Tom Bilyeu

Key Takeaway

The U.S. is drawing up plans for potential ground operations in Iran, including seizing Kharg Island (90% of Iran's oil exports). While Trump has military might, the real risk is asymmetric warfare and getting trapped in an unwinnable situation. The key insight: Always map decisions as if people are acting rationally, then identify their base assumptions. Ask 'what would indicate this path vs. that path?' rather than jumping to simple narratives like 'Trump is dumb.' This high-resolution thinking prevents blindspots.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu discusses escalating tensions with Iran as the Pentagon draws up plans for potential ground operations. He explores the strategic complexity of the situation, analyzing multiple scenarios from regime change to prolonged conflict. The conversation examines Trump's decision-making process, the risk of mission creep, economic impacts including oil prices, and growing domestic opposition. Bilyeu emphasizes the importance of probabilistic thinking and avoiding simplistic narratives when analyzing complex geopolitical situations.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Tom Bilyeu from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome everybody to another Tom Bilyeu Show live. Boy, oh boy, there is plenty going on in the world today. I'm excited that you guys are joining me. Thank you, by the way, for the birthday wishes in the chat. I appreciate it very much. And we're going to make sure that this is a special day for us all and it lives up to all the hype. All right, a ground invasion seems more likely by the day as Marines are told to make sure they're ready should they get deployment orders.

deployment orders. deployment orders. We'll talk a lot about that. The UAE has seized somewhere between 30 billion and 50 billion dollars in Iranian assets and put Iran on notice that they will leave the Middle East and join in the military confrontation if needed. We'll see what that looks like. The massive no kings protest over the weekend were filled. This one triggered me, boys and girls. They were filled with communist flags and chants for a communist revolution. Strap in when we get to that one but because yeah, I feel some type of way about that, as you can imagine.

Ryan, I will be will be will be uh it'll be interesting to see if I'm in a fight with the chat over this one or if we can all agree that it's a terrible idea. idea. idea. We're going to be coming in hot. The Iranian diaspora showed up in force in DC to remind Trump that they are grateful for the bombs falling on Iran. That one was a tricky situation. Lots of protests, counter protests going on. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, was shocked to discover that not only do billionaires flee when you try to fleece them with taxes, but many companies do as well.

as well. as well. And New York is realizing that as they go, so goes 47 billion dollars in revenue. That's just in New York and that's just so far. And then 12 tons of Kit Kats went missing when a shipment from Italy to Poland was hijacked. I like to think that uh who's the bald guy from the Fast and the Furious? I want to believe he was involved in some Vin Diesel, thank you. I want to believe that he's involved that somewhere uh uh uh Ozempic broke down on somebody and did not work the way as intended and they just had to have all 12 tons of Kit Kats.

That one's wild but nonetheless true. Exactly. Exactly. Well, welcome everybody. Uh these are wild times that we are living in. And I think right now everybody has to understand that what's going on uh with the Iranian war is really getting more complicated by the day and it's looking more and more likely that the US is going to put boots on the ground in Iran. Now, Now, Now, [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] if we do that, America's reputation and Trump's entire presidency is going to hinge on how it turns out.

Now, I don't think anybody should be entirely a consequentialist, meaning that you're just thinking about how things turn out. However, if you're going to try to think well through how the world ought to be, you have to think about outcomes. And one of my biggest beefs with the world entirely is that people don't take into consideration in the in this era where things are going so good and in the West, for the most part, people can just assume that everything is going to be stable and fine, people stop looking at outcomes and we end up in situations where we are hyper funding the Department of Education as one example and yet our test scores are stagnant or in some cases getting worse and we just shrug our shoulders.

Or here in California, where we're spending ungodly amounts of money on the homeless uh population and it just keeps getting bigger. Same thing in New York. And so, we do things that feel good but they don't necessarily have the outcomes that we're expecting. we're expecting. we're expecting. You need to look at the outcomes. Never is that going to be more important than looking at the outcomes that we're getting in the war with Iran. So, we are here here here uh and uh and uh and we're in this whether we want to be or not at this point.

And while it's true that some things do indeed look darkest before the dawn, sometimes things also look darkest right before they implode into a fiery ball of death. And which way Iran is going to go right now is completely unknown and I think people are acting way too much like this is a either a guaranteed success or a guaranteed failure depending on which side of the aisle that you're on. Be skeptical of anybody who is purporting to see this clearly, they know exactly how this is going to play out.

The reality is we don't. This could end up being glorious. It could end up finally bringing stability to the region, allowing that region to make the transition from transition from transition from basically 100% reliance on oil, moving into a far more modern economy, getting the Abraham Accords to really be all across that region, which would be extraordinary not just for them but for the world. They've already begun collecting such a massive amount of the capital available capital available capital available in the world. So much of it that's funding the US is actually in the UAE is where all of that starts.

And so, we've got this incredible opportunity to transition away from just that, just oil money, all the terrorism that has come along with that and move over into something that is far more integrated where we're looking at the world through an economic lens instead of a more uh theocratic uh theocratic uh theocratic lens. It's weird to me that we're proving that proving that proving that um um um monarchies are somehow more peaceful than a theocratic dictatorship but nonetheless, this moment in history brought to you by that reality.

And so, it is possible that on the other side of having gone after Iran, having begun to tear apart their military infrastructure, taking out an entire layer or two of their military personnel could lead to that outcome. But it could also lead to a [ __ ] show the likes of which we have never seen before. And as we look at the build-up of troops and our troops being given the notices that they might be going in, everybody needs to be incredibly skeptical of how this is going to play out.

Now, I like to believe that we've gotten a lot smarter since Iraq and Afghanistan but wars are easy to start and they are hard as hell to get out of. And once you're in a ground war, this is where all bets are going to be off. You are at massive risk of getting into a mess where the only outcomes are bad. And that's the thing that I worry about at this phase of where we're at is that there just is no good way to get out of this.

That we're going to be put in a position where we either go whole hog, we post up and while we're still not nation building, we have agendas in the region that require that we control physical assets on the ground. And if there is no uprising from the Iranian people and we have to hold certain assets there on the ground, we're going to find ourselves in a situation where this is this is this is a protracted war not because we're trying to nation build or because we're trying to win hearts and minds but that's just what you have to do if you don't have popular support of the people on the ground and you have to maintain control of that structure.

And at a minimum, we're going to have to control the Strait of Hormuz. So, um that's the thing that we need to be watching out for. And with all of that as the backdrop, the Pentagon is drawing up plans right now to seize Kharg Island. Whether they move on it or not is a totally different question but Kharg Island is the facility that processes 90% of Iran's oil exports. It's just one island and nine out of every 10 barrels that Iran sells to the world is right there coming out of that island.

So, when you look at juicy targets that we might be going after with boots on the ground, that's going to be one you're going to hear people talk a lot about. Also, securing the shoreline so that we can stop them from launching launching launching uh their the navy boats that they have that are like hidden inside of the tunnels tunnels tunnels that they would be able to drop mines, attack ships and just continue to make it effectively such that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So, we'll see.

The Washington Washington Washington cited multiple US officials saying that this build-up is happening, that we are drawing up the plans. Uh right now, the plan stops short of a of a full-scale invasion. Uh but what is being discussed is special operations raids, conventional infantry operations along Iran's coast, specifically obviously what we're talking about with the Strait of Hormuz, plus the potential to get control of Kharg Island. The goal would be to clear out all of Iran's missile batteries that can threaten commercial shipping and choke off Iran's uh oil economy.

Simultaneously, also to make sure that they can't launch the fast boats that carry missile launchers, that carry mines, all of that to get all of that out. And all of the hardware that the US would need to do this is already moving. The USS Tripoli, an American class amphibious assault ship carrying 3,500 troops, arrived in the Middle East already. Uh the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit is on board. The 82nd Airborne, we talked about that on Friday. Friday. Friday. That's the Army's designated rapid response force. response force.

response force. Uh they're also confirmed deployed to the region. You've got letters being handed out to more Marines saying, "Hey, make sure that your gear is ready to go should the order come in." Now, Trump hasn't greenlit any of this yet but as he stated over and over and over, they are trying to keep their options open. And the Pentagon is ex- uh echoing that, talking about maximum optionality. So, we'll see. Trump himself told reporters uh that he was not going to be putting troops anywhere but obviously, that was whatever nine or 10 days ago.

Things have changed since then. But, Rubio said on Friday that the US can achieve its objectives without ground forces. We'll see if that ends up being true. So, a lot of mis- mixed messaging when you think about the way that Trump has behaved in these situations before, he's going to say one thing, he's going to do another, which by the way, when you're in war, that is just the way that things go. You're going to send mixed messages to people. You were not trying to be consistent, you were trying to confuse your enemy.

your enemy. your enemy. But, that's creating a lot of weird backlash here in the US. So, while speculation uh has to be taken with a massive lump of salt, multiple officials have told Axios the final blow framing is real. is real. is real. Meaning that Trump is trying to build up the options getting some sort of like strategic strike groups in place so that they can try to develop war-ending leverage. leverage. leverage. Trump obviously doesn't want the war to expand. The question is going to be, given that the enemy is always going to have the ability to have a vote in this, will we end up in that situation anyway?

Now, the crazy part is that Israel is saying that, at least it's being reported, that Israel is saying, "If the US does put troops on the ground, that they would not do that." And so, that is a a pretty interesting twist. I was certainly surprised by that. So, uh we'll see. Now, I think it would be unwise for Trump to put boots on the ground as well. So, uh it just becomes a question of what is the exit ramp? Trump is not communicating any of this to the American people in a fashion that I think is very useful.

We'll get into the No Kings Day parades, but man, whether you're on board with that, whether you're concerned about the fact that they're funded or not, there is plenty of reason to be traumatized by what Trump is doing and to have the kind of pushback that we're seeing. So, I think Trump has to be very careful that if we start seeing a rapid uptick in the loss of American lives, which right now sit at what, 13? 15 if you count the two people that died of non-military causes, but 13 people directly killed plus over 330, I think, uh people injured.

You start getting footage of US soldiers being chased by drones in Iran, you get one video of an American soldier that was killed being dragged through the streets of Iran, boys and girls, it will be game over for the US's appetite to continue this. So, uh this is one where we need to be exceedingly cautious. Now, Iran is going to bluster. They're saying things like, uh "We're waiting for American soldiers to enter on the ground so that we can set them," this is all a quote, "ablaze." Now, what that means exactly, who knows, but of course, they're going to do everything they can to kill every last person that we put on the ground there.

So, nobody should be confused about that. that. that. Now, the question is, is this just Trump getting completely overextended that he thinks at every turn that Iran is going to back down? I'm still haunted by Steve Whitcoff's phrase when we were sending all the build-up of the troops into the region and Whitcoff was saying, "I just expected them to capitulate or I'm surprised that they didn't capitulate." And I feel like that's a lot of what we're seeing play out is we think that the Iranians are just going to back down as we put more and more force in front of them, but the reality is this is an existential fight.

So, where are they going to go? Bestin has been talking about people fleeing, sending money out that, you know, the rats, {quote} {unquote}, are fleeing the ship. Not so sure that's true. So, sending out the money is probably far more likely that they are trying to diversify to make sure that everything isn't stuck there, that they have access regardless of what ends up happening. We'll talk a little bit later about um the UAE beginning to freeze some of Iran's assets. So, I imagine a lot of that movement, rather than being uh they're all about to just bail, bail, bail, is about them keeping their options open.

