here is that she's not sticking to the diet.
	Yeah. She's sneaking in...
	I don't know, Twinkie bars or whatever Americans eat.
	Twix bars.
	And she's not admitting it, and then she's coming out of all this cope about how we follow the diet and it doesn't have the same effect.
	Right, quick anecdote.
	One of the firms I worked at years ago, the women's toilets kept on getting blocked up with sweet wrappers.
	Right? And we didn't have...
	I mean, it was a finance office.
	We didn't have a huge number of women.
	And basically, all the women there were skinny apart from one.
	Yeah. And she was insisting that she was dieting.
	And so when this came up to management, I was like, well, it's the fat girl, isn't it?
	And they're like, oh no, you can't say that.
	It's like, no, it obviously is the fat girl.
	She's saying to all her skinny friends that she's on a diet, and she's eating the bloody salads at lunches, and then what she's doing is she's sneaking into the toilet, having a bloody Kit Kat, and then stuffing the wrapper down the toilet.
	It's obvious what's going on here.
	Yeah. But, you know, apparently I was out of line for saying that or something.
	There are two stages of criticism here.
	Because, I mean, I've tried to go on a diet before, and sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it's easier.
	But I will say this.
	There are two stages here.
	One problem is not assuming personal responsibility by thinking something is beyond your control when it is under your control.
	A lot of people do this.
	And then there is blaming other people for what is beyond anyone's control.
	No one controls her genes.
	But she wants to say what she says there makes sense only if she's sticking to the diet and she's losing less weight.
	She's lying about the diet.
	She's lying about the diet.
	But even if that were not the case, she is blaming society for something that is under no one's control.
	Because it's easier than not eating.
	Exactly. And the question is, how has that mentality become so prevalent?
	How has this constant victimization and also blaming of other people...
	Taking such a hold.
	And I think to a very large extent it has to do with education and the woke infiltration of education.
	I had a lovely interview with Dr. Eric Lidstrom where we talked about whether education can be saved.
	Definitely check it out.
	We talk about evolutionary psychology, free market economics, and also how basically the state should get out of the...
	Education system because they're literally producing racists who are basically believing in BS that the left wants them to believe in.
	And there's a whole culture that rather than telling people to assume responsibility, tries to foster an allergy towards personal responsibility to people.
	And they want actually to victimize them and everything they say against...
	The toxic culture diet is in fact something that is even worse when it comes to them because what they're saying is that people of some groups, in this case black women, they experience racism and because they experience racism they experience negative emotions and they tend to eat more because it's a sort of momentary pleasure.
	There is an increased drive of momentary pleasure.
	Stop spreading victim mentality then.
	Stop spreading, you leftists.
	Stop trying to make people see racism and discrimination everywhere.
	Stop it.
	Especially when we're talking about diet.
	Diets are no racist.
	I'm just fascinated by your next headline.
	Diet culture is rooted in racism, white supremacy and colonialism.
	Isn't it?
	I mean, for God's sakes.
	Right. She should just be shot.
	Yeah, so what I want to say here.
	Is that basically there's a lot of cultural background behind this.
	And I have lots and lots and lots of articles showing stuff like that that I really think you're going to find cringeworthy.
	So here, as you said, diet culture is rooted in racism, white supremacy, and colonialism.
	Obviously, I was joking when I said that before, but it's a form of banter.
	Silly things.
	I think the only response is to basically ridicule them and laugh with them.
	So let's see what they say here.
	Toxic diet culture is a pervasive and insidious influence on our lives.
	Many people may recognize its connection to fatphobia and its harmful consequences on body image, mental health and eating patterns.
	But they may be less aware of its racist and white supremacist history.
	And how diet culture continues to uphold white supremacy and perpetuates systemic racism to this day.
	So this is totally ridiculous.
	Let's move down because I like when people give me bullet points.
	I don't have...
	I'm a busy man.
	I like when people give me bullet points.
	So they say, any diet...
	These are common examples of toxic diet culture.
	There's lots of toxicity if you want to have a diet, because diet is racist.
	Any diet, cleanse, or healthy eating lifestyle that limits food intake, promotes fasting, or omits certain food groups or ingredients.
	So Dan, you said before about calories in, calories out, and restricting calories.
	Yeah. No, you can't do that, Dan.
	That's racist, is it?
	It's toxic diet culture.
	I'm glad you're doing this segment, because I just could not bring myself to argue against that.
	I just want these people shot.
	I'm just so tired of it.
	And I found the ultra-racist on this issue.
	There are some people who live more than 100 years old in a village in Italy, and they say that one of the keys to their longevity is their diet, and for a long time they fast.
	And this has a good stuff on their blood vest.
	Is that a picture of them?
	Are they...
	Yes. So they're over 100?
	I think she's 94. I also saw a documentary.
	She's 94. And she says she feels very young.
	Those two, they're looking reasonably good.
	I reckon they could manage a walk around their little town or village at 100.
	Yeah. Good for them.
	And the scientist...
	And all it took was being massively racist.
	By eating...
	By dieting.
	Yes. Yes.
	So, they are the ultra-racists of toxic diet culture.
