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Sept. 28, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:47:02

WHY HAVE MEN STOPPED WORKING?

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	Oh, thank you, Stefan.
	Really just, I'd love the chance to speak to you.
	If you want to make money, I think crypto is a great way.
	I've made a lot in Hex.
	And Pulsechain, Richard Hart is releasing Pulsechain soon.
	And that's going to be a great investment for people.
	So, yeah, sorry to take up too much time.
	Is there a question that you had or mostly a comment on crypto?
	Just really a chance to speak to you because I'm a long time fan.
	I don't like the way the world's going but I mean I've made a lot in Hex and I think Pulse Chain's the next great speculation that people can get into.
	Hex might keep going.
	I think the whole Bitcoin market's going to come down a little bit from here.
	The China ban worries me, but I hope it's nothing to worry about.
	They do this every year.
	Yeah, every time I see a ban, I just see a buy the dip thing.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they do this every year.
	I think it's just because of that.
	you know their property firm is going under so they don't want everyone pouring money into that well yeah i mean a ban on crypto is a a confession that your economy can't compete with digital right And yeah, I think that the issues that I did a show many years ago, China's not going to recover particularly well, and the demographic issues are pretty crippling.
	And, you know, it's easier to get people to stop having kids than it is to get them to start having kids.
	It's one of the great tragedies of sort of the modern world.
	So, yeah, I mean, and the fact that a totalitarian regime doesn't like crypto is, to me at least, the biggest advertisement for crypto.
	If they were like, yeah, more crypto, yeah, let's replace everything with crypto, I'd be like, wait, wait, what are we not getting about crypto that makes it so dangerous?
	So, yeah, it's like if the psycho girl doesn't want to go out with you, she's just helped you dodge a bullet, right?
	Exactly. Yeah, I can't agree with you more, man.
	But tell me a bit about, sorry, since you seem to be a bit sort of casting a bow for topics, would you mind spending a minute or two schooling me on whatever this Pulsechain thing is?
	Oh, Pulsechain is basically a clone of Ethereum that Richard Hart is launching.
	And Richard Hart...
	He created Hexcoin, which is built on the Ethereum network, but because Ethereum gas fees have got too expensive, basically, he's just making his own Ethereum network and that's going to do, you know, if you're getting early on that, that's going to do a thousand, ten thousand X like Hex did, I think.
	Yeah. Do you know what the story is with the Ethereum gas fees?
	I think just because the network is so busy now, really, I can't think more than that.
	Yeah, it's just because it's busy.
	Richard wasn't happy that some of the stuff they've done doesn't help Hex because we do real work on our chain or something.
	But I think it's just because it's busy.
	I mean, once the bear market comes, which it eventually does, because everything goes to overvalued, then undervalued, then overvalued, you know, that will bring the fees down.
	Yeah, it's almost like they didn't plan for success.
	It's always a big problem.
	Like, you can get something to work locally.
	I remember when I was doing database programming, it was one thing to have a couple of users on a LAN, but when you started to get people on a WAN, that's when the robustness of your code works, and it's almost like they didn't quite plan for it being successful, which is something that...
	I mean, if you have entrepreneurial people around, if you have a good board of directors, if you have good people who are...
	They'll say, okay, so the only way this thing gains value is with the network effect.
	So have you simulated a million people trying to do something or 10 million people trying to do something?
	I remember having to stress test my own code, not with a million people, but certainly with 500, 700 people, which was sort of...
	Of course, this is like 25 years ago.
	And so I guess my question is, I don't know if there's an answer.
	It's like, okay, well, where was the oversight to say, yeah, it's great if you've got 10,000 people using it, but what if it only gains real value if millions of people are using it?
	And how's it going to work then?
	And I just don't really feel that that was done, if it was, or what the environment is, but something was missing.
	Yeah, I don't know, really, because Vitalik said that five cents or something was too much for a transaction.
	So now we're at $50 or $100 a transaction, about $150 to end a stake, I was looking recently.
	So, I mean, I hope they can work this out, but I just go where I think the best speculation will be.
	So I think Pulse Chain is going to be where you're going to make the most money if you get on that early.
	Now, I'm sorry to sound rude, but it always bothers me when people just say it's going to be a big return on investment because then it's just hoping other people buy it, which is not the same as, okay, what problems is Pulse Chain solving that Ethereum has failed to solve?
	How is it going to overcome the issues that Ethereum has?
	Um, I'm not sure exactly because I'm not like a programming expert, but apparently whatever they're doing is somehow making it so the fees won't be won't be a lot Well, you don't have to be a programmer, right?
	You don't have to be a mechanic to know which car goes faster, and you don't have to be a programmer to know that they've at least got this problem in their sights and have some innovative way to try and solve it.
	They were complaining about...
	On Ethereum, they had done something that had made real work on your PC to do the stakes and made it more expensive.
	I really do need to work on this more.
	I really do need to understand this more.
	Basically, Pulse Train, they are trying to make it so it won't be too expensive to do your stakes and do all the things that people really need to do.
	Yeah, because I mean, Ethereum was sort of poised as, you know, like the cheaper Bitcoin alternative in a way.
	And I mean, I spent a lot of time setting up NFTs on Ethereum, which to some degree became somewhat useless because it was costing more.
	Like I set up to sell my book, my novel on the lead up to the Russian Revolution.
	And yeah, I'm like, yeah, nobody's buying it.
	Oh, why? Well, because the fees are higher than the book.
	Yeah, well also, you're going to get a copy of all your ERC20 tokens that you've got on Ethereum.
	You're going to get a copy of all of them on the pulse chain.
	So all the hex you've got on Ethereum, and you'll also get airdropped a little bit of pulse for the Ethereum you hold, but it won't be very much.
	So that's just a great speculation.
	Right. Okay, is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	No, I mean, I'd love you to have a debate with Richard Hart, but you'd probably agree on everything, to be honest.
	You're both very intellectual people.
	Yeah, but that would be great if you and Richard Hart ever had a chat.
	Are you aware of him at all?
	I've heard the name. I don't know much about him, though.
	He's just... I don't know.
	He was like a businessman. He made a little bit of money and then he made more in crypto.
	And now he's... I think...
	I didn't realise how rich he was.
	He actually is a multi-multi-billionaire now because he bought Bitcoin back in the day and now that would be worth 22 billion.
	And he owns about half the heck supply.
	So that's another fucking...
	He's an 80-odd billion or something.
	He's a serious multi-billionaire.
	That might be an interesting guy to chat with.
	All right. Well, thanks. I appreciate that.
	And yeah, I guess everyone keep your eyes peeled for good opportunities.
	All right. Mr. Marcus, if you want to unmute, you had a question as well.
	Hey, Steph. Have you seen the recent CNN article talking about more men are abandoned in college?
	I have read, I don't know if it's that article in specific, but what is it, close to like two-thirds of college students are now women?
	Yeah, and it's interesting he says right here on a quote, too many of the most dangerous cohort in the world if the trend isn't reversed.
	And what he's trying to say is pretty much all these like single men that don't have a wife, don't have a career, don't have home ownership.
	They're just, you know, they're the most dangerous cohort.
	I just think it's pretty interesting that mainstream media is covering this topic now because I figure it's a little bit taboo.
	Like people kind of like denied this.
	For like a quite a few years, you know, like, oh, it's great to be a guy in America, blah, blah, blah.
	You have it so easy. And it just, it seems like they're reversing the narrative a little bit.
	I'm not sure why they're reversing that.
	Maybe it's because of the worker shortage.
	Do you think it's too late, or do you not think they're reversing it?
	I don't think the narrative is being reversed at all.
	You could be right. I don't mean to contradict you right out of the gate, but it doesn't seem to me that the narrative is being reversed at all.
	What they're concerned about is that men are escaping the propaganda that higher education has turned into.
	That's their big concern. Because if you're not in school, what are you doing?
	Well, you're reading stuff on the internet.
	And that's out of the narrative, right?
	That's out of the leftist narrative.
	I would certainly view that they – I would understand why the mainstream media would view fewer men in college as a significant problem for propaganda because college is the main place where the propaganda gets inflicted.
	I mean, certainly as you get older, right?
	And so, yeah, they would say it's massively dangerous.
	We've got to find a way to lure these men back into the propaganda mills where they can get falsely accused of assault.
	I mean, just – it seems to me that's why they would be the most concerned.
	And I can sort of understand why.
	Yeah, that's probably the underlying reason.
	But they also admit in the article, like, they're concerned that, I guess, all the women with the college degrees don't want to, I guess, date down, quote-unquote, men without degrees.
	It seems like they're now talking about the Maiden collapse as well, which we see happening in countries, mainly Western countries.
	We see it in South Korea as well, in some Asian places.
	I wonder if they're trying to ease off the gas on it.
	That's probably right.
	They just want more people in college.
	I just thought it was interesting that topic was being covered.
	Because it was largely, you wouldn't really talk about it too much.
	Well, and of course, for women as a whole, right, I mean, you have the choice of economic participation in the here and now, or having a society in the future, right?
	Because the more women get into economic activity in the here and now, the more they postpone kids, the fewer kids they have.
	And, of course, the value transmission from generation to generation occurs over women, right?
	Women are the ones who, if they stay home, they transmit the values.
	Of the hard-won values of the West or wherever, right?
	They'll transmit those to kids.
	So getting women into the workforce makes men less willing to fight for values because what's the point of fighting for values?
	What would be the point of working hard when you're young to make, I don't know, a couple of hundred thousand dollars if it all got taxed away when you were 40?
	People wouldn't really bother.
	And it's the same thing. Why would you want to fight to maintain values and defend values if women bugger off to the workforce won't?
	Give those values to kids and the values just they get taxed away in a sense by the indifference and materialism of women and so yeah it's become sort of I posted this article yesterday which was a reproductive endocrinologist was talking about how he has like ungodly numbers of female doctors come in at the age of 40 saying you know like I'm having trouble conceiving I'm having trouble having a baby right?
	And he's like, well, yeah, because you're 40.
	Of course you are. And they're like, what are you talking about?
	I mean, I can still have a baby.
	Like, I think they view it as like a table edge.
	Like fertility is 100%.
	And then at 41, it goes to zero.
	It's like, no, no, no, it's a... It's a descending slope, right?
	And it starts in your mid to late 20s and then trails off in your early 40s.
	And he says, look, the only way you're going to be able to have a baby, basically, is if you take a donor egg from a younger woman.
	And they're like, I don't want that.
	It's like, but you're a doctor.
	And so you think, of course, of these doctors.
	And they've had all of these women for many years talking about fertility issues.