And so, I don't think that this is going to be as simple as people want it to be. And we got to watch out for that. A lot of the chat is talking about how last week you were saying that, "Oh, Trump's not going to do boots on the ground. There's no way he would do that." And then you were also talking about um, you know, he's got plans, even though if we don't know them, they're a little chaotic. Um he still knows what he's doing.

he's doing. he's doing. Today, you know, a week Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Did I misconstrue Play the clip where I say Trump knows what he's doing. Well, I guess the way There's no universe it felt more like, and tell me if I'm misconstruing, it felt more like, maybe not he knows what he's doing, but he is aware of the actions he's taking and taking this one. It's like he has a plan. Wait, okay. Y- yes. Yeah. The the odds that he has a plan are exactly 100%.

So, there's no way way way I think that's what Kat's asking right now is, do you think at this point in time he still has a plan with everything going on? Yeah. So, this is the whole thing that I'm trying to get people to differentiate. I think that people end up with this low-resolution way that they're thinking through the problem. And what I was beseeching you guys to think about on Friday, Friday, Friday, if you are taking your thought process up to uh Trump is just flailing about and he has no plan.

Okay. That's not going to get you very far because the odds that that is true are effectively zero. It is way more likely that he has a plan, that he's got incredibly smart people, well-informed people that are around him giving him all the details, and they are still at hyper risk of making a never-ending string of horrifically bad decisions. So, now what we want to do is say, "Okay, this isn't about not having a plan. This is about where is the breakdown in their thinking occurring, if it's occurring, right?

Because one, we still don't know how this is going to play out. So, the if you're trying to map my thinking, mine is there is great uncertainty right now in the world, and the uncertainty index, by the way, just hit an all-time high. So, that I think everybody agrees with. But, the way that I am mapping the situation is by going in, launching the offensive, everything became uncertain. And if it was going to play out like Venezuela, it would have already played out like Venezuela. It's clearly not going to be that.

So, if the original strategy was, "Hey, this is going to be like Venezuela, Venezuela was really a dry run for Iran. Let's go in, do the same thing. We think that the Iranian people are going to rise up." And there's a pretty big reason to think that that was going to happen. We think they're going to rise up, we just need to weaken the military infrastructure, they're going to come in, rise up, take their country back. This is going to be amazing. Okay, that's that's not lacking a plan, that's just you were wrong, and it didn't play out that way.

And so, now it's like, as you begin to build a mental model, if you go "Asshole president had no plan," you're already going in the wrong direction. The right thing is thing is thing is president had a plan, he was wrong. Now, it's like, uh-oh, dear president, whoever is advising you, no matter how smart, no matter how well-informed, there is something that you guys are not tracking. Now, another option is this is playing out roughly, we thought that there were five major ways that this could go.

This is one of the five, and we have contingency plans for that. Okay? So, now, it's not necessarily that you're watching something play out that they didn't think would happen, and they may have a whole set of contingency plans that now they're just executing against. against. against. But, what you have to watch is the pacheco ball bouncing on all these possible elements, all these branching possible futures, and where does it become where now all of the remaining options are [ __ ] horrific? And that's the thing that I want people to start war-gaming out because the second you terminate in a I know what's happening here, happening here, happening here, you stop thinking forward.

You just go, "This is what it is." Th- This is, okay, you're going to hear me later talk about all the communism and all that stuff. And I'm going to present it to you as if I'm at my most certain. When I'm at my most certain, I'm running an entire algorithm in my brain that says, "You're at your most at risk because you are so convinced you're right about this that you're likely to be blind to something that will knock you off guard." So, then I'm going to run a whole like research campaign in my own life to figure out what am I missing?

missing? missing? So, what I'm trying to model for you guys, because it's so high utility and certainly what I hope that you guys are doing in your own life, is say, "Okay, there there isn't just one simple narrative, Trump dumb. It's on the board, maybe Trump is just dumb, maybe he has completely surrounded himself with sycophants, and maybe we are now in like a Xi-like or a Putin-like situation where Trump has so purged everybody that would tell him the truth that that really is our blind spot, and it's just going to be a never-ending string of blind decisions.

That is a possible thing in the matrix of what's happening. Now, Now, Now, it doesn't strike me as the most likely, but that's largely emotion. It's me just trying to watch the situation and see how things are playing out. Does this feel like people that are going off randomly half-cocked? It does not. It just feels like somebody who's making decisions that would not be the decisions I would make, but I don't have the information that they have. Okay. So, what we ought to be, in my opinion, trying to do to preserve maximum utility in terms of our ability to read the future, is to map this as if people are making decisions that they believe are rational.

rational. rational. And this is where I go all the time. When you watch people debate and they end up like slinging insults at each other. Like I don't know if you guys are watching the Megyn Kelly Mark Levin thing, where now it's he's calling her deep throat, she's calling him micro penis. Like this [ __ ] is wild. Instead, because that's where debates go, instead, you always want to map back to somebody's base assumptions. In their mind, they are almost certainly moving off of logic. Now, the question is, are they moving off of emotional logic, where emotions make dots feel like they connect that don't actually connect, or are they moving off of erroneous base assumptions?

But if you believe that thing, then their actions make all the sense in the world. Or do we not have enough information and we cannot tell that their base assumptions are actually highly likely to be correct and this is just an incredibly tenuous moment that we have to navigate our way through. There's no way for us to know which of those things is true. This is where we have to wait and watch how things play out. But the more that you can sort of go down the different paths and say, what would be the indications that were uh path is path A Trump versus completely blind, he has nothing but sycophants, right?

What would that look like? Are there signs that we can see? What would the other path, erroneous base assumptions? What would that look like? like? like? And then over here, right base assumptions and we just don't have enough information. For me, my gut instinct, but again, it's just feelings and so I'm trying to track this to see what actual information I can get to figure out which one of these to double down on, but my actual one is that Trump has a base assumption that's erroneous, that is that is that is American military might is so advanced that we're going to be able to prosecute this entire war from from from the air and that we won't have to go on the ground.

But that if we do have to go on the ground, we're going to overwhelm them and we're going to continue to use that overwhelming military might. And I think that he believes his base is strong enough that they'll support him through it. And I think he's wrong about most of that. I think asymmetric warfare is the thing that we have to pay attention to here. I'm not getting enough vibes that there's going to be an uprising inside of Iran and they're going to take their country back.

I think that when they killed the 31,000 plus people, that that just put an end to that. All right. I have actually have a question about that. Please. Um cuz I've been seeing this in the chat over the weeks we've been covering this, covering this, covering this, mentioning the Iran uprising. A lot of people have been saying, is it possible for Iran to rise up against their own government when they are being relentlessly bombed? relentlessly bombed? relentlessly bombed? So, that's the question that's on the table right now is, okay, are we seeing evidence that they don't have the appetite to go and try to take their country back or has the US made it clear, hey, now is not the time, we're still doing the campaign, you guys need to chill.

That one is so ripe for propaganda that I just immediately, and this is just my mental map of the world, I so believe I'm being lied to all the time by politicians, I so believe that politicians will take the um story, the narrative over facts on the ground, that I look at this and go, okay, I've been told from the beginning this is uh three to four week endeavor. We're in week five. Okay? So, already, their ability to predict the duration of this war is inaccurate.

So, at Impact Theory, we give each other dots. The idea of dots is to try to see patterns emerge in people's skill set, their behavior. Any one dot doesn't matter, but as a pattern emerges, that's where you're like, okay, that's what that person is actually like. So, I think that we can see building in this confrontation that the timelines are off. are off. are off. That the administration is not able to judge how long this is actually going to take. take. take. So, we've had one miss.

So, we know that they're not bang on. Or, it's possible to read as they're just going to lie to us. But if they're going to lie to us, then I throw out everything that they said, including that we're not going to do a ground invasion. So, that one becomes more sort of world view destabilizing, so it's better to stay with the thing that I can anchor off of very strongly, which is they're not good at timelines. at timelines. at timelines. Okay, so then the question becomes, why aren't they good at timelines?

If they're not good at timelines because the enemy is more pernicious than we expected, which I think is true, then it becomes, okay, if you were to leave now and you left Iran in a state of disarray, would the situation be better or worse than when you went in? It would be worse. Is that political suicide for Trump? Yes, it is. Based on that, my mental model goes, Trump isn't going to back out. So, I've got he's not good at the timelines, enemy is stronger than he was expecting them to be, and now it's political suicide for him to back out, so he can't back out.

There's obviously more. The UAE now is talking very spicy, they're seizing assets, they're saying they'll get involved in the military angle if they have to. Obviously, Israel is under a real ticking clock. Netanyahu has to hold elections by October. So, there's going to be a ton of pressure for him to deliver incredible results by that period, otherwise he also goes to jail. So, you've got two leaders, which is crazy. I cannot believe we're here. here. here. But you've got two leaders that are facing that reality, that they may end up going to jail for this.

So, it it is going to be a very strange situation. situation. situation. So, So, So, taking this now more to the level of average American citizens, if we do boots on the ground, it's no secret prices have gone up. My tank of gas costs more than the new Pokémon game. There's threats of nuclear war potentially from UN like advisors stepping down. What can we do as American citizens to practically prepare for the inevitability of boots on the ground and the cost effects that will come with it on like food, gas, etc.

Well, so this is going to depend entirely where people are in their own economic situation, but hopefully you have plenty, let's call it three to six months of savings on hand. This may make it harder for people to um extend that, but right now I'm not expecting there to be in the US any sort of long-term of long-term of long-term um massive increase in the cost of oil, but if this really gets out of hand, then we're going to be in trouble. Now, the reason that I think that here in the US is we're energy independent.

Because we have a um oil and gas infrastructure that is largely private, they will respond to the economic incentives and be able to at least locally um keep the prices reasonable. Now, how intertwined we are with the global market, I would actually have to do more research to up my confidence in that. Um oil is the closest thing to being truly inflationary in the sense that if oil prices do go up and they stay up, then you'll find yourself in a position where it will seem like this is just a purely inflationary event.

The reason I say seem like is inflation is an actual thing, you inflate the money supply, this isn't that. But this undergirds so many things. Our entire modern way of life is predicated on cheap oil um that if that number continues to climb and we're not able to solve some of these problems in terms of the Strait of Hormuz and getting the oil flowing again and this goes on three, six, nine months, Jesus, God forbid longer, that really will start to feel truly inflationary, at which point it all hell will break loose because already already already people on the underside of the K-shaped economy are having so much trouble making ends meet that you'll see things like the new Kings protest just continue to rise.

But what individuals should do is cut back on their expenses, sock away as much money as they can for rainy day, rainy day, rainy day, and there is no magic solution for that and it is a level of discipline that most people are not prepared to do. So many Americans live on credit that it becomes very hard to do because you have interest payments that you're going to have to make one way or the other. Um so, yeah, it is a very tricky situation. There's no doubt about that.