	Now, also now, food labels saying guilt-free, fat-free, low-carb, keto-approved, paleo-friendly.
	They're toxic.
	I'm just curious.
	Is it possible to eat what you want and just be extra racist and live to 100?
	Well, if you have any kind of food that says double the guilt, triple the excitement...
	It's bad.
	It's food racist.
	Right. Advertisements and programs for quick weight loss cures.
	The prevalence and success of social media fitness influencers.
	Before and after photos of weight loss.
	So Lizzo dared to post photos before and after the event.
	Yep. That's racist.
	Lizzo is racist for losing weight and posting photos.
	Okay. And trying to inspire people to lose weight as well.
	So basically, she has fostered a mentality.
	She has contributed to the fostering of a mentality that says, well, I have my problems, but I don't want you to point them out.
	And I want you to have these problems as well.
	And if you stop having problems, these problems, if you lose weight, you're not my friend anymore.
	I mean, sorry to cut this as Chase, but this is just women and accountability then, isn't it?
	It's not just...
	I think it's a leftist issue here, because the body positivity stuff is also leftist.
	The leftists are constantly saying that when you have people who are in the bottom of, let's say, the economic chain, hierarchy, people who are very poor, they face adverse social conditions, which makes sense.
	And that these adverse social conditions lead them to eat, for instance, bad food.
	Or, counterpoint, they're poor because they're lazy, and because they're lazy they eat bad food.
	I don't know if the leftists can comprehend this.
	Maybe their reaction is error 404.
	Because they have been brainwashed by articles such as the following.
	From Healthline, she says, I'm a black dietician.
	Here's what I want you to know about food and racism.
	Let's scroll down.
	I'm glad you're bringing me this because I never would have read this article otherwise.
	Yeah. So she says classical and hot cuisine tend to categorize regional and ethnic food as a pleasure trip for the senses or something that requires fusion so it can be safely eaten.
	What's the problem here?
	When white culture is the barometer for measuring worth, the cultural foodways of black, indigenous, people of color are often deemed worthless until they become trendy and invited into the mainstream.
	Literally, I think basically this is total BS.
	I've never heard anyone saying anything of the sort.
	If you like a kind of food, just go eat it.
	What's the issue?
	She says, What were the owners implying?
	And here is where people who are just brainwashed into viewing racism everywhere are becoming ridiculous.
	She says, she's reading the mind.
	This is a clear example of the demonization and exoticization of ethnic food in one fell swoop.
	It shows the anti-Asian racism behind the idea that Chinese food isn't clean or healthy.
	So she's taking offense on behalf of Chinese people because white people put less calories in it.
	Yes, and they say that basically what she says is that when people say, I want clean Asian, they don't mean this.
	Or that.
	But she says that they constantly think Asian food is this.
	So the way I would read it, the way I'd see is that I don't want dirty food.
	I don't want someone doing this, cooking this way.
	I'm perfectly fine with...
	Foods of this sort.
	Yeah. But that's racism for some reason.
	Why? Because they want it.
	And also, let us remember this.
	Are they going to get in the food?
	They are going to get in the food.
	Yeah. This is, I think, one of Carl's best posts.
	So, there is clean and bad Asian food just by pointing it out and want the clean one doesn't make you a racist.
	How many impressions did that tweet of Carl's get?
	140k. I think it deserved more.
	It deserved more, definitely speaking.
	Right, so systemic racism is associated with emotional eating in African Americans.
	This is a study from Rutgers University that says essentially the same thing.
	When you have, let's say...
	When you're facing systemic racism, you want some momentary release.
	This is just a long way of saying negative emotions and people go on to eat food.
	Apparently some people don't have impulse control.
	And if you notice that, it's racist.
	Anyway, we have a really interesting report and survey if you want to check it out from our website.
	We have all the links.
	And here...
	You know, Dan, if you're fighting obesity, you're a racist.
	If you're not obese, you're a racist.
	If you fight obesity, you're a racist.
	If you tell people that they should have a clean lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle, you're a racist.
	I appreciate I'm a few pounds over, but that's because I like drinking an awful lot of beer.
	Maybe you're a more approachable goal.
	Yeah, but I want to drink a lot of beer, so I'm just going to have to put up with it.
	Yeah. And anyway, they're saying basically it's the same thing over and over and over again.
	It's the nature versus nurture thing.
	And I think that basically the left is brainwashing people into having an allergy to personal responsibility and constantly viewing racism everywhere.
	And lo and behold, for some reason, this causes negative emotions.
	And as they say, negative emotions sometimes...
	Lead people to overeat.
	And actually leftists don't help with victim mentality.
	I don't know.
	They literally want these people to be constantly dissatisfied because they want them to be angry and they want to capitalize upon their anger politically.
	We've got some comments.
	Yep, so by Scanline's Brokonomics topic, buy shares in chocolate and snack companies and become racist.
	Is it viable?
	And from Ramshackle Otter, woman at my old work looked like the honey monster.
	We'd find empty boxes of Mr. Kipling cakes on top of the tampon bin in cubicles.
	We all knew who the culprit was.
	Yeah, obviously.