	And what happens?
	they don't even seem to have the basic understanding of the drop-off in fertility that happens after your late 20s and particularly into your 30s like after 35 man you really roll on the dice i mean you really really roll on the dice not just in terms of the whether you can have a baby but how healthy that baby is going to be and the same thing happens for men and sperm but that's sorry i don't trust the doctors at all they're They just put you on all these drugs that are pushed by the state.
	They put me on something.
	It made me crazy.
	Oh, like a psychotropic?
	Yeah, it was like...
	What was it?
	The serotonin...
	Oh, the SSRIs?
	Yeah, SRIs. Yeah, that's it.
	And it made me really, like, seeing patterns and everything, thinking I was being gang stalked, all of this.
	Wow. You know, and I just think, what the hell are they doing that they're just prescribing people this that makes them crazy?
	Oh yeah, I knew a guy who was younger who was talking about some anxiety and depression, went to his doctor and his doctor just gave the guy handfuls of benzodiazepines, which he then didn't take after reading up on them.
	And he went to another doctor who's like, well, have you had your testosterone levels checked?
	And it turns out they were pretty low.
	So he had to take that and deal with that instead.
	But the first doctor was like, oh yeah, here are your benzos.
	Good luck with that. Yeah, it's not good.
	I don't...
	I don't know. Everything's politicized nowadays, isn't it?
	Hey, Steph, I have another question that can segue on our current topic.
	So, how would you explain the current work shortage that we're witnessing?
	And it seems like quite a bit of work shortages in America.
	Is it the unemployment, which has already ran out for, I think, the past month?
	People haven't been able to collect the pandemic unemployment assistance anymore.
	Do you think people are just still living off that?
	Or do you think it's because the wages are too low or people have just completely checked out?
	Well, I don't know. I don't know the data.
	Is there a difference between male and female unemployment?
	Has that been broken down? I'm not sure.
	It seems like a lot of the service industry jobs and a lot of trucker jobs are predominantly male-dominated.
	Right, right, right.
	So, I guess, yeah, service industry, well, I don't know, it's a lot, I mean, waitresses would be, it's a lot of women in the waitressing area, right?
	Yeah. But, you know, cooks tend to be more male, right, because women would like, women like to make the money off tips, right?
	So, it's more men who are doing that kind of stuff.
	So, yeah, that's a good question.
	I mean, have you looked up anything?
	I have some thoughts, but, you know, if there's data, let's start with that.
	I'm not sure. It seems like everyone on the right is saying it's the unemployment.
	I think it's a little bit a mixture of everything because the amount of unemployment people were getting for like the past maybe two years, I knew people would get in collecting maybe $600 a week.
	This is just anecdotal.
	This is people I know.
	They got that $600 a week.
	Some people sat on their asses.
	Other people are like, okay, here's a great opportunity for me to get out of that service industry.
	And they either went back to school, learned a different trade, or Or like trying to change complete careers.
	And I think that might be one of the reasons.
	It's kind of been like a little experiment with universal basic income, you know?
	Right. We're seeing how that's playing out right now.
	I think it's been good for some people, but also other people and society as a whole is suffering from it.
	Right, right. So, I mean, it's an interesting question.
	I'm actually starting to plot out another novel.
	It's my first novel in like 20 years or whatever.
	And so it's a big question for me about the future, right?
	Or really the present.
	So let me ask this of the audience as a whole and just let me know in the text chat.
	How much do you buy over and above...
	What you need and or significantly want, right?
	So you need food, right?
	You need shelter, that kind of stuff, right?
	But, you know, do you, oh, you know, I need a new cell phone.
	Well, my cell phone is working, but the new one is cooler or faster or whatever, right?
	It's not really a have-to-have.
	So what percentage of your spending is nice to have and what percentage of your spending is have-to-have?
	Do you upgrade things that you don't technically absolutely need to upgrade?
	Do you spend excess on stuff?
	Do you eat out a lot? Like stuff where you could eat at home or cook for yourself or whatever.
	So what percentage of your spending...
	And this includes things like shelter, right?
	So do you... I mean, personally, I've got a two-bedroom place now, but I've inherited that.
	I've got all this fucking...
	Sorry, sorry. No, like, I got like 10 grand in airdrops from like Uniswap and 1inch and I just spent through all that and what good does it do you?
	I mean, what, like, have people attached too much value to money nowadays?
	Like, I don't want all these things, you know?
	Like, if I want to take money, I would just save it and I'll put it in this pulse chain when that's released.
	That's... That's what I would do.
	Or start a business. And so, what percentage of your money do you think do you spend on things that you don't really need?
	I mean, I just, I don't know, like, obviously I've got all that staked, but I just once did that 10 grand on women and cigars and alcohol and just whatever, you know, like, and now I regret it.
	I personally spend less than 20%.
	On things that you don't really need?
	Yeah, and there's a point in which I was maybe at, yeah, about 10% when I was traveling abroad.
	And what are the things that you buy that you would put in that 20%?
	Just mainly food.
	I don't need to eat out, but I enjoy food.
	That's like mine only. I don't spend money on alcohol or cigarettes or drugs, but good food is a drug to me.
	Right. Okay. Okay. Anyone else want to sort of...
	Let me just see. I guess I'll need to...
	I don't know if there's a way to unmute everyone.
	I have a sort of general convo.
	I'll just unmute the people who have raised their hands and, yeah, just jump in.
	I'm curious about what people's spending habits are.
	Just unmute yourself if you...
	Just jump in if you want.
	Like, yeah, what are you spending money on that you don't really need?
	Yeah, the thing what I wanted to talk about isn't really about that, but it's about the fuel shortage in the UK. If you want to carry on speaking...
	Yeah, let's deal with this unemployment thing first, then we talk about the fuel shortage.
	It's funny too, because I grew up under the coal strikes in the 1970s, so I remember very well the fuel shortages in the UK when I was a kid.
	But yeah, I'm just curious, other people, do you spend a lot of money on...
	On things you don't really need.
	Listen, and that sounds like a judgment, like, oh, how dare you spend money on things you don't really need.
	That's fine. I mean, a lot of civilization is getting above subsistence level, right?
	I mean, do you need 100 books?
	You'll survive without them, but, you know, do you need to listen to a philosophy show?
	You'll survive without it. So this is not like a negative judgment, like you're a wastrel or something.
	I'm just curious how much money you spend on things that you don't...
	I think I spend around like 15 or 20% on things I don't need.
	And that's out of like my total gross income for the month.
	Is that after taxes? Gross, so it's before taxes.
	So it's kind of double, right? Yeah.
	Right, okay. Right.
	Okay. So, I mean, that's interesting, right?
	So, you're spending what?
	About 30%. And again, this is not a judgment thing.
	Like, it's bad or something like that.
	I'm just genuinely curious.
	Like, what do you... So, maybe 30% on things that you don't need.
	And what I mean by that also is it's money you could save and still have a pretty decent quality of life.
	Pretty much. Right.
	Like, I would say that it's the same for me.
	I spend most of that spending money, like, going out to eat...
	Or I'll have the Amazon purchase like here and there.
	Right. Okay. Okay. Anybody else?
	And listen, can I just ask you guys a favor?
	Just if you're talking and you're unmuted, just try not to touch your microphone or move around because it just ends up clicking and popping and grinding and I have to do all of this stupid work which is really brain dead afterwards cleaning it up.
	So that's just my particular preference.
	And if you're not speaking, if you could mute.
	But yeah, is there anyone else who wanted to jump in and...
	Oh, somebody else wants to...
	Yeah, I'm kind of curious.
	I've always said it straight up.
	I'm always fascinated by people's finances, always have been, because a lot of people's finances are kind of a mystery to me, like the amount of debt that people carry is kind of mad to me and a lot of stuff going on like that.
	Yeah, anything else?
	Any people want to jump in with other things that they spend that they don't need?
	It's just great to talk to you Stefan.
	I made a million dollars from nothing with crypto.
	I know you're an atheist and I became really religious at one point but now I'm questioning all that and I don't know anymore.
	All right. Hang on. Sorry. I appreciate that feedback.
	And thank you for your kind words.
	But let's try and stay on the topic.
	Is there anybody else? Just unmute yourself if you want, if there's anyone else who has.
	Because I think this excess spending economy is pretty central to how we live at the moment.
	And do you buy things that you don't really need?
	And how much of your after-tax income do you?
	I guess if it's gross, right?
	It's double after taxes. How much of your income do you spend on that stuff?
	Yeah, I estimated about 20% also.
	So that's 20% gross or net?
	Oh, net.
	Okay, got it. And what's the kind of stuff that you spend on that you could get by with that?
	Well, I think that probably a big one is prepared, not prepared food, but high quality food.
	I'm sure that a person could pare back on that if you had to.
	I know people that are on welfare, they could cut it down drastically and still get by just fine.
	So I would say that's a bit of an extravagance that's become kind of normalized.
	What kind of food are we talking about here?
	Oh, well, you know, like prepared ribs in a bag, for instance.
	That could be done a lot less expensively.
	Wait, sorry, do you mean like Ritz crackers?
	No, ribs, as in...
	Oh, ribs. Okay, sorry about that.
	Yeah, that makes sense. Prepared ribs.
	Do you mean, like, pre-seasoned and all of that?
	Exactly. That type of thing, you know, you just grab.
	But if you really had to think about it, you know, I wouldn't necessarily grab those.
	But, you know, on other things, like my household here and everything else, we don't spend much on knick-knacks around here at all.
	So... The big ticket items are not a big deal.
	We don't need fancy cards or anything like that.
	But I guess it's just like the other guy.
	He spends extra on food.
	Same thing. Right, right.
	Okay. And do you spend on tech?
	Is that something that consumes you?
	Not like some people would.
	I mean, I did get a phone when I didn't necessarily need to upgrade, but But not massively in tech, no, no.
	Computers all the time or nothing, no.
	Right, right, okay. Anybody else want to jump in?
	Because I can say why I'm asking this stuff, but if anybody else wants to jump in, I'm always curious.
	I'm kind of with the other guy on that one.
	I can just eat eggs and coffee in the morning, but I usually buy peaches and Greek yogurt and granola and chicken and biscuits, you know.
	Well, I mean, none of those things sound to me like an extravagant.
	It's not like, you know, well, I have to, you know, ladle my crackers with caviar from Beluga caviar or something.
	I mean, it's not particularly extravagant to have some fruit and granola, is it?
	No, I suppose it's not.
	That's true. But cost-efficient, it's a lot easier to go with eggs.
	Well, yeah. I mean, you do need to vary your diet a little bit, right?
	So I don't think that's – that doesn't sound to me overly extravagant, if that makes sense.
	Is there anything else that you spent on?
	Yeah, totally. Okay. What was the last thing you bought that you had bias or remorse for?
	Like you're just like, oh, man, look at that.
	It's past the return date and it's just going to sit there and stare at you having burned up money.
	For food-wise?
	Anything. Let's see. It was probably...