So, last thing I kind of have a question on that chat's discussing. chat's discussing. chat's discussing. Um Um Um boots on the ground, there is kind of a prediction that if we do that, it is most likely going to make us lose this war, right? Are you in that same mindset when you were playing I guess the game theory of this all, or do you think there is a potential we in air quotes win coming out of potential boots on the ground of Karg Island specifically, but I There's certainly an avenue where putting boots on the ground has a benefit.

My concern is that the odds of that strike me is very low. It feels like to me from where I'm sitting with what we know, with timelines dragging on, with on, with on, with the American appetite for boots on the ground being extraordinarily low with the things that Trump said about no new wars, that in the middle of that, unless it's like uh hey, last night a lightning strike happened, we went in, we got this, we're back out, there's no more troops on the ground and we don't even hear about it until it's already over and successful, um if we just hear there are now boots on the ground in Iran, you are going to see a real problem emerge.

I think it will be suicide for the Republican Party on mass. And we're already seeing in these special elections that people are flipping seats that have historically been going to Republicans turning Democrats. So, yeah, I think boots on the ground is going to be a a very massive political problem. There's no two ways about that. Do you think in any capacity he loses his own base? Cuz right now I believe the percentage is like 90 to 99% approval in the MAGA base specifically. Not all Not all Not all so when you look at the Republican base, if you can believe the studies that are coming out or the polls that are coming out, the Republican base is largely like 60 70% identifying as MAGA.

And of people in MAGA, at least as of like a week ago, you were at like 95% approval. I think at one point they clocked it at 100% approval. That's a little hard to believe. Um so, I think that he certainly does have support from his base, but there is a growing divide in the Republican party and there is a just absolute cacophony of voices that are rising up that are saying that, yeah, this is a hard pass for them. So, I do think that he will lose his base.

If you've got video footage coming out of American soldiers dying, if you've got that number ticking up, people are just going to say the obvious thing, that we're in a much worse position now than we were before the war on Iran started. And that's where I say, to some extent, you have to be looking at the consequences of this stuff, not just the intent, not just the fact that the world doesn't want a nuclear armed Iran, which is all true. At the end of the day, if what comes out of it is uh uh uh oil prices skyrocket, American lives are being lost, the Iranian people are um way worse off than they were going into this, we're striking civilian infrastructure.

I mean, Trump himself put out a Truth Social saying that um he was going to be willing to strike, potentially, desalinization plants, which would be insane. So, you put all of that together and this would be, I think, a catastrophic implosion of uh his presidency. I think he will get flipped at the midterms hard. I think that they will then impeach him and it will be an absolute witch hunt for the rest of his life to put him in prison. And how does this affect the deficit?

A lot of people are talking about, you know, we talk about wasteful spending in America, things that the government shouldn't be putting money towards, and a lot of people in the chat are very confident that this war is one of those wasteful things. Um how do we recover from this after the fact monetarily as a country? The reality is the Iran war from an economic standpoint is small potatoes compared to the debt that we have been racking up. So, it is going to make the problem that you already have worse.

It will accelerate it, but you're already $39 trillion in debt. So, the foundational problem that you have of deficit spending and using the um using money printing and inflation as a way to go in and rob people of their savings and put it via purchasing power and use that to fuel all of this um deficit spending across everything, because it certainly is not just the war. war. war. It is a problem that's already terminal. So, the way that I look at this is a bit like somebody that has terminal brain cancer eating a donut.

It's like you already have terminal brain cancer, you were already going to die, and now, yes, you're doing something that's going to make it worse. It's going to speed it up. Uh but the terminal brain cancer is the problem. The eating this one more donut donut donut is just going to hasten the end. It doesn't go from we're going to be fine to now we have a problem. And that certainly isn't me championing the war. It's just wild, but that's where we're at. I guess we'll need like three more No Kings protests to to actually start making a difference.

But yeah. yeah. yeah. That's not going to help. So, the the problem is what's going on with the No Kings protest is really it it is revealing something that's happening to the social fabric of this country that I am extremely concerned about. And the truth of the matter is that that that because of the K-shaped economy, because of the long march through the institutions, we are in a position now where the where the where the culture of America is completely decaying. And we have moved into a new phase where phase where phase where there's no longer a national identity of what America is, what it looks like, what it should be.

And because of that, we are now, obviously, we've been talking for a long time about the fact that we are in a hyperpolarized um populist moment, but all of this stuff is beginning to play out where you have people on the streets at these No Kings protests actually chanting for a communist revolution. Now, this is people that clearly do not understand what it is that they're calling for. They don't understand why we've ended up in the situation that we've ended up in. Uh and therefore, they don't know how to get out of it.

And this is the part that I lament is we're in a situation where the bankers have been so successful in convincing us that modern monetary theory is a good path forward that that that we are now permanently creating essentially a caste system in America. And the great irony is there is a way out of this, but the way out of it forces people to confront austerity. And people are just not prepared to do that. And so, as I've gone down the road of learning about how the economy actually works, like the actual plumbing of the economy, the physics of money, it really is difficult to see to see to see how we pull ourselves out of this, and it becomes very easy to see why countries almost always end in bloodshed and the in these times where you get the level of toxic inequality that we have right now.

And the reason is that the economy is hard to understand. And And And uh I know that I I've said this before, but you can explain the economy very quickly. You just can't explain the economy very easily. And once the more real your explanation of the economy, the more confusing it gets, and so people just shut their brains off. And so, they just go um rich people bad, poor people good. And the long march through the institutions was the indoctrination indoctrination indoctrination or the indoctrination of uh multiple generations of people to begin to view themselves through the lens of identity.

And what your identity is, you as the victim giving up your power, viewing everything as um the sort of battle with the institutions and power structures, instead of realizing that you yourself individually can get better, you can get stronger, you can become more powerful. Um and we've completely lost that narrative. And so, you have this terrifying collision that is people no longer believe that they can claw their way to the top, which was the very thing that made America great. And people have no historical context for what for what for what communism really is.

Like, i- if we can um Eric, I don't know if you have the ability to do this, but pull up the clip of the No Kings protest where they're waving the communist flags. Like, this is is is this is crazy town. Um Um Um over the weekend, the No Kings protests were massive as far as I can tell. And what we can talk later about the funding and all of that, and I think all of that is real, but I think it would be an absolute mistake to look at the No Kings protest and think anything other than there was a lot of reason to distrust what Trump is doing.

There's a lot of reasons to hate the ways that he's going about governing, and I think it's pretty clear that Trump is somebody that wants more power in the hands of the executive, not less. And that should scare everybody. But the thing that scares me infinitely more is that morons were loose in the streets waving communist flags to protest Trump, chanting that we needed a communist revolution, and working to ensure that neither Trump nor any other president um ever gets king-like powers is a very good thing, but waving a communist flag while doing it is like fundraising for KFC while screaming all chicken should be free.

It it is the literal height of stupidity. It stupidity. It stupidity. It it's actually stupid. It's nonsensical. The two things are completely incompatible. And we've we've been living in this weird world where and I understand people have tried to stop down and say we need to talk about this, but Queers for Palestine. Okay? Th- that's it's incompatible. Communists for um more equality is incompatible. Communists for human flourishing is incompatible. And so, when I see people look at a K-shaped economy and become absolutely enraged, I'm right there with them.

I'm equally enraged. When I see the solution that they put forward, which is more communism, then I'm just like, this person is [ __ ] stupid. Communism requires guns, requires guns, requires guns, murder, and mass scale oppression to stay in place. Guns, murder, and mass scale oppression. That's the only way. People are worried that Trump wants to turn the US presidency into a dictatorship, and I love that people are paranoid about that, and we should never let that happen. But if you're at a rally to protect women and you start waving a Ted Bundy flag around, I'm going to get very [ __ ] suspicious of what your motives are.

You're either irredeemably [ __ ] or you are evil. Either of those options completely counts you out. Now, I blame some of this problem on the fact that the protesters are being funded by people with an agenda. We'll get to more on that in a second, but I also blame this on the fact that people have simply not been taught the horrors of communism. of communism. of communism. The flags they're waving around with a hammer and sickle, that was first adopted by Vladimir Lenin in the USSR and made famous by his psychopathic successor Joseph Stalin.

Now, if we're going to glorify and idolize them, why don't we take a look at what it actually took to keep communism in place in the real world? Now, I get that people have this vision of what communism is going to be and it's going to be everybody on an equal playing field. It's going to be nobody's a victim and finally these evil capitalist [ __ ] are going to get their comeuppance, but the reality is there was the Red Terror. Okay? This is what it takes to keep communism in place.

We know because this is what actually happened. actually happened. actually happened. The Red Terror, the Soviet police executed tens of thousands within months of coming into power. The Tambov Rebellion, suppression was used by Lenin. He ordered poison gas to be deployed against Russian peasants who were resisting, guess what? Grain confiscation. confiscation. confiscation. Then, because that rebellion was crushed down, there was a famine of 1921 through 22 that caused it was caused directly by the forced grain seizures that those people were murdered that were trying to stop.

5 million people died because communism is so good. so good. so good. Let's not forget the gulag prison system. The scale of the gulags was staggering. The total prisoners that historians estimate were locked away and tortured is roughly 20 million people. people. people. There was the Kronstadt uprising that got crushed down in 1921. When the people who launched the Bolshevik Revolution, they stood up finally demanding free speech because they were like, uh this is not what we did the Bolshevik Revolution for. We thought things were supposed to get better.

Things are getting aggressively worse. So, when they stood up, the Red Army slaughtered them and hopefully that one sounds familiar for anybody that's been paying attention what's going on in Iran. Then, there was the Ukrainian famine of 32 to 33, an engineered famine. Grain quotas were set at levels that they knew were impossible to achieve. Peasants who tried to flee were shot. Estimates range that there was a meager 3.5 to 7.5 million Ukrainian starved to death in just 12 to 18 months. People ate bark, grass, leather, and their own children.

There were more way more famines, many, many more atrocities, millions more dead, but let's look at China and see if they did any better. And by the way, spoiler alert, China did much better. They killed way more people. The Great Leap Forward, 1958 to 62, was the single greatest man-made famine in human history. Mao collectivized agriculture, banned private farming, set impossible grain quotas. That's a thing that keeps repeating. And exported grain abroad while his own people starved. And they were starving because Mao did all of that because he wanted to prove that socialism works.

That's actually what he said. During the land reform, one to two million landlords were publicly executed, often by mobs that were incited by the party. Family members were sometimes forced to watch or even participate. The suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, so basically just saying protesters, that killed another one to two million. Another roughly two million were slaughtered during the Cultural Revolution with millions more dying from exhaustion and suicide. The list goes on and on. Most conservative numbers put Mao's death toll at around 45 million murdered and or starved to death.

And we could just keep going down the list to Cambodia and beyond, but it's just more of the same. That's what the hammer and sickle represent. That's the legacy of the communist. But people people are still cheering it on, which is wild. It's like we got the message about the Nazis being bad, but somehow we didn't get the message that the communists are bad even though the Nazis are weak sauce compared to the communist. The communist killed way more people. It is so surreal to watch what is playing out that people can embrace that and we don't have the same aversion to the hammer and sickle that we do to the swastika.