	So simple.
	Connie the Caterpillar everywhere.
	Oh, I like the Colin the Caterpillars.
	Yeah, me too.
	Yeah, they're good.
	Right. Gentlemen, I regret to inform you, women again!
	They're not happy, and obviously it's our fault.
	Obviously. Yes.
	So, I mean, this all kicked off because of, you know, this tweet that went around, a clip from, this is an interview with Ronaldo.
	Who apparently is...
	I think he's an Italian football person.
	Ronaldo. Isn't he Portuguese?
	I don't know.
	He's some kind of...
	There are many Ronaldos.
	There's the Brazilian Ronaldo.
	The phenomenon.
	Click into the video and play a little bit.
	It's going to be in...
	It's going to be in foreign, so...
	Yeah, you can kill the sound.
	There you go, who's that?
	That's Ronaldo, isn't it?
	Yeah, yeah, that's the Portuguese Ronaldo.
	The Portuguese Ronaldo.
	Okay, so yeah, kill that.
	Go back to the other tweet.
	So basically, he is not getting married.
	So he's been with this woman, Georgina, for whatever it is, nine years now.
	They started dating in 2016 after he found her in a Gucci store.
	Presumably decided he likes the cut of her jib and promptly started dating her.
	And now they've got like five kids.
	He already had three kids and they've had another two kids or something.
	How old is she?
	I'm not sure if that's Georgina or if that's just the woman who's interviewing him.
	Like I said, it's all in foreign, the whole thing.
	I think they also have kids, don't they?
	Yeah, two from this Georgina person and he brought three with him.
	But basically he won't marry her.
	Why? Well, why would he?
	Well, I mean, you've opened the can of worms there because after this interview aired, women were not entirely happy about this.
	This is a case in point here.
	So this Lizzie person is saying, Yeah,
	I've heard several cases of the sort, and all of them were cases where women were constantly trying to find Brad Pitt.
	And they didn't like regular dudes.
	There weren't enough for them.
	And they constantly went out to find the golden, you know, part.
	Yeah. Yeah, and they couldn't find it.
	Yeah, I mean, it's...
	And these women tend to gravitate towards men who don't want them in the first place.
	We're relentlessly hearing about women shaming men and calling them man-children, but you never see those same women go out to publicly try and change divorce law.
	Yeah. Because, I mean, that's what's happening here, is what possible reason should Ronaldo have to get married?
	So he's living with her.
	He colloquially refers to her as his wife, even though they're not actually married.
	They have children together.
	You know, what benefit would he gain from being married?
	I mean, it's not an issue of benefit, a consequential benefit.
	I mean, I'd say it's...
	It's an honest question.
	It's a watermark in the relationship.
	Yeah, but I'm looking...
	It's an immaterial value.
	Okay. And on the flip side of that, as soon as he marries her...
	She can then just decide, I'm going to initiate a divorce and get half his stuff.
	They could have a prenup.
	I mean, if she...
	Or he could just not get married.
	If she's thinking like that, he shouldn't get married with her, but he shouldn't be with her as well, either.
	Well, why not?
	I mean, he provides everything.
	I know, I wouldn't want to be with someone I wouldn't trust.
	Yeah, but I mean, fundamentally, I mean, why do men still marry?
	I mean, we get...
	We get everything that marriage used to provide outside of marriage, except after you're married, you can then lose half your stuff.
	So apart from these vague old traditional feelings, I mean, to be fair, I've done it myself, I got married, because I'm an old trad guy and everything and all that kind of stuff, but I can't make an intellectual case as to why I should.
	The only intellectual case you can make is that it's an immaterial value, and some people don't see it, some people do.
	I got married.
	It was the happiest day of my life.
	Brilliant. Hope I don't lose half my stuff.
	And it's a problem, because there are some good examples of this.
	Jeff Bezos, he divorced from Mackenzie Scott.
	I mean, the fact that she kept her surname that whole time was probably a bit of a clue.
	But they divorced after 25 years.
	During that time...
	She was going out to lunches, playing tennis.
	She's raised some children, so that's important.
	She did that.
	She probably had some nannies and stuff, given that she was married to Jeff Bezos.
	Probably didn't clean the house herself.
	No, she probably didn't clean the house.
	That's true.
	That's important.
	Yes. So what did she get for being married for those 25?
	She got $38 billion.
	She got half his stuff.
	Mel Gibson and Robin Moore Gibson.
	They divorced after 31 years.
	And she got half his stuff.
	425 million.
	A lot of 50%.
	And she spent her time interveningly going to lunch, playing tennis.
	She did raise children, but probably had nannies.
	Probably didn't clean the house either.
	Okay. Now that she's got all of that money, she can, of course, buy some Islander merch.
	You can't buy the magazine because we've sold out.
	We did warn you to buy it in time, but we've sold out.
	But you can still buy the merch, which is also limited edition and won't be available for long.
	Michael Jordan and Janita Vinoy, apparently.
	So they divorced after 17 years.
	She got half his stuff.
	£168 million.
	Don't know what she was doing in the meantime, having lunches.
	Playing some tennis.