	Oh, anything. Okay, so I bought a couple of shoehorns because I thought that that would help putting on my shoes, and it didn't, so I just regretted that.
	Okay, that's not at all extravagant with the shoehorns, like, a couple of bucks each.
	Good point. Or, actually, no.
	I bought, like, a Call of Duty game for $60, and I ended up hating it.
	Right, right. All the shooting games are just, hey, here's shooting white people.
	I'm just a little alarming at how they're training everyone.
	Anyone else have, like, biased remorse?
	I have a couple, but I mean, I can go into them if anyone's interested.
	But anybody else have sort of biased remorse of stuff they've bought?
	And it's like, oh, man, that was a bad idea.
	I regret this gaming chair and something else.
	Yeah, women, I shouldn't have bought it.
	A gaming chair. Now, is that something that vibrates when stuff happens in the game?
	No, it's just gaming chairs are a bit of a rip-off because apparently they're all made in the same factories.
	You better off buying an office chair.
	Oh, yeah. So I thought they had speakers or something embedded in them.
	They'd fart on your butt if enemies were close or something like that.
	But you're saying they're basically just office chairs painted red?
	Yeah, they're just like sports chairs, but they're really badly made.
	Oh dear. And don't buy women, because that's the fucking...
	Don't buy what? Women.
	You mean like dates or prostitutes?
	Like, yeah, hookers don't like this.
	They don't even do it properly.
	Hey, come on, man. That STD is not going to arrive at your house on its own.
	It needs a body cavity to transport it.
	Exactly. Exactly. Well, they wear protection.
	They protect that.
	Right. Okay.
	All right. So anybody else want to...
	Oh, sorry. Somebody else wants to mention about...
	You guys are... I feel bad now.
	You guys are very, very responsible with your money.
	But anybody... Sorry. You wanted to mention something?
	Now she's blonde. Did you...
	Yeah. Hey, Stefan.
	So glad to be here. Hey.
	I just joined and I immediately, you know, heard the point about food and it's like a fucking plague in my country of Ljupania.
	There's this... Food delivery service, Bald Food.
	It's like a couple of years now since it appeared here and people are spending like insane amount of cash like you know over a month just ordering food to their house when they could be you know like eating for I guess like a third of that at home or like really tasty healthy food.
	Like me and my friend literally once sat down and looked at his like order history over the past couple of months and it was like thousands of euros spent on like ordering food and it's a really common thing I've noticed and it's like Jesus Christ what a waste you know.
	Is it like Uber Eats?
	Like they just pick up stuff from a restaurant and bring it to your house?
	Yeah, it's like an app where you pick up what you want from what kind of a restaurant and they just, you know, deliver it home.
	And I guess it's like, in a way, big laziness, you know, just not preparing your food and like eating a lot of the times like trashy junk food from places where you wouldn't usually go, you know, especially in the lockdown situation now.
	So it's like you're too lazy to go eat at a restaurant.
	Is that the idea? Well, yeah, it's like, you know, the restaurant comes to you in a way.
	Right. Okay. Right.
	And I guess you get more variety because, you know, when I was growing up, you could order pizza in Chinese and the Chinese stuff came later, but you could order pizza.
	That's sort of about it. You know, the Dungeons and Dragons concessions that we'd have.
	You get some greasy pizza and some RC Cola and consider yourself well-fed.
	But now you can get just about anything, right?
	Because they'll go to the restaurant, pick it up.
	You can get Indian, you can get Thai, you can get sushi, anything you want, right?
	Yeah, I think it's like a really negative point for a restaurant if it isn't in the app, you know.
	Because, yeah, people just don't really know about you, Dan.
	Wow, okay. Well, the people who order at home.
	So, yeah. Okay.
	And is that, yeah, because I actually know a couple of people who've complained about, I don't know, it's a real first world product that Uber Eats took forever to get here.
	It's like, dude, you could have just cooked or made something yourself or whatever, right?
	Okay, anybody else wanted to mention about spending habits or issues or things?
	Maybe they've heard of other people who have these sort of bias regrets.
	No, okay. So, I mean, the reason I'm asking all of this...
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay, go ahead.
	It's okay. No, you've got a thought.
	Jump in, man. Yeah, sure.
	Well, just yesterday I was talking to one of my friends and we kind of decided that it's like this weird pattern lately.
	You know, we have, like you say, like excess, I guess, earnings, which we can sort of freely spend...
	And yeah, it's like every couple of months, they're this thing you get obsessed with.
	Like this summer, I got obsessed with headphones.
	And I bought a pair of mixing headphones.
	I bought a pair of AirPods.
	I bought these other headphones.
	I was just looking at videos on YouTube, reviewing these endless headphones, analyzing them and stuff.
	Yeah, and it was in a way really fascinating and interesting because I sort of had the opportunity to go really deep.
	Into headphones, how they work, and all this fascinating noise-canceling technology.
	But the point is, yeah, did I need all those headphones?
	No, it was like this almost demonic obsession, you know, of getting something.
	And my friend yesterday was telling me about, like, his new obsession is, like, quality lever shoes, you know?
	Well, in a way, it's a good thing, because if the boot is really quality, you can, like, use it almost for 20 years, you know, just replacing the pad.
	Well, the part which is sort of walking on concrete, if you understand, or whatever it's called.
	So yeah, but we sort of agreed that it's like this new thing, you know, for him now.
	And before that, it was something else.
	And before that, it was something else.
	And it's sort of really hard.
	I sort of, for the past couple of years, noticed this sort of weird pattern.
	But it's really hard to sometimes, you know, control that urge to just get into something that you don't really need.
	Spend a ton of time analyzing it, getting into it, and just eventually buying those things.
	And yeah, they're nice. Like, I'm literally now using one of those headphones, you know.
	I have, but did I really, really need them?
	Like, well, I guess not, you know.
	So it's just... Do you need them for work?
	Is it anything to do with, you said, mixing headphones?
	So you're like a DJ or sound engineer or something?
	Yeah, it's a long story.
	But yeah, the mixing headphones are probably the most useful thing, which I bought out of those three pairs of headphones.
	Well, and of course, if it's to do with your job...
	Then it's tax-deductible if you're self-employed.
	So you can sort of make a case that it's kind of hard to overspend on quality stuff for your job.
	So yeah, that's a possibility.
	It may not be totally indulgent, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, sure.
	But now it's a really hard time in my country with all this COVID passes and stuff.
	And I'm sort of maybe thinking about leaving my job due to all this poor situation.
	And now, oh boy, I would really gladly have that money to invest in Bitcoin or gold or whatever, instead of having those headphones, which I will sell for, well, surely a lesser price, which I bought them for, even though they are still in pristine condition.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, and of course, it's also all the time that you spend researching and ordering and getting and analyzing and learning about the headphones.
	And, you know, I guess there's not a lot of instructions for headphones, but, you know, figuring out how they work and how best to set them up and all that.
	I mean, that's a lot of time, right?
	And that's time that's sort of taken away.
	So it's not just the dollar value of things.
	Yeah, I mean, I ordered a camera because...
	When I do my shows, the live streaming quality is not always super great, so I like to have a local recording, and so I like to have a camera that can both live stream and record, and webcams can't do that, so I order the camera and...
	Just for a variety of reasons.
	It's just the file sizes are absolutely enormous.
	And because I do a lot of video, if I end up with a lot of large file sizes, it's kind of brutal.
	Plus, it overheats after a while and doesn't work.
	And I was hoping to get it to output so that I could have the same camera to record and output.
	But when I output, and I'm sure there's a way to fix this, I just haven't been bothered to look it up.
	You get all of this stuff on the screen, like, here's the aperture, and here's your white balance, and here's your time remaining.
	It's like, I can't live stream with all that stuff on.
	And also, when I live stream, it no longer shows on the local camera.
	Like a lot of cameras, the more expensive ones, it will show on the local viewfinder, and then when you live stream, it will show as well.
	That's kind of how it works in my actual studio, but I like to not always be stuck in the studio.
	Yeah, so I got this camera, and it's like 50-50.
	It's like, ah, you know, it does most of what I want, but the file size is huge, and it's kind of tough to live stream at the same time, although it has really nice audio.
	So anyway, it's just this kind of stuff.
	But then I sort of look at the amount of time that I spend researching and figuring out this camera and learning it and all that, and it's like, ah.
	It seems impossible to just get a camera that does 60 frames a second 720p.
	Even cell phones don't do that.
	I don't think I've ever had a camera that would do that.
	Doing 1080 and then downsampling seems like a big waste.
	So yeah, just things that are tough to get.
	And I've had a lot of those things.
	I remember when my producer was around, we were looking for a hardware solution for recording, right?
	Because... Software for video recording, right?
	Software solutions for video recording are always dicey.
	Always, always, always dicey, which is why when I record now in the studio, I have a hardware recorder, right?
	So it just records dual track because that way it doesn't matter what happens to the software.
	It doesn't matter if your computer entirely crashes or anything like that.
	I mean, you'll always have the audio.
	And yeah, I won't even mention how much we spent on it because it was a fairly ungodly sum.
	And It had a hum to it.
	It just kept humming. And of course, you know, that's sort of pointless, right?
	And this was before the audio recorder.
	So it hummed, and he spent time on the tech support line of this company, and they tried...
	And he spent two days just trying to set it up and get this hum to go away.
	And they couldn't help him, online forums.
	And then at some point, don't you just get this like, oh, forget it.
	Like, I could spend the rest of my life trying to get this thing to work.
	And when you're not making progress, at some point you have to...
	You know, like if you can't get the plane to clear the mountains, you've got to jump, right?
	You've got to parachute out.
	And so, yeah, I mean, it was one of these things where it's like, this thing will make our lives easier.
	And instead, it turned out to be this frustrating grind into the valley of time-wasting hell.
	And that kind of stuff happens more often in the tech world than you would even care to admit.
	And yeah, so that kind of stuff is...
	So let me just sort of get to why I'm asking this stuff as a whole, which is...
	How much of our economy is built on stuff you don't need?
	So I'm sort of planning on writing a science fiction novel.
	It's a great idea. And I'm planning on writing a science fiction novel.
	And, of course, you have to sort of figure out what's the world going to look like in the future.
	And, you know, typically the place that you go is...
	Well, what kind of amazing technology will be with jetpacks and time travel and teleportation and whatever it is, right?
	And I'm sort of curious, I guess, if people are raised happy, right?
	They're raised reasonably, they're raised peacefully, which is a prerequisite for a free society in the future.
	If people are raised peacefully, then...
	That's why I'm so lucky. I'm sorry?
	Yeah. Oh, sorry.
	I was just saying I'm so lucky for that.
	Yeah, if you could just hold off, then that would be great.
	So if people are raised peacefully, will they have the same hunger for excess stuff?