If people were walking around waving the swastika, dude, it would be all over the news. People would be freaking out. They'd be like, what the [ __ ] is going on? Who is funding this? This is insanity. But that's not what we're doing. With communism, like people just give it a pass. This is so weird. So, anyway, I get it. If there are people in the chat, I really I want to know what people think about this one. So, I'm going to summarize the three points that chat's discussing in one thing cuz I do believe they all go hand in hand.

So, if you need me to repeat, let me know. But first thing people are saying is, well, how is this any different than what the US already does to other countries, right? We are already putting basically our boot on other countries' necks, have done so through history just as much as communism. Granted, there's obviously a difference in terms of the amount of people that have died because of it. Trump also recently just praised China for their structure in the society they have. Granted, they aren't total communist.

They have a partial free market. market. market. And correct me if I'm wrong on that. And then the last thing is people are asking if we're misconstruing communism as as authoritarianism because while communism does have like inherent problems to it, a lot of times the communist societies that have fallen have been because the leader was authoritarian. That's kind of what chat's discussing. Could Could chat point to the communist country that didn't fall because of authoritarianism? authoritarianism? authoritarianism? I think most people would point to China right now because of that Trump comment.

At least in the chat. Love that. Let China is my favorite country to talk about because what did China realize? So, Mao starves 45 million people to death and murders a bunch, so it's not just the starvation, but that's a pretty big number. big number. big number. Just keep Just keep Just keep someone said. Sorry to cut you off. No, by all means. So, kills his way all across everything. And finally, Mao dies. And Deng Xiaoping comes to power. And Deng Xiaoping says, we're going to accept that that was all moronic.

We're not going to keep doing that. that. that. And let's not move on any further. The people in the middle of it said, "Okay, that was a horror show. We're not going to keep doing that." Now, what do they do? They go to the US and they say, "Teach us. Teach us the how you deal with banking. Teach us how to do an open economy." And what China realized was, you guys know that China has almost as much inequality as the United States, right? So, So, So, China finally realizes, "Oh, inequality is necessary.

You have to have inequality because if you don't have inequality, you have to kill people." Here, the the very simple reason that communism does not work is it violates the physics of the way the human mind works. works. works. The human mind works in the future is very difficult to know and the only way to innovate and have success is to let a whole bunch of people try things, most of which will fail, but you end up finding the winners and the reason that people work so hard is they have selfish motivations.

Either they want to be celebrated by the group, they want to make more money, whatever. But they want to reap the rewards of their hard work. And so, they will outwork people, outthink people. You'll be able to attract the best in the brightest because they can get ahead. That That's just the very uncomfortable reality. And what communism says is, you only got ahead because you had these advantages. And they No one ever goes, "God has decided to give you certain advantages." You're just [ __ ] smarter than the next person.

That you work harder than the next person. That you didn't take days off when other people did. That you don't break under stress like so many other people do. And that we want to create a society that incentivizes those like nut jobs like an Elon Musk who just work around the clock, build multiple trillion-dollar companies. I mean, it's absolute insanity. And when you disincentivize that and you kill them, you create all kinds of problems. So, again, told this story before. Mao said in his infinite wisdom that we're going to make agriculture state-owned, which by the way is why there's a sickle on the um um um communist flag.

So, that sickle rep- represents agriculture being uh turned into a state apparatus. And because the state knows best, I want everybody all across China despite the diverse geography. I want everybody across China to plant same crops at the same time because these are our highest yield crops. And people said that won't work and he killed them. And it didn't work and people starved to death. death. death. And so, the until communism becomes the thing that the people want to do, you're always going to have to kill the people who dissent.

And the thing that I just really want people to confront. Let's say you're a communist. communist. communist. And then some people start saying, "No, I'm not going to let you do insert thing here." here." here." What do you do with them? If you let them run riot, communism collapses. collapses. collapses. So, you have to suppress them. You have to oppress them. You have to kill them. You have to intimidate them. Okay? It's the only way the system will work because there's too many smart people that realize, "You need to let me try this thing.

I think I know better than you." And the crazy thing is, most of them are wrong. Most of them don't know better than you. And they're all going to fail. to fail. to fail. But you have to create that environment. One of the greatest innovations came out of England, but it was really perfected in the United States, was the limited liability company, where you could try something with a company, let that company go bust, declare bankruptcy, and then start again and try again, but now you're a little bit smarter.

And the ability to not be shackled by the debts of your failures, and instead you can move forward and try again, is how you get America. Okay? The biggest economy in the world, the most innovative, until we started doing stupid policies, longest longest longest um um um our life expectancy was climbing. I I won't say I'm sure we're uh compared to blue zones, we have always struggled, but anyway, life expectancy longer than the vast majority of the world, economically just an absolute powerhouse, able to do the things that people are frustrated by with America going around and being a bully on the world stage, but we also were the ones responsible for roughly 80 years of um unprecedented global prosperity, and going back to China, the way that China pulled the whatever 400 million people out of abject poverty was by mimicking the American system.

And so that's where I'm always like, I'm confused. Like, if you are saying what we want is a dictator like China has, and we want a dictator that uses state-infused capitalism, now I'm really confused, because I thought what you were saying is you don't want somebody to have that kind of power and authority. So, that's why when I look at all of this, it's nonsensical. I don't think people understand what communism actually requires. Okay? Tiananmen Square, anybody? So, the Chinese have a history of killing their own people to keep control.

keep control. keep control. So, you have to oppress your own people, kill, murder your way. Uh it doesn't work. And so, in the places that try it, like China, if they want to get ahead, they have to end up embracing inequality and an open market. And then, in China, and in Russia, and in Vietnam, and in Cambodia, then you install the very thing they're saying not to install. Oh, and by the way, in countries where you have a dictator versus a monarch, the monarchs are actually doing better than the dictators.

dictators. dictators. That is not a vote for a monarchy, but it is a fascinating realization. So, what exactly are people fighting for? I think that they have an emotion that they're fighting for that does not make contact with reality. And the emotion is, you're [ __ ] up my life with this K-shaped economy. K-shaped economy. K-shaped economy. Cool. Now, I would just say, go that one step farther. And now ask the question, what do we have to do in order to actually diminish the K-shaped economy? And the answer is, you have to stop deficit spending, you have to balance the budget, you are going to have to face austerity.

Uh people that have made all of their money off of equities are going to have to accept it's not going to be that way anymore, and you can't simply be in equities and expect that number to go up. Those days need to be over. They're not over, but they need to be over. So, everybody's going to feel some pain. Myself most assuredly included. Fine. I would like the country to move forward in a way where people have class mobility, that those that work hard and innovate will be rewarded, and that you can save your way to prosperity, which right now is impossible because of the banking system that we have set up.

So, I want to dive into super chats. Let's go. Um Yeah. And then, we can we can pivot to one thing chat was saying, but let's start with these. So, Trent Richardson 1957, wishing you a very happy birthday, my friend. friend. friend. Okay, wait. I think we covered this once before. This is the Trent Richardson from my high school, yes? Oh, I wasn't probably here when you tackled that, but it says the Trent Richardson, so I'd assume. Yeah. assume. Yeah. assume. Yeah. Yeah. That's Okay. Wonderful to see you, my friend.

Wonderful to see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The The first time we went through a whole drama of like, wait a second, is this the? So, yes. Got it. Hi, Trent. Um and then, RJ Johnson with a $100 super chat. Big big spend. RJ's coming in hot. Happy birthday, Tom. Jubilee all sins forgiven. The McGarrett Jack Lord would be proud. 50 [ __ ] years of life well lived. Come on, chat. Everyone flood Tom with super chats of at least a dollar or two to show appreciation. appreciation. appreciation.

not need to do that, but that is RJ, thank you. That is very very kind, very generous. I appreciate that. Uh no need for birthday super chats. You guys are extraordinarily extraordinarily extraordinarily kind. kind. kind. Uh I do appreciate it, but yes, please, especially in this economy, uh keep them duckets in your pocket. Patrick Wrightson says, "Happy birthday, man." man." man." Forged and Rooted with a $50 super chat. Damn. Says, "Happy birthday, Tom. I'm a long-time viewer, and want to thank you for pushing others to think the first principles, and your advice to not be on a team have truly changed the way I look at politics and make them easier to stomach." Man, I appreciate that very much.

Thank you so much for being a long-term member of the community. Really really really appreciate it. Uh yeah. yeah. yeah. Everybody gets very sure of their positions, and that is just in my experience, in my 50 years of experience, uh that is a non-starter. You will not get ahead if you are convinced that you know what's going on. Also, we tend to calcify, and our thinking turns into dogma, and then people do not make progress uh because of the simple fact that what got you here will not get you there.

And yeah, I would like to invite you guys into a quote that I've said before that haunts me to death, which is, "Genius is a young man's game." Now, I think that there are multiple reasons for that, but I think the most terrifying is that people become utterly convinced that their way works, and it's so hard to recognize that the world is changing constantly. And so, it probably really is true that you got to where you are because you figured something out that most people didn't figure out, and that ended up being extraordinarily powerful, but as the world changes, it's not going to keep working into the future.

And so, you have to be willing to update your mental model, but that forces people to recognize, "Oh my god, most of life is simply perception, and it's not reality, and the reason that something works or doesn't work is based on its ability to sway people's perceptions, which is terrifying in the age of social media. media. media. Man, I could really fractal on that, Ryan. I will stop myself. Uh but yeah. Yep. So, last super chat for now. Kobe Johnson says, "Tom, any thoughts on that 10 Delta Global Energy?

Did you have the chance to watch that yet?" Mhm. Okay, I can send that to you again. And then also, any thoughts on Pakistan stepping up mediating talks since they are also at war with Afghanistan and have a defense pact with the Saudis. Yeah, I think this is very complicated, but right now both the US and Iran are signaling that they have confidence that Pakistan will be able to help them negotiate. Um I think that really comes down to not Pakistan as a nation, but who are the actual mediators in the room, and if they've got high-caliber talent uh that's in the room and helping to smooth this out, cool.

If both sides trust them, it doesn't matter where they're from, to be completely honest. It's really about somebody being able to mediate um that well. Uh so, so far so good on that front. Obviously, there's a big PR battle, so it's very hard for us to know what's actually taking place. Um we'll see, but right now, yep, that seems fine. So, I'm perfectly happy, whoever it is, regardless of entanglements or complications, as long as both sides signal that they've got faith faith faith um that they are uh good-faith actors, I'm happy.

So, last bit on the communism section of the No Kings before we dive into the funding and such, but chat is moving very fast on this, very passionate, but one of the things I noticed is they latched onto one of the phrases you said while you were talking about China, which was you said China killed people who dissent. And what a lot of chat is saying is, "How is that any different than a capitalist country like America killing other countries or putting sanctions on other countries just because they do not align economically or with the same type of political structures we do." If If that kind of makes sense.

That's what chat's talking about. makes sense. makes sense. makes sense. Uh I am aghast. Okay, so, [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] I love chat. I'm grateful for you guys coming. So, let's not be hyperbolic. Here's how the breakdown goes. Um I think it's perfectly reasonable to not like what the US has done from a an economic standpoint that can be summed up with the meme, um someone discovers oil in their country, and the bald eagle finds its way in the chat saying, "I guess that country needs freedom." Uh I think that's very reasonable, and we can have all kinds of pushback.