	Probably didn't clean the house.
	Rupert Murdoch and Anne Murdoch.
	They divorced after 32 years.
	So what did she get?
	She got $1.7 billion.
	She got half his stuff.
	Did she spend those 32 years getting up at 5am working in a ruthless, high-stress, cutthroat business making deals?
	Growing a business.
	She probably went and had lunches.
	Sorry, this reminds me of Intolerable Cruelty.
	It's a very fun comedy movie.
	And they had the prenup.
	Okay. Because Catherine Zeta-Jones there in their movie wanted to marry rich old dudes and get half their stuff.
	I mean, that is what Catherine Zeta-Jones did as well, isn't it?
	So she was probably qualified to make that movie.
	Yeah, was it fiction or non-fiction?
	So basically you're saying women are getting half of her stuff.
	Well, what I'm pointing out is I just want...
	I mean, maybe somebody in the comments can explain it to me, but apart from traditional principles, why would you get married?
	Okay, so I want to disagree with...
	You know, respectfully.
	Because I think that this is a bit of a fact.
	Well, I'm not making an idea.
	I just literally want to hear somebody explain why.
	Outside of traditional principles.
	Yeah. Yeah, but the point is the merit of traditional principles.
	In and of itself.
	It depends what they are.
	Right. So, for instance, you could say that it's a...
	When you want to have a family, you want...
	You're not...
	You're caring about...
	It's a formal society.
	You're building a society whose primary purpose is to raise children and to foster a good environment.
	You don't actually need marriage to do that.
	You can have children, raise them.
	If you're going to stay together anyway, you will.
	I mean, I know a lot more people who got married.
	I do know people who've had children have been together for like 30 years and never got married.
	You know, it doesn't change anything, apart from the fact she can't just decide one day to leave and take half his stuff.
	Why can't they sign prenups?
	If you say, no, I'm in case...
	Well, you can do that now, yeah.
	So, case solved.
	Because it's also fun.
	You can have a party.
	Yeah. It's a ceremony.
	So, I can see people in the comments making an argument for marriage, which they have phrased it very differently, so let me make it...
	PG-rated.
	They're basically saying that it's for sex and companionship.
	Well, to be fair, if you're a man of meat, you can get that by buying a dog and a series of Russian hookers.
	Make sure that you get it the right way around, otherwise you'll have a very confused hooker on your hands.
	Stats do show, and there's no question about that, that men in relationships have more access to these stuff than people outside of relationships.
	Dogs and hookers?
	No, more sex.
	Oh, okay.
	Dogs, I mean...
	Yeah. Yeah, people buy dogs and pets.
	Yeah, but I'm just saying, if it's just companionship and sex, and actually you can get it outside of a marriage anyway.
	I've got some stats here.
	So these are marriage rates over the decades.
	So for those listening, I've basically broken it down from the 1920s to the 2020s.
	Marriage rate per thousand.
	So as you can see, in the UK, it basically sort of hovered along at about, well, maybe about 8%.
	So every...
	Every year, out of a thousand women, eight of them would get married off.
	And that has slumped from being fairly consistently about eight in a thousand.
	Now that's dropped to two.
	Sorry, two women out of a thousand get married?
	In any given year now, yeah.
	So the marriage rate has gone down to a quarter of what it was.
	Average age...
	I thought this was interesting.
	So as you can see, men are on average a couple of years older than the person they marry, and I thought the gaps used to be wider in the past, but apparently no, it's fairly consistent.
	It's been about a two-year gap.
	The only difference is that people are marrying later now, so the average age for men is now 34 against women's 32, whereas at one time the men would have been 25 and the women would have been 23. So they've both got older, but the age gap has remained consistent.
	But look at that divorce rate there.
	So 1920s, the divorce rate was 0.1.
	1 out of 10,000.
	Yeah. To be fair, it did peak a bit higher in the 1990s because boomers absolutely love getting divorced.
	Sorry, I think it's way more.
	It can't be 2 out of 1,000 who get divorced.
	I think that's just out of people in general, so it's not out of marriages.
	Okay. That's just out of people, including the ones who aren't married.
	Right, and according to the Office of National Statistics, women initiate 63% of divorces in the UK.
	That's a lot.
	So if you are going to get divorced...
	Roughly two out of three.
	Yeah. It's twice as likely that the woman is going to initiate it and get half your stuff.
	Let's go down, because I also did the same data for the US, which is even more stark.
	So they had an even higher marriage rate back in yi days of about 10%, and now that's dropped in half to 5%.
	That's for?
	Yeah. Sorry, that's for men.
	Well, this is only looking at heterosexual marriage, so it would be the same number.
	What have we got?
	The average age, as you can see, similar sort of pattern to the UK, drifting up, age gap of about two years, so that's fairly consistent.
	The divorce rate, much higher in the US.
	What are we up to?
	In fact, it was, I mean, it's never been below one.
	And what are we in now?
	2.3.
	Again, it peaked in the 80s and 90s because, again, boomers love divorce.
	But, I mean, otherwise it's about the same.
	The thing that really got me with these numbers was women initiate 70% of divorces, although if you go to college-educated women, it's 90%.
