Dave Smith and James Smith dissect the "rigged game" of modern economics, refuting Kyle Kalinsky's "fixed pie fallacy" by arguing wealth expands through value creation rather than zero-sum redistribution. They critique government overreach, including surveillance and the politicized prosecution of January 6th supporters, while defending billionaires who generate societal value against those relying on corporate welfare. Ultimately, the hosts conclude that true freedom requires ending cronyism and allowing voluntary exchange to drive prosperity, rejecting both progressive redistribution and the myth of an unrigged free market. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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America's Next Enemy00:14:44
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith.
And if that's me, then he must be, by powers of logical deduction, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
What's up, my brother?
You're looking more skinheady than ever.
I'm just trying to blind in.
You know, inflation's coming.
It's only a matter of time before they realize the Jews did it.
And I'm just trying to do everything I can.
There you go.
Just, I, when, when you come on looking like this, I really feel the need to stress Robbie's last name is Bernstein.
Just for now, pretty soon it's going to be Rob Hitler.
This is the thing about Robbie the Fire.
It really doesn't even, it doesn't make it clear at all.
Just so you guys know, we have not taken a dark turn.
Rob is just preparing himself.
Rob's haircut is a hedge against radicalism.
And when you think about it that way, what could be jewier?
I mean, honestly, what could be jewier than thinking about it that way?
Okay, so there's a few things on my mind.
And then I got a video that I wanted to go through today.
So by the way, the first thing that I was thinking of that I saw this morning was, and I don't know if you've seen this, but it's been announced that CPAC has a pretty big speaker coming this year.
Did you see who it is, Rob?
Only the greatest speaker of all time.
Okay.
The greatest.
I'm so good with words.
I'm really the best with words.
And I would be speaking at CPAC.
Donald Trump to give his first major speech, I think, since he's left the White House.
And I got to say, just for entertainment value, happy to see it.
I think everyone's happy to see it.
Honestly, I don't believe that even the people who really hate Trump aren't deep inside a little bit glad that he's going to go give a big speech.
Because you got something to talk about.
What is CPAC?
I know you've mentioned it, but it's the conservative political action conference.
I believe that's what it stands for.
It's a thing that's been going on for forever.
It's just kind of an event.
Conservatives go and give speeches.
And, you know, the libertarians used to really have a stronghold in that event.
Like Ron Paul used to go and speak every year and just crush it.
And he'd always win their straw poll and stuff.
But then it just, it kind of got taken over by more of the kind of populist nationalist types.
And Donald Trump was going and speaking there well before he ran for president when Obama was president.
And yeah, I don't know.
I don't know that much about it.
It's a conservative event.
Conservatives give speeches, but it'll be interesting to hear from Donald Trump after everything that's happened.
You know, you just, as somebody who hates politics and hates all politicians, but loves political theater and just loves the whole story of all of it, it's about as big a thing as you can get.
I mean, here is this guy, Donald Trump, who was, you know, one of the most unique, if not the most unique political figures in American history.
You know, runs for political office on his first try.
I mean, I know you could say back in 2000, but really his first try running for office, he defeats the Bush and Clinton criminal families, you know, becomes the president, is framed for treason for three years, then has to deal with the entire COVID, you know, insanity, then loses an election to Joe Biden in which he claims there was massive fraud and all of this,
then goes out being, you know, the only president to be impeached twice and all of this stuff.
And this guy whose whole brand was about being a winner is now, whether you think fairly or unfairly, a big loser.
And now we get to hear from him.
And I'm just kind of interested to see what he's going to say.
My guess would be no different whatsoever.
It's just going to be him blasting Joe Biden for being an idiot.
It'd be great if he showed up with what would have been his last three months of tweets.
Just reads them all.
Just reads them all.
All right.
This one was pretty good.
I would have put this out a month and a half ago.
It is a great example, though, right?
Like him being kicked off Twitter and all of this.
You do, you really feel it.
Like it really did remove him from the national conversation so much.
Like we would, they would constantly be talking about the latest thing Donald Trump tweeted.
And I think that, you know, since there's such a huge industry around hating Donald Trump, I have a feeling that a lot of them miss him.
They miss him for that content.
I bet he's as a civilian just doing his part to get that wall done.
You know, he's just probably now he can really dedicate his efforts.
Well, be careful.
I think what's his name?
Bannon got in trouble for that.
He was fundraising for it.
That's how that's how badly Americans want it.
They were willing to contribute towards it.
And then Bannon just took their money.
Bennett took their money and then got a pardon from the president.
So you better have your boy in the White House if you want to get into that game.
So anyway, that'll be interesting to see.
And of course, this is, you know, I'm sure he will blast Biden for his immigration policy and for the executive orders that are undoing a lot of the Trump stuff and all of that.
But that isn't as interesting to me.
I mean, we kind of all know, you know, what his position versus Biden's position, at least rhetorically, is on that issue.
But I will be interested to see if Donald Trump mentions at all the fact that they're, you know, turning the war on terrorism inward and focusing it on his supporters.
I would not be surprised if Donald Trump just doesn't mention that at all and the speech is all about him.
Donald Trump, I don't think has ever demonstrated any real feeling or compassion or anything for his supporters.
But right now, we're seeing something pretty major.
You had mentioned before we started the podcast about Merrick Garland promising ahead of his confirmation that he will be prosecuting the white supremacists because that's the biggest problem in America is white supremacy.
It's just everywhere, you know?
So he'll be prosecuting them.
And this is, you know, at this point, you've got the potential AG, who's almost certainly going to be the AG.
You've had the former CIA director, all types of people in the corporate media.
This is, you know, this isn't just something random people are saying.
They are really talking about treating the Donald Trump supporters as domestic terrorists and bringing the full force of the state down upon them.
And it'll be very interesting to see if Donald Trump even feels compelled to address it.
Yeah, well, they milked the Charlottesville for everything that it was worth, and they really tried to pretend that that freak occurrence of whatever it was, a thousand people showing up in Charlottesville was proof of the fact that there's a tie, a growing tide of racists in this country, and that that's the biggest problem we face.