But when you look at the result of America running the world, it's pretty extraordinary. And the great irony of the globalization period was how awesome it was until it hollowed out local manufacturing and just really fueled the K-shaped economy. That's why I say that everything is tradeoffs. With 80 years of untold global prosperity, it was a time where uh the number of people that died at the hands of the US or anybody else, um everyone, of course, is a human tragedy, and it is so disgusting to have to look at the realities of what it takes to have global peace.

But when you put it in historical context, what we just lived through was one of the most extraordinary, maybe the single most extraordinary periods of global peace ever. Literally ever. And so, yes, it's gross, and yes, it's horrible, but it was way better than every historical moment that came before it. So, I don't need to spend any time defending that, but I will just beg you guys to read more history more history more history to see how cheap human life used to be. And finally, it at least for a while was actually held in pretty high regard that you couldn't just go and invade a country and take it over and be colonial.

Now, America for sure was operating an empire. We had bases everywhere. We would go and drop bombs on people if we thought they were getting out of pocket. But, the world order that we preserved was extraordinary. Again, I'm not justifying any single operation, many of which I'm sure were morally repugnant. Just saying that when you look at the scale of somebody going in In fact, let me say it another way. I think your moral compass is broken. If you look at what Mao did and starve 45 million people to death in his own country confiscating grain from them shooting them if they would steal a seed a like bit of bread crust, they would go into your home, find it hidden in the wall, they would find a seed.

Think about that. And then shoot you in the face, okay? face, okay? face, okay? 45 million people starved to death. He encouraged middle schoolers to beat their teachers to death, which they did. And that were saying we can't see any distinction between that and a country that is blowing people up to maintain world order that had delivered global prosperity and peace, the likes of which we have never seen before in history. So, on one side, you've got the largest engineered famine ever in human history. history.

history. And then over here an icky reality that people going to get killed in order to maintain world peace. Okay? I I am not asking you to see America as benevolent. I don't think that that that great power works like that. I don't think there are good guys and bad guys. But, I do think that there are outcomes that are so much worse that that that they when lumped together as if there is no discernible difference, you drive the cultures cultures cultures moral compass mad. And we end up in the places that we are right now.

At some point, we have to say this is what a um acceptably acceptably acceptably horrific path forward is because again, I'm not asking anybody to say, "Oh, over here it's utopia and over here it's bad." bad." bad." But, the degrees of bad are startling. startling. startling. And And And read about the gulag. There's a book called The Gulag Archipelago, which I highly encourage you guys all to read. It's from a guy who went into the gulag. And it's it just makes very clear [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] the difference between how grotesque a politician can become when they have to face elections and how grotesque they become when they're a true dictator.

It is insane. is insane. is insane. So, jumping back to No Kings specifically, let's discuss the funding behind it. behind it. behind it. lot of people are saying, you know, the funding of No Kings, how is that any different than funding, you know, lobbies and things like that? it is no different. So, the No Kings Here's how I would advise everybody to mentally model this. There's a real movement going on. No Kings protests are real. And to map them as something that doesn't have like real justification, I think it would be a mistake.

There's plenty of reason to be marching and protesting against what Trump is doing. He's displaying a level of aggression that would make President Polk blush. Look him up, absolutely fascinating figure who again, consequentialist, ended up being the the president to give us America that goes from sea to shining sea. Before, it did not. And and that I would not expect anybody to celebrate what Polk did, but the outcomes are incredible. And so, from that perspective, I would say is worth celebration. But, when you look at the protests, they are right now being amplified by big donor money and big donor money with very questionable motives.

One of the founders behind the No Kings protest infrastructure is a US billionaire who lives in Shanghai who allegedly attended Chinese Communist Party propaganda workshops. He's currently under subpoena from three separate congressional committees. His name's Neville Roy Singham, by the way, if you don't know. He sold his company for almost a billion dollars back in 2017, then moved to China and has since allegedly routed tens of millions of dollars through shell companies and donor advised funds to American activist groups, including organizations that marched on Saturday.

And there's a bunch of other groups. You've got Ford throwing in a ton of money, the Soros Foundation throwing in a ton of money. There's a bunch of names. I can't remember if Reid Hoffman's in there, but there's a bunch of like the who's who of people that have been donating to the No Kings Kings Kings groups that are running them. And it's my understanding it's been roughly $300 million million million that have been given to the organizations. It's not directly to fund No Kings, but have been given to these organizations.

Again, to dismiss the No Kings Kings Kings coalitions as being completely fake, I think is a mistake. I think it's a massive movement. I think all the funding in the world behind an idea that has no real cultural energy behind it is going to go nowhere. It's going to be wasted dollars. But, if we don't also accept money in politics is terrible for a reason. Money supporting these protests, I think is a bad idea. I think as a nation, we are already divided. I think that there are enemies globally that want to see us divided.

And so, when one of the guys that is sending a massive amount of support is somebody who clearly has the incentive to see America decline, I'm already very suspicious. And that's how I think people should be looking at this. You've got a real phenomenon, people very upset and understandably so about what Trump is doing. And then, you've got somebody that's living in communist China that allegedly has allegedly has allegedly has been trained in communist propaganda tactics, is helping to fund these things. So, at a minimum, this very real thing that's happening is good for our enemies.

That's not ideal. And so, anything that drives more division in the country, I think is something we should be looking at. How do we bring people back together? I have long said that we want to find a way for us all to meet in the middle. There is just something really psychologically damaging about pushing and pushing and pushing for polarization. And like for instance, I am absolutely I'm legitimately legitimately legitimately worried that the push towards communism is going to tear America apart and make it impossible for us to move forward together in an intelligent fashion.

But, I don't go to, "All right, all these idiots, they can't vote. Lock them in a closet somewhere." I go, "They're They're expressing a real pain, a real concern, and we have to find out what that is." Now, I will be honest. They fall into a category that I call some people need to be chased by a lion. I think much of what we see on the side of communism has to do with a string of prosperity that is so long that we really have created weak men that have time to argue about gender identity because there is no real fears to worry about other than that where we have to look only at what is actually working, what's not working.

I no longer believe that simply being an entrepreneur is a panacea for politics for reasons that I think are abundantly clear. However, I do think that the thing that happens to entrepreneurs that forces them to think in the way that I often model on the show is you realize to make payroll, you have to be honest about what generates profitable revenue and what doesn't. Otherwise, you have to start firing people or go all the way to closing your business. Rule number one of entrepreneurship is avoid a mortality event.

And so, you get very honest about what works and what doesn't work. And we don't see that. When you've got people waving communist flags, which has failed over and over and over and over and over. And if there's more energy in the chat, if people think that they they they And Ryan, I'm telling you, I'm I'm not insecure. So, if one if somebody shows me in real time that my thinking is wrong, I'll just accept it and move on. So, if there are people that are like, "He's not addressing like this thing and until he addresses that, I'll know this is all bullshit." I want to attack that stuff head-on.

And I want to do it for one simple reason. If I don't feel like this show actually contributes in some small way, I get how small my footprint is. But, if this show doesn't contribute in some small meaningful way towards bringing people back to cause and effect, I will not keep doing this show. I think America is in a perilous situation and this is not how I want to spend my final days in the America of old if this isn't working. And so, what I'm really hoping to get people to understand is that, okay, you have cultural energy brought on by a just multiple decades long string of success that has led people to believe that you don't have to fight for prosperity.

I think we have to fight tooth and nail for prosperity. Think it is very hard. I think the world is hyper unstable. I think people murder nonstop all the time. I think despots will kill their own people at scale. History has proven that over and over and over. And we need an identity as Americans in order to ground everybody around a central set of ideas. And you're not going to get that by um constantly mocking and making fun of the other side or seeing yourself as being on a team.

Okay, so even though it is maddening to see people wave communist flags, I think all of us have to do a good job of articulating why that's problematic, why from a cause and cause and effect perspective it doesn't work so that we can actually then begin to define what it means to be American. And I miss the days by the way when being American was something I thought of as global. So, I used to refer to people as foreign-born Americans. My wife was a foreign-born American because to me there is an ideology that backs up America.

nothing to do with nationality or ethnicity and it has everything to do with desiring freedom, freedom of speech, prioritizing innovation, making sure that class structure structure structure uh is completely fluid, that rich people can go broke and broke people can get rich. Like all of that. This was the place that you came to compete entirely on meritocracy. And that means that there is going to be a massive amount of inequality because God has seen it fit to make some people less gifted, less effective. And by the way, that God has seen fit, that luck [ __ ] matters.

And if you get the timing right, ooh buddy, you still have to be prepared. You still have to outwork people. But if the timing isn't on your side, just is what it is. So, that's the America that I want to see get re-prosperous. Now, I know that America's been through moments like this before. And so, I try to remind myself that even though it does feel kind of dark right now, there's always a path forward. The thing that that that I hope you guys are here for is possible.

It is possible to create a United America, to have tomorrow be a more beautiful day than today. And there's going to be plenty of messiness and all of that. We just have to know what flag should we be waving? I vote for the American flag. I vote that we all get behind of what that stands for. And it stands for the message on the Statue of Liberty, which that's going to be a surprise to some people cuz most people don't understand what it actually says. Says, "Give me your tired, weak, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." And it was written at a time where we did not have social safety nets.

So, if I were going to reword it, I would say, "If you're [ __ ] tired of being abused by a despot, come to America. There are no guarantees. But if you can build something the world wants, you can succeed on a scale that's impossible anywhere else. And we get back to attracting the best and the brightest, celebrating the best and the brightest, knowing that yep, this is the place where people come to compete. And that means some people are going to lose. And we're going to stop bailing out banks.

And yep, there's going to be some rough days. There are going to be times where the stock market's just legitimately down and it's hard times. However, because of that, there are going to be days where we're building the best stuff in the world, competing at every level to better take care of the people that live here, not trying to do everything through subsidy, which doesn't work. I think we're something like 30% of all Americans are using social assistance of some kind. That is not sustainable. That is crazy town.

town. town. We've got to get back to America as the place where people compete for greatness. If we can pull that off, but on an even playing field. And right now, we have allowed bankers to create the most disgustingly K-shaped economy. I don't know if it's ever, but damn is it close. it close. it close. So, Chatter W Finance and Stocks said, and I think this summarizes most of the people's arguments. So, this is where chat's at. You should be a bit harder on regulations on oligarchy and super rich uh you should be a bit harder on regulations on oligarchy and the super rich.

We are not following Adam Smith. Okay, so what words would I need to say for them to hear? Uh okay, so for you to be saying those words, I think you map the ultra-wealthy as doing something uh illegal and nefarious behind the scenes. I don't map them that way. So, the way that I think about I mean, let's name them. The way that I think about Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, um Hoffman, um Hoffman, um Hoffman, um um um and throw out some other names. Soros, just to really make it nice and icky.

Uh what you have is people that understand the physics of politics, the physics of the human psyche, and the physics of money. And when you get those three things colliding, they can play the game better than anybody else. Now, regulatory capture is evil and we should avoid it at all costs. Money in politics is evil and we should get it out immediately. immediately. immediately. Both of those things pale in comparison to the outcomes that they have created. Namely, that we have a central bank that allows us to deficit spend.