	So if you marry a college-educated woman in the United States, nine times out of ten, she's the one who initiates a divorce.
	What is...
	So if you're an American man and you marry a college-educated woman, your lifetime divorce risk is about 35%.
	And then she gets half your stuff.
	If you're an American man, why would you do that?
	I mean, when they're talking about college-educated women, now they mean woke women.
	Yes. Yeah, don't marry a woke woman.
	Yes. Case closed.
	It should be 0% marriages between normally thinking men and woke women.
	Yeah. And, you know, like I say, I am a trad guy myself.
	I mean, I did get married, even though I was thinking at the time, why am I doing this?
	But, I mean, fair enough, I'd do it.
	You know, I think that's what a lot of men think.
	But I couldn't make a good reason for it.
	So, you know, I have gone there myself.
	But you do need to be very certain that...
	Whoever you're marrying is a keeper.
	And it's not unreasonable that, therefore, men are delaying marriage for much longer because they want to be really certain that this person is an actual keeper.
	The problem is, if you're a young man, growing up, you constantly hear horror stories from older men who have got divorced.
	But if you're a young man starting out in a firm, you're going to have like two or three guys around the office who've divorced badly and it's just crushed them.
	And I'm at the age now where I'm getting to know, I'm finding out that mates of mine that I've known for years and years are now getting divorced.
	So I've got one mate, lovely bloke.
	Probably let himself get walked all over a bit.
	I mean, he was absolutely killing himself by putting all these hours in down the office because his wife was one of those keeping up with the neighbours type and she wanted a new kitchen done and she wanted a new conservatory.
	And so he was killing himself down the office working all these hours.
	Oh, you don't want a person like that.
	Yeah. And then, on top of it, what happens is she makes a friend down yoga or something who's a divorced woman.
	And her friend is bored, because her friend has nobody to go out with most of the time, so she wants this guy's wife to also divorce.
	So she's constantly in her rear telling her, oh, it's amazing once you're divorced, you can do whatever you want, you can do this, you can do that.
	And of course, she then initiates divorce.
	So now, because he's provided her that lifestyle and that house and that income by absolutely killing himself down the office, now he needs to keep doing that forever, except now he hasn't got a wife or a house.
	The point is that this is how a lot of materialistically oriented people think.
	So if you see that a woman is thinking like that, maybe you should call it off.
	Yeah, she's telling you how she's going to be like.
	But this is the point though.
	You need to be very confident about who you're marrying.
	You can't blame men for being very cautious.
	And I've got huge sympathy for women as well, because, I mean, I posted up that original tweet and, you know, pointed out, you know, I'm still waiting for good answers.
	I mean, apart from traditional...
	Why would you do it?
	And I had various people say, you know, they knew women who did everything right who this happened to.
	And I feel enormous sympathy for them.
	And I've got two daughters myself, and I don't want this to happen to them.
	I don't want them to get strung along for 10 years in their 20s, lose their childbearing age.
	But at the same time, we now live in a culture where things have been so biased in favour of women that men are just understandably extremely cautious.
	You can fix this overnight.
	You know that Ronaldo guy?
	So he's Portuguese, apparently, you said.
	If Portugal changed divorce law to capping what women could get out of divorce at 10%, he would marry her tomorrow, I'm sure of it.
	And most of this stuff would go away.
	If you just capped divorce payouts, then, you know, I suppose it's a bit different when you've got children's and stuff, but...
	This problem would just be solved.
	Anyway, I was about to beat up on college-educated women because we started going down that route.
	I mean, you're in a world of hurt if you go down this route.
	So, you know, I mean, this is a woman...
	Colleges by themselves are world...
	Well, this is a woman pointing it out.
	She's saying, white college-educated women are at odds with everybody.
	They've lost their mind.
	I've broken my cohort.
	They come for you when they do.
	Make no mistake.
	And that was because of this chart.
	I think Mike...
	Mike Johnson originally shared this, which is basically...
	If you're listening, it's basically a chart that shows voters' opinion of, and then it gives a whole range of people.
	Trump, Elon, Voldemort, Lezinski, DEI, Democrat Party.
	And basically, everybody is more or less in the same orbit, apart from white college women, who are just mental.
	I mean, they're just completely off the chart.
	So white women without a degree have a minus 3% favourability of Voldemort-Lezinski, whereas white college women are plus 53. A 56-point difference on something like that.
	You know, these people are a bit indoctrinated.
	Polls show that 45% of college-educated single women say their inability to find somebody is a function of not being able to meet somebody who meets their expectations.
	What I said in the beginning, if they want to find Mr. Perfect and they constantly think that any minor deviation from perfection is merits rejection and divorce, they're going to stay alone.
	Yeah, these college-educated women, they won't marry, like, a plumber who's earning 200k a year when they're working in a coffee shop because they've got a philosophy degree or something.
	Well, it won't be a philosophy degree, will it be a psychology degree?
	But, you know, they have their psychology degree and they won't marry somebody earning four or five times as much as them because they consider themselves to be higher status and they can't marry down.
	And then on top of it, there are apparently 145 college-educated women for every 100 college-educated men.