And now they're doing the exact same thing with this storm on the Capitol.
They're trying, most of the people out there weren't white supremacists.
It's unfortunate that there were some that were there.
It's unfortunate that some idiots show up with the Confederate flags and like they give them the exact like, you know, footage that these people are looking for that they can point to.
But there isn't this growing racist tide in this country or some risk of domestic terrorism.
It does not exist.
And they are going to, I mean, we, we fucking got taken off Facebook for some reason.
You know, how soon so they start just throwing around these titles at anybody.
And because it's terrorism, it's, you know, there's no court.
There's no nothing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's, that's exactly right.
And, you know, as you pointed out, it's, it's, you know, a good comparison to the Charlottesville thing to what happened on January 6th.
The, I guess, like the, the obvious difference is that it's much more of a stretch to make the January 6th a racist white supremacist thing because it's just not really clear that that's what it was.
I mean, okay, I guess technically speaking, Charlottesville, those guys claimed that they were there to, you know, unite the right or it was about, you know, statues being torn down or whatever.
There, you there, Rob?
Yeah, I'm here.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So I guess those the Charlottesville guys can say they claimed that it was, you know, about uniting the right or that it was about, you know, statues or whatever.
But, you know, it was like a bunch of white nationalists who were there and they're chanting the Jews will not replace us and stuff like that.
So it was pretty easy to replace you.
I'm doubting it.
We're able to do it.
But you know what I'm saying?
Like it made it easier to be like, well, look, this is a bunch of racists doing this thing.
Now, the absurdity of Charlottesville was making it out like it is this major thing throughout the country and not just a few hundred people, you know, having a little event.
But January 6th, I mean, it's like you could say you found a few people there who were racist, but the event itself had nothing to do with race.
The event was about supporting Donald Trump and believing that the election had been stolen from him.
So, but you're absolutely right.
I mean, they milked Charlottesville for years and they will milk this one.
And, you know, you would think that maybe if some of these right-wingers were a little bit smarter, they might see that all of these type of events, what do they actually get you?
Pretty much nothing.
And you're just handing the opposition a talking point that they will milk for years and years and years.
And, you know, it's funny.
I mean, I remember thinking that about Charlottesville at the time and talking about it afterward.
But like, if you, if those people who put on the march in Charlottesville were trying to help the Democrats, they couldn't have done a better job.
If they were trying to destroy their own cause, they couldn't have done a better job.
Because the truth is that when most people see someone with a swastika flag and people chanting the Jews shall not replace us and all of that stuff, they immediately recoil.
The vast majority of Americans, including right-wingers, the vast majority of right-wingers.
And the vast majority of Americans, you know, seeing the spectacle on January 6th had a negative reaction to it.
So this stuff, you know, you got to be you got to be smart about this stuff.
And that's certainly not going to help your cause.
Not that I'm, you know, on board with either of those causes, just kind of calling balls and strikes here.
You're.
If you were working for the other side, you couldn't be doing a better job.
So now um, you know, we're in this situation where they're talking a big game about what they're going to do to these domestic terrorists.
Now, I don't know um, how much of this is actually going to come to fruition, like I I don't know that they're actually going to be going around uh, rounding up what they call white supremacists or domestic terrorists.
I mean, there have been arrests made so far.
You know that that I was pretty certain of like yeah, they're going to use every, they're going to have every camera and facial recognition technology and all of this stuff and they're going to figure out who was there.
Um, there was um, banks were cooperating with the federal government to flag people who had made purchases anywhere near around there.
I mean you really, it's really damn hard.
If this was like if even if you were planning this thing out, right, like even if it was the caricature of what happened on January 6th from the corporate press, right, like this was a planned premeditated coup attempt and attempted insurrection, even if that was the case with technology today.
It is very hard to pull that off, man, without, you know, ending up getting a knock on your door from the FBI.
Things they could have been doing all summer to end the violent protests.
We were saying it the whole time.
Who's crossing state lines, who's organizing, who's showing up?
Pretty easy to track these people down if you want to.
Well look, Rubb.
It's one of the major themes of this.
Show me, and you have talked about this many, many times.
But um, there's a a distinction that's important to make between what is illegal and what there is political will to go after right.
So the the example I always use is, uh, you had um Clapper, that guy right who just lied to Congress and then a blatant lie about something illegal that was going on.
They asked him if there was any mass bulk data collection at the NSA and he looked right in those congressmen's face and said no no, there is not what we don't do that at the NSA, it's.
It's basically a book club.
What are you talking about?
We're not spying on any Americans, just lied to him.
Now that's a crime.
He's still walking free.
He's got, he's got a gig over at CNN.
Nobody cares that.
If there was any political will to prosecute him at any time, they could just go and prosecute him and absolutely get a guilty verdict.
There is no defense for it.
Now, if Clapper was on, let's say, Trump's transition team, he'd be sitting in a cell.
So we all know that.
There's no question about it.
He blatantly lied to Congress.
You can't get away from lying.
You can't get away with lying to Congress if you're on you know what I mean if you're not amongst the establishment.
So it's not a matter of what the law says, it's a matter of where the political will is.
Creating More Extremists00:05:17
Um, so there, you know what I mean.
Like there, there just wasn't any political will to crack down on the violence uh, over the summer um, and there's massive political will to to crack down on these people, but it's a very hard thing to pull off.
I mean, they're especially for people, especially when you realize it wasn't really the corporate press caricature of events and that really what it was was just kind of like, you know, a Trump Trump rally that got out of hand and people started smashing windows and stormed a government building, you know, and some people got hurt and at least one person got killed in it.
I guess there's been some question as to some of the other deaths that were reported.
But regardless, in that type of situation, you are so fucked.
Like they are going to take, because now all of a sudden, you see what's happening?
Like Bank of America was cooperating with the feds.
So it's like, okay, well, you've been in Washington now.
Now not only do they have your face on camera, but they've got that you've been sitting there, you know, putting everything on your debit card for this whole fucking thing.
They got your social media where you're like, you know, live streaming at the Trump rally and shit.