And because we are the world's reserve currency, we have now started abusing that privilege. And because we've been prosperous for so long in America and we no longer celebrate the um the people competing on a meritocratic basis, um we have lost our focus on innovation. And so, we let people use regulatory capture. regulatory capture. regulatory capture. Uh we are perfectly fine with deficit spending, which is the thing that makes the wealthy so wealthy. And I think people are missing that. I think that they think Elon Musk got as rich as he got because he is somehow not paying his fair share of tax when he's the largest taxpayer in human history.

Um and also that the only reason that he generated wealth is because he built companies that people would rather have his products than their money. And because of deficit spending and inflation, um money the world over is trying to hide from those effects. And the way that they hide from those effects is going into assets. And one of the best performing asset classes of the last 200 years has been the stock market. So, on paper these guys look just extraordinary what they they are even in cash terms, but they look orders of magnitude more wealthy than they actually are.

And so, Ryan, at the risk of bad TV, I would really like to stop there for a minute. I want people to contend with that argument because I feel like people they just gloss over that. And I'll restate it. The reason these guys get wealthy is because of deficit spending. Now, Now, now what? now what? now what? So, it isn't just the evil maneuvering in the government, which they are doing. It isn't just that. And it won't go away if you stop that because I don't think that when did Elon really start to manipulate the government?

Four years ago? I would say it was like 2023. Yeah. Yeah, so recent history that the richest man in the world started really trying to um do the manipulative [ __ ] that he had railed against. Uh so, he got he became one of the wealthiest people on Earth before that. So, I'm not denying in any way, shape, or form that it's very real that a lot of these guys do some seriously grotesque [ __ ] Uh and let's prosecute them. Let's go. Um at the same time, I'm telling you I just cannot get people to focus on your real problem started in 1913.

And it started in 1913 because we made modern monetary theory possible. Modern monetary theory, deficit spending, money printing printing printing is the method by which you steal from the poor and working class. And I just cannot get people to zoom in on that. on that. on that. So, all right. We're pausing here. Gave them plenty of time to come up with their best argument. It is make arguments. Don't just yell in the chat and complain. I'm not going to pick up on that and I'm going to have to formulate things.

formulate things. formulate things. I'm also fine for yelling and complaining. Give give me the yelling complaints. Sure. Okay. Well, most of these yelling complaints are just the tax the rich, oligarchy, tax the rich, oligarchy, that kind of stuff. Cool. So, Cool. So, Cool. So, within the framework of what we're trying to talk about, let's address that. Okay, so tax the rich, oligarchy evil. So, that feels good emotionally. I like that energy. Let's hold that energy, but let's aim it at cause and effect, okay? I hope that's fair, right?

Like if we were going to decide we're going to go beat that guy up, right? Like we just decide that guy's evil. So, we're going to get in a fight. I would hope someone pulls you aside and says, "Rad, rad. However, let's train in stand-up. Let's make sure we have takedown defense. And let's make sure that we understand some jujitsu because that leverage can be deadly and they're trained. And so, they're going to put you in a pretty gnarly situation really fast." I hope we wouldn't just gas them up and send them in, at which point they get their joints broken, they get [ __ ] sent packing, okay?

So, there's cause and effect in reality. So, when we say tax the rich, we need to be very thoughtful about what the desired outcome is. I think the real desired outcome is purely emotional and it's just punitive. And when we say tax the wealthy, we're not actually saying make life better for poor people, we're saying hurt the wealthy. And I would say, "Don't do that because all of the good things, even in a communist regime, end up coming from the people that can actually make money." Okay?

Now, we could tease apart right now, but I don't think it will help us. Rent-seeking elites and the way that they financialize and make profits, but let's set that aside for a second. And let's just focus on the people who actually build things, make things. So, we want to tax them, hurt them. They're going to leave. Tax revenue plummets. Kathy Hochul is finding out this the hard way. We're probably going to go into that in a little bit. So, Kathy Hochul realizing, uh-oh, in my attempts to tax companies and the wealthy, the companies just leave, okay?

Now, for all of you that want to stand at the the borders with a gun and force people to stay in, remember they will also just stop producing. So, the more you try to tax them, the reason the Laffer curve exists is that it doesn't work, right? So, we can be angry, we can hate the oligarchy, but we have to have a sense of cause and effect. So, how do we dismantle this? Now, anytime you want to look at look at look at where has somebody done this well?

Like, if you're trying to do something, look at the country that's done this before you, so that you can emulate what they did. did. did. All right, so you've got America and how it came out from under the British. Extraordinary story, one arguably the most extraordinary stories on planet Earth. So, partly a lot of evil [ __ ] right? We take over the entire country, we completely genocide Native Americans, uh we kick out Mexicans from their own land, uh we kick out the Europeans and tell them, I forget the name, 44 fight or whatever the [ __ ] it was, the longitude line that or latitude, I forget, but like, hey, if you guys are going to [ __ ] around basically in the Pacific Northwest, we're just going to come fight.

So, they leave as well and we just end up taking all of America. Yikes, right? However, America goes on to be the most extraordinary country that the world has ever seen, responsible for the most prosperity, helping end World War I, helping end World War II, and then despite our many foibles, creating the most extended period of peace the world has ever seen. Okay, so that's one option. We can look at that and how, and how, and how, you know, in our early days, they were like, no central banks, not going to do it, it's absolutely terrible.

We keep it at bay for over 100 years, then in 1913 we slip for a long time, like most empires before us, we sort of keep that [ __ ] at bay and we don't do the extraordinary spending until of course we become the world's reserve currency, then we start getting out of pocket, but really even that doesn't get too crazy until about 2000. And then it starts to really ratchet up. So, tons to learn there. Then we can look at China, okay? China, really horrible. They force everybody to unify because they thought, Jesus, the you know, whatever, 100 years of humiliation, that's plenty for us.

I'm going to [ __ ] kill anybody and everybody I have to to get them together. Pretty, you know, the it you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. 45 million, lot of eggs to break, but hey, they do unify. There's no denying that. They come together, country, cool, we're stable. But how do they stop murdering their own people? They finally go, hey America, teach us that banking thing. They become capitalist, let inequality just absolutely skyrocket to the point where it probably is toxic inequality. So, it's like, okay, let's look at the socialists over on in the Nordic countries.

People love that one. Okay, cool. They need America though, that's the problem. They don't have to spend on any of their defense. America's keeping Russia at bay. Russia's super weak. USSR falls apart, America, even though you guys didn't like it, America's running military cover for everybody so that those guys can spend on their people instead of having to spend on their defense. That's about to go away, so we're about to see what that looks like on the other side of this. Also, open borders, that hasn't turned out so well for them.

So, you can expect a reversal there. So, it's like, who are we really going to model ourselves after? Super open if you guys have an answer, but it's like history gives us some pretty messy lessons. I think we can all agree on that. But hopefully, regardless of what we end up concluding, we all see that going to cause and effect is the right place. It's all going to be trade-offs. There's no like easy, straightforward free lunch. lunch. lunch. Ryan, are they convinced? Are they now on cause and effect yet?

People are still kind of all over the place, but I think this is a good one to start with. The Mean Sleeves says, let's talk about the USA loopholes. Yes, we're better than China, but I'm not living in China. Okay. And then on top of that, another person said, but what we're really trying to say is the wealthy are making all all all Wait a minute. Hold on. I was going to combine them, but yeah. Yes, but I have a feeling it's just going to be more of the same.

So, here is when I teach entrepreneurs, which by the way, you guys should all sign up for my entrepreneurial class if you're worried that AI is going to give you the boot. Uh one of the first things that I teach them is to make something called a financial model. Okay, what I'm trying to do with a financial model is show them every beat that they go through from nobody knows I exist and that I have a product all the way through, not only do you know I exist and have a product, but you're going to pay me for it, I'm going to fulfill it, all of that.

And there's like a bunch of steps, might be 20, 30 steps in that phase from I create a piece of content, uh 100,000 people see my piece of content, I do a call to action, I give you a lead magnet, blah blah blah, okay? Countries are the same thing, right? We do things, regulations, voting, all of that, and then those have downstream consequences. So, um as you regulate an industry, it tends to get more expensive over time, not less, innovation tends to dry up, you don't get more.

And so, like there are knowable outcomes to some of these things, but you can start modeling this out. this out. this out. What I want to get everybody doing instead of just saying, I don't live in China, therefore Tom magic wand fix problem, it's like heard, but let's start mapping out the whole sequence of events. So, what So, first of all, as with entrepreneurship, always start with where you want to end up. Where are you trying to get to? So, I will tell you right now, in America, the place that I'm trying to get to is a thriving middle class where there is just ease of mobility up and down.

So, it's easy to go up in class and it's easy to go back down. Meaning that this is a competition. So, if you're the person making the right economic decisions, you will win and you will have more money than other people. If you're making poor economic decisions or God saw fit to make you stupid, you're going to be on the low part of it. It just is the way that it is, okay? So, a thriving middle class, that's how I'm always going to sum it. That that is like the closest thing you're going to get to what I'll call human flourishing.

So, you want people to be free, you want them to be prosperous, and you want them to be rewarded for being effective with their time. Simple enough, right? Maybe like we could boil it down even more, but thriving middle class. Okay? Now I know where I want to get to. Now you start looking at all of human history, history, history, uh you look at how things have changed and you ask yourself, what are the things that I would put in my model of cause and effect, which is all a financial model is, what are the things that I can look at in my model of cause and effect that are going to lead me to human flourishing?

And so, I can start listing them off, I've done it so many times. I won't do it now, but what I'm trying to get people to understand is there's a big difference between, yeah, [ __ ] stop talking about China, I don't live in China, and then getting to to to I get it. I get that energy. The very thing though I'm trying to anchor people on is the world works from cause and effect. So, what is the [ __ ] cause and effect? Everybody bangs pots and pans, waves communist flags, marches in the streets, but nobody goes, this is where the [ __ ] I'm trying to end up, and here are the things I'm going to do to get there.

Right? So, we all wish that that's what Trump was doing with the Iran war, but he can't because he's got to like hide a bunch of [ __ ] he's got to confuse and bamboozle, and by the way, just [ __ ] try to manage all of our expectations so that he gets reelected, so don't think that it's all good and nice, it certainly is not. But you're never going to get it there. But in terms of what we, the people, having this conversation in the age of high-velocity information, high-velocity information, high-velocity information, we can at least say, this is where I'm trying to go.

This is what I think gets us there. And if we just keep coming back to that, like if you guys attack my basic assumptions, super helpful. If you guys attack because you think I'm mis-mapping cause and effect, meaning Tom, that thing will not lead to that thing, super helpful. So, remember, the person who best maps cause and effect and effect and effect wins. And even if you just want to think economically, we win economically. For the first time in my life, I'm actually thinking about leaving the United States.

I don't want to do that. So, like it is a win for me if people can point out how I'm wrong, but wrong in a way where now that I if I can map this correctly, we can go down a good path. So, So, So, that's where I'm trying to take this. I do you think people are starting to understand your point a little more? And some people are even commenting on um um um about the idea of like, yes, people are talking right now about the rich leaving, like you just mentioned you're thinking of leaving the US, but what about like businesses?