	Lots of divorces.
	Well, yeah.
	There are apparently 5.5 million college-educated women between the ages of 22 and 29 versus only 4.1 million college-educated men in the same age bracket.
	So the dating pool for college graduates, It's basically 33% more for women than men.
	Right. While I was looking, I also found some other interesting data.
	Oh, this is just...
	I just want to make the point that if you're a woman...
	And you think this doesn't apply to you.
	I'm not saying it applies to you.
	This is another woman making this point.
	She says, not only am I a white college-educated female, I work in higher education, and most days I think I'm the only sane one on campus.
	It's that bad, even in Texas.
	So yeah, I'm not having a pop at you if you're a woman.
	I'm just saying women in general are gone mental.
	Right, what's next?
	I thought I'd throw this in as well.
	This is female IQ, the different degrees that they study.
	So, as you can imagine, in the top corner, you've got physics and astronomy.
	Yeah, they're not that interested in it.
	Philosophy's really high up.
	Apparently, if you're a woman studying philosophy, you've probably got an IQ of 130.
	That was your thing, wasn't it?
	You taught it, in fact.
	Yeah, I taught it.
	Yeah. As you start to come...
	I can't imagine...
	And engineering, that's quite high.
	I can't imagine there are a huge number of women studying physics and engineering, though.
	What about philosophy?
	I mean, how many women were in your courses?
	A lot.
	Right. So that's probably where the smart ones go, philosophy.
	Not like psychology, which is down there.
	That's like 110.
	If you've got an IQ of 110, what are you doing in a university, to be honest?
	I don't mean to be cruel, but...
	I found this interesting point that somebody raised.
	It's a cliche at this point to be a young woman majoring in psychology.
	Apparently, yes, psychology.
	80% of psychology degree holders are women.
	Clearly, they want to take emotional care of others and they want to nurture them.
	Well, okay, that's what children are for.
	So rather than getting a degree and then not being able to find a man...
	Because there aren't enough men who are left-wing enough for you and have a college degree.
	Why don't you just save yourself the bother and have kids?
	Yeah. I mean, a lot of them have gone mental.
	Yes. And then finally, I'll leave that.
	Women, they just don't pay off their...
	So not only do they get a useless college degree that stops them from marrying, stops them from having kids, stops them being happy, but they don't even pay off the bloody loan.
	The point is, make...
	When degrees make people become insufferable for others.
	That's the issue.
	So, I mean, I started saying, you know, why should men get married?
	And I think sensible right-wing men and women will continue to do so.
	But lefty college women, who are basically the ones writing the articles about this sort of stuff in the first place and get themselves all upset about it.
	I mean, they've painted themselves into a corner.
	Oh, well.
	Right, let's have a look at some comments.
	McLeod says, The guys who got married are the ones who went over the top to possibly get cut down by a machine gun of divorce court.
	The rest of us single guys are trying to survive in the trenches.
	Connor Smugmug says, Issue 3 just arrived on my birthday.
	Still no Issue 2. There is a big logistics effort going on at the moment to get The remaining two's out.
	I've heard something about that.
	Bless you, lads.
	Looking forward to read it.
	Dieting is racist because it's about impulse control.
	I won't read that last bit.
	Scanline says, Brokonomics topic, buy shares in chocolates and snack companies.
	Oh, I think you did that one, didn't you?
	I think you should do the topic.
	Maybe. We've got some video comments.
	Good morning, Lotus Eaters.
	I'm not gonna lie, as photogenic as snow is, I'm ready for all the snowy road closures to open.
	This last weekend I found myself on the northeast end of the Mountain Loop Highway.
	I found a great trail out there, a gentle climb through the trees, into the snow, to a little lake, though there was no chance I was gonna climb 3,000 more feet to the top.
	Feel free to throw an islander advert here.
	This mountain peak really looks like y'all's snowy cathedral.
	Hope you enjoyed the nice nature scenes to end our day of podcasting.
	That is remarkable.
	This is amazing.
	That looks like a Windows screensaver to me.
	It must be awesome having that down the road from you.
	Bloody brilliant.
	Any other video comments?
	Oh, right.
	Okay. Right.
	Should we go and read the comments here?
	Oh, yeah.
	Somebody's pointing out...
	Astrid Lindgren is the author and Pippa Longstocking is the character.
	Okay, that actually makes a lot more sense.
	All right, fair enough.
	And then on my section, AP says, I thought Gary's economics clown might be coming up soon.
	You keep pushing videos with him on me unsolicited.
	YouTube, not UKIP.
	Did I say UKIP?
	Yeah. Oh, I apologise.
	Got the flu.
	Yeah, YouTube keeps pushing it.
	Eventually clicked on one and it smelt wrong.
	Yeah, inequality is a symptom, not a cause.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Particularly when society is non-homogeneous.
	I realised that I'd heard him before.
	He was caught lying about his trading record.
	His fellow former traders called him out, claims to have made countless millions, now has a Patreon, works for Novara Media shilling nonsense.
	Okay, right, that's interesting.
	These nuts.
	Yes. Yes.
	Yes. Yes, go on.