So you're, it's, it's very, very hard to get away with this type of thing today.
It didn't accomplish anything.
And a whole lot of people have probably ruined their lives for participating in it.
However, whether any of this actually happens or not, the crackdown, you know, beyond what I'm talking about here, like further crackdowns on political dissidents.
And I'm certainly not dismissing the idea that something really bad could happen.
I mean, I know better than the average person what our government is capable of.
And it's pretty ugly.
And I wouldn't dismiss it.
Like when this many really powerful people are musing openly about, you know, the war on terror being turned inward, I think it's wise to take that pretty fucking seriously.
However, a lot of these people are pretty crafty.
And I also would not rule out the possibility that this is intentionally designed to provoke.
They are being extremely provocative with the things they're saying.
I mean, I've heard people in the corporate press openly, you know, contemplating the idea of taking people's kids away from them if they were one of these domestic terrorists and things like that.
I mean, it's like really stuff where it's almost, you know, it's hard to not consider the possibility that they're actually trying to create more extremists, you know, which is if you see like so much of like the woke, naked racial identitarian shit that's pushed, you know, and through the mainstream of American culture, it's hard to not wonder sometimes, like, are you guys trying to create Nazis?
Because if you were trying to, this would probably be the way to do it, you know?
Like this, this would probably be a good tactic.
So again, I'm not dismissing any of these possibilities.
I'd be lying if I said I know for sure, but it is certainly a dangerous game that they're playing.
And you wonder what this might provoke out of the right wing response.
And that's going to be the interesting dynamic going forward is that these people, you know, who supported Donald Trump by the tens of millions, you know, you think you're just going to call them domestic terrorists and then what?
They're going to support a more moderate candidate?
No, they're going to support someone who's Trump times 10, you know?
So anyway, we'll have to.
They're also with Merrick Garland.
They're also playing up his expertise in dealing with domestic terrorism as he was the prosecutor on which bombing was it?
Whatever that federal building was.
I forget.
The Oklahoma City.
Yeah, I think Oklahoma City.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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Dirty Republican Tactics00:03:52
Let me ask you the big deep state question because the second they put up Merrick Garland, I was like, wait a second, I know that name.
And I was like, oh, that was their Supreme Court pick.
But I don't know.
There's something that seems very transparent about how this is really just team sports and that clearly the Dems really specifically want him in a position of power.
I don't know.
I was wondering if you had any inside scoop on.
I don't really think I have any particular inside scoop.
I would just say that many times, you know, there's a lot of different ways to analyze how these very powerful groups, some within the government, some outside of the government, operate.
But they are all human beings.
Only like five or six of them are actually lizard people.
It's like Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, but the vast majority of them are human beings.
And the human factor is real.
And so I think it's not really necessary to find a deeper explanation than the fact that that was really a humiliation to Barack Obama and the Democrats.
And in many ways, they got done dirty.
I mean, it was dirty what the Republicans did to him.
No question about that.
Obama nominated a Supreme Court justice.
He had the opening.
That's what he gets to do.
And okay, really, they didn't violate a law.
You know, a lot of these things are just kind of run by precedent and what the normal procedure is.
But, you know, they, it wasn't like it was in his lame duck period.
It was before the election.
You know, it was in his last year of being a president.
And the Republicans had the Senate and they just said, nope, we're going to stall.
We're just going to stall.
They didn't even vote against him.
It's not like they had the confirmation hearing and voted to not confirm him.
They just were like, we're not going to vote.
We're not going to do anything.
We'll just wait.
And then they waited and Donald Trump ended up winning.
And so everything, and that's a big deal, you know, like a Supreme Court to the Democrats or Republicans, that's a really big deal.
And so, you know, it's a lifetime appointment.
And I think it was a humiliation to them that McConnell's trick, his kind of dirty trick worked and that Donald Trump ended up winning, which they're all still furious about, you know.
And that, and so that guy had to have a role just to stick it in their face.
And almost now as like the, you know, like pure revenge to get there.
Yeah, well, that's right.
You got your guy in there, but now they almost want to put the Republicans in a position where they're like, oh, don't you wish he was on the Supreme Court?
Because then he wouldn't be this guy cracking down on you here.
So a lot of these things are just, you know, human on a human level.
People hold grudges.
They get pissed off.
People don't like to be embarrassed, you know?
And that's that explains a lot of these things quite often, you know, that it's just that like, you know, I think to a large degree, I think this explains the Cuomo thing too.
Like, I think it's, it's, you know, there could be a lot of other factors, but I think one of the major factors is that, you know, did you hear what de Blasio said?
This guy, Kim, came out and said that Cuomo basically, you know, like was giving him a shakedown.
that he fucking called him and threatened him.
And he was like, if you come out, I will ruin you.
You'll be fucking ruined.
And he came out and he was like, this is so wrong.
You can't talk to me like that.
Like, you're not a mobster.
That's, you know, he doesn't really understand government.
He absolutely is a mobster.
But, but then de Blasio came out and he said, yeah, we've all gotten that phone call.
We've all got, and basically what de Blasio's thing was just like, he's a prick.
It's like, I don't like this guy.
It's just the same way that anyone else is working with someone who you're like, oh, we all fucking hate that guy.
And then if you see the opportunity to like make that guy look bad, sure, you know?
The Shakedown Scandal00:10:44
And so there's not, you know, there's like a mix.
This is the thing where it's like a lot of people get this twisted on both sides.
So if you talk about anything that is conspiratorial, right?
You have people on one side who go, ah, you're just a conspiracy theorist.
And then people on the other side who are like, no, no, no, the conspiracy is real.
And that's the total story.
And the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Like there are conspirators.
There are conspiracies.
There are groups of people who try to, you know, in secret organize and then, you know, impose their will on other people.
And then there's also lots of other factors involved that have nothing to do with that, you know, that are just human or profit, you know, motivated or lots of other different things.
So it's never just one or the other.
And you end up having a very inaccurate kind of caricature version of the world if you think either there are no conspiracies or everything's a conspiracy, you know?