People are worried businesses are going to also start leaving the US. Well, not only that, but we've just taught two generations not to be entrepreneurial. So, oh man, uh Ryan, I have a rule. I try not to say nothing the DA might want to play in court. In the hopes that this helps America in some way, I'm going to say something the DA might want to play in court. need to put a joke tag on it? It's all fake, we're kidding. So, here here is a hard truth.

Very few young people have young people magic anymore. Young people are magical. And from a hiring perspective, getting people who are young and hungry is awesome. is awesome. When Ryan confessed that he was 23, my esteem for him went up, not down. Because I'm like, there's a certain phase that young people go through where where where nature has selected for it. They are just all consumed by their by their by their ambition. Those are the people we turn into entrepreneurs. A very small percentage of them.

of them. of them. But those people who are just consumed and they don't have kids yet, a lot of them aren't married yet, and so there's this window and it is glorious. glorious. glorious. And we've broken that. It used to be easy to find. I, and I'm not kidding, not kidding, not kidding, I used to have young people DMing me constantly. At one point at Quest, I had people lined up around the block. It was the wildest [ __ ] I'd ever seen in my life, just to be interviewed.

That was 15 years ago. It's not like that anymore. It's hard to find, and I'm in California, so that speaks to some of it. But, it's getting harder and harder to find people that have that [ __ ] chin down, hardcore, I just want to get good, I'm in here, I'm going to do whatever it takes to be successful. That used to be America writ large. And now, And now, And now, not so much, man. We have got to really get people culturally back on board with I want to be the greatest of all time.

I want I want delusional kids like I was that have no reason to believe that they're going to be successful, but they still just believe it. And because I believed I was going to be successful, I did the things I needed to do to become successful. If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have done those things. But goals make demands, which means you have to have the belief that it's possible, otherwise you won't meet the demands of your goal. So it's not that people fail to meet goals because they can't do the things, it's because they don't believe that they can get better.

And because they don't believe that they can get better, they don't even try. And by not trying, they don't get stronger. And by not getting stronger, they truly are incapable of doing the thing. And that's where people just stagnate. stagnate. stagnate. And that is depressing. At risk of derailing us a little bit, so if you'd want to jump to a story, just let me know. But I like this comment. It says, and this is from CCID Crazy, why would they, Tom? There has to be an incentive.

People are saying, is are there really incentives for young people anymore? anymore? anymore? Okay, I love this. So now, push that on to cause and effect. So you're right, you've identified a real problem. I think this is super powerful. Now start asking, okay, was there a time in history where people were like this? If yes, what was different about that time? And the answer is yes, there was a time where it was like that and there were incentives. What were those incentives? The incentive was you could get extraordinarily wealthy.

So when I was a kid, I never thought about like government subsidies or that I could get on welfare one day or anything like that. I just thought if I'm going to get rich, I've got to work for it. I've got to find a way to add enough value to people's lives that they'll pay me for this thing. And so that became the journey because I really believed in the upside. And it was incredible and I lived in a miraculous moment and it was wonderful. And there still are incentives, but they're getting smaller and smaller.

The window is harder and harder because you're going to get put behind so much debt at the beginning, then you're going to get robbed, you're not going to be able to save your way, you're going to be forced into the gambling machine in order to beat inflation, yada yada, all the things. But, But, But, there there there in an a free market, there is the ability to get ahead and to be rewarded. And so it it's this really cool moment where social media has just completely democratized everything.

You can leverage it if you're good in order to like skip the queue and just do something incredible right away. Um but also, the flip side of that is that culturally we're in a weird place where now we don't celebrate people that are going hard anymore. Remember when um Kim Kardashian was just absolutely torn apart by saying that basically, if I remember what got her lit up, was people need to work harder. Uh which is so true. Um so we've got to get people back to that energy.

We've got to make sure that we get regulations out of the way so that people can compete. We've got to make sure that we want that competition. And then we've got to make sure that we have a sensible tax policy so that people can keep uh uh uh enough of their wins to make it make sense. So yeah. But just push it that one step further into, okay, let's map out the steps. So I'm curious to put this in the lens of young people again. This is really Ryan.

Um what's up? This is really Ryan is curious. This is me. This isn't Chad. So again, derailing a little bit, but if I were in your shoes Mhm. trying to make Quest, doing the same route, but doing it today, Yeah. do you think the obstacles are much higher these days than when you started? No. No? The the real obstacle is if you were buried under debt, now you're in trouble. trouble. trouble. Um if you were told that your ambition is toxic, then you're in trouble. And those things are scary, but long I mean, I'm building a company now, have been for the last decade, and it's the same.

same. same. So it is um what's scary is that I'm on the other side now of years and years and years of experience. And so And so And so when I think about what I did in my 20s, I often refer to it as I sold my 20s for knowledge. knowledge. knowledge. And that ended up being extraordinarily useful. But like now, it is illegal in the state of California for somebody to work for free. And the best piece of advice in the world would be to go find somebody and work for free if you have to, but get them to teach you and to introduce you to people.

So those two things would be transformative. transformative. transformative. Um but we've decided that that's bad, that people are being taken advantage of. of. of. Um raising the minimum wage number. Uh another stupid thing that stops people from getting on the economic ladder. And then just deficit spending, people should just be screaming about that endlessly. But um yeah, it it is no harder in that sense. Um where it gets weird is the incentive structure. So um you can feel on the horizon that you're going to get taxed into oblivion.

Um there's animosity towards builders now. now. now. Um they're doing things to strangle companies to death in the crib from a regulation standpoint. So all of that stuff is brutal. But you could still build an extraordinary company right now today and it would be so much easier than what we did. We don't even have AI. Like dude, the Okay. Okay. Okay. Just by way of example, we didn't know why our bars were rotting, okay? Food rots. But how many people know why food rots? But if you went to to um Claude and said, why does food rot, it would just tell you.

And we had to go like find experts that could explain it, and it ends up being the same where you have to trap water. So you have to find ingredients that will sequester the water within the product. And by the way, that you can only have so much water in the product. Water's your enemy, which I never would have imagined. So things like that which might have taken us, you know, maybe a month to figure out, somebody could find out in 9 seconds. So the speed with which people can do things, and just like every time I do an ad for Shopify, I want to like clap and and cheer for you guys.

I'm so excited that entrepreneurs now don't have to build their own shopping cart. Like we had to build this stuff. It was crazy, and it wasn't that long ago. So anyway, in some ways it's much easier, but the psychology of people have been so damaged. so damaged. so damaged. Um so speaking on business and money, I think we should jump into uh about our national debt party going on here in America and how that is affecting companies. Yeah. Um so let's dive into like the taxing of companies and how they're going to leave because of it, I think.

Okay, so yeah, there there's an old saying that money goes where it's treated the best. And right now, the uh blue states, unfortunately, this breaks pretty neatly along party lines, is deciding that the right structure of society is that we even out the playing field by taking away from the successful and redistributing wealth to the unsuccessful. Now the impulse is actually right in the sense that you've got a K-shaped economy which is making it such that 10% of people own 93% of the assets. The assets are the only way to hide from the forced seizure of your buying power.

But what they're not being honest about is they're the ones that are doing it. So they are the ones that are stealing your purchasing power. And so they're over here robbing from you and then getting you addicted to voting for them by giving it back to you over here. It is the most asinine thing in the universe. So what they should be doing with that impulse to make sure that the K-shaped economy comes back to the middle is to say we're going to stop deficit spending.

We're going to make sure that you have the ability to save your way to prosperity, as it should be. And so that would begin to push things in the right direction. But right now, they're doing the exact opposite and they just want to confiscate more and more and more through money printing. They have no intention to balance the budget, which makes it insane to collect more tax revenue because you won't solve the problem. Remember, the problem is the government is knowingly stealing your purchasing power via inflation.

They know they're doing it. They are doing it on purpose, and they're going to keep doing it to make sure that people vote for their side. The reality, and by the way, they both do it. The reality is what they should be doing is saying, cool, we're going to stop deficit spending. We're going to balance the budget. We're going to make sure that your savings are your own. And the things that we collect in tax, we're going to use to incentivize the private industry to continue to innovate to make your lives better on every front, including medical, uh just in every way, shape, and form that it could be better.

That if there's a market for it, they're going to push that forward. That is what they should be doing, but that's not what they're doing. Instead, they're making it less interesting for people to build. Like, okay, think about this. Uh it's my 50th birthday, and yet last night, instead of being in bed celebrating with my wife, I was preparing for this episode. This morning, I got up ass early, and uh again, preparing for this episode, not having birthday cake, not celebrating. In fact, I'm going to be slammed all day today today today um to the point where my family had to ask, what time specifically can we call you to wish you a happy birthday?

Okay, that's what my 50th birthday looks like. Now, it's my choice. I've done all of that, but as you can imagine, fewer and fewer people are going to make that choice as taxes go up and up and up, including myself. There will be a breaking point where I'm like, "Yeah, this doesn't make sense anymore." And so, I'm just going to tap out. And then you get a bunch people that go, "I don't need to do this anymore or I'm not going to do this or I'm just going to flip burgers or whatever because I don't want to take all of that risk when risk when risk when I mean, I have personally paid 53% of my income many a year.

And in other countries, that number climbs even higher. And so, you get to the point where people are just like, "Why would I work even harder?" And so, if you can follow that incentive structure, hopefully it becomes self-evident that unless you point a gun at somebody, they're going to move to where money is treated better. And even if you do point a gun at somebody, it gets to the point where they say, "This isn't worth it." And they just stop producing. And those are the only two outcomes you need to completely crater the economic base.

And that's why taxing works, but only to a certain point and then it has diminishing returns. Like we did last week with balancing the budget, Chad and I are curious, what would be ways to provide a proper incentive structure for companies while still taxing them an appropriate amount? So, I think that getting to simplify the tax code would be a huge step in that direction. So, if we were doing flat taxes on individuals, that would be a good place to start. Balance your budget, that's another thing to start.

Deregulating companies so that they're not wasting a ton of their money on complying with things that are just absolutely moronic so that they can actually innovate, get products into the market. I'm not saying you completely remove all regulations, but we passed sensible regulations about 20 years ago. And we need to wildly deregulate things. And so, And so, And so, if you were doing that, there's not like a set number that you can give and say, "This is the exact amount of money that you can tax somebody because some of it comes down to what is the perceived benefit of those taxes?" Like, I'm not very sensitive about 53% tax if I look out at the world and I'm like, "Yo, like this is really amazing." If I look out at the world and it's all of my tax dollars, not all, but like a very substantive proportion of my tax dollars are going to fraud, that they're going to they're just becoming a survival fund for institutions that should be trying to put themselves out of business like the homeless industrial complex, should be getting better.

There should be fewer and fewer people that are homeless every day. But instead, the exact opposite is happening and the the homeless population is growing because they're making it better and there's so many meaning that it's easier to be homeless now. And there are so many people that are getting paid that it's just absolutely ridiculous. I forget if it's LA or New York, but one of us has a two-to-one two-to-one two-to-one ratio. For every two homeless people, there is there is there is a bureaucrat trying to oversee all of it.

That That is so absurd. Like imagine if we had that ratio in education, how much better education would be. But we're doing it in homeless instead and making that problem worse. So, uh uh uh you'll never be able to just set a number and say, "This is the amount that you can tax people." Because it comes down to what's the result. So, real quick, jumping in the super chats. Uh Yeah, super chat. I'll start with the short one cuz there was no description and they never said they wanted to add anything.

So, $20 from The Real Stuff 101. Thank you. The Real Stuff. Uh next up, Quint uh Quintangib Quintangib Quintangib Quentin Gilbertson, so sorry. Tom, your show has been a fundamental shifting point for my own consciousness and understanding of the parts that move within the world uh around us. Thank you for everything you do. Your impact on my life is more than I can communicate. Wow, thank you. That means that means a lot. And I really do try to never take for granted those kind words. I'm so grateful that this impacts some people.

Um very very very much appreciate you taking the time to do that and for it being a super chat. It's incredibly generous. Um I do want to address something that I see in the chat. Yes, by the way, I do have big ears. I am so well aware of that. Uh but somebody said uh uh uh CCID crazy, "Only a rich person would say it's easy to be homeless." Okay. So, again, go back, get beyond the slogan and get to do you believe that when you have two bureaucrats uh sorry, one bureaucrat for every two homeless people and the homeless population is growing, do you believe that they are being effective in addressing the issue?

Hopefully, we can all agree that the answer is no. Now, if you map it that this is not a homeless industrial complex problem, this is an economic problem and what's really happening is there's just economic devastation where we're creating some other problems somewhere that so many more people are homeless now despite their best efforts to avoid it, they're just ending on the street. Fantastic, then stop putting the money into the homeless industrial complex and start putting it into that area. What I'm saying is that there's knowable cause and effect one of the knowable cause and effect issues is that when you fund a department that department is now going to fight not only for its survival, but it's going to try to expand.

And so, a lot of the uptick in costs that we see everywhere is to feed the bureaucracy. Now, if you disagree that there's not evidence there, then we can't have a conversation. Because everywhere you look, you see like college tuition is a great example. That they're not necessarily letting in more students, they're just bringing in more bureaucrats. And so, there is this very obvious data set that you can point at that says organizations will fight to expand. They will try to get more resources. They become literally like a tumor.

It's exactly what happens with government, full stop. And so, there is this like you always have to have a countervailing force that is trying to make these organizations smaller. That's what the Republican Party was meant to be. Like when you think about from an evolutionary standpoint, the right and the left um holding each other in dynamic tension. One is trying to grow and take care of everybody, the other is trying to shrink and make sure that people are held personally responsible. And so, that give and take for a long time kept us in a great place.

Unfortunately, because of deficit spending, everybody realized, "Oh, just give people something for free and you'll get reelected." And then that creates the runaway problem. So, it's like I can articulate all of the reasons why I say the things that I say. I'm not saying that homelessness is fun. I'm not saying that it's desirable, but I am saying that it is being facilitated and it is quite literally easier than it would otherwise be if there were no funds there. So, that seems um so easy to point to the data to back that up that I'm not sure what you're arguing against.

arguing against. arguing against. Um I'm going to wrap up the super chats real quick while that person has time to respond. Juan Maldonado says, "Tom, have you heard of Protocol 10? It's an anonymous constitutional framework going around in NL as pushback to the paper gains tax. Deep overlap with your ideas. Love your show and takes." Very interesting. I'm not aware of it at all. I am the most on the outside of all elite circles that you could imagine. It is a horrible flaw in my personality that I'm very sad to report is all too real.

real. real. I just don't have the impulse to network even though I know it would be so lucrative. I just don't have the impulse. impulse. impulse. Uh last super chat and then I actually have a question from the chat. Let's go. Uh Ibrahim Daba says, "China Mao deep dive make or link, please, if you've already got it. Thanks for all you've done with Impact Theory and continue to do with this platform. Here since 2019." Wow, damn, man. Uh you're OG. So, thank you for that. Much much much appreciated.

We do have a deep dive that I did not directly on Mao, but he comes up in the deep dive. Um so, we can certainly get you that link. I just have to relook up which title that was if Ryan doesn't know off the top of his head. Uh but yeah, we can drop that if not in the chat, we can certainly put it in Discord. Uh and then the question posed by chatter from Frank 2222, "What is left to get paid from but the bureaucracy after AI and robotics takes all the jobs?" Yeah, okay.

So, there's a whole 'nother thing that we can get into with where is AI taking all of this? That is a very fair question. So, I tend to set that aside when talking about the problems that we have today only because the future, while I will often talk about it, the future is unknowable and we don't know that's how AI is going to play out. As a quick PSA reminder, every technological revolution before AI um was wildly disruptive and caused major problems for the generations that lived through it.

However, on a long enough timeline, it created way more jobs than it got rid of. So, of. So, of. So, it is possible that AI really does make us irrelevant. And then I think it will be a uh a new economic excuse me, a new economic model will come up and will address that basically when that time happens. But all of the language and things that we know to be true now will be um totally different. And so, I don't think we can sort of preemptively without just switching over into sci-fi gear, I don't think we can even talk about it.

Now, I'm happy I love talking from a sci-fi perspective of here are my three to five basic assumptions of what's going to happen and what you know, where I think this goes downstream of that. Um if I were going to just absolutely shorthand it, I think it will look something like this. Um it will be a more drawn out process than people expect it to be, but when it goes, it will go fast. So, it will be call it 7 to 10 years of transition where it will feel pretty normal where you'll get we already have if you look at each separate agent, we have generalized intelligence across AI.

But we don't have a single AI that can just adapt like on the spot. You've got to hyper train it and all that stuff to get good at whatever niche thing that it's in. So, that leaves humans as the driver. It's a wonderful place. Really, please enjoy this period. This is extraordinary. Everything is easier. You can push farther, know more, do more. It extends your abilities super far. It is beautiful. We're going to look back on this time with joy in our hearts, I assure you.

Please try to recognize it for what it is right now. At some point, it may get to the point where AI really can just do everything better than us. But right now, there's plenty of things that robots can do better than us or AI can do better than us, like play chess, and we still want to see humans play. And being a human playing other humans is still fun, and we still revere the people that are good at it. And so, humans aren't going to go anywhere.

So, for a while anyway, that's a whole another topic. So, the people that are alive are still going to do their thing. So, the question becomes, what do they do? And will we rapidly get to an age of abundance, in which case then it becomes a question of who is going to dole out the abundance, and that may end up look God forbid it gets put in the hands of the government, but it probably will, and that will look very much like a new version of socialism.

socialism. socialism. And my hope is that in that scenario, that you're in a position where there's so much abundance that there's no need to force people to adhere to it at gunpoint. gunpoint. gunpoint. Now, that remains to be seen cuz it depends on what they do and whether they control the AI and all of that because in an AI takeoff scenario where it gets into a self-improving recursive loop, it could become so much more intelligent than us that we all end up basically I'll use a um um um a a a controversial word, but hopefully you get the idea, that we essentially become enslaved by them, but I've no reason to believe that they will do by force what they can simply do by incentives.

And so, my feeling is that AI, even if it gets super intelligent, will simply keep humans occupied with something that is um wonderful. It won't be an only up phenomenon cuz we're not wired for that, so there have to be struggle, there have to be dynamic tension, uh much like the Matrix runs the thought experiment of like we tried to give you a utopia and you guys rejected it. So, we gave you the late '90s. Uh and now there's enough struggle and turmoil that you guys actually are um um um you're in alignment with the way that your minds work, I think is the right way to think about it.

So, I have a feeling super intelligent AI would do something like that. Um so, yeah, anyway, that's we're now way, way, way off into off into off into uh uh uh sci-fi territory. But speaking of AI, you have a masterclass coming up. An Adam masterclass that I'm going to drop in the description below, but Indeed. Indeed. Uh so, we have our ZTF masterclass, which is on Thursday, April 9th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time. I'm so proud of this thing, not just the masterclass, but the actual university that's behind it.

University used in a much more colloquially way, you're not going to get a degree, but you will get the skills that you need in order to start a business using AI. Um I think the world is shifting radically fast right now, and the way that it's changing is AI is just going to make a ton of people redundant. Remember, every technological innovation, while it ends up being better in the long run, in the short term it just disrupts everything. And so, there's so many people that are getting laid off right now, and we've got a pretty rough economy right now.

And so, I think a lot of people are going to be able to leverage AI to build a company that previously wouldn't have been possible. And we're getting hit more and more and more by people that want to learn how to do a one-person company. They don't even want employees, which is already a radical departure from companies of past, but we're showing people how to do that. So, the free masterclass that I'm doing on April 9th, Thursday, 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time is about how to use AI to start a company.

So, again, it's free, free, free, free. So, come and check it out. Uh there should be a link in the chat that you guys can grab right now. Um and we've been doing this for a while now, it's very popular. We have people take it multiple times. Um so, do come, show up, and then hopefully a bunch of you guys will also sign up for Impact Theory University's uh Zero to Founder program, which has helped a ton of people start generating real revenue. Now, I'm not the get-rich-quick guy, so I'm not going to show you a bunch of Lambos and [ __ ] like that.

Much to Drew's dismay, I don't flash my lifestyle around um because the reality is become the type of person that's capable of growing a company like that. The rest will take care of itself. If you're doing it just to get rich, you'll quit, I promise. Unfortunately, it's just the way it goes. goes. goes. Rounding out the super chats, there's no message with this, but Stevie Westside donated $25. donated $25. donated $25. And a lot of people are saying happy birthday as well. Thank you guys. Thank you for real, for real, I appreciate it.

And yeah, it is something happens in your late 40s that uh those of you that are already there, you're going to recognize this immediately. Those of you that are not, try to hold this in your mind. Don't only exist in the age that you're in, try to teleport yourself around. Remind yourself what it was like to be young. Remind yourself what it's probably going to be like, based on all reports, when you get old. Uh in my late 40s, my youth started to suddenly feel almost like something that happened to somebody else, and it's utterly fascinating the level of perspective that you start to get, and you realize one really powerful thing.

Every age is a phase. Those phases are going to change, and they're going to change partly because of life circumstance, partly because of your hormones, which is wild. Uh you were controlled by your biology more than you realize. So, make sure that you plan accordingly. Whatever your life is like right now, it is going to end. It isn't going to be like that forever. You're just living in a phase. And so, as you think about what you're doing with your life, try to think about the different phases and optimize for what does it look like is going to be um the most profoundly important phase of your life.

And then remember, it's all and I should say the most profoundly um daisy-chained periods of your life. For some people that's going to be raising kids, right? And you've got the infancy, the teenage years, and them as adults. And so, if you're optimizing for that, that's one set of optimizations. For other people it's going to be building and creating something. For others it's going to be you as an artist, but remember, a young artist is very different than an old artist, and they're just wildly different phases.

And so, anyway, it has been um hugely informative for me to start getting a historical perspective of my own life and society at large, which I did not get into till my mid-40s. Uh and it's just completely shaped the way that I think about the world. So, anyway, I invite you to see it like that. But that was maybe a weird reaction to the birthday wishes. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Uh we will be back on Wednesday, right? Cuz we travel this week. But I think we're still doing them just some from different places.

different places. different places. Yes, Drew will be back on Wednesday, so very excited for that. Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful Monday, and I will see you guys on Wednesday. Peace.