	Will they really, really want all of this excess stuff?
	I don't know. I mean, how much of the excess stuff that we buy is kind of filling in, you know, being unloved or feeling insecure or needing the dopamine hit from purchasing because we don't get it from our relationships or whatever it is, not having a great relationship with yourself, so wanting to focus on external stimuli.
	How much of the economy is built on bad childhoods?
	Sort of interesting question.
	If you are genuinely happy, do you want to buy stuff?
	I've always been a propeller head as far as that goes.
	New tech stuff gives me a high.
	It really does. It gives me a total high.
	I'm ambivalent about that.
	Some of that's good. Some of that's not so good.
	But yeah, straight up. And of course, because I work in a field where tech is necessary, and more tech is better, and I've always been kind of obsessed about having good audio and video quality.
	But yeah, how much of the economy is built on happiness?
	I mean, it's one thing for dudes, right?
	But it's completely another thing for women, right?
	I remember seeing some ad many years ago.
	Brooke Shields, I think, was the model.
	And it was like, are your eyebrows not bushy enough?
	Are your eyebrows too thin?
	Or something like that.
	Like to the point where you're now self-conscious about Your eyebrows or, you know, are your eyelashes not thick and curly enough?
	And like just crazy stuff like that.
	You get obsessed about everything to do with your body.
	Everything to do with your appearance.
	And they just, they just chisel away at your happiness to make money.
	And this is a pretty ugly side of the free market.
	Where, it's not really an issue with the free market per se.
	It's just an issue with where we are as a society.
	But... I mean, it's not even really free market, is it?
	It's just the corporate agenda.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, the corporate agenda comes from sort of a very real thing, which is like, so men want to appear successful and women want to appear beautiful.
	And so, because women want to appear beautiful, it's very profitable to tell them they're ugly, but if they spend money in your stuff, they'll be beautiful.
	And men have given up, to a large degree, men have given up on the status game, which I'll sort of get to in a sec, but...
	It is just appallingly easy to make money by making women feel ugly.
	And it's like the old thing that, you know, you have original sin, but if you give me 10% of your income, I'll remove that curse from you, right?
	Sort of the darker aspects of some religions, right?
	I'm so sorry. Can I just, let me just, there's not a conversation part.
	Sorry if you just hold off. So...
	There is this darker side of people which is – or of how to manipulate people and how to make money from them, which is if I can make you feel bad, then you will give me money to alleviate that.
	You will give me money to relieve that feeling bad, whether it's sin or ugliness or you have – what was it?
	Linda Evangelista, who was a very famous model, who famously said, I don't even get out of bed for $10,000, but that's when $10,000 meant something.
	So she took some fat reduction treatment that has completely disfigured her.
	And to the point where she's barely been seen in public for the last couple of years.
	She's become a complete recluse.
	She's had unbelievable issues with mental health and self-hatred and all of that.
	And she's now suing the manufacturer of these fat-destroying treatments.
	Because instead of reducing the fat, they caused it to swell enormously, and then they tried corrective stuff which made it swell even more.
	And I'm not saying she turned full elephant man, but obviously as a model, her appearance was the most important thing about her economically, and this just wrecked it.
	And I mean, it's one of these ironic things that she actually made a lot of women feel terrible.
	Like, what are models paid for?
	Models are paid so that other women feel bad.
	That's what models are paid for.
	You know, why does Brad Pitt get $10 million a movie?
	Because he has, you know, he smokes and has sculpted abs, right?
	You can see them all over. His first movie with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis and Fight Club, of course.
	You know, there's that famous picture of him smoking a cigarette, looking all lean and sculpted and muscly and all that.
	And so he's, in many ways, he's paid...
	To make men feel overweight, to feel bad, to have envy.
	Now, he's not selling a weight loss product, so it's a little bit different for him.
	But, yeah, he's just genetically gifted, and I'm sure he works at it too, but it's a lot easier to work at it if you're genetically gifted and if you get paid $10 million a movie to do so.
	So... It's so...
	Well, I'm not being... Unbelievably...
	I'm so sorry. Please, I asked you.
	Just hang on. This is the monologue part.
	So, for...
	The economy as a whole, making people feel like crap, is just a very easy way to make money.
	Oh, do you have a natural human odor?
	You need perfume.
	You need deodorant.
	You need all of this stuff, right?
	And so all of this stuff is so ridiculously easy to make people feel bad, and then they'll give you money to feel better.
	There's some woman who posted on some online forum about how she wanted other people to exercise more.
	And some woman, because she had wide eyebrows, right?
	And some woman said, well, I could lose a lot of weight just hiking between your eyebrows, right?
	And then the purpose of that, of course, is that she feels now, oh my gosh, my eyebrows are too far apart.
	Like, there's just this crazy stuff.
	My eyebrows are too far apart.
	Like, what does that have to do with the quality of your soul, the quality of your virtue, the quality of your parenting or friendship or economic?
	Like, nothing! Nothing, but it's just so easy to chisel in and widen people's confidence and just say, I'm going to make you feel like shit, but if you give me $100, you won't feel like shit for a while.
	And that, I mean, that obviously comes out of parenting, that comes out of education, that comes out of a variety of things.
	So I don't know if it's naturally endemic to human beings or it's just something that's exploited for gain in the here and now.
	But if you kind of look at the economy and you say, okay, okay, what portion of this economy, what portion of everything we do is taking the torture devices out of people?
	Like, you're too fat. You're too ugly.
	Your hair is not lustrous enough.
	It's not curly enough. It's too curly!
	It's, you know, whatever it is.
	Like, it's the one thing whether, you know, so-and-so is the new black.
	You know, like, every...
	Every year, in the fashion world, right, they have to come out with all this new stuff.
	And the new stuff is good, and the old stuff is bad, and how dare you be wearing last year's outfit?
	How dare you be wearing... These aren't in anymore.
	I can remember the 80s, these jackets with the big shoulders were really big, and you had to wear the jackets with the big shoulders, and then you had to wear the pastel Miami Vice suits, and then you...
	And I remember when I was a kid, the polo shirt was like the big thing.
	You had to wear a shirt with a polo.
	Ralph Lauren, I think it was, some polo.
	That was really, really a big thing and all that.
	And if you don't have the polo shirt on, well, you're just not cool.
	And if you do have the polo shirt on, it's really cool.
	Like the Axe body spray.
	Do you smell like a natural human being?
	Women will find you repulsive.
	So put all of these chemicals on your skin and you'll get some.
	And it's just...
	Really, really sad.
	And of course, as a philosopher, if people took like 0.0001% of the energy that they poured into feeling bad about their appearance and working to improve their appearance and put it into improving the quality of their moral decisions and the quality of their soul and the quality of their parenting and the quality of virtue, we'd be living on a whole different planet.
	Now, whether this is a natural human phenomenon that is exploited by the market, I lean towards that view simply because you can see tons of places in the world where they don't have...
	This kind of free market mass advertising stuff.
	And still, like, you know, there's these tribes in Africa where a long neck is considered wonderful.
	So they put all of these crazy hoops on the women's necks, and they turn them into half giraffes, and then they can't even support their head without these neck necklaces or these tight hoops around their, their necks and so on.
	So that's not exactly a free market scenario.
	There are places, of course, where if you don't have the requisite scarring from your rituals, like in the Aboriginal society that I talked about when I was in Australia in 2018, if you don't have the requisite tattoos or the requisite scars from your coming of age ritual torture, then you're just not attractive.
	Now, that's not a market situation in particular, but it is where people will self-mutilate rather than avoid that.
	And of course, where circumcision is a requirement for religions, then if you don't self-mutilate, you can't be part of the religion and all that kind of stuff.
	So, I think it is a natural phenomenon that we are susceptible to feeling bad through being told we're ugly or unattractive.
	And... We will just pay almost any price, bear almost any burden.
	To find a way to fix that, to not feel bad.
	Now, of course, it's a losing game.
	It's a losing game because we're just going to get old.
	And, you know, unless you're John Carrington, generally older is not particularly appealing compared to youth.
	And, you know, this is one of the things that happens when you get older, is you see all of these stars from when you were younger, right?
	Like Meg Ryan is one.
	Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle was, you know, just about the prettiest thing since, well, I guess Linda Evangelista, whatever.
	She was just, you know, perfect hair and peeled the apple and just gorgeous.
	And now, well, I don't know, I guess like Renny Zell, I guess they look like they've had a lot of work done.
	It's just not good. It's just not good.
	Tom Cruise versus...
	Oh gosh, what was her name?
	The woman from Top Gun. Oh, my brain hath forsaken me.
	But yeah, the woman from Kelly McGillis, I think her name was.
	Yeah, Kelly McGillis has aged, you know, as most people do.
	And Tom Cruise, of course, has aged like he's been cryogenically frozen in between, not just movies, but in between takes.
	And, you know, good for him, right?
	I mean, obviously, he works very hard at it.
	And that's his bread and butter, so to speak.
	But I mean, Val Kilmer versus Tom Cruise from Top Gun, right?
	I mean, look at those differences.
	So Val Kilmer, of course, He had cancer and really, really rough stuff happened in his life as a whole.
	But yeah, he went from a pretty naturally beautiful young man to this guy who looks like you wouldn't trust him with your dog if you went on vacation.
	So we just have this economy that's based on status, based on insecurity, which is to a large degree based upon having a bad childhood.
	I think that the...
	The capitalists, so to speak, they see that as a profit opportunity, and capitalism is largely amoral in its profit-seeking, right?
	Capitalism is simply exchange, right?
	Exchange for the perceived benefit of both parties.
	And now the perceived benefit of both parties could be real, or it could be not real.
	In other words, it could be that...
	Your eyebrows aren't really too far apart, but you'll buy some product to pencil in to bring them closer together or whatever it is.
	And then what happens, of course, is you make money from that.
	But if people don't, like, you try to make them feel bad for their eyebrows being too far apart or not thick enough or whatever, and they just laugh at you like, yeah, that's really important in the quality of my life, right?
	Well... It's not a real economic transaction if you're strip mining the insecurities planted in there by a neglected or abused childhood and then profiting because this open wound exists that you can press to get money.
	And the other thing, too, with women as well, I mean, this is the makeup question is always really fascinating to me.
	I saw some movie.
	I can't even remember. I don't think I saw the whole thing.
	It was a movie with Anna Faris and she woke up and she wanted to get this guy to marry her or whatever.
	And so she woke up in the morning and she slipped out of bed like a ghost and went to the bathroom and did her makeup and her hair and then came back to bed and pretended that she just woke up that way.
	Now, obviously, that's to some degree for comic effect.
	But the reality, of course, is that women who use a lot of makeup are sowing the seeds of the destruction of their relationship because they're presenting themselves as something they are not.