So either way, you end up like not seeing what's really going on.
All right.
So I want to watch this video.
I was sent a video that someone asked me to break down.
And I won't say who sent it to me because I'm not sure if they wanted their name shared on the podcast, but he sent this to me and he said, look, I think you'd have a lot of fun with this.
You've always said you'll take on these videos, you know, challenging libertarianism.
And he said, this doesn't quite fall into challenging libertarianism, but it's just someone being wrong about everything.
And so it's a video of Kyle Kalinsky, which was put up, I guess, a couple months ago.
And I never saw the video at the time until someone sent this to me, but I thought this would just be fun to go through and for me and you to pick it apart a little bit, because it really shows you what we're dealing with with left-wingers when it comes to economics.
And I know that, you know, economics is one of the things that you really love to talk about, Rob.
So I thought we could have a little bit of fun with this.
If people don't know, Kyle Kalinsky is a, he's very, very popular.
He's one of the real like stars, one of the young stars on the kind of progressive left.
I don't know exactly what he would call himself, like a democratic socialist or something like that.
I'm not sure.
I believe he was a big Bernie Sanders supporter.
And he's big.
He's got like close to a million YouTube subscribers and he's all over the place, been on Rogan.
He's done a lot of, he's built up quite a following.
And he's been around for a while and been on a lot of cable news shows, I think.
I don't know about a lot, but I've seen him on cable news shows before.
And In defense of him, like he's, he's solid on some of the issues you would expect a lefty to be solid on.
You know, like he's, he's good on war and cops, I think, probably government spying and shit like that.
My, my guess is that he would be good on that stuff.
Um, I know he's, he's pretty good on war and that stuff.
So, you know, props to him for that.
But man, when it comes to economics, does he really need to clear out his mind and think a little bit?
So, someone sent me this video.
I just, I, I, I loved it in a perverse way.
And so, let's, let's play it and me and you will break it down.
CNBC did a positive fawning segment on the increase in billionaire net worth under COVID for IPOs.
Hold on, here, pause it for a sec.
Just to be clear, the title is called CNBC Fawns Over Billionaires as Millions Fall Into Poverty.
So, all right, let's keep picking back up.
Minted American billionaires, Robert Frank joins us now with more.
I'm celebrating, Robert.
I'm not one of them, but I'm just on the record.
I'm not Bernie Sanders.
I'm celebrating.
I'm celebrating that there's taxes, there's philanthropy, there's the possibility it can happen to other people if you work hard and have a great idea.
I like millionaires and I like billionaires, but you go ahead.
I'm not going to comment on this.
I have no editorial opinion.
Yeah, these stories are just really inspirational, no matter what your point of view.
You've got this week two IPOs, six billionaires, over $40 billion in personal wealth.
You look at DoorDash, they minted three new multi-billionaires this week.
CEO Tony Xu, he's now worth over 2.7 billion.
You've got co-founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang.
They were all friends at Stanford, and they did the first coding and food delivery while working at night while they were students at school.
Those two guys worth $2.5 billion.
Now, the winner of the week was Brian Chesky.
He, of course, Airbnb CEO.
He's one of three co-founders who started the company when they were flat broke, sitting in a San Francisco apartment.
They decided to rent out air mattresses to make the rent.
Chesky, now worth over $11 billion.
He'll start.
Pause it right there.
So listen, I will start by saying, I think there's a lot to criticize CNBC for.
Okay.
I am not a fan of the network.
You could pull up clips.
I don't know if you ever saw back in the day of when Jon Stewart just raked Kramer over the Kohl's for telling everyone to buy Bear Stearns.
And they literally, I mean, they're just god-awful when it comes to the financials and all this other stuff.
So there's plenty to rip them for.
This, however, is not one of them.
That's the segment that he's about to go off on now.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this segment, like literally nothing to complain about.
I mean, okay, the guy takes a little bit of a shot at Bernie Sanders in the beginning and says, I'm not going to editorialize after he did editorialize a little bit, to be completely fair.
You know, but he was just saying, hey, I don't hate billionaires and millionaires.
But the two examples that they used were two companies that built themselves up that these people have been very successful.
There was nothing wrong with it.
One of the companies was three Asian guys who became billionaires, who I believe are people of color.
So maybe the left should be celebrating when these people succeed.
The other guys were literally what was the Airbnb guys who started off broke trying to make their rent by renting out air mattresses.
And they turn this into a huge, huge thing that tons of people benefit from.
I know I've used Airbnb a bunch.
I'm sure you have before, Rob.
Like everyone's used it.
It's great.
It's a great alternative to staying in hotels.
And I don't know.
So it just, to me, from my perspective, before we get Kyle's perspective, from my perspective, absolutely nothing wrong with this segment.
It was as neutral and just kind of reporting financial news as you could be.
A little shot at Bernie Sanders in the beginning, but like, yeah, I don't know.
He's just saying, I don't hate billionaires and millionaires.
I don't know.
I think it's also worth, I think, stating the value that both these companies created out of nothing.
So DoorDash, I mean, I've never really used DoorDash, but I think it's like an Uber Eats.
I think you can order food.
So if you're a restaurant, you know, it's a technology service that allows you to utilize probably their delivery people.
Oh, yeah.
Actually, I think I have.
I think I have used it.
I think my wife just downloaded it on her phone and we've ordered from it before.
There you go.
I'm sorry.
So it's a way that you can be found.
Your business can be found online and you can probably get more delivery business than you otherwise weren't.
And if you're a consumer, it's a new platform that you can order food from that I guess might be easier than calling up the restaurants.
All right.
So they've created value.
They've probably created jobs for some people that are doing the DoorDash service.
And now they're making money for it.
Yeah.
So I always used Seamless for the longest time, which I just recently found out that a lot of people outside of the city don't use Seamless or know what it is, but that's like the thing in New York City to use.
But with DoorDash, so my wife just downloaded it.
And I believe this is DoorDash.
There's a small chance I could be getting this wrong, but I'm like 90% sure.
And that they sent her a message.
They were like bringing our food and they sent her a message and they were like, you need anything from 7-Eleven?