	Thomas Howell says, I agree, Dan.
	Shouldn't bother talking to Gary.
	He's a mediocre mind attached to an above-average calculator.
	Yeah, so he will be clever because you're not becoming a trader at Citibank unless you're very quick on the mental maths.
	Because, I mean, you'll have...
	You'll have somebody ring him up and say, you know, I'm selling 17,000 contracts of whatever expiry date of this, and then you have to work out very quickly in your head against whatever your position is, what it means for the firm, and you need to do it instantly.
	So he definitely is going to be an intelligent guy, but because he's a lefty, he's just remarkably uncurious.
	And the problem with lefties is not that they don't know things, because, of course, you can look stuff up when you don't know something.
	It's that a lefty cannot imagine that learning something would make them change their mind.
	So they make no effort to learn anything.
	They've already got their conclusion, and they basically just stick there.
	Thomas goes on to say, however, as I tweeted at you on X, you should talk to Tiffany Chichenti.
	She's discovered some fascinating shenanigans that will be the underpinnings of the next credit crunch.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, I will look up Tiffany and find out what's going on there.
	Annister Crowley says, the 15% is total tax, so in reality we are paying more than just 40%.
	Yep, it's too much.
	North FC Zuma says leftists will see the Laffer curve and say 50% tax is optimal then.
	Yes, well, in that simple diagram, it made it look like 50% was optimal, but, you know, as I say, it's probably 15%.
	Many years ago, the smartest person I know said low interest rates are a symptom of excess government spending.
	Yes. Yes, I agree with that.
	Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk simplifies it to inflation as a product of government overspending, which is probably a little bit reductive, but, I mean, essentially he's right.
	It does come down to that.
	Yes, let's do some from yours while I look up who Sophie Chichanti is.
	Okay. Sophie Liv, I'll be excessively careful when I'm reading your comments.
	So this whole idea that fat activism and fat con, Was started by a lesbian black woman has actually been debunked.
	Fatcon, that was the origin of this.
	Was started by skinny white men that had a feeder fetish.
	I'm not joking about this.
	I'm going to check this out.
	Hang on, what was that about a fever fetish?
	What? A feeder.
	Oh, I thought it was about yellow fever again.
	Okay, no, carry on.
	I'll definitely check it out.
	Thanks, Sophie.
	Right, Chase Ball.
	Celebs be all body positive.
	Yas, queen, you go, girl, until they get their grubby obese sausage fingers on some ozempic.
	So we leave again.
	Yeah, once I gained weight during winter.
	So I am just not eating candy, nor drinking alcohol or any sugary drinks at the moment.
	And shockingly, I'm getting back at my desired weight.
	The sad thing is this happens every year.
	So maybe I should just take better care at winter.
	I mean, it happens.
	Just during celebrations, I also like to drink and eat a bit more.
	How old are you now?
	35. Oh, okay.
	Right. It's starting to get more difficult.
	That's about the sort of...
	Because when you're in your 20s...
	When I hear people in their 20s say that they're going on a diet and then look like I'm supposed to be impressed or something...
	Going on a diet when you're in your 20s is not impressive because it's bloody easy to lose weight at that age.
	You'll find out now that you're past the midway point in 30s, it is a bit more stubborn.
	Also, the difficult thing is to keep it because you could say, well, I want to lose 10 kilograms, 20 pounds, lose them and then regain them.
	Yeah, I mean, it still comes back to calorie deficit.
	You can run yourself around a bit more and just eat less.
	The problem is when you're old, you're less inclined to run yourself around all over the bloody place.
	I think it's a bit more complex.
	Not that you're wrong, but it's also what these calories are comprised of.
	If you just have 1,000 calories of chocolate, it's not going to be as good as you have 1,500.
	No, then you have other health issues if you eat bad food.
	But I mean, literally, you can have a calorie deficit on sweets and you'll lose weight.
	Yeah, you will, but you may also...
	You'll just screw up the rest of your health in the process because you'll get all sorts of vitamin deficits and all that sort of thing.
	But also, I think it's about mentality.
	It's about the mindset.
	It's not, the mindset shouldn't be, well, I just want to lose 20 pounds to look better this summer.
	It should be, I'm changing my life.
	Right, okay, not a fed.
	I'm a personal trainer and can't tell you how many times I've tried explaining to people that nothing they do in the gym will matter if they don't get control of their diet.
	Yes, they say 80% of physique is built in the kitchen.
	You simply cannot out-train a bad diet.
	Pro athletes and bodybuilders wouldn't bother with their super strict diets and would all be fast food junkies as well.
	Yeah, why wouldn't they?
	Why would you resist fish and chips?
	Roman observer, what's more racist?
	Islamophobia, being on time, or diets?
	Definitely diets.
	I mean, it's quite a high bar because I remember...
	In order to be racist, you just had to say racist things.
	And it's like, okay, achievable.
	But these days, in order to be racist, there's so many things that you've got to remember.
	It's a very low bar.
	You've got to remember to be punctual.
	You've got to think about the Roman Empire.
	You've got to go on hikes.
	You've got to diet.
	It's like, oh, it's exhausting.