	And they're also saying, I'm not enough for who I am.
	And look, I'm not talking about a little bit of lipstick.
	I mean, you know, the people who use like the really sniper wolf style, apply it with a cannon makeup, right?
	You don't even know how big the face is because it's just got so much bigger under makeup.
	And so those women, by putting on the makeup, they're saying, look, you won't like me as I am.
	You won't like me for who I am. Now, again, I don't mind a little bit of that.
	It's not like nature provides us toothbrushes, but it's nice to brush your teeth.
	So I'm not sort of a Puritan as far as that sort of stuff goes.
	So for me, how much of the economy is just real?
	How much of it is actually necessary?
	And by necessary, I also mean something that brings you pleasure that's not...
	Out of some dysfunction in your past.
	Right? Not out of some dysfunction in your past.
	So, if you look at the people who are addicted, as one of the callers was saying, the people who were addicted to food delivery services.
	Well, what are food delivery services?
	Their mom. Right?
	What they're trying to say is, boy, it's really nice when people just bring you food.
	Like my mom didn't when I was a kid because she was working and, you know, she was stressed and she was tense and it was always a hassle and problems and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So I think a lot of people, a lot of this kind of stuff comes out of unhappy childhoods.
	And it's a way of trying to avoid the mourning by trying to get what you want later in life so that you don't have to mourn what you didn't get earlier in life.
	And you can't, like the stuff that you didn't get as a child, you can't fix it as an adult.
	You can't. Because to fix it as an adult, you have to promote people into the position of being your, quote, parents, which they're not.
	And it's like if you didn't get enough food when you were a kid and you ended up an inch or two shorter, eating more food as an adult doesn't make you grow taller.
	It just makes you grow fatter. It's just dysfunctional.
	So, you know, how much of the economy is based on avoiding mourning?
	How much of the economy is based on avoiding trauma?
	How much of the economy is based on avoiding grief?
	I think a lot. I think a lot of it.
	And how much of a course for men is based on status?
	Well, you've got to have the newest iPhone and you've got to have the right shoes.
	And, you know, there are these memes on the Internet of black guys and there's a beautiful white sneaker and then someone rubs mud on it and they completely scream.
	And, you know, like it's kind of a joke, right?
	Like because the shoes kind of kicks, as they call them, right?
	The sneakers in the black community is like a big status thing to the point where people get assaulted, robbed or even killed over their shoes.
	It's a big status thing, right? So how much of that is actually, do you need those shoes?
	No. Will you kill for them?
	Yeah, sometimes. Are they necessary?
	Nope. But that's just the way things are, right?
	So you need your status for biological reasons, of course, like you want to prove your fitness to potential partners for children and all that, but a lot of it has to do with A caricature of masculinity that tends to develop in the absence of real fathers.
	Like if you don't have a good father, you will tend to end up with some sort of distorted characterization of masculinity.
	Like... The rookie numbers, you've got to pump it up like there's some caricature of masculinity that occurs in the absence.
	And it's a lot easier to program people with stereotypes if they've never encountered the real thing, right?
	Like if you don't spend any time around, I don't know, black people or Hispanic people or white people, then it's easy for the media to program you into particular stereotypes or characterizations.
	And that's, you know, you can see this in the community of men who don't have much contact with women.
	They'll often reduce them to, you know, it's Broufort's Law and hypergamy and neoteny and like, okay, but that's, you know, there are real women out there with complexities and depth and you can't just put everyone into a particular category unless you don't really have much contact with them.
	So it's pretty easy for Society to program men with dysfunctional models of masculinity if they've not grown up with an actual father because when you've grown up and spent 20 years with an actual father, it's kind of tough to be easily programmed about what masculinity is because you have a daily example of that that's gone on for 20 plus years.
	So as far as why people aren't rejoining the economy, well, it's because they don't see a future.
	Men are fantastic at a bunch of things.
	I mean, we suck at some things for sure, but we're fantastic at a bunch of things.
	And one of the things that we're fantastic at is figuring out whether something is sustainable.
	And the reason for that is we can't nag people into giving us resources, so we actually have to figure out if something is sustainable.
	And if men are looking at the current society and they're saying, well, okay, it's sustainable.
	And of course, the answer is, well, no.
	If it's not sustainable, then that's kind of by design, right?
	Because the people who want to replace the current system don't want the current system to continue.
	So I think what's happened is men who've been on COVID unemployment or whatever, they have crushed down their expectations.
	They've crushed down their costs of living, right?
	You know, they've spent, you know, 500 bucks on a console and, you know, maybe 100 or 200 bucks on games, and that's going to keep them entertained for like a year, right?
	You can't sustain the economy if people aren't out buying more than they need.
	At least the current economy, which is kind of built on people buying more than they need.
	So men, I think, are saying, okay, well, there's no point going to university because...
	I don't want any of the jobs, and particularly white males.
	What was it? Was it DuckDuckGo that was recently found to be refusing to hire white males in favor of other ethnicities and demographics and so on?
	And it's like, no, that's not. But so, you know, we're aware of all of this kind of stuff.
	We're also aware that if we go to university, we'll be taught that we're bad if we're white males.
	And we won't really be able to get a job because they'll be favoring other genders and races.
	And We'll get a lot of debt and we won't even have fun because it's too scary to have fun in university now because you could get accused of something in some crazy woman.
	Not all of these accusations are false, of course, but also not all of them are true.
	So that's not fun.
	So what's the point?
	If men start to believe that society is circling the drain, then they don't want to do the 10x The 10x economic multiplication that comes from having kids, right?
	So when a man gets married, he gets really serious about his income, or when he wants to get married.
	And when a man has kids, he gets even more serious about his income, and you end up...
	You need about 10 times the money if you have a wife and kids than if you're single.
	And you're willing to do that if it's going to be a positive and productive thing for you to have wives and kids, right?
	But of course, this is the generation of men that grew up seeing their own fathers often eviscerated in family courts, you know, living in a car, maybe even being dragged off to jail.
	Because you see, when a woman can't pay her bills, she gets welfare.
	When a man can't pay his bills, he gets a jail cell in the Alamone child support situation.
	And then they expect him to go out and pay his bills with a record.
	So things that don't work, one-on-one, right?
	So... I think men are looking and saying, okay, well, I got used to living on very little under COVID, and I don't know where society's going.
	I don't know, like, the time horizon for everyone under COVID, regardless of what you think of the vaccines, regardless of what you think of the illness or whatever, the timeframe for everyone is gotten down to the week by week, day by day.
	What's the new news? What are the new restrictions?
	What's happening? What's going on?
	And particularly in Biden's eviscerating the republic chaos of America, people don't know what the hell's going to happen next.
	They don't know. And when men don't know what comes next, what do we do?
	We conserve resources and we hunker down.
	We conserve resources and we hunker down.
	If you don't know when your next meal is coming from, You will conserve resources and hunker down.
	I mean, assuming you don't have to hunt to get your next meal or whatever, right?
	So men's radar regarding the future of their society has been shortened enormously because there's no possible way to predict what society is going to look like even this time next year.
	I mean, who would have really known what society from like last September to this September?
	I mean, the amount of change, we could go through it all, but everybody knows that the amount of change has been staggering and they're not done yet.
	So men aren't planning for their lives.
	Now, when men don't plan for their lives, and I'm not disagreeing with that or thinking that, oh, well, they should, it's a bad thing.
	Like this Jordan Peterson thing of like, well, you've got to get serious.
	You've got to apply yourself.
	And he's like, okay, that's fine when Jordan Peterson, and it was fine when I was growing up and Jordan Peterson was growing up, but the world is very different now.
	The world is very different now.
	And so men are hunkering down and conserving resources.
	They got used to spending very little under COVID. And they probably put some money aside or bought some crypto or whatever.
	Or maybe they're living with their parents and so on.
	And they are like, okay, maybe I'll work under the table a little bit.
	Maybe I'll dabble in crypto.
	Maybe I'll do a bunch of stuff.
	But I'm not going to go and get a job.
	They're not going to go and get a job if they can avoid it.
	And so because the men are no longer planning to become husbands and fathers, like 90% of the economy on the male side is at risk.
	I mean, at significant risk.
	When you get married, your wife wants to not live in an apartment anymore.
	Maybe it's a condo. When you have kids, your wife doesn't want to live in a condo anymore.
	What's this mean with this black guy sweating, saying, you know, men's faces when they see their wife walking around the house with a measuring tape?
	Oh no! Gotta get back to work.
	And so the economy is driven by the nesting of women and the providing of men.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	It's perfectly fine. But that's the reality of How everything runs at the moment.
	And of course has for most of human history, so there's not some big capitalist issue.
	But if men don't want to become...
	Oh, I shouldn't say don't want to.
	If men don't see a productive or easy way of becoming husbands and fathers, the economy collapses.
	Because the economy is there to serve women and children.
	I'm not kidding about that.
	The economy is there to serve women and children, which is nothing wrong with that, right?
	Because women need a lot of resources, a lot of health care, a lot of food and shelter and all that when they're having kids and raising kids and all that.
	And children, of course, don't contribute to the economy except in the future, and children are massive economic consumers, right?
	Was it $250,000 to raise a kid?
	Not even including college or whatever, right?
	So... So if men don't want to become husbands and fathers, or at least don't see a way to do that, if they're holding off on that, then, I mean, the economy is going to collapse, as we know it.
	Now, economic collapse, it just means a reconfiguration, right?
	I mean, the collapse of communism was good for a lot of people in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and so on.
	So I don't just mean like, you know, we're hunting each other with mop handles or anything.
	I'm just meaning this big reconfiguration.
	Now, society doesn't have any particular way to lure people into becoming husbands and fathers.
	Now, if you are, like, to take a sort of cliched example, right, like if you're somebody who's kind of poor and kind of broke and so on, and maybe you come from another country and you get on welfare and so on, it's like, okay, well, then the government is paying you to become a husband and a father, but the government, by paying you, you're not turning into a provider, which means the next generation is going to be entitled to Not hardworking, right?
	Because they don't have the example of the father or the mother who work hard to gain economic value, to produce economic value.
	So, yeah, I mean, there's some places, of course, birth rates are high in certain communities, but men aren't being, in a sense, lured into being husbands and fathers.
	And I can understand that.
	I mean, in general, it's not a very good deal for men as a whole.
	And this is, of course, the deference to women produces situations that women don't want.
	The deference to women produces situations that women don't want.
	I talked about this. I actually interviewed a woman who wrote a book many years ago on this show.
	And sorry, that was a confusing way to put it, but I think you know where I'm coming from.
	And the woman was saying, like, yeah, you know, women get more educated, women get more income and all of that.
	It's really not great for women in a lot of ways because a woman wants to marry up.
	And so if she makes $150,000 a year, she wants a guy who makes at least $200,000 a year.
