NATO Warns of World War–Level Conflict — Why Global Tensions Are Escalating Now

Key Takeaway

Never do what's emotionally satisfying in business. Most people aren't serious about achieving their goals - they're only steered by what feels emotionally correct in the moment. Ask yourself one question: What is your goal? Once you know your goal, build a concrete plan that generates forward momentum towards it, not emotional chaos.

Episode Overview

A wide-ranging discussion covering political drama (Candace Owens vs. Turning Point USA), the litigious nature of American culture, cryptocurrency, the Federal Reserve system, and the importance of asset ownership over salary dependence. The hosts emphasize the need for strategic thinking over emotional reactions in both business and investing.

Full Transcript

Transcript of NATO Warns of World War–Level Conflict — Why Global Tensions Are Escalating Now from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Tom Bill Show live. We are here. There is plenty going on in the world. I'm very interested to see that poll and to see what you guys want to talk about. I like that. We're going to have to do that more. Drew with me as always. How we doing, Drew? Good. Happy Friday. Happy Friday indeed. We got Mason in the community, so let him know what you guys want to talk about. He'll make sure that that gets surfaced and we get in on it.

We got the boys behind the scenes. Always grateful to have them. We've got Eric and G rocking it today. So, they're going to make sure that we don't have any crazy volume swings. Uh they're going to make sure that everything is ready to rock and roll. So, welcome guys. The US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and it will be keeping the oil and the tanker. NATO general says that Europe needs to be prepared for World War II levels of war. The Fed cut rates despite inflation being 50% above target.

and we're going to discuss the real reason for what I consider a maniac move. Home prices go negative for the first time in 2 years. Fantastic. Uh but we'll see if the underlying causes of that are good or bad. The Trump backed bill to get health savings accounts set up for Americans got shot down. I'm mortified. Chad GPT 5.2 drops. And at the same time, Elon and Boulli are deploying AI at the nation state level. get used to that level of saturation that is coming everywhere all at once.

So get ready for that. Ran Paul is pushing for an audit of the Fed. Thank the Lord. And Erica Kirk and Candace Owens beef is escalating as Erica is now addressing the accusations directly. The greatest show on television, Drew, is the Candace Owens like madness. It's so interesting. I actually watch very little of it, but I find myself talking about it off camera a lot. Uh, I do want people to recognize that a new form of entertainment is coming into being, and it is it is it is that's been like swirling in my head since you said that.

So, I'm like, I understand the the lore. People want to see what's happening. People want to say what's happening. what's happening. what's happening. And there are real world consequences. Yeah. Darius in the chat was like, "Breaking news. Candace just got some evidence that she's never going to release." And there's like that's the intro of every show. It's like, "Okay guys, I found it. I got it." and you're like, "Okay, this is going to be the episode." And you're seven episodes deep and realized, "I don't know anything about except Egyptian plane numbers and a flag." Like, it's I don't know.

It's It's interesting. It's weird. It is certainly fascinating. Um, Um, Um, somebody just in the chat was like, "Let me know when we're talking about Candace. We're going to talk about it right now. We're jumping right into it." It I think now it's relevant, though, cuz Erica Kirk finally responded. And just as a husband, I know if your wife was getting attacked, I love Lisa to death, but she is a bit she's a little bit of a lion. Like she's not going to just be like, "Okay, I'm sorry, guys.

Let me go cry in the corner." Like I feel like she'll be firing and fight back as well. Yeah. Do you do you think that like Erica is being villainized for that? Should she be quiet? Like what's your take on her exposure and things like that? that? that? Well, so there's two ways to answer that. There is girl like you got to be true to you, right? So you could see her friends saying you need to say whatever it is that you believe and you've got to represent yourself in an honest way.

I would be advising Lisa and have a thousand times. Uh, I want you to ask yourself one question. What is your goal? Once you know what your goal is, then we can build a plan that will actually get you to your goal. Now, the very bad news when somebody starts getting into the emotional beef of it all, usually they have an invisible goal. And the invisible goal is that they want to feel that justice is served or that they've protected their, in this case, her husband's honor.

And so they will do things that are emotionally satisfying that don't necessarily lead you to what would be your actual stated goal. Like her stated goal might be something like, I want to make sure that Charlie's legacy lives on in TurningPoint USA and that conservative uh voices for young people get heard. Right? that might be the official goal. Uh but then she gets drugged into the dirt and the mire of it all by going off in a far more emotional way towards the allegations. It devolves into Candace is a bad person, right?

And so you can get drugged into the mud. Now admittedly, one of the things that I think made Charlie so effective was that he would throw down with people and he would go emotional on stage and if people wanted to go low, he would go low. Uh so he certain now look he had a certain level of decorum that also kept him from being too mired in the mud. But it was very interesting to see him like he was a man of the internet. He grew up on the internet.

he knew what it meant to be in like an Xbox lobby and uh you know just have people like swinging at each other ad homonym uh was certainly not foreign territory for him. So that is uh that's certainly part of what makes all this complex. We're just in a totally different time and expecting her to act completely presidential just isn't the moment. Uh, and so I think there's going to be some of that, but really like in life now as a PSA, getting people to understand you can't trust your emotions.

Absolutely. Like one of the most important rules in business is never do what's emotionally satisfying. satisfying. satisfying. Like the number of times that I get to do what I actually feel is almost zero because I have a state of goal. I know what my goal is. And the emotional thing will usually cause some sort of emotional chaos because if you trigger the other person emotionally, then they start pulling to invisible goals. They start going like in crazy directions. You find yourself debating something that isn't even really the real thing.

All of your energy is leaking over into this thing that is not generating forward momentum towards your actual goal. And so I just learned very early on, yeah, doing the emotionally satisfying thing does not generate momentum. It is not concrete steps towards a goal. and that's what I need to be if I'm serious about actually achieving my goal. The reality is most people are not serious about achieving their goals. The only thing that they steer by is what feels emotionally correct in the moment. So literally that is the conversation I would have with Lisa in moments like this.

Have had that conversation with Lisa a hundred times at least because yeah she will get she is very fiery. She is not afraid to stand up for herself. Um, and because she felt really bullied as a kid, as she developed her voice, she was just like, I'm never going to feel like that again. And it can make her overly aggressive in my opinion. my opinion. my opinion. Um, is this like a Stzian effect thing though where Erica Kirk shouldn't have addressed it? She should have let it go and then hopefully it dies out or at some point you have to kind of address it.

it. it. I think you have to address it. You can try to let certain things go, but Candace is she's one of the biggest personalities on the internet. And so to pretend like that's just going to go away is rough. It certainly won't go away fast. Now Candace is either racing towards becoming the queen of the internet or being the world's most tragic cautionary tale. Like there's not going to be an in between here because this either goes where the French government backs off and it's like she's now standing as queen of the hill or the French government takes her down and everyone's like yo.

So I don't see the one where it just sort of peters out and people are like no they're still right. Meaning the French government and other people like no Candace is right. I think it's if they drop the lawsuit or Candace wins that's a Candace victory. She's queen of the internet. If they push it all the way, they bankrupt Candace, um, this escalates into a whole bunch of people seeing her now as being weak and they start going after her for a whole bunch of other things.

Like, you can imagine a universe where Yeah. If if the French government pushes it all the way, they win. Then you get Turning Point USA going, "She's made all kinds of crazy accusations about us," and then they push her into years more of litigation. like that that could get rough very very fast. Now, I don't know all the specifics about um what's his face? Oh god, the king of conspiracy, Alex Jones. Alex Jones. Alex Jones. Alex Jones, thank you. But I know with a billion dollar judgment against you, you're getting your wages garnished.

So, I don't know how he has continued to run his business. I just don't know the logistics of how that kind of thing operates where they clearly um um um would be garnishing his personal wages, but he can probably create separation with the company. Yeah. So, she might be able to do something like that because I don't think she's going to diminish. There is a certain type of person that loves that conspiratorial sips tea makes they she knows that you're drawing conclusions in your head. She knows that's why it works and she phrases it in the way that she phrases it because she's a marketing genius.

Like once you understand, she does not speak accidentally. She completely understands the way largely I think this is a female phenomenon. She understands the way the human the female brain is drinking in the world. The way that it wants to engage with like conspiracy relational like um there's a great book called a billion wicked thoughts that says the right way to understand the female brain as a is as a detective agency and the female brain is constantly trying to assess threat who's a friend who's a foe operating behind the scenes um instead of just out in open conflict.

And so the way that she presents this information is like that. We're all one big community. You guys are helping me solve this like grand conspiracy. Uh you always have to be conscious of what's coming around the corner. Everything is like a tease and a payoff in the next episode. It's just like it's really brilliantly structured. But anyway, I don't think she's going to disappear cuz I think that new form of entertainment is going to be incredibly popular. I think that uh she will continue to be popular though she may become more fringe if she gets like absolutely hammered for the same reason that Alex Jones has not disappeared.

Um so we'll see. But it is if I were advising her I would say listen you're an extraordinary marketer. You're an incredible online personality. Rain it in a bit to give yourself exit ramps ramps ramps so that when if you see like okay this one's not going to pan out like you can move on to the next but she is just taking a totally different strategy that will be very interesting to see play out. out. out. Okay so we have that on the table. Candace Owens actively being sued by the French government.

Um Candace Owens potentially being sued by TPUSA. Everybody's looking forward to the 15th. I'm making that one up by the way. I want to make sure I'm not saying that's already happening. I'm just saying what already what already what already I don't think Turning Point USA is suing Candace at this point. No, no, no. They're having um they're like we're responding to all the claims live stream thing. So, we're all all eyes on that to kind of figure out what's going on. On the other side of the Men's Fear podcast space, Dan Krenshaw is now suing Shawn Ryan for allegations he made on his show.

I want to tie these two together, but this is directly from Sean on his show um announcing that he's been sued. all of you who've supported this show and made it what it is today. On December 9th, 2025, I received a legal demand letter from lawyers representing Congressman Congressman Congressman Dan Krenshaw. Dan Krenshaw. Dan Krenshaw. They are threatening to sue me for defamation because of comments I made on my podcast about a message that he sent me. They want me to remove content, issue a public apology, and stop talking about him.

I'm not going to do any of that. Let me give you full context so you can judge for yourself what I originally said a while back. I commented on my show about Congressman Krenshaw throwing an extremely expensive party and the fact that he seems to have become quite wealthy during his time in Congress. I raised questions about how a congressman makingundred makingundred makingundred That flyer is wild. Yo, I I did it on 2X the first time I watched this. I didn't pause it. Yo, he got a club flyer.

That's a congressman. Yo, this is crazy. This is an Atlanta party, Tom. party, Tom. party, Tom. Dude, this So, okay, hold on. Think about this. This will really get you. Uh, have you seen the Gen Z like influencers? Like the people with podcasts and stuff, they talk like Jenzers. Like, they're not kidding. That's how they talk. So, he grew up in that era. And so, yeah, that doesn't seem weird to him at all. He had, if I'm not mistaken, Steve Aoki DJed his party. So, So, So, okay, I'm not I know we don't name drop here.

Steve Aayoki is like your boy. He he's he's he's in he's in the ecosystem of of of We are very friendly. Dan Krenshaw makes around $170,000 um a year. I feel like Steveoke might be a little bit more expensive than that being he had a residency in Vegas alas. Like Steveoki is cool, but I don't think he'll just like, "Yeah, Tom, I'll DJ a party for three hours for you. No problem." Like I feel like he's certainly not going to do it for free. Here, free.

Here, free. Here, you know what I mean? I do and this will be interesting to see people's reaction to. So here the the fact that Congress people get rich off of insider information is a level of despicable that I cannot even begin to convey. convey. convey. The economic game is rigged against the average person to a point they should be furious and enacting change immediately. This is like the heartbeat of my interactions with the public is trying to get them to understand the economic game is rigged against you knowingly.

Uh, you can still win though, so figure it out. But what drives me crazy about the way that people look at this kind of situation is, hey, this guy only makes $170,000 a year. How's he able to afford this? this? this? What I want them to figure out is just like whatever person, hey, you only make whatever person watching this, you only make $60,000 a year, you only make $95,000 a year, one, whatever. You're going to make your real money in [ __ ] assets. So, I'm not mad that Dan Dan Krenshaw owns assets.

I think everybody in Congress should own like a default basket of assets that they cannot change once they're in office. And so, it's like I'm going to hold a uh basket international or America, whatever. And I'm not going to trade. It's going to be index funds. And I'm sure there's a more nuanced position to be had. So, just consider this like a swag, but I'm going to hold a basket of index funds that are not actively traded and I'm going to go do what I think is right for the American people.

And hopefully that has a positive [ __ ] effect on the uh the the markets. Like, you want a positive effect on the markets. It's the only way to escape inflation. So, it's like the fact that these guys are in the stock market, good. The fact that they are doing it in a way that is insider information is a catastrophe, but people lump it all into, can you believe this [ __ ] only makes $170,000 and you can afford all this? What I want people to understand, if you win the game of the [ __ ] markets, your $170,000 doesn't really matter.

It's how much are you making in the markets right now because the system is so rigged against people people people making money off a salary. Get out. They're going to take all of that money back through inflation. You have to own assets. I wish that were not true because there's risk in assets. I wish it weren't true because I consider it morally repugnant. It is gambling. But the government has put you in a position right now today where you must own assets or you're going to get soaked.

And so when people get emotional, they tend to just the whole idea of the reduction of number of crayons and you only have two colors to color with. And so you're like, uh, market's bad. Anybody in markets is cheating. That's not true. And if you are in the if you're not in the market, you're getting soaked. So yes, we should want these guys to be limited in the way that they can interact with the markets because it is way too easy to manipulate. But you should want them in the markets.

You should want them doing things where they're tied to your success. And if we can get them tied to your success, okay, now we're in a good spot. We have a a famous saying here. I feel like we should have like a wall of saying maybe that's what we we figure it out. We were talking about that yesterday. Um, show me the incentives. I'll show you the outcomes, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. If you're a good politician Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. I'm using that word purposely like in the Mchavelian sense or you're an honorable politician in the Mchavelian sense.

Okay. Okay. Okay. You walk in with one tax bracket. You leave at least two tac bracket above at least. at least. at least. Obama went in broke, he came out rich. Pelosi went in broke came out rich. Um uh Dick Cheney went in broke came out rich. George Bush whose pre whose dad was president, he was already rich. He got richer. So it's uh Donald Trump allegedly through the crypto scheme has is at up like three billion at this point right now and he came in in January and he's up three billion.

So it's one of those things where things where things where clearly politicians are making money in this game and it's not the salary that's doing it. No, I don't know if it's kickbacks. I don't know if it's So, do you think that if we were to be honorable as opposed to quote unquote good and remove money from politics, remove it? Would that save the system because all the grifters and people that want to get rich will then go to another game? game? game? It would help a lot.

Like the more doors that you can shut for corruption to be easy, the better off you are going to be. the more that you're going to attract people who really believe in what they're trying to do because there's there is only structural upside. Meaning you want politicians to go into politics to make their country wealthier. That's what you want them to do. People do not understand they are economic units. Once people start thinking of those, oh, I'm an economic unit. That's actually how the world works.

works. works. Like, and it works that way, not because men are evil. It works that way because people don't want to have to hunt every day to stay alive. And once you understand, oh, I want this stuff to get easier. Oh, I want people to specialize, therefore I am going to become an economic unit. Great. So now we embrace that. But the way that you structure it is going to matter so much. And if a politician goes in and can get wealthy, but their wealth is tied directly to the wealth of the people in their country, yay.

Like that's the kind of thing that you want to see. We don't do that. And we make it very possible for them to get wealthy in a thousand ways. That is not tied to their constituents, is not tied to the nation as a whole. And that's where things get deeply problematic. And all of human history is the elites getting wealthy off the back of the masses. And the reason it's like that unfortunately has a lot to do with intellect intellect intellect connections and the ability to use when you've got the 128 crayon box and you're going up against people with the eight crayon box.

So [ __ ] easy. It's so easy, Drew. You just like you make drawings that they can't even comprehend and you're just like, I got you. I got so many more crayons. Don't worry about it. And people inevitably fall to the iron law of oligarchy, which is that there's a certain type of person that's smart enough to lead and that is from where I'm sitting crazy enough to want to lead because nothing about that looks fun to me. But nonetheless, and so organizations, no matter what they are, a PTA, a nation, a family, they will all fall to there's leaders and there's followers.

just no other way around it. So, you've got to limit the ways that the leaders can get rich at the expense of everybody else. So, we do have a couple points of uh disagree disagreement in the chat on the owning assets portion. Oh, here we go. First, you're not even making money with assets. You're just holding the value as they inflate the supply. What? Uh you're you're not even um stopping bullets with a bulletproof vest. You're just absorbing the impact without dying. Okay, great. Would you like to get shot with or without the bulletproof vest?

That That is God bless you, but that's a terrible [ __ ] argument. I just I just want to shout out Jay Welk real quick. I said it in the chat, but he was like, I lowered my expenses so I could start investing even though I make 40k a year. And I'm not trying to shout out your income level or nothing like that, but the fact that you're saying, hey, let me just make a little changes here so that way I can invest more on this side.

That's the first step to being financially independent. So, shout out to you. Congratulations. No doubt. All the roses, all the flowers. We need more of that, less of it's their fault. It's their fault. I can't. I can't. Way to get to it. Shout out to you. True. True. True. Um, okay. Quick yes or no or yes, no. You know, I give you like two or three sentences. I feel the type of way that everybody's suing each other. I feel like lawfare is now becoming petty. It's now becoming I don't like what you said about me on your on your little show, so now I'm going to sue you.

Yeah. America is so latgious. It is ridiculous. And I don't know how to beat that out of us culturally. Um, but that's just what we do. We sue people for things. Uh, the number of times that I've either been in a lawsuit or have had a chance to sue someone else is ridiculous. Uh, and I am not proactive in terms of going after people. But that is basically the default stance. It is a tool in people's arsenal that they use all the time. It's miserable. It's expensive.

Only the lawyers win. Uh I once sat across from a retired judge who was doing arbitration. And he said, and I quote, uh Mr. Bill, I'm going to be very honest with you, you are being legally extorted right now, but you have to deal with this. I was like, Jesus Christ, like I felt seen. I won't lie, but it was still like you have to go through the process. Like it was wild. So, welcome to America. Sheesh. Um, Sheesh. Um, Sheesh. Um, and that that would have to change culturally.

culturally. culturally. Yeah. I mean, the Constitution was argued in a courtroom. So, I do feel like it's something that's built in in the grain. the grain. the grain. I'm not saying courtrooms are bad. You need courtrooms. need courtrooms. need courtrooms. No, but I mean like the the integration of I am vying for justice through a latigious sense. I would say like lawyeres like they weren't in a classroom trying to like philos come up with it from a philosophical level. They were battling it out and letting somebody rule who was right, who was wrong.

Sort of. There there was a lot of philosophical debate and I think they would be scandalized by the level of lawsuits that we have now. Though they did actually do duels, so they they had their own lunacy. Uh but yeah, I don't think that they would have anticipated the level that this would escalate to. This is a problem with policies. This is why Radalio's rich is what he realized is debt's awesome in the beginning becomes terrible in the end. And it has like all these really predictable things because humans can't do a fire break and say a little bit of something is awesome.

A lot of it is terrible. For instance, I love salt. And so when I did this really brief stint is like I'm going to get good at cooking. Um, I just like added a ton of salt and I was like, "These all suck." And so I was like, "That's so interesting." Like a little bit of this thing is wonderful, but if you try to just keep adding more, it becomes a problem. So debt is awesome in the beginning. When you rack up debt, it becomes literally economically suicidal.

So, but people can't stop themselves. So, same thing. Court's great a little bit, but over time, it's just going to escalate, escalate, escalate. Uh, same thing with welfare programs. In the beginning, they're great because they take care of the people that actually need it. And then you get Somalia moving to America to [ __ ] bilk billions of dollars. People are now saying not not just tied to um Somalians, but that there's an estimated $500 billion dollar of annual fraud in the welfare system. So, in entitlements, dude, 500 billion.

That is so much. That's enough for I think roughly it would allow 90% of taxpayers to not pay anything. Just to give you an idea of what $500 billion billion billion if that number is correct and I don't think it is but like but do you think the number is zero? I don't think the number is zero cuz in like misguided interest. So now ask yourself if you know the number isn't zero. It's somewhere between zero and 500 billion. billion. billion. Yeah. Yeah. But bear with me.

What I'm trying to get to is once people realize oh there's a way to defraud this they will defraud it until they reach sufficient push back that they are forced to stop. What I think people think happens is that people will be that all people will be as morally repulsed as they are and therefore won't just keep taking and taking and taking and taking but you actually have to meet it with force otherwise it will just keep going. And so what I'm saying is welfare yay I get why we have it but the problem is it will by its nature escalate.

And so the question becomes as a society, how do you interrupt the escalatory process? Because we're not good at that. We haven't been able to do it with debt ever, and I don't just mean America. I mean every civilization ever uses debt in the beginning is like, "Oh my god, this is like magic." Like literal magic. You can't believe how well it works. So much prosperity. It's incredible. Everybody born in that era is [ __ ] ecstatic because it works so well. And then people go, "Well, it's not we're not getting the growth that we used to, but we know that debt works." And it's just like cocaine, heroin, fentanyl.

Like the little bit that used to get you high doesn't get you high anymore. And then all of a sudden, you've got to be doing enough of it like just to stay even keel, not even just to feel like that same euphoric feeling that you had before, just to be at like break even. And then you start doing it so much you're [ __ ] giving [ __ ] behind Denny's, dude. It's like that is the cycle. And people just are not being honest that you need something that breaks that escalatory cycle.

And if you don't have it, it just flywheels out of control. control. control. I found out Andrew Jackson's last words was, "I took on the banks and I won cuz he was the last president to stop the Fed Fed Fed before the next president came and then started the Fed and the Fed was like like you're going to be gone and we're just going to keep going." 1913. They tried it three times and then in 1913 they changed it to Federal Reserve Bank and that was the one everybody's like, "Oh, okay.

It's Federal. It's for it's by the government and it's a reserve." It's like, "Yeah, exactly." And that's what they did to like get that. Um, hey, can I just make everybody mad really fast? really fast? really fast? Let's do it. Did you guys know that banks get paid like 4 and a half to 5 and a half% to loan their money that was created out of thin air by the Fed back to the Fed. So while you guys are struggling to make ends meet, the banks are getting paid to not loan you money.

That is wild. But we're just like, okay. In fact, we're not okay. No one understands it. So people don't know what's happening. I'm excited about Tuesday's episode, the Arthur Laugher because he was the first one to say that money is broken because that's the first government instit that's the first institution government went in and like broke. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And I didn't realize before the Fed like local banks used to loan money and we like the structure was working. Of course, it was a different lifestyle and stuff like that.

that they weren't on Instagram or nothing, but it's like there is a way that independent people were generating money. There were all these different mints like currency can be be be do you know why the dollar is called the dollar? dollar? dollar? No, No, No, there's a guy I think in Spain whose name was like the I forget his actual name but it was a variant of dollar and he was just the guy that everybody trusted. He was printing money and he was just like no no no mine's legit.

I never like uh mess with the weights of the coins cuz that's like a big thing. This is why your coins have little ridges around the edges so you can see if people are like skimming off the circle to make it smaller and lighter. And so he was just so religious and so honorable and so trustworthy that that became the currency that everybody used. And people think that money is made by the government because all of us grow up in an era and we just assume that's how the world is forever and all time.

And it's not. It's not. Many, many, many things have come before this. We didn't have a federal well, we had a brief federal reserve at the founding of our country, but we put a 20-year time limit on it because we knew it would be abused. Speaking of breaking the escalatory cycle, they just said, "You got 20 years. Whatever you can get done to build this country up, you've got 20 years to do it." After that, nope, hard pass. So, we ended it. And then, of course, by 1913, the bankers just knew how potent it would be if they could get this thing through.

Watch my video on the creature from Jackal Island. I go into all this stuff, the secrecy of it, the way that they manipulated the public. It's devastating. Somebody said Tom should do a master class on monetary policy. Those are the deep dives that come out on Mondays. Go check them out. Always about economics. But yes, and the wild thing is um this is just a guy learning this stuff. Like I I am an entrepreneur. That's what I do. Entrepreneurs know how to make money. I didn't know how to invest money.

money. money. And so, uh, anyway, the community knows the story, but anybody can learn this stuff. Like, you don't need to, uh, be an economist or anything like that. Watch me with Arthur Laugher. You guys can make up your own mind. I'm just a [ __ ] entrepreneur who was like, "Wait, I think CO is going to demolish my former employees because they don't know how to manage their money. I did not think this was going to be some insane rabbit hole. Uh, I'm just trying to help them literally like balance a checkbook." That was the kind of thing I was thinking in the beginning.

was like, "They need to understand like basic investing." And then I was like, "If I'm going to tell them about basic investing, I better figure it out cuz I don't know how to invest my own money." And then going down that rabbit hole, you start going, if you're actually trying to think from first principles, you just keep asking, "Why is it like that? Why is it like that?" All the way down until you're at the physics of how something works. And that's what this is. So, I hope that people don't look at me as some sort of scholar.

I'm just a guy saying, "Wait a second. There's way too much money in this." Okay, period. New paragraph, but very related. Um, I routinely am debating like, do I just go full-time into the video game thing because I love it so much, Drew. And I'm starting to get jealous. I I realize that. that. that. Yeah. Yes. Uh, I have a side chick, Drew. She is hot. Uh, so I be bouncing at his desk looking over at the I'm like, "Hey, we got to prepare for the show tomorrow." Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, cool. Hey, what are you working out over there? That is literally true. This is what happened last night. Uh, okay. So, I have that debate a lot and then I realize I can't stop learning about it because now that I know how much money I can make investing just like I can't ever stop. It would be irresponsible. irresponsible. irresponsible. Literally, I'm now I am so scandalized that I went 42 years or whatever without knowing how money actually works. Like, whoa, my wife should be very angry.

Uh but now that I know how it works and feel like no one should assume that I won't make catastrophic mistakes in investing, I will. And as the island of my knowledge grows, so grows the shore of my ignorance. But seeing now just how much money just in 2025 alone I've made by understanding like the basics. That's why I'm so evangelical about getting people to understand. Like if you just throw the baby out with the bathwater with the Dan Crrenshaw thing, uh it's very possible that he's entirely corrupt.

I don't know. But the reality is you don't want to be mad at anybody in the stock market. You want to get into the stock market. That is the right takeaway. takeaway. takeaway. Yeah. Um Okie Doie Soie said, "I would love a deep dive on assets." Um check out one. We did a We have a done a ton about um Lynn uh Lyn Alden strategy, a deep dive Tom did that compared Lind versus Ray Dios versus his own kind of spin on it. So um yes, definitely some stuff on the channel.

Uh we should make like an investing playlist. playlist. playlist. Give me a good idea. I got you. Uh, Michael just asked project project Kaizen merch. Are there shirts? There are, but we sold out. We're going to do another run of it. I have a really strong rule when it comes to Kaizen because I was doing the exact opposite at the very beginning, which is if people are playing the game, then I'll go ham on building all the ancillary stuff, which would make me beyond happy. Uh, but if people aren't playing the game, I just need to focus.

Make the game awesome. I game awesome. Make the game awesome. I have 23 months left before we hit early release. I've got to make every [ __ ] second count. Um, the game is getting good, but if you played it right now, you'd be very disappointed. So, it's like I know that 23 months is enough time. Oh, it's a race. So, uh, we got to make it awesome. Anyway, we're going to be doing some um early access, like pre-alpha access stuff. Uh, so if anybody's interested in the community, please let yourself be known in the Discord uh so that we can get you the game probably at the end of Q1 is what I'm expecting.

Uh it'll still be super awkward, but we'd love to get people's feedback. Can we throw a um Discord link in there? Uh okay. Thank you everybody for super chats. We're gonna get to at the bottom of the hour. Right now though, we're going to our title story today. NATO Chief Root warns we need to be ready. Russia has brought war back to Europe and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured. I don't know what's going on lately, but a lot of these politicians keep talking about World War I and World War II.

It was China and Japan like, "Hey, you just lost World War II. you need to be humble. And then now NATO is saying we need to get ready because Russia is bringing it to Europe. Again, I don't know if this is something in the water right now, but I feel like tensions are bubbling internationally in a lot of different ways. Yeah. Uh so here is the thing that makes me sad and I don't know what to do with this. Um even you and you are both like, uh yeah, we cover a lot of doom and gloom and chat.

accuse that you guys caught strays before we went live about you guys being quote unquote into the doom and gloom. It makes me very sad that people call this doom and gloom. Uh this is human nature playing out and we are living in a moment where this stuff matters and it matters a lot. Uh so I am merely trying to point myself at the things that matter so that I can be prepared so I can deal with whatever happens because the world right now is not a very stable place.

Uh, and so being aware of this stuff, I don't want to overindex on being afraid or anything like that. In fact, I don't spend any of my time being afraid. I spend all of my time trying to think execution. What's my goal? How do I get where I want to be? Uh, so yes, we cover this stuff not to scare you, not to spook anybody out. But there, the human mind operates under algorithmic principles. So we respond to certain stimuli in the same way over and over and over.

And this is why history rhymes. So, um, people need to be aware that for whatever reason, Europe does not appear to be doing the things that they would need to do to back away from this standoff with Russia. Now, maybe they legitimately are just afraid and so their fear is causing this aggressive posture. Maybe that really is it. And so, they see Russia on the march. they've got enough cultural scar tissue that they know when Russia starts making a move that uh they'll gobble up, you know, I mean, all of the USSR post World War II, that was not a good time for a whole lot of countries that we think of now as European.

And so I can understand why I mean this is the Berlin Wall doesn't fall until like ' 89. So, um I get why Europe is going to be really paranoid, but all of us when we hear statements like that, that is it's pay attention time. That is like, hey, we are giving you official messaging. Doesn't mean that they're going to pop off. Doesn't mean that they're going to go in guns blazing, but it does mean that their posture is we need to get ready. We do not trust that he's going to stop.

We are going to be arming up. We are trying to psychologically terraform our population to be prepared to go to war. It's wild. Now, at the same time, uh, America stuck in Thusidity's trap. So, I have a very similar feeling, which is that guys, 12 out of the last 16 times that world history has found itself in the situation we're in now, where declining superpower hits a rising superpower, they've gone to war. So, it's like the odds are not in our favor. And hopefully part of the reason that you talk about it is so you can find the path to deescalation.

That you can put yourself into the four people that did not end up going to war so that you figure out what that looks like. That's my goal anyway. Um so it all manifests in supply chains and policy decisions that we need to make in order to make sure that we actually are prepared. I say all of that to say um don't look at this stuff as doom and gloom ever. that won't serve you because that puts people in this mindset of like fear. Nope. We want to be um I don't want to use the word aggressive.

We want to be aggressively prepared. We want to think through the scenarios. We want to say where exactly do we want to end up, be very honest about all the pieces that are on the board and then move like an entrepreneur. So entrepreneurs just they live and die by the market. They either can or can't make payroll. And that is so clarifying. And so all of a sudden you just go, I can't lie to myself about the situation that I'm in. We are where we are.

I have to figure out what matters. I have to be thinking from cause and effect. And I look at, okay, I'm trying to get here. There's a thousand ways that this could go wrong. There's only a small handful where we actually get there. You have to understand your points of leverage. You have to understand the things you care about versus the things you can give away as a chip or whatever. And as you think about it and strategize and be ready and be paranoid in business, we always say only the paranoid survive.

And so, yes, I do because these are the things that I'm actively thinking about. We talk about all this stuff, but it makes me very sad that people want to dismiss it as either, oh, this is doom and gloom. Or because I'm talking about it, they think that I'm inviting them into a world of fear. And I get that response a lot. Like, I get a lot of people that are like, Tom, you're scaring the life out of me. And I'm like, that's not my intention.

My intention is to make you prepared. My intention is for you to understand that, yeah, there are going to be periods where the world is unstable. And that's perfectly fine. You will be able to weather that storm if you're prepared. But if you want to be polyianaish, if you want to bury your head uh in the sand because you're afraid of like um one of the accusations that'll be levered against somebody like Peter Schiff. Uh Peter Schiff has called 20 of the last two recessions. Fair.

I get what people are saying. But if you look at the way that Peter actually invests, he's wealthy. So, in all of his paranoia, he's made himself wealthy. And so, I'm really trying to build a way to articulate to people that listen, I'm going to be talking about AI and how it's going to do all this crazy stuff, but if you start acting like it's already done it today, you're going to miss opportunities. So, like AI is almost certainly a bubble, but pulling out of the market is also almost certainly the wrong answer.

Unless you're like Warren Buffett and you're reading, you know, a hundred uh prospectuses uh a day. It's like if if you're doing that, great. Yes, you can probably dip out and get back in at a sensible point and have enough capital to recognize when something's a deal and all that. all that. all that. For the rest of us, that's not going to be the play. The play is, ooh, we're going into a period where uh the market could be down for, let's say, 10 years. Okay, I'm facing something where the market could be down for a very long time.

So, how do I want to do that? And it starts to become the real simple basic building blocks of I'm going to dollar cost average in because I don't know where this is going. um there I need to have a certain amount that I can access very quickly. Call that cash or cash-like instruments. Uh but also you need to beat inflation. And so if inflation is 3% right now on the back of 25% but anyway I won't start down that path. path. path. But if inflation is 3% right now then you've got to have your money both readily accessible and turning over at least 3% in interest.

And so it's like I'm not saying like, "Hey, you got to go get rich and so go way out on the curve and buy like shitcoins and Pokemon cards." Like that's not my pitch. Uh I get that my pitch is probably very boring, but I want people to start thinking through the problem, to be paranoid, not so that they can freak out or give their kids anxiety. I want you to go, uh, I understand how this works mechanistically. I understand how money moves. I understand how humans move from a psychology standpoint.

And therefore, I'm going to make different decisions with massive amounts of humility because the future is so unknown. And I'm gonna position myself so that I can do well enough no matter what happens. The people that got obliterated by 2008, the people that got obliterated by the Great Depression, the crash in 29 were people that were convinced they couldn't lose. Those are the people that lose. I listen, Michael Sailor may prove to be the king of the world. That is entirely possible. But there are so many timelines, Drew, where he goes bust.

And I'm just like I I personally am never willing to bet that I'm on the timeline where it just all works out. And so I'm always trying to hedge my bets. That's where I want people to be. Proactive to feel like they understand what's going on well enough to make decisions. That's the ultimate goal here. I am talking into the camera so that people will feel armed to make decisions that will put them in a better situation. so that they understand how all of this game is played and they can play it well instead of like I'm not trying to get people to panic.

I'm not even trying to get you to click. I'm trying to get you to actually change your behavior in a way that will protect you. So anyway, I hope that we can get that vibe in the community that these are the things that we ought to be paying attention to because they will have the most economic impact. That really is like the core driver. they'll have the most economic impact and because their impact is knowableish that by talking about it you can build a plan. plan.

plan. Chad says if you want people to see the message differently you talk about it exactly like you are right now. So they really appreciated that. There we go. Boom. All right. Let's jump into the uh NATO chief's remarks. We need to be ready because at the end of this first quarter of the 21st century, conflicts are no longer fought at arms length. Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe and we must be prepared for the skill of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.

uh imagy from where we are. Um could you speedrun us? How did we get here? Um because I'm not a student of history. Like World War I was in Europe and then World War II was when America got involved. got involved. got involved. Uh we got involved in both. Uh both times we came in very late and both times we walked away unscathed. And so World War I started moving us in the direction of being the greatest superpower on earth. And then World War II really sealed the deal.

Um, so the the speedrun of that may not be as relevant to the speedrun of like what's actually happening now with Russia. So you've got Russia, a country uh run by a dictator who does not have to so much please as voters. I mean ultimately you want the populace behind you, but that's not he doesn't have to get reelected. reelected. reelected. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh he's a former member of the KGB. So this is somebody who certainly understands propaganda, who understands subtrafuge, who knows how to do things uh under the cloak of night.

This is not somebody who is sort of morally high-minded. This is somebody who understands the game of power and will do whatever it takes, including poisoning his enemies, uh blowing up, uh the plane of that guy whose name I forget. Um it just do it all. And I mean, listen, we got Trump drone striking. So, I'm not saying anybody's uh above killing is super efficient. So, he has said publicly, I think the dissolution of the USSR was like this great tragedy. Okay, so this is a guy that believed we were much better off.

Certainly, we the Russian people were much better off when we had far more territory. Uh he also understands that Ukraine is resourceri and he also understands that understands that understands that any country will expand until they hit sufficient force or internal value um violations. violations. violations. So we view ourselves a certain way and so we don't want people doing something that we think is opposed to our values and so we'll internally put the brakes on. But if you don't trigger the internal value system problem, they they will literally take over the entire world.

Somebody has to stop them. That's basically everybody. Estonia will eventually do it if they feel that there's a vacuum of power and they're like, "Whoa, are we really the ones? I guess we're the ones." And you know, they'll do it. So it's that's something that Putin understands very well. So he sees a weakening of the US's will to back NATO. And so he's like, "Fuck it. Now's the time for us to go back and start gobbling up these regions." He doesn't start with Ukraine. That's just the one that for whatever reason people really uh got tweaked out about.

So I imagine there's some resource there that we feel very strongly that we don't want getting into his hands or maybe it just became too much much much too close. Uh, so anyway, the US and NATO should not have kept pushing up against Russian borders because it gave him a cover story. Now, I don't know whether it's just a cover story and he just always wanted to do this. He was like, "Oh, perfect. This gives me the excuse that I need to be aggressive or if it was actually the thing where he's like, "Hey, how many [ __ ] times do I have to tell you?

Like, if you keep moving forward, I'm going to push back because I understand that's how the world works." So, I don't presume to know the mind of Putin well enough to know which of those is true. Some combination of the two. Um, but he will now be territorially acquisitive until he hits sufficient push back. And so, clearly he's hellbent to take Ukraine. Will Ukraine be the end of it? Don't know. Now, also some of it is just because if he were to stop now doesn't mean he's not doing like the Xi calculation of I'm not going to mess with Taiwan right now because I'm not strong enough to take on the US.

But I mean, they've been talking openly for a long ass time like we got to accomplish this and this and this and then we'll be able to push back on the US and then you get Xi comes into power and is far more Maui in than he is Deng Xiaoing in my opinion. And so you've got him being like, I'm gonna rule this [ __ ] by an iron fist and we are going to officially officially now be dismissive of the US. So that's where we're at.

So you've got like all this like when people detect that there's weakness, they are going to move. And so Russia feels like, yeah, we're in a strong enough position now. We've got alliances with China, a very strong military alliance with China. Uh so we feel good about that. We've got an alliance with Iran. We feel good about that. Um, so he's feeling emboldened. And then from Europe, are they just this guy is we need help. They're getting flashbacks from previous world wars. Why do you think the NATO general is sounding this alarm um at this scale at this time?

this time? this time? That's a really good question. So I don't know him as a personality yet, but if I'm a European right now, I'm thinking, huh, we have lost faith in ourselves. We like take England. England is now just a small country off the coast of France. England used to be the greatest economic and military superpower the world had ever known. ever known. ever known. Imagine the swagger. England doesn't have that kind of swagger now. England won't even stop immigrants from flooding their country. So England does not believe in itself.

It does not believe it is in like the biggest backlash over, oh god, we were this horrible imperial superpower. And to be honest, yeah, they were. But once you lose faith in yourself, you become far weakened. So if I'm a European, I'm thinking, hm, France did not cover themselves in glory during World War II. They just tuck tail and ran. Uh, so they've probably got some thoughts about that. Uh, England has over the last 100 years lost the greatest empire the world had ever known before the US empire.

Uh, and the Dutch used to be king [ __ ] The Spanish used to be king [ __ ] The Portuguese used to be a lot stronger. So, you've got all these nations that have this incredible history. And they know that they almost lost everything in World War II. And then the aftermath of World War II was that basically the world was divided between two superpowers, the US and Russia. without asking them what they wanted. So imagine waking up one day and being like, "Wait, what?

They just divided Europe?" What? So, but that's how it played out. So now they're like, "All right, America's no longer quite the ally that we thought. We can't be just [ __ ] around with green energy. We've actually got to start thinking about being our own force." Now, I don't know if this guy is beloved or if everybody's like, "This guy's a lunatic. He's a fringe character." Like when you're looking at foreign polic I'm always like wait is this their Trump where they're like super divisive or is this somebody who's really got the backing of everybody and that I don't know know know but he's certainly signaling that at a minimum he believes they have to bluff so that Putin will believe it's not worth going beyond Ukraine that okay these guys are really going to fight me here so I'm going to take an exit ramp and get off.

um or if they really mean it and they're like, "No, no, no. Ukraine is now a proxy war between not just um the US and Russia, it's now a proxy war between Europe and Russia." And that Europe is regardless of what the US does, they're going to like pony up and get in. So, listen, I know better than to trust what any politician says, let alone Putin. Uh but Putin has been saying Trump really wants peace. Europe clearly does not. So there's also the element of uh what does Europe want out of this?

Do they want continued NATO expansion? Do they have some sort of bitterness against Russia that is still playing out? I don't know. That'll come out in time. But Putin is struggling with Ukraine. Does he really think he can take on all of Russia or all of Europe or is it just the the the Democrat? I don't think he's that stupid. But um my instinct is that what you have is we had 70 80 years of everybody just agreed we don't violate other nations borders. Um the '9s was awesome man.

It was so hopeful in terms of the USSR collapsed. We all wanted to believe that Russia was going to join the West. They most certainly did not. But there was a period where it was like oh no they really might. Uh and so all of that optimism has just sort of been frittered away and now people realize, oh, we are unstable again. We are a world where people will violate borders and that they'll do so violently. So, China may I'll be interested to see if they move on Taiwan violently or if they do it administratively like they did Hong Kong.

But Russia obviously is using military. You think uh the US should stay in NATO? I haven't thought about it enough. So, I would be I'm thinking out loud, which I told you yesterday I try to do very little of. Uh but it will go something like this. like this. like this. America is in such a weak economic position that for us to rack up even more debt to go in and do article 5 guarantees and actually have boots on the ground and all of that would would require require require such an act of unparalleled aggression uh on the part of Russia into let's call it traditional Europe that that would be the only thing where I could see like yeah that really is bad and you don't want to see all of Europe fall to Russia and we did tell people that we would be there for you.

Um, barring that, I think that we're far better off saying, "Listen, you guys need to you need to arm up. You need to put a ton of money into your own military defense, and if something egregious happens, we're still here with you. But, um, we've all been a little too trigger-happy. We've all marched way too close to Russia's borders, and we're dealing with the backlash. We, America, need to focus on China." That's where we have to be concerned. So, we'll help you, but only if you're helping yourself.

That's sort of my final answer. And so, to um the NATO chief's point, he is pushing for increased investment from Germany. Germany said they're going to bring 3.5% of their GDP into war efforts by the end of 20 2029, I believe, by the end of the decade. Um and he's pushing for other European nations to kind of increase their military spending as well to not rely on the US. So, I think that that is um at least a step in the right direction. It's necessary for us to at least limit the amount that we have to police.

Um I think that's very important for them to fight a lot of their own battles and rely on us only as a like guys, we just couldn't get it done and now we're really at risk and we're allied with you guys culturally, economically and so we want to make sure that that continues. And then at that point, I would ask America to do a combination of two things. what is morally right and what is um economically intelligent. And so if there is a play that is both of those things, great.

If there isn't, then don't don't go in because we're in a super fragile position. And if we overextend ourselves in Europe, China moves on Taiwan instantly. Yeah. So on the back of that war effort kind of uh ramping up, Trump is thinking about leaving the G7 and creating alternative known as the core five. And it would unite the five heavyweights of the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan. Uh I laughed when I initially saw this cuz I was like, isn't this just a bricks nation?

But they kicked out Brazil and Iran. Like so I understand that with NATO kind of being a relic of what it was formed for and all these other G7 other superpowers kind of now being reshuffled. Does it make sense to form new alliances or to your point through the city's trap is too deep? People are already stuck in their ways. It's diplomacy might not be as effective as it could have been a couple years ago, a couple dec. It's interesting. I have a weird emotional reaction to this.

There's something interesting here. I've not explored this deeply, but my initial reaction is this is what Europe gets for being [ __ ] for the last like 80 years. And so, yeah, if you guys are going to act a fool, literally, this is how I felt when I was in Italy. I was like, Italy, man, your guys' town, this is awesome. Thank you for ice shaking coffee. I now spend, I'm not kidding, at least 120 seconds shaking my coffee over ice every morning. I am actually concerned about a repetitive strain injury from doing it so much.

So, God bless you for giving me coffee shaken over ice. That feels like a group of people that are like, "We used to be dope and now we're just going to coast." And I find that so morally repugnant. I believe that humans and nations have a moral obligation to get strong. And I don't feel that when I'm there. I feel people that are just a wash in guilt, that have their hand out, that want the government to take care of everything, eliminate all the risk from my life, and they've just gotten soft.

And this is just how things work, man. And so, yeah, being there just feels like, oh, cool. I'm visiting a museum of a culture that used to be rad. And I hate the way that feels. So, anyway, seeing them get booted by the countries that are still trying to be hardcore as [ __ ] Yeah, I'll take that. Uh this this might be a little bit painful for you. So walk through me. I'mma hold your hand through this as crazy capitalism. Crazy capitalist. Um is there we talk about AI there's going to be a new usher in a new utopia.

Um you know pipe dream pipe dream unicorns. But is there a transition right now from we want to be the dominant power? We want to be the number one economic engine to maybe I could go in my little corner and chill, you know, like cuz to your point of Portugal, to your point of Spain, to your point of Italy, it's like, like, like, are you asking should America coast? I'm not asking if America should coast. I'm just asking maybe it might be nice to stop starting stuff with everybody.

Like, we don't have to be the we don't have to answer every call. We don't have to go to every party. America needs to settle down. America's been too much in these streets. We've been at everybody else's war. We've been trying to help everybody else. American can't just sit down. down. down. Here's the thing. I agree with it when you say it like that. That we have overextended ourselves. This happens to every empire. They realize, wo, running all these military bases, being the one that everybody calls.

It's incredibly expensive. And if you're not getting enough back economically, then it stops making sense. Now to be honest, I think America probably could have um if unlike every empire that came before them, they could have stayed lean and mean and said, "Okay, we have the ability to export uh inflation to the rest of the world. Um but when bad thing happens inside of our country, we've got to let creative destruction happen." So your bank failed. I'm so sorry. Be smarter about the bank that you choose next time.

um like if we were willing to do that rather than bail out, bail out, um we could have stayed a lot stronger, but we just kept racking up debt and convinced ourselves that there was no end to the amount of debt that you could rack up. Even if we had stopped the banks from being bailed out, but then um said, "We have to balance the budget. You can't be adding a trillion dollar trillion dollars a year." if we had just been more fiscally responsible, we could have like really pushed this out for decades more.

Um, so I am very sad that that's never how this kind of thing plays out. But yeah, seeing us stay lean and mean would have been awesome. Seeing us patrol the seas, making sure that commerce can flow, making sure that we get our vig, whether that vig is just we get to export our inflation, whatever, but we we get our bite at the apple for doing what we're doing. Um, that world was awesome. That's what the 80s and 90s felt like. It was rad. So, that's where I would have wanted to see us.

I don't want to see us now coast. I don't want to see us become a country that used to be cool. Now, the bad news is I feel like we're already there. there. there. So, it's just a question. The story that I tell myself is that America is still savable. And I don't know that that's true. But I choose to wake up every day and act as if America is savable. Uh, but if people want to know why I'm focused on children's entertainment, I adults, forget about it.

But if you focus on kids, you actually can raise them to want to get strong. And that's my goal. my goal. my goal. I I don't necessar cuz I'm I'm I guess I want the Japan route because I feel like Japan is a superpower. No, Japan is in trouble. I feel like Japan is is a superpower with none of the war problems. They get invited to all the conferences. They have cool stuff. People, their tourism is high. You do realize and China are at hyper risk of armed conflict right now as we speak.

Yes. Yes. Yes. But we're also America's also in in like on like three different fronts. So well America's the world's policeman. So we never stopped uh being at war. We've effectively been I I ran the math at one point. It's like something like 87% of the years since I forget when the clock started since the Revolutionary War or something. We've been at war. It it's wild. that that war has touched that year. year. year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so yeah, it's pretty crazy. But um nonetheless, Japan has put themselves in an insanely weak economic position and culture has carried them a long way, but it will ultimately stop.

They have been stagnated for 40 years. Dude, that's rough. So I don't think Americans would stand for that. Like growth is a foundational pillar of human happiness. And when you're stagnated for 40 years, you don't have that. Now, the bad news is American wages have also stagnated. It's just if you owned assets, your life has gotten better and better and better and better and better. So, the last 40 years have been extraordinary. If you're in the asset owning class, which anybody could be, but most people will not.

Uh, so we've had this K-shaped economy for a long time. Um, in Japan, there's they're just stalled. Yeah, Yeah, they're still powerful. I get where you're coming from. They're one of the big economies, but yeah, they're not in an enviable position right now as they're the long tail of their yield curve is going up up up up up. I I guess it's just I'm realizing that it isn't s sustainable. So, I was just hoping that we would take that exit ramp, but I guess I mean the exit ramp is we're going to scale back to hemispheric power only.

That's part of what I think is happening in Venezuela. So Venezuela is about Venezuela, but it's also about China. And it's about letting China know cuz that oil Venezuela sells 90% I believe of its oil to China or China it must be that. that. that. Um so Um so Um so us taking that tanker is whether we intended to or not and I think we do intended to is sending a message to China that says this is our hemisphere get out. uh what China is doing around Japan's them saying, "Hey, Asia is our hemisphere.

America, get out." So, yeah, it's going to be the next decade is going to be dramatic. Uh well, you queued it up. Let's jump into it. Um the US seized a Venezuelan oil tanker. Um we'll get into the wise and everything about this, but I think it's interesting because we were just joking around how Venez they just wanted to go to Venezuela for oil. This is Iran and Iraq 2.0. And lo and behold, the first thing we take from them is some oil. Um, Fox News uh highlighted, hold on really fast.

The reason that we take oil is we are all economic units. Energy undergurs the cost of everything. Everything. This is all economics. And it's really interesting how when you try to boil things down to its like simplest building blocks, people do not understand themselves as an economic unit and they really don't understand energy. Energy controls the cost of toys, hair care products, um food. It's all just energy cost. Um I feel like you set us up, but I need you to say more. Like what do you mean?

Like well how was that pull through? Like so you said lo and behold they seal seize some oil. When people hear that I think they think yeah oil everybody wants oil. That's crazy. And they don't go to the next step which is oh everything is about economics. Got it. All these wars what are they about? Economics. Cool. Economics. Cool. Economics. Cool. Because once you understand like as you begin to ask okay let's not let economics be this vague concept. Let's really let it what does it mean to be an economic unit?

economic unit? economic unit? Once you start seeing yourself as an economic unit in the eyes of the government, all of that, then you get very disciplined about, oh, I need to be paying attention to my money. So, let me give you an example. What money is, money is a way for you to capture the value of your time. It's like a freezer for food. So forever if I killed a will the beast and I wanted to store the value of those calories I had to let you eat some as well as me because it would go bad before I would be able to finish it.

Then eventually we get freezers and I'm like I don't have to give you [ __ ] I'll put it in my freezer. It'll be there for me when I don't get the next one. I'm good. And so once you understand that you agree to a salary because you're like if I sit at home I can't capture the value of my time. I have let it dissipate into nothing. Um, it's a bit like the heat in the engine of your car. You can turn your heater on and now that heat blows into your car and it keeps you warm on a cold day.

When it is a day where you don't want that heat, it just dissipates into the atmosphere and you don't get to capture the value of that heat, right? You don't need it in that sense, but like if you don't turn your heater on on a cold day, it just goes out into the ether and you get no value from it. That's sitting at home and doing nothing. So if you want to capture the economic value of like uh your leisure time, you have to own assets because the asset can work for you when you're not there.

So now by owning an asset, you can capture the value of your leisure time. When you're exchanging money for a salary, you're saying, I want to put I want to capture that value in a way that I can essentially store in a freezer, and that's money. Now, this is why people need to be paranoid about inflation because it's like me unplugging your freezer. And so, yes, you have stored meat in that freezer, but that meat is going to go bad because you're going to start slowly thawing.

And when you see your life as like, oh, this is economics, then you start asking the right questions. M when you don't see your life as you as economic unit, everything gets very confusing because we're seizing oil tankers because of economic reasons. Like why does China care about losing that oil? They can go buy oil somewhere else because Venezuela is sending it to them illegally. China has leverage. This is why I say always know your leverage point. So China's like, "Hey, you've got to put up false flags.

You've got to turn your like corresponder off, all that. otherwise you're not going to be able to sell it. So I run the risk of pissing off the US by buying this oil from you. So I'm going to buy this [ __ ] at a huge discount. And Venezuela goes, "Okay, cool. I'll take the hit because you've got the leverage. I'm not supposed to be doing this. I've got all these sanctions against me. So fine." So now China's like, "Damn, the the seizing of this tanker caused global prices to go up by one or two%." Now, I think largely out of paranoia, not direct impact as a tanker doesn't have that much, but like the fact that America's going to be like, "Nope." Like, we're going to start because this is almost certainly not the only one.

We're going to seize tanker after tanker if they keep trying to send it. Um, so now people are like, "Oh, this is going to be an ongoing thing that's going to raise the prices because the cheap oil certainly isn't going to make its way to China." If cheap oil, like we're all benefiting from all the things we buy from China and it's so cheap. We're like, "Wow, China's amazing." because they do [ __ ] like this. So now as we seize tankers, that's going to cause prices to go up even more because we're all economic units.

Oil is an economic question. It's not about energy as much as it is about what that impact is on the economy because everything in the economy economy economy needs energy to produce. This is why AI becomes so important because it can drive energy costs effectively to zero, labor costs effectively to zero, and those are the only costs other than materials. But you begin ex they're limited, but you begin extracting them for free. for free. for free. Gotcha. Okay, you landed a plan on that. All right, let's jump into the US seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela that marks a major escalation in the crackdown against narot terrorism.

So, we're watching this today. We're doing fine. Had a good night last night and a great day this morning. morning. morning. And you come, you have a great time. So I'm Dana Parino and this is America's newsroom and truly Fox News threw a wonderful holiday video of the daring operation and it shows US forces swooping in from a helicopter above the vessel and then landing on the deck of the ship with their weapons drawn. At the White House, President Trump called the seizure more than justified from the standpoint of news.

As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. He really is starting to look tired. I'm not going to lie. Largest one ever seized actually and uh other things are happening. So you'll be seeing that later. It was seized for a very good reason. So now all of this it was seized for a very good reason. Um so to your point, there are sanctions in place right now. One because of the terrorist uh tariff war we're going through with China, but another one on Russia and Iran.

And one of the workarounds is Venezuela is kind of sending oil to those regions through proxies, back lots to your point, uh, illegal methods. illegal methods. illegal methods. Is this something that we think is happening more is going to get ramped up or is this kind of aggressively? So, uh, okay. How much of the official story this is about narco terrorism? You're going to hear that over and over and over and over. Uh, how much of that is true? Probably some, but I also think that this is probably largely a cover story.

So ultimately the US is going to have to establish itself firmly as owning the western hemisphere and China is going to establish itself firmly as owning the eastern hemisphere. And so now becomes a question of what are all the moves that they're going to make in order to establish that dominance. Um certainly going into Venezuela, controlling the oil, um controlling things that are being shipped if we have sanctions. Now, the wild thing is, God, the power really is amoral. I hate to say it, that's not going to change.

Okay? If I can get people with me that far, then the next statement will make sense, but people are going to choke on this one. this one. this one. Okay? Power is amoral. It's always going to be that way. It is. I'm actually changing my posture to deal with this. Uh, so you want to be the guy with all the power, but that's not going to stop you from being amoral. I would rather be in a world where America is the amoral [ __ ] that controls everything than be in a world where China or Russia or Iran or whoever else because I don't want anybody else uh to be the one in charge of all this because we just like think of it this way.

Uh a guy Maduro took control of his country. We decided that well that was illegal. the woman, the opposition party, the woman that won, she's the rightful ruler of Venezuela and you're illegitimate. And so we simply say because we have more guns that nah, she's rightful, we're going to sanction the [ __ ] out of you. Oh, and by the way, if you don't listen to what we say, we will send armed men on very angry helicopters to take all your [ __ ] We will point guns in their faces and we will say, "Knock knock.

This is ours now. We literally just took oil and a boat and we are not giving either of them back. Now, they say that we're going to follow all the legal procedures, but we control all of that. So, I want you to imagine a world where a shipment of stuff was about to make its way to America and China was like, "Nope, we have sanctions on you guys. They can't send you things. These are ours." We would have a fit. And so, I'm just like, "This is why you want to be the one in control." And I again, it's amoral, but amoral, but amoral, but knowing that it is going to happen, don't you want to be the one in control?

So, that one's tough for people cuz they wish, myself included, that the world weren't amoral, that power didn't act like that, that everybody was just chill, that humans don't expand until they hit a force that forces them to stop. They don't like this one anchors me a lot. You know the there's like two really big prizes for war in a historical context. historical context. historical context. Resources. Everybody knows that one. The other one's women. That's rough. That's what I was thinking about. Once you understand that for millennia, millennia, millennia, we killed other people because we're like women.

like women. like women. That's the human mind at work. So now you scale all this stuff up to the global level and we have the same algorithms running. Whatever is valuable, I want to control it. Uh and you're in this moment. Jeez. Jeez. Jeez. So yes, this is going to escalate. A lot of words around that very simple answer. Um and then when asked about what's he going to do with this oil, Trump uh happens to all of the oil aboard that ship. Here's what he said.

We're interested in the seizure of this tanker. What happens to the oil on that ship? ship? ship? Well, we keep it, I guess. Where does it go? Oh, what points does it go to? Well, you have to follow the tanker. You know, you're a good nman. Just follow the tank. I assume we're going to keep the oil. the oil. the oil. The attorney general. It's It's our oil now. Literally, look at me. I'm the captain now. now. now. Yeah. Oh, god. Uh, yeah. So the good news is that because you've got global power plays, like none of this just explodes and runs violently out of control, it will be a far more controlled escalation where China and the US are doing these different power moves and checking each other and building alliances and all that and dealing with their economies.

China will have problems sometimes, we'll have problems other times, and so it'll keep it from like just becoming like this crazy flash point into World War II. But there isn't enough between us and World War II to um make any of us happy. So that's the we've got to be very careful, very thoughtful. very thoughtful. very thoughtful. Peace will not happen by accident. Uh so in in essence, this started off as they have drugs that were going on and now we're now we're now we're that's the cover story.

Remember, politicians will do and say anything to gain and retain power. That's it. Every word out of their mouth is spin. Every word out of everyone's mouth is spin. Uh my wife is constantly spinning me. I'm constantly spinning my wife. And what when you choose between two words, you are spinning, but politicians really do it to a I mean it may go beyond amoral. It it's it's bad. They will do and say whatever they need to. All right. In AI breakthrough news, Elon and El Salvador launched the world's first nationwide AI tutoring program