And I remember just thinking, oh, that's a pretty cigarettes, condoms, like everything that's terrible.
All right.
I'm going to need a 24 pack.
Crush that.
But we didn't need anything from 7-Eleven, but I just remember thinking to myself, like, oh, that's kind of neat.
Like, that's a nice little thing to offer that they'll go there.
Anyway, whatever.
Maybe they're more like postmates.
Maybe they do general deliveries.
Whatever.
Either way, it's a value service.
I think it's like just someone with a car will go pick up your food and bring it to you is the way it works.
I believe.
I could be wrong about that.
Anyway, let's listen.
So in other words, helping out poor schmucks, poor schmucks that otherwise you have a job.
And Airbnb, how many people were able to, I mean, they were able to basically come into the market and allow people to rent out what otherwise would have been taken.
Yes.
And here's one more little addition.
And by the way, I'm not saying any of these things are perfect.
I mean, I know that there's people who have complained in apartment buildings where other people are renting out their space and things like that.
But, you know, Tim Delans have to deal with desert lesbians with bad furniture.
Oh, yeah.
It's a great segment.
You got to go look that one up.
All right.
I'll have to check that out.
But so, but one of the things that's interesting here, right, that people on the left is just like, they're so committed to their dogma on economics that it seems like they can never see stuff like this.
But so the hotel industry is a big industry.
And it's not all of them are huge corporations, but it's certainly dominated by huge corporations, right?
And like these big players, you know, like all of the big name hotels.
And I don't mean like five-star hotels.
I just mean the big name hotels that like, you know, are holiday in and all this stuff, right?
And this allowed now some guy who's just got an extra room or is just going to be maybe out of town visiting his father or something like that.
He can now bring in a little bit of money and compete with the big guys, you know, because some people would rather stay in an apartment and he can offer them less money or what, you know, or he can offer it for less money or anything.
So they don't see any of that aspect to it ever.
Protect Yourself Online00:02:30
They just see the billionaire at the top who created the thing, you know?
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Um, all right, let's get into playing, Kyle valued at 1.8 billion.
So that's on top of that.
And he and the other guys cashed out about 90 million dollars in stock yesterday.
Now, co-founders Joe Gebia and Nathan Blacharzek, they are now worth over $10 billion, also cashing out some of those shares.
Breaking Down Billionaires00:15:06
Now, in total, American billionaires have gained a trillion dollars in wealth just this year.
Joe, this is just a perfect CNBC clip.
It's everything that's terrible about CNBC in one clip.
So, the main problem here is they clearly believe in the myth of meritocracy.
That's how they're talking.
They're talking like who, me?
I'm not like Bernie Sanders.
I don't want to punish success.
I want to reward success.
I think this is wonderful that we have more millionaires and more billionaires now.
The idea that the reason why these people are getting wealthy is because they just worked harder than everybody else.
That's provably not true.
Can you pause for a second?
That's clearly not.
I don't remember that the anchor said that they just worked harder than everyone else.
No, I think they said worked harder on something that provided more value than anybody else.
And that's so that's the essence of it right there.
You nailed it, Rob.
It's you're already reframing this to something that nobody said.
First off, no one said it was a meritocracy.
Um, we can kind of get into the meritocracy stuff in a second, right?
Um, but no one said that.
By the way, when he mentioned at the end how much billionaires had gained a trillion dollars over the last year, he didn't, he didn't seem to editorialize that in the slightest.
That was literally just reported, like news, which is news, however, you feel about that.
And again, we can get into that in the end.
But here's where you're, it's almost like the imagination of what you must be saying from the left-winger's perspective comes out, right?
Like, so you must be saying, they're Kathy Newmaning this whole segment.
So you, so what you're saying is this is a meritocracy and these people just worked harder than everybody else.
No one said that.
No one said that they worked harder.
That's not the claim at all.
It's not a matter of working harder.
It's a matter of being more successful.
Look, like, I don't know what to say.
Like, I could, you know, I could get on a basketball court with LeBron James and outwork him and he could still dominate me on the court and go like, well, how come he gets all these points?
And you know what I mean?
When I was working harder.
It's like, oh, because he was working better.
It doesn't matter that you were working harder.
He was getting the ball in the hoop and that's the goal.
So what you're doing in an economy is trying to provide value for people.
It's not just about how hard you work.
I mean, you can work really hard.
Like, you know, I don't know.
I could get behind, you know, I could have a car that doesn't have an engine and I have to get behind it and just put it in neutral and push it every day.
And then someone else just has a car with an engine.
And I go, I'm outworking that guy.
It's like, yeah, you're working a lot harder, but he's working a lot smarter.
And who's going to win when we try to sell our cars?
My engineless car or his car with an engine?
Well, his is providing more value to people.
So that's the question.
That's what this is about is how much you're providing value to other people.
And the way to determine that is what other people want.
Do they want to buy what you're selling or not?
And yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely right that it is true that there are people who work really, really hard and will never become billionaires.
And really, I mean, who could argue it, right?
Like, I mean, if you're, if you're like, I don't know, someone who does like a really physically grueling job, no matter how many hours a CEO puts in, you could always argue that that person is working harder, but that's not the question.
The question is how much value are they bringing to the table?
So if you're just like, if you do a job that's really, really physically challenging, but let's say hypothetically you died tomorrow, they could replace you like that.
Anyone else could come in and do your job, then you are by nature not as valuable to the operation as a CEO who like if they were gone, the whole company would fall to pieces.
That's what it's about.
Also, if I, in your manual labor example, so like, let's say I got a guy who's moving rocks around, the hardest working person you've ever seen in your life, and he's helping you, I don't know, you're building the rock wall around your house.
He's literally moving rocks around.
So at the end of the day, he's helped out one household.
This Airbnb guy has helped a lot of people capitalize on apartments or their entrepreneurship to be able to rent out.
And he's helped everybody who's going to a city who maybe couldn't afford a hotel or would rather just stay in this other place.
So just think about how many more people benefit from the technology that this guy's created versus this other guy who's working hard.