	Omar Awad says the body positivity movement has the moral integrity of Bernie Sanders once again asking for just the billionaires to pay their fair share because millionaires are okay now for some reason.
	It's because...
	It's because Bernie Sanders became a millionaire.
	That's right.
	Sneeder Chuck.
	Still hoping that Cooking with Stelios becomes an actual show.
	He will slim down the world.
	Did you have an idea for a show?
	Cooking with Stelios?
	No, but during the Lotus Eaters cook-offs on Twitter that we were posting.
	Oh, that thing.
	I said that I cook my own souvlaki.
	What's a souvlaki?
	Souvlaki is basically a wonderful...
	You have pita bread, and you put basically anything you want into it.
	You can put anything you want inside, but generally speaking...
	A kebab?
	Yeah, but it's not actually kebab.
	Right. It's a Greek version, the OG version.
	Right, okay.
	Yeah, and it's generally speaking much more clean, much cleaner.
	Okay, and you can put chips, you can put tomato, you can put lettuce, and also Craig Cooper has asked me to do this video.
	Right. At some point, maybe.
	Right, Maureen Peters, it is interesting how all these curvy women with no self-control are all about body positivity until they finally lose some weight.
	Exactly. That Texas gal.
	White women do diet differently, Dan.
	They don't wash their chicken.
	RFFC. Zuma tells us there's a video of a diverse woman making a tray of sweet potatoes, and no joke, she pulls a full kilogram bag of sugar onto them.
	you Yeah. I mean, if you do that, you'll gain weight.
	It's going to be an uphill struggle to lose weight then, isn't it?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Ron Swansea says, marriage is a non-logical concept.
	It's entirely magical.
	Logic ruins it.
	That's probably the best argument, actually, that you can make for marriage.
	I just can't help but be a bit logical sometimes.
	So I question it.
	You're a slave to love.
	Yes. In fact, I saw on Twitter that Ron got married recently, so congratulations, Ron.
	Congratulations. Yeah, I mean, I still keep coming back to, you know, what am I going to say to my daughters?
	Because, you know, obviously we want a fleet of grandchildren.
	You know, so I'm going to have to marry them off.
	And it's not like the old days where I can just sort of arrange it and pay a dowry.
	So, I mean, I'm not being unsympathetic to women here.
	I genuinely would like to try and get this solved.
	I don't know what to do.
	I don't know.
	I sincerely hope all the best for you.
	I mean, maybe I do actually do the dowry thing.
	I just say, oh, sod it.
	I'll just marry the daughter and I'll buy you a house.
	Or some cows.
	I think a house would be more useful.
	Unless he's a farmer.
	Maybe then I'll buy him some cows or something.
	Do it the old-fashioned way.
	Let me see.
	Bob Bobson says, Stelios' statistic about people having more sex in marriage is misrepresented because on the other side it conflates those who don't want to get married with those who can't get married.
	The former gets plenty.
	I think I said relationships.
	Right. Yep.
	Yeah, same difference, I'm sure.
	I appreciate the comment, yeah.
	What have we got?
	Theodore Pinnock says, This conversation on marriage makes it very clear to me that everything falls apart without Christianity as the foundation.
	Yep, okay, so that's also another good point.
	If viewed in purely materialistic terms, as you say, there was not really a good reason for men to get married.
	You have to look at the religious conception to find a good reason, the spiritual union before God, the mutual support of achieving I mean, again, yeah.
	It's an immaterial value.
	If I try and apply a logic or a metric to it, I can't...
	Find a reason.
	But also if you try to apply material...
	I wouldn't say it's...
	I would disagree with the framing because it's not only materialistic reasons that exist.
	But if you try to do the dowry thing, for instance, you run the risk of men wanting to be in the marriage not because they love the daughter but because they want the dowry.
	Well, I would have to choose wisely.
	In that case.
	I mean, I don't think my daughters will go for this.
	I mean, they probably won't let me arrange it for them.
	But I'm just thinking that would be one possible solution.
	And whatever else.
	Michael Dribilis says a small percentage of men are sleeping with 80% of women because they don't have to make any effort.
	A man, six foot tall, six pack, six figure salary and six inches plus.
	I mean, that's a bit small, but still have no problem getting all the women they want because they also have no motivation to commit.
	It's this kind of man that a lot of women go after, especially now with social media.
	It was always the case.
	I mean, I think that this has to do with...
	Some women.
	Especially the indoctrinated ones.
	They take good guys for granted.
	Maybe I don't really need to worry about the daughters because I just need to make sure they're really right-wing.
	And because there's so many lefty women who won't go anywhere in right-wing man, they just have their pick.
	I mean, maybe it's easy.
	Maybe I'm worried about nothing.
	Anyway, and then finally, someone online says, marrying in the modern day is an unbelievably foolish move for a man.
	You want to lose half your stuff because that's what's going to happen.
	Yeah, I mean, it seems that way, but it's unfortunate.
	Right, so I think that's everything we've got time for.
	If you can explain to me in the comments why men should get married or how to fix it, because I genuinely don't know.
	Other than that, lovely talking to you.

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