	And the more we educate women to make more money, it's not like we're immediately creating more affluent men.
	So you have a greater and greater supply of women chasing fewer and fewer men.
	That's a bad situation for social stability because the women don't want to settle for less.
	Because it's one thing to say to men, well, you've got to show your feelings and you've got to respect women and you've got to defer and you've got to be not a male chauvinist pig and you've got to smash the patriarchy.
	That's one thing. But it's not like women have been told, look, you've got to stop having expectations that a man is going to be taller and wealthier than you.
	You have to stop that.
	That's totally sexist. That hasn't been done.
	That hasn't been done.
	I mean, I haven't seen anything of that in the mainstream at all.
	I haven't seen any movies where the woman thirsts after some hedge fund manager but ends up really happy with a plumber who makes half her salary or whatever, right?
	I don't see any of that.
	So there's conditioning for men to change, but there's no conditioning for women to lower their expectations.
	In other words, patriarchy is combated, hypergamy is not.
	And so because you have more and more women chasing fewer and fewer men, the highest quality men have no incentive to settle down.
	I mean, I was close to this edge.
	I was close to this edge when I was younger because it was just fun dating.
	And I wouldn't say I like it totally had my pick, but I largely had my pick.
	And it's really, really hard to settle down when you can have a bunch of different women to go out with.
	And I never simultaneously dated, but it was pretty easy to ask women and get them to go out.
	And, you know, maybe even have short-term relationships or even maybe medium-term relationships.
	But when you have options, it's tough to settle, right?
	When you have options, it's tough to settle.
	So... That's what's going on.
	Why are people not rejoining the workforce?
	Now if men are not rejoining the workforce, then I think that there's less incentive for women to rejoin the workforce.
	But I think in particular, if I had to guess, well, of course, a lot of women, if they can't work for tips, if they can't gain economic value from their physical attractiveness, which, you know, the whole story of Theranos is a pretty blonde, pulls the wool over everyone's eyes because they think she can break physics because she's pretty.
	And so she can get, you know, a thousand blood tests out of three drops of blood, which is completely mental.
	and her very first teacher at – her first professor at Stanford said, no, what you want is physically impossible.
	And she's like, don't care.
	I'm pretty.
	Pretty means I'm not subject to the laws of physics.
	Pretty may even mean she's not subject to the law.
	I guess we'll see that as the trial goes along.
	But if – so women aren't going back if they can't get the pretty privilege, like the extra economic value that comes from being pretty, you know, like the sort of cliche that I saw sometimes, which is that the pharmaceutical reps – I think Heather Locklear did this once in Scrubs.
	Like the pharmaceutical reps that go and try and sell medicines to the doctors, the pharmaceutical reps are famously pretty, right?
	Because they can – the doctor is kind of older and the doctor is like being flirted with a little and will order stuff just because the woman is pretty.
	And I remember when I was interviewing – when I was a chief technical officer, I was interviewing.
	And I remember this one woman came in.
	She's very pretty.
	And she's a programmer.
	And the guys – it's so funny because we had, of course, male and female employees.
	And the guys were actually literally hovering outside the interview room.
	And the girls, the women who worked for me, they're all rolling their eyes.
	Like they knew exactly what was going on, right?
	That there was this high status or high value woman in the vicinity.
	So all the programmers were like, hey, is she going to get hired?
	Do you think she's going to come work here?
	Right? So the pretty privilege, if you can't get that for women, and because of COVID, that's been kind of put on hold, right?
	Because... You know, fewer people are going to restaurants and you don't get pretty privileged from delivering the food, right?
	You get it from being a waiter or a waitress or a bartender, bartender or whatever it is, right?
	So, women can't get the pretty, and you don't get the pretty privilege as much on Zoom as you do in person, right?
	Because in person, there's always this thing in the back of a man's mind when he's around a pretty woman.
	It's like, yeah, she might go out with me.
	Like, if he's single, but on Zoom, it's like, you know, you're in another city and you don't get the same pretty privilege, right?
	You probably get a little deference, but not quite the same.
	So, the economy has reshifted itself to the point where women aren't getting as much pretty privilege, and men are on hold.
	How's this going to shake out?
	I don't want to get married and have kids if it turns out that I'm going to get fired for being my ethnicity and my race or if the economy is going to change so much, right?
	And I think a lot of men as well are sitting there saying, okay, what is happening with these vaccine numbers?
	Because that's pretty important. If it's go back to normal, okay, maybe, right?
	But looking at Israel... Looking at Gibraltar, looking at other places, like, okay, I don't know that very high vaccination rates mean exactly going back to normal, so I think I'm just going to hold off.
	I might date a little, I might, you know, maybe even sleep with a woman or two, but as far as actually settling down and having kids, no.
	And of course, when a man decides not to settle down and have kids, like, close to half the economy, like, when men aren't willing to commit, at least half the economy grinds to a halt.
	And it's more than that, because if men aren't women willing to commit, then women won't be as interested in dating.
	If women aren't as interested in dating, they spend less on makeup, they spend less on...
	I mean, look, the average millennial has gained, what, £35 over the course of the pandemic?
	And I bet you that's more on women than on men.
	Because when romance, love, marriage, family, when that is off the table, People get fat and lazy and boring because why would you want to stay lean and hardworking and interesting if there's no possibility or no desire that you can act on or willing to act on for marriage, kids, and family? So, yeah, I think men aren't going back to work because it's like, why?
	I work for my wife and my kids.
	That's what I work for. And if I can't have wife or kids for now, what will I work?
	Now, I might go and get a job if I absolutely have to, and if there's starvation, I'm not going to work real hard.
	I'm not going to spend my downtime educating myself.
	I'm not going to up my economic skills and values.
	Why? Why?
	Everything's on hold. That's the real price of the pandemic, right?
	Other than the massive numbers of people who are going to die of cancer because they couldn't get screenings or anything.
	But The real price of the pandemic in many ways is men just saying, okay, I'm not going to be ambitious.
	There's no point. What's the point?
	It would be literally like someone saying to you, hey, build the house and maybe I'll get a permit.
	And the man will say, no, I'm not going to build the house unless you have the permit.
	Because maybe I'll get a permit down the road means that the whole house could be torn down.
	Maybe you'll have economic opportunity in the future.
	Maybe there's a return to normalcy.
	Maybe, maybe. No, that's not enough for a man to propose.
	That's not enough for a man to become a father.
	Because if things don't work out, or he has economic challenges, his wife will leave him.
	She could rely on the state.
	He might go to prison. Like, there's just no way that...
	I mean, a lot of men who don't know these issues will just kind of wander into these chainsaws, but for men, you know, listeners to this show and so on, I mean, I get where you're coming from.
	I mean, hell, my life's a little bit on hold at the moment.
	I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's going on.
	I don't know what's next. I know that all the conspiracy theories have turned out to be complete facts, for the most part, at least, about certain issues.
	So... Yeah, I don't know.
	I don't know what's coming next.
	And I'm still happy to do the show.
	It's still great to talk with everyone.
	But as far as big life plans, good Lord, no.
	I don't know how to do any of that at the moment.
	And this winter will be to some degree the make or break with regards to all of that.
	Now, if it was like, well, it's going to be uncertain for the next 20 years, then people are like, okay, well, I just have to live with that and go ahead with my life.
	But if it may be more, we'll certainly have more information this spring about various things.
	So I think that there's a lot of on-hold stuff.
	A lot of people are just like, okay, well, you know, like when you're at an airport or when we used to go to airports, right?
	You're at an airport and you got a flight in two hours, right?
	What do you do? You kill time.
	You pick up a magazine, you'll play a couple of online games maybe, you'll chat with someone, you'll read a book, you'll just pace around, you'll check out the store.
	You're just killing time. There's nothing wrong with that.
	What else are you going to do in an airport, right?
	You're not going to start a big project.
	You're just going to kill time. And when men kill time, they also kill the economy.
	Because the economy is designed to serve the needs of women and children, of wives and children really, and if men aren't marrying and men aren't becoming fathers, All of that economic activity stops.
	And if it was a big shock, then people would recalibrate.
	But everybody's waiting.
	Everybody's treading water.
	Everybody's killing time right now.
	What the hell is coming next?
	What the hell is coming next?
	Nobody knows. And I don't even think the people in charge know.
	I don't know if anyone's in charge.
	But... I think that's one of the reasons why the Help Wanted signs are up, is that nobody knows.
	You can't build a bridge if you don't know what the gravity is, if you don't know what the physics are, if you don't know anything.
	Like if they said, okay, I need you to build a bridge for another planet.
	And they gave you no parameters, you'd say, well, I can't build that bridge because I don't know what the variables are.
	I don't know what the gravity is. I don't know what the atmosphere is.
	I don't know what the load it's supposed to carry is.
	I don't know if it's a footbridge or it's supposed to carry trucks.
	Like, you'd say, I can't build it because I don't have enough information.
	It's too many variables. Can't be productive.
	Can't build the house because I don't have the permit.
	Now, if they say, you're not getting the permit, then you say, okay, well, I guess I'll look for some other place to build my house, right?
	But if it's like, well, your permit is on hold.
	Okay, is it worth necessarily going for some other permit in some other place?
	Not necessarily, because you already went through all the paperwork for this.
	You can't build the house, but you can't do something else.
	You're just waiting, just waiting, waiting, waiting.
	Just circling the drain, waiting, waiting, waiting.
	I think that's what we're up to right now.
	We're just in an airport saying, okay, now what?
	Right? That's the old movie, Airplane.
	On the announcement, they're saying, you know, that the flight that was leaving at gate 12 is now leading from gate 13.
	And everyone just swarms to gate 13.
	And then the flight that was leaving from gate 13 is now leaving from gate 45.
	And everybody's just like, and that's all we're doing.
	We just, what the hell is coming next?
	The hell is going on in the world?
	You look at places like Australia.
	Oh, my God. I mean, obviously, I tried to warn them.
	It doesn't really matter. But you look at a place like Australia, it's gone completely mental.
	If you look at a place like Denmark or Sweden, they're taking off all their restrictions.
	All of their restrictions are gone.
	They say Denmark is now saying, well, we're downgrading this to a seasonal illness.
	Pandemic's over. Which way is your country going?
	Which way is my country going?
	Do you know? I don't.
	You don't. So will Denmark and Sweden and other places that are removing their restrictions, will that last?
	I mean, Alberta tried that.
	Now they're locked down very tightly.
	We don't know. And when you don't know, you wait.
	You kill time. You may take a job if you have to, but you're not going to really prepare for the future when you don't know what that future is going to look like.
	How could you possibly know that?
	How could you possibly know what's going to happen next?
	How much of this last stuff has been surprising to you?