Yeah.
So obviously there's less profits in me helping this one household versus helping out countless individuals rent out a bedroom.
And the other side of that, which is what you were saying with the Airbnb guy, maybe there's a little bit of almost a Robinhood element where all of a sudden maybe the Hiltons who are billionaires are worth a little bit less because he was able to return more money to just household owners who are now renting out spare rooms and able to make money.
And so that's the value he's providing is actually in creating more money.
Like he's actually almost diversifying who can make money off of rental units in any particular city.
Yeah.
And look, this is where a lot of people on the right will say that this is, you know, they'll call it the politics of envy or something like that.
And I don't know.
I can't tell you exactly what's in Kyle Kalinsky's heart.
I could tell you what ideas he has that are just straight up flawed, that he just doesn't understand economics at all.
But, you know, you do kind of see where what bothered him about this segment, what triggered him, what made him go, this is just the perfect everything that's wrong with CNBC is just that they talked about billionaires and didn't talk about them in a like, fuck them, they're stealing from the rest of us kind of way.
It's just that they went like, oh, look at these success stories.
And so I do understand why some right-wingers have the tendency to be like, dude, you're literally just jealous that they fucking succeeded.
Like, I don't know.
The other thing about it that's really funny to me is it's like, you know, as somebody who's kind of in somewhat, broadly speaking, the same industry as Kyle Kalinsky, it's like, I don't know, you've taken off.
You got like a million, you know, YouTube subscribers and all this shit.
So you started a thing and it's going really well.
A lot of people seem to think that you add value and like what you're doing.
And you're fine to take all of that, right?
Like you're, you're fine to keep that.
There's other people who really want to be political commentators on YouTube and they have a full-time day job.
And then they just got to do it on the side because they only got 35.
Yeah.
They only got 35 subscribers on their channel or whatever.
Rob, you're very successful.
But I have to keep telling him that or he'll forget.
But you know what I'm saying?
So it's like, I don't know.
Why is it necessarily a thing that if someone's successful in what they do, your immediate reaction has to be that it's negative?
I don't see it that way.
It's actually, by the way, it's not just that it's foolish to be jealous or negative.
It's actually at its core, if a person, take the Airbnb people.
So they figured out how to better allocate capital in a way that everyone can win.
It's like if someone invented a new way that was more efficient to travel, they created an airplane that was half the weight, ran on half the fuel, were able to buy tickets for half the money, and that guy becomes a billionaire.
Did anyone lose out that the fact that this guy figured out a better invention that gets us around quicker, faster?
It's funny you mention that because he's going to get into his underlying philosophical assumptions in a second.
So let's keep playing.
Not the case.
I've said this before, but some of the hardest working people I've ever known were working like two or three low wage jobs.
All of their waking moments were spent working and they still never made enough money to have a decent, comfortable life.
So the idea of the harder you work, the further you go, that's not accurate.
Nope, it's not.
And like, I would be sympathetic to people if they defend the hierarchy of a meritocracy if it's an actual meritocracy, but we don't have a meritocracy.
So stop pretending like we do.
Sorry.
Also, most people or a lot of people are lucky to have jobs because some other rich, smart guy created an opportunity for them.
If you're a guy who just likes digging ditches or just likes doing single tasks, you're lucky that somebody else figured out how they can monetize you just doing a single task.
You know what I mean?
So it's like all these people that he's describing and going, well, they worked really hard.
Yeah.
And they're lucky to have had that job because if they don't have the spirit of these other people to go out and like, you know, pave the road where you can just do some single task and maintain that road, you don't have a job.
So they're lucky to have these fucking other people who are going to go create the opportunity for them to just do these single tasks and make that money.
They wouldn't have it.
Yeah.
You know, like there's something really interesting about Kyle saying, you know, I would be okay with defending the hierarchy if we actually had a meritocracy.
And, you know, when he's already, I'll talk about this a little bit later after we get through a couple other things that he said.
We'll get more into this.
But look, if from the way he's already talking, right?
He goes like, well, I know people who have worked really, really hard and were broke.
And no question, you know, that is true.
There's lots of people like that.
But so you wonder, like, right, like again, let's say, you know, just for example, like you use, someone's like lugging rocks around, right?
And then somebody else just invents a machine that lifts the rocks and moves them and can do it, you know, a hundred times faster and help a hundred more people, right?
And there's all these people who need rocks moved off their property or whatever.
Sorry, this isn't the best example.
But that one, the guy moving them with his hands is clearly working a lot harder.
You know what I mean?
Like he's moving rocks with his hands.
This other guy just wrote down and built a machine and now the machine does all the work for him.
But what is your idea of a meritocracy?
Should the guy who's working harder, does he have more merit?
Or is it the guy who helped a hundred times as many people?
Is he the guy who deserves it?
So, you know, we'll talk more about the idea of a meritocracy in a second, but you almost have to wonder with these like economically confused leftists, like what would your idea of a meritocracy even be?
What would amount to merit to you?
Like, what, because you're saying you would defend a higher, you could understand defending a hierarchy if it was based on a meritocracy.
But so what are you saying?
Just like the people who worked harder always had more money.
And regardless of whether they were being productive or whether they were working smart or anything else like that, it's just who exerted more, what, physical energy?
I mean, how would you measure physical energy against intellectual energy?
How would you exactly measure who's worked harder?
You know, like now for your justifiable meritocracy, would we have to start measuring, you know, somebody like roofing versus somebody cleaning on their hands and knees?
Which one is harder work?
It seems like it's almost impossible to find a way that you could measure that, right?
So anyway, just the way, just what I was thinking about this, but let's continue to play because it gets interesting.
And then the other thing is they sincerely believe, oh, you know, somebody's wealth doesn't make anybody else poor.
But that's not really true either.
The idea that like, oh, just because this person's got like $10 billion doesn't mean that this person who's living on less than minimum wage is impacted by this person having $10 billion.
And it's like, of course, there's a finite amount of money and wealth.
And this is, we need redistributive policies to ameliorate the extreme inequality brought about as a review.
Pause it here.
Pause it here.
Okay.
So this is where, just to be clear on what his statement was there, and this is where the rest of it all flows from, right?
He said, there is a, he said, there is a finite amount of money and wealth.
All right.
Now, what's the old corny line that I guess I could throw out here?
It goes like everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but we're not entitled to our own facts.
That is factually wrong.
And he's saying it with this kind of like smug sense of superiority while he's like, oh, these idiots, here's what these idiots think.
They think if one guy gets a billion dollars, that doesn't necessarily negatively impact somebody else and all this stuff.
And then he will just say as a fact that it's a fact that there is a finite amount of money and wealth.
Now, just to be clear, why we're living like cavemen.
Yes.
This is why we're still living in caves and no one's invented fire yet.
We're still eating raw food.
There is, this is not an opinion.
This is not our opinion versus his opinion.
This is as tangible, as demonstrable as any fact ever in the history of the world could be.
There is not a finite amount of either wealth or money.
In fact, the amounts are changing constantly.
And as you just point out, like the amount of money, by the way, they print up trillions of dollars every year.
So the amount of money is absolutely changing more than me and Rob would like it to, believe it or not.
But the right, like, I mean, this is just so easy to disprove.
The idea that there's a finite amount of wealth in the world.
Like what's interesting, what was interesting to me about this video, where I was almost like, ah, shit, I think we got to break this down on the podcast is that quite often these leftists will imply this without coming out and saying it directly.
And I appreciate that he at least said this retarded bullshit out loud so you can understand, okay, so here's why you've got everything else wrong because you're wrong about your foundational assumption.
And of course, if you were right about that, then a lot of the rest of it makes sense, but you're wrong.
You're clearly wrong.
Somebody getting wealthy does not mean that they took it away from somebody else.
And here, your point is the easiest one to make, right?
Like the level of wealth is obviously drastically changed over time.
Now, if you were saying the level of wealth is finite, it would seem to reasonably imply that you're, you've been saying this has always been true, right?
Like the level of wealth is always finite.
So if then how do you explain human beings having this the amount of wealth that they had three, 400 years ago compared to what they have today?
Debunking the Fixed Pie Fallacy00:02:27
Clearly, the amount of wealth is drastically increased.
And if you're not saying that it's always been finite, why do you think all of a sudden it is now?
Do you think we stopped creating things of value?
Of course, wealth is created.
And so the fact that somebody created more of it does not at all necessarily imply that they took it away from someone else.
That's just not, that's not true.
That's not how economics works.
And this is like, you know, for someone who's going to get out there and be like a public commentator.
And look, I'm sure I'm guilty of this to some degree too.
Like we all, you know what I mean?
Like get out here and none of us are really experts, you know, but we have our opinions on all of these different things.
But you are with this smug sense of superiority saying something that would be the most basic foundational lesson of economics.
It'd be like the first thing someone should learn if they learned anything about economics, you know, like anything.
You would know like, hey, that's, that statement is a really stupid statement to make to just like throw it out there, like you're so convinced that you're right, that there is a finite amount of money and wealth in the world.
Well, like, no, there's not.
In fact, they both fluctuate constantly.
They're both every single day, the amount of both is changing.
And so, I mean, like, again, just like, I don't even know, it's so obviously wrong that I don't know how many more examples I'd need to disprove it.
But if you are actually saying there's a finite amount of wealth, well, then like you're saying that we can't get wealthier as a society?
Is that true for all societies?
How about third world countries?
Can they not get wealthier?
Is that impossible?
Or can they only do it if they take away from other people's wealth?
Now, of course, if you did believe this, right?
If you did believe this, then it would stand to reason that, yeah, if anyone's getting rich, then they have to be taking it away from someone else, but they don't.
That's just not true, right?
Like if you create something that does not necessarily take anything away from other people, in fact, quite often it makes them richer.
Quite often, by you creating new wealth, other people share in the new wealth.
This is what's known as the fixed pie fallacy.
The idea is like, look, if you order a pizza pie, right, and you have one pie, then you sit there and you go, whatever, we have eight slices.
Understanding Wealth Creation00:11:11
Okay.
And if there's eight of us and you look over at someone's got three slices, well, that means there's less for the rest of us to get, right?
But that's not how wealth creation works.
Wealth creation, some other guy can come in and order another pie, create another pie, you know?
Wealth creation is like about, you know, it's more like you're at a pizzeria making pizzas.
And some guy might have five slices, but maybe he made three pies.
And there's actually a lot more pizza for everybody else to have now.
So this is like really, really basic shit.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, let's go back to the video for a little.
Redistributive policies to ameliorate the extreme inequality brought about as a result of either a laissez-faire capitalist system or in our case, a corporatist system.
So of course, of course, the redistributive policies are absolutely necessary because the inequality, the wealth inequality and income inequality can get so extreme that of course you look at it and you go, well, we should tax that guy and redistribute it and help these people and do it in the form of education, do it in the form of healthcare, in infrastructure, paid vacation time.
Like, of course, redistribution is necessary and important and can help ameliorate the extreme inequality.
So the idea of like that person's $10 billion has no reflection on the fact that this person's a working poor person.
I mean, honestly, it's stupid if you believe that.
I think the people who believe that are like disregarding all evidence.
Yeah.
In a way, the Airbnb guy has created a digital infrastructure by which poor people can profit off of their own homes.
And if you understand capitalism, you'd want a guy who figured out how to do that to have more money so that he can make the next round of investment on other things that will benefit people.
Yeah.
I'll tell you, dude, what's fucking frustrating about this, right?
Is that you got, and I just wish sometimes some of these guys would just pull their head out of their asses and fucking think critically for like five seconds.
So he starts with this like unbelievably ignorant, inaccurate statement, like just outrageously, like anyone who knows anything about economics should right away have been like, I almost can't believe that the guy's got a million subscribers on his YouTube channel, that he's like this big guy and he doesn't have one person on his team who would be like, don't, don't say that because that's just wrong.
You don't want to like put that out.
You know, this is like not good.
But it's not just that.
It's as I keep saying the smugness.
So he goes from, well, look, here's the fact.
Okay.
Wealth and money is finite.
And so of course you need progressive policies.
Of course you need to tax this person and give it to that.
And then he goes, and it's just stupid to not see that.
So not only do you have it completely wrong, but then you're convinced that anybody who doesn't see it the way you do is stupid.
And here's the fucking problem.
Okay.
Here's the real heart of the problem with these economic lefties and their dumbass ideas.
It's not a meritocracy.
We don't live in a meritocracy.
And so you're actually kind of a little bit small fraction correct in your instincts, right?
So, but you actually have to understand shit if you're going to get to the bottom of it, right?
So when that guy says, now, I don't know about like you, but I'm sure you have the same reaction as me, like the part that the guy just reported on wasn't praising or saying was a good thing or bad, but he just said that billionaires have gained a trillion dollars of new value, of new wealth in the last year.
That doesn't make me or you feel good.
Me and you don't go like, oh, yeah, that's just the free market at work.
That's wonderful.
They're improving everybody's life.
That's why billionaires have gotten a trillion dollars richer in the last year.
It's like, no, because there's real policies that have affected that outcome.
We do not live in a meritocracy.
The vast majority of billionaires in this country are on fucking welfare.
And it's a goddamn outrage that they are.
Okay.
But you have to know a thing or two if you're actually going to get to the bottom of this problem and solve it.
Okay.
So no, it's not a fixed pie where every time someone becomes a billionaire, they are taking money away from somebody else.
But you know what is a fixed pie?
Government force.
So if government taxes money from the working population and then gives welfare out to billionaires, then they did just take that money away from people.
So you have to in some way be able to contrast the people who are successful by helping their fellow man and the people who are successful because they're cronies, as you just pointed out, Kyle Kalinsky, because we live in this corporatist system.
But once you understand that, like once you just go one little level deeper than your inaccurate, simplistic understanding of economics, then you realize, oh, it's not so obvious that the answer here is progressive policies.
It's not so obvious that, oh, we need to have redistribution.
By the way, half of the shit he's talking about, we already have.
And I don't know if he hasn't noticed that, but we should tax these people and pay for infrastructure and education and all this shit.
Yeah, we already do all of that.
I mean, maybe not the, you know, we may not do it quite as much as he'd like to, but we do a whole lot of it for healthcare as well.
I mean, he added like paid maternity, paid vacation or something like that.
Okay, maybe we don't do that.
Maybe we don't have Medicare for all like he'd like, but we certainly have a whole lot.
I mean, we have Medicare and Medicaid and, you know, all, so there's a lot of that going on already.
But if you actually understand which billionaires are robbing from people and which billionaires are helping people or which successful people are, you know, benefiting from government programs or which, you know, successful people are actually in this unfair rigged game, right?
Then it's not so clear that the answer is progressive policies to tax from them and give it back to them.
Because really, once you get that, right?
You realize that the only successful people who actually hurt the rest of us just by their mere existence are the ones who rob from us.
And maybe they don't rob from us directly, but some politicians send, you know, they rob from us and then give it to them.
Maybe it's the government locking down small businesses and Amazon reaps all of the benefit of that.
Maybe it's the government printing trillions of dollars and then the people who are connected to the banks end up getting that money first.
I mean, the point is that Kyle is right that this is not a meritocracy, but you have to understand a little bit more than just that in order to have the correct prescription.
But once you do understand the split between those successful people who help everybody, the ones who created something that everybody wanted.
And so they make a lot of money from that, that by its very nature helped everybody.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have made a lot of money if they hadn't offered those people something that they wanted more than that money.
If they got the money from them voluntarily, it's because those people were like, this is better than my money.
That's essentially what you're saying anytime you buy something voluntarily, right?
You're saying, this is better than my money.
Like I could have this new computer or I could have the money and I'd rather the computer.
So this is better than my money.
I'll give you the money for that, right?
So that's the essence of it.
But the people who have bought off the government to rig the game in their favor, no one ever said that that was better than their money, right?
No one ever voluntarily made that decision.
So if you understand that for the irrefutable truth that it is, then it's not clear that the answer is progressive policies where we tax from some and give to others.
Well, then the answer becomes much more clear, which is that we stop taxing people to give money to billionaires, that we end the corporate welfare, that we end all of the rules that have been put into place because rich people bought off our government to write rules in their favor.
So Kyle Kalinsky is correct that this isn't a meritocracy and that there are a whole bunch of people who have succeeded off of this system.
That's bullshit.
But you have to understand a little bit about the way economics work in order to figure this shit out.
And if you're still sitting there saying wealth and money is finite, you haven't done, I mean, dude, like read one fucking free market economist.
Just take a look.
I'm not saying you have to become a free market guy yourself, but at least just know what you're talking about a little bit.
And here's the frustrating thing, right?
And this is where libertarians need to come in and fucking really explain this shit, is that what you have constantly is someone on the right and someone on the left, right?
And so you have a Kyle Kalinsky type saying his dumbass shit that he's saying in this video.
Oh, it's completely unfair that anyone's a billionaire.
And look at all this income inequality.
And this is so unfair.
And that's by its very nature.
If you're getting rich, you're robbing from someone else.
And then you have some right winger be like, no, idiot.
This is a free market.
So all the people who got rich got rich because they, you know, provided value.
And they're both wrong.
They're both fucking wrong.
The truth is Kyle Kalinsky is an idiot who doesn't understand economics.
He's not an idiot, but he's an idiot on economics.
And the right wingers are fucking pretending like we live in a free market.
And we don't.
We live in a completely rigged system that is rigged for the powerful.
So this is what people need to wake up and realize.
Otherwise, we're just going to be in this disaster for longer and longer.
The Rigged System00:00:15
All right.
There you go.
That's our episode for today.
Any final thoughts, Robbie the Fire?
We covered it, dude.
There you go.
Go listen to Run Your Mouth.
Follow Robbie at Robbie the Fire on Twitter.
And we will be back on Wednesday with a brand new episode, bitches.