	I mean, the general trend is not super surprising for me, but again, there are big exceptions like Sweden and Denmark.
	Just nope. Sweden never had a hard lockdown, removing coronavirus restrictions.
	Denmark had a lockdown, removing coronavirus restrictions, saying it's time to get back to normal.
	Predictable? Sweden a little bit more.
	Denmark a little bit less. Australia?
	Predictable? I don't know.
	Maybe it's the influence of China. I have no idea.
	Maybe they have something on the leaders.
	I have no idea. So I think we're all waiting, aren't we?
	Just, what the hell is coming next?
	What's the next undebated executive order law that's just going to be imposed with no consultation, no debate, no feedback?
	Just boom. What's the next thing?
	I mean, a lot of people are pretty surprised.
	I didn't know the government had all these powers.
	I thought you actually had to debate laws.
	I thought that you had to vote.
	I thought, like, where are all these things coming from?
	So I would say that is the major issue that's going on in the world.
	And, you know, if you don't feel that, you know, feel free to let me know.
	Of course, I'd be happy to hear that.
	But I think that's the major stuff that's going on.
	But yeah, thanks for your patience with that speech.
	If you guys wanted to give me your thoughts on that before we close up, that'd be great.
	Just don't forget to...
	Go ahead. Hey, again.
	Well, yeah, you sort of perfectly described my situation.
	I was really on this, like, great wave, you know, of...
	Going ahead with my life, I got really inspired by my friends having children and stuff, you know.
	I was like, I'm going to find a woman, I'm going to have children.
	I sort of planned my career out and my sort of, well, government job, let's just say, honestly.
	And yeah, now my country went sort of into full, like, you know, mental madness of division over the COVID pass and crazy regulations.
	And I'm like, yeah, all right, I guess all that stuff isn't happening.
	And it's kind of really horrible, but I'll just have to deal with it, I guess.
	Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people who are like, well, the guy I talked to yesterday, who's like, I'm moving to Eastern Europe.
	It's like, okay, so let's say you move to Eastern Europe.
	How much does that delay your marriage plans?
	Well, I imagine quite a bit, because you're going to some completely virgin territory, so to speak.
	So all that stuff delayed like crazy, right?
	Yes, exactly. All right, so Marcus, I think you wanted to mention something, but you will need to unmute.
	Hey, Steph, I was the original person that asked this question about the unemployment.
	Yeah, what do you think? That's really a great, great answer, and it kind of applies to me because you pretty much described my entire life, like, to every little inch of it.
	I am here to serve, as you know.
	Yeah, it was it was but um and it feels bad because like man I've been going back and forth and back and forth because it it really gives you a mental toll like because some days you're like oh okay finally things are getting back to normal and then other days you're just it's just doom doom doom and it's really hard to uh make any long-term decisions I mean, that's great that that guy's moving to Eastern Europe.
	I'm in a similar situation right now.
	I literally have to decide by today whether or not I accept a scholarship or defer a year and potentially lose it.
	And the scholarship would be moving abroad to Taiwan.
	Okay, so let's say you move abroad to Taiwan.
	Well, how's that going to delay marriage and kids, right?
	Quite a bit? Yes.
	I am very young, but...
	But unless you marry some Taiwanese girl or find the woman of your dreams out there, you're half a decade out of the mix, right?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I figure Asia and just like the other guy was saying, Eastern Europe might have better opportunities than the West at the moment.
	You mean economically or romantically or what?
	Everything. Economically, romantically.
	The only thing that...
	See, I'm weighing the pros and cons right now, and the only cons right now are the COVID restrictions.
	They haven't done a hardcore lockdown.
	They've never really shut down, which is great.
	And I don't think they will.
	But they still have the mask and they still have some other stuff.
	Supposedly they've had zero cases for the past six days.
	I'm like, okay, sick. And they're saying they're going to ease the restrictions and get back to normal.
	But then, of course, as I'm saying, it goes back and forth.
	Then the head of the CDC said, we're going to have outdoor masks indefinitely.
	Just like, ugh.
	Well, and I know that there's all this stuff about, ah, yes, but Taiwanese women, they're not feminists and they're more submissive and they're more conciliatory and so on.
	And it's like, yeah, but you are coming from a collectivist culture.
	You're coming from an individualist culture into a collectivist culture.
	Oh, no, no, no. That's a hiccup and a half, right?
	I don't believe any of that.
	I met a lot of people.
	I was over there for a bit.
	And there's all the people like, oh dude, just get an Asian wife and it's so much better.
	And I dated around and I largely realized that they're not...
	They're women. They're all women.
	It doesn't matter where they're from.
	They still have the same motivations and problems and, you know, to think that, like, just traveling to a different country is going to solve your women issue.
	I think that's...
	Well, and as far as fatherhood goes, of course, I mean, one of the challenges...
	One of the challenges...
	Sorry, can you still hear me?
	I can hear you. Okay, sorry.
	My little talky thing wasn't lighting up.
	Yeah, of course, the other challenge is too, if you've dated an Asian woman, then you have kids with an Asian woman, then your kids, it's one thing in California to be half white, half Asian, assuming you're white, but...
	You know, it's a little tougher for the biracial kids to find their way in the world, to find a community, and the mental health issues tend to be significantly higher, and identity issues tend to be significantly higher.
	So you're kind of making a choice that has impacts, obviously significant impacts on your children, which doesn't mean, you know, don't do it.
	It just means be aware that you'll have to put in extra resources for your kids to make sure that they get a community that they feel at home in.
	Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know.
	Right now, I'm in the same boat, which, what you described earlier, like, there's no way anyone right now with a brain is going to consider having kids or trying to set off a new career path.
	And birth rates are down significantly.
	Yeah, just, of course, everybody knows that because people are just, whoa, hang on, what the hell's going on?
	Do you think men have fertility windows?
	I'm 22. I'm still carving out my career.
	I'm still studying and learning things.
	No, so, like, I mean, you can have kids when you're old, right?
	I mean, your sperm is still, it's not perfect or anything like that, and there's some degradation in quality, but you can have kids.
	Mick Jagger still had kids in his 70s, I think.
	Anthony Quinn had kids in his 80s, if I remember right.
	So, yeah, you can do that.
	It's physically possible.
	But, of course, as you get older as a man, you accumulate more life experiences, and I guess I've dated both older women and younger women, and it's a challenge, because that's a lot of difference in experience.
	So I would say it does begin to become less productive as you get older, because if you're some 70-year-old guy, you need a woman half your age.
	Okay, so what's she doing with you?
	Just waiting for you to die, right?
	I had a call-in show some years ago with a woman who was basically moving in with a guy and just waiting for him to die so that she could get the house.
	And that's not, you know, that Anna Nicole Smith stuff's not particularly loving or noble.
	And the other thing too, of course, is that if you get older, and of course I know for you 70 seems like an eternity away.
	Trust me, it still just seemed to me even though it's only 15 years.
	But as you get older...
	You just get creakier.
	Like, I mean, I was an older parent, and so I'm 55.
	My daughter's almost 13. And at 55, I'm sorry, like, I cannot sprint the way I could 10 years ago.
	I can't, you know, I can still dangle around and wrestle around on the playgrounds and all of that, but I just have to be careful.
	I just can't do it.
	And so, I mean, I can, but I'll just injure myself, and that's not good, right?
	So, So, as you get older, of course, you have a kid in your 50s or whatever.
	Okay, so then your kid's going out into the world and then you're getting old and need their help.
	You know, so if you have a kid when you're 50 and then they go out into the world when they're 20 and you're 70...
	Oh, and your wife is 70 or whatever, right?
	So it's just, it's not particularly great because then you might need their help or whatever and, you know, they're supposed to be off enjoying their life and it's just one of these things that you have to be sort of vaguely cognizant of the fact that you're going to have a big age gap with your wife and you're not really going to be around for much of their life if you have kids when you're an older dad.
	So that's just something to be aware of.
	How do you think I should make this decision?
	I mean, I'll probably have kids maybe when I'm 30 or older if I financially can afford it, but how do you break out of that indecisiveness and the going back and forth on decisions, especially when it's like big life decisions?
	Especially... All during COVID on top of it, it seems like I'm the most indecisive I've ever been, and sometimes it just paralyzes me.
	Why would you insult yourself?
	You're not indecisive.
	It's just that there's not enough information.
	Yeah, the world is indecisive.
	Well, no, there's just too many variables.
	And there's too many lies. Honestly, just way too many lies floating around.
	And I'm not talking about pro or anti-vaxxer.
	There's just no debate is allowed.
	People got deplatformed for all of these things which turned out to be totally true.
	And so the fact is that there's just so much bullshit flying around and there's so much cover-up of essential information.
	Are there good treatments? Well, India says yes.
	You know, India has used various drugs to treat...
	Ivermectin.
	Yeah, various other things to treat COVID. And they say, hey, it's over for us, man.
	We solved it. Same thing with certain places in Africa, right?
	Other places it's like, oh, well, we got to put these COVID people on ventilators.
	And other people are like, that's going to kill them.
	And it's like, again, I'm no doctor.
	I can't evaluate any of these things objectively.
	But... There should be room for debate, but there's not.
	Right? There should be room for debate, but there's not.
	I mean, was it Elle magazine put out an article about how the issues with miscarriages and the vaccines, and it was fairly technical.
	I think I followed it, and I won't sort of repeat it here, because anyway, what happened was I think they got pulled.
	It got yanked.
	And so you just can't talk about that stuff.
	You can't talk about that stuff.
	And so I wouldn't put you down as indecisive.
	When you don't have enough information, making a decision is a bad idea.
	It's a bad idea.
	You know, if you don't know which way to go in the woods, you know what you're supposed to do?
	Stay right where you are. Because then at least you're near where you got lost so people can find you.
	But if you don't know which way to go in the woods...
	You sit down and you say, oh, but that's so indecisive.
	It's like, no, I don't know which way to go.
	No, I will not.
	Like if you're in the middle of the ocean, or not in the middle of the ocean, you're someplace and you don't know where the shore is, you don't swim because you're just going to attract predators.
	You're going to run out of energy and you don't even know which way you're going.
	So you just hang tight.
	That way you stay close to wherever your ship sank so you can be rescued.
	So that's not indecisive. You don't have enough information.
	Try not to label yourself with negative choices because there's a virus around and there's massive censorship.
	Be nicer to yourself.
	I order you. I order you to be nicer to yourself.
	Anyway, go on. Yeah, so, yeah, I guess that's a good analogy with the ocean.
	But, I mean, do you really think people are going to be drowning?
	Do you foresee... You were talking about economic collapse, but, of course, it's not going to turn into Mad Max-style stuff, hopefully.
	It's mainly just going to get a little progressively shittier.
	There's going to be more shortages, and it's going to take more time.
	It's going to adjust. Yeah, it's going to adjust.
	So, you think being somewhere where you're comfortable is probably the safest bet?
	You want to take a risk right now?
	See, now you're trying to have me make a decision with no information.
	I have no idea what being more comfortable means.
	Is that your couch? I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know.
	It's hard to say. I mean, this winter is going to be make or break as far as liberties go, right?
	And so, if...
	Yeah, again, all the options, but I don't know if there's enough information as yet.
	So, you know, if I tell you everybody's uncertain because we don't have enough information, you're saying, okay, yeah, but Steph, with your magic access to your crystal ball, what should I do?
	It's like, I don't know. I can't tell you, because I don't know.
	And if it was an area, like if they were talking about moral philosophy or statism or even computer programming or entrepreneurship, like stuff that I know well, or arts, yeah, like economics, stuff that I know well, yeah, I can evaluate that.
	I can't evaluate an MRI. I can't evaluate this stuff.
	I don't know this. But I would like there to be more debate, but there really isn't.
	So given that there isn't, that's what we do.
	When we have very opposite narratives, very opposing narratives...
	And debate is not allowed.
	Everybody goes on hold, right?
	Do you think it's only winter will have a clearer picture?
	I think this could be going on for five years, maybe.
	Yes, of course, right?
	I mean, my particular amateur guess is that, I mean, COVID is here to stay.
	I mean, because...
	It's got animal reservoirs, right?
	So it sits in animals. So once it sits in animals, what are you going to do?
	Inoculate all the deer? And even if you did, it wouldn't stop the spread, right?
	So I think COVID is here to stay.
	The question is, does it become more dangerous, stay the same, or less dangerous, right?
	That's really the big thing right now.
	There's some people who say that the vaccines are making it more dangerous.
	There's some people who say it's going to settle down into something less dangerous.
	I don't know. Can't evaluate those things.
	Don't know. What I mean by that, though, is that...
	For the last, I guess, over a year, right?
	So over a year, the promise has been vaccines get us back to normal, right?
	Because that, you know, there was polio, and then there's a polio vaccine, and nobody had to worry about polio anymore.
	Smallpox, smallpox vaccine, you get the idea, right?
	So that's been the story, the narrative of That you take the vaccines, we can all go back to normal, right?
	And that's why the word vaccine was used, right?
	Which, you know, there's even some debate about whether that's valid or whether it's just a prophylactic or whatever, right?
	A treatment. So that's what people did it for.
	They said, oh, well, okay, this is like all the other vaccines, so we take this, we go back to normal.
	Safe and effective like all the other vaccines, and it eliminates our risk of illness and eliminates the illness, so we go back to normal.
	And That's the question, right?
	And they said, well, once we get to 70% to 80% combined with people who've had it before, we've got, you know, we'll be fine.
	And it's like, so now, the winter, I think this winter is going to be pretty essential because...
	If it's like, oh, no, sorry, you need booster shots, and oh, by the way, you still need to wear a mask, oh, and by the way, you still need to practice social distancing, oh, and by the way, you can spill, catch, and spread the virus, oh, and by the way, in some ways, more of you are susceptible now because you've gained a lot of weight, and if it's not, take the vaccine and go back to normal.
	That's going to be a pretty interesting moment in human history.
	Because this is the biggest government project outside of maybe war.
	It's the biggest government project that's ever been undertaken, is this level of vaccination with this level of do it and go back to normal.
	And if there isn't going back to normal, and there's some evidence that that doesn't seem to be happening, certainly places like, as I mentioned, Israel and so on.
	If there is no going back to normal, wow.
	Wow. Wow.
	I mean, that'll be a huge thing, right?
	And, of course, the media and the governments and the companies involved in this stuff, I mean, they're all going to be like, you know, well, you just move on.
	It mutated. You need a booster.
	What can I tell you, right? Things change, right?
	But there will be some people, I think there'll be some people who will remember and say, wait a minute.
	Everybody was very certain about these numbers and what was on the table and what was being offered.
	And now they're Not only have they changed their position, but they're not acknowledging the change.
	And you know someone's trying to hustle you when they try to hurry you along, right?
	Whenever you feel hurried, you're being hustled, which is why my shows are 14 hours, right?
	But whenever you feel hurried, you're being hustled, and there will be this sense of urgency and hustling along and all of that.
	And of course, you know, I mean, the particular danger, which I've mentioned before, the particular danger is that If the theories are true, and I don't know if they are, but if the theories are true that the vaccine is going to drive mutations and the mutations get more dangerous, then if more dangerous mutations hit, of course nobody's going to blame the vaccines.
	They're going to blame the unvaccinated, and then that's going to get pretty exciting, to put it mildly so.
	Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
	That's why I sort of... I hear what you're saying about five years or whatever, but what I'm saying is that the narrative that's been very front and center for the last year and a half, take the vaccines, go back to normal.
	Take the vaccines, it's done.
	Like polio and smallpox, we're done and dusted and we move on.
	Then if that narrative turns out to be false...
	And what was it?
	Michael Rappaport, the rather lefty, slightly lunatic and not particularly talented orange haired actor in New York, was, you know, really pissed off about all this booster stuff.
	And how come I got to still wear a mask?
	And how come I got to do this?
	And that wasn't what we were told and blah, blah, blah.
	Right.
	So that is, of course, you know, half the world is going to be like, oh, we might have been lied to.
	And the other half is like, well, yeah, that's what they do.
	So welcome to welcome to post matrix reality.
	Right.
	So, sorry, I know that's not particularly helpful, but there's nothing I can do to say, here's what you should do, because I don't know what's going to happen.
	No, it's ultimately up to myself to make that decision.
	Well, I mean, solipsistically, it's not just up to yourself, like, in isolation, right?
	Once you get enough information, like, you know, it's like you said, you said this kind of cute thing, which I don't mean to mock you for, but I'm going to anyway, because I'm totally hypocritical.
	But you said, I think I want to get married when I'm 30.
	That is madly delusional thinking.
	And I'll just say that right up front because, you know, you sound like a great guy.
	I think you'd be a wonderful husband and dad, so I really want you to get that and achieve that and have that.
	You can't plan that.
	You can't plan that. Do you know when you have kids?
	What do you mean? Well, you say I'm going to have kids when I'm 30.
	I want to have kids when I'm 30. That's nonsense.
	Do you know when you get to have kids?
	When I get to have kids?
	Yeah, when you get to have kids is when you meet and marry the right woman.
	Of course. Now, are you saying, I'm 22, so I've got six years to date terrible women who are dangerous, hot, and frightening, but then, after six years of putting my heart through an estrogen cuisinart of instability and bipolar, I'm going to, yeah, I think I'll just settle down with a nice girl.
	Yeah, then maybe I might not do any of that then.
	What you need to do, if you want to have kids, what you need to do is say, I'm only going to date women who'd be great moms.
	That's what you do, right? I'm only going to date women who would be great moms.
	And I don't care how hot they are.
	I don't care whatever, right?
	I don't care if they're BTS groupies, right?
	I'm going to only date women who would be great moms.
	And if you do that, then you'll have kids.
	And if you don't do that, you won't have kids.
	That's it. And so saying that there's some age thing, well, when I'm 30, that's all nonsense.
	This is everyone. If you want to have kids, then please, I hope you do.
	Because it's not like the world is overflowing with smart, intelligent, philosophical people.
	But if you want to have kids, there's only one plan.
	Only one plan. Only date women who would be great moms.
	Or have that potential.
	Or are working in that direction.
	Or whatever, whatever. Only date women who'd be great moms.
	And if they're hot messes, no thank you.
	If they're obese, thus unlikely to conceive, no thank you.
	And, you know, it's hard to say that obese women can be really great moms because being a mom is a pretty physically active thing to do.
	You've got to play. You've got to take them running.
	You've got to play sports.
	You've got to, you know, obese people have a pretty tough time with that.
	So, and also, if you have an obese mom, the genes for obesity get to some degree passed along to the kids, so you're more likely to have an obese kid, which...
	So, yeah, just, I mean, only date the women who are or have the potential to be or are working towards great moms, being great moms.
	Do you not see that being the minority of people at the moment?
	Of course it is. Exactly.
	You know, but hey, really great philosophical shows are very rare, but you found me, didn't you?
	So, if you can find me, you can find the mother of your children.
	And, of course, because...
	I mean, if 95% of women would be great moms, I wouldn't even need to say this, right?
	but because the number of women who will be great moms tend to be more on the conservative and Christian side and tend to be more rare, then that's exactly why I'm saying this, right?
	Because you've got all these other crazy self-absorbed, irrationally attached or detached girlfriends who will put you through the blender, and it's like you've got to stay away from them.
	Because they, I mean, the worst thing, if it's like you want to be like with a woman where you're like, oh, you're pregnant, that's wonderful, as opposed to being with a woman like, oh, you're pregnant, I'm doomed.
	Yeah. All right, any last questions, comments?
	It's time for Seth to get his lunchy lunch on.
	All right, last question.
	So the worst case scenario, when you said it, it gets super interesting if it goes the South way in which they blame it on the unvaccinated.
	Do you foresee, it seems like, I don't know if you've probably seen it, the way they're prepping the narrative leads to genocide.
	Yeah. In the way they're demonized and dehumanized and the unvaccinated and using them as like the scapegoat.
	Yeah, I don't... Look, I think that's too far because...
	That's too far. Yeah, I think that's too far, honestly.
	So genocide tends to be against a relatively small proportion of the population.
	You know, like, what are vaccination rates in America still in the 50s or something like that?
	And even in other countries, they're in the 80s and so on.
	So you still have millions and millions and millions of people Who are unvaccinated, and over 100 million in America.
	So I don't, you know, I don't see it going that way.
	I just think there'll be a lot of, I mean, they're really going to push the social ostracism, they're really going to push the economic ostracism and all that kind of stuff, but I don't see it going, at least in the foreseeable future, I don't see it going much further than that.
	All right. Thanks, everyone.
	And again, that's just a guess.
	Nobody knows the future, and nobody knows if there's some sinister plan hand behind all of this.
	I know some people think there is, but thanks, everyone.
	Just a great pleasure to drop by and chat with everyone.
	Have yourselves a wonderful day.
	Don't forget my novel, free novel, free, free, great novel.
	You can go to freedomain.com forward slash almost or almostnovel.com.
	You can get the free audiobook there, and also you can get the PDF. As well.
	No, not PDF, sorry. Kindle format or e-book format.
	You can read it that way if that's what you prefer.
	And don't forget to check that out.
	Also, freedomainnft.com if you'd like to look at any of my other novels.
	I can't do much to apologize for the Ethereum fees, but if you want one, you can certainly do it that way.
	And have yourselves a wonderful day, everyone.
	I'll talk to you Wednesday night for sure, if not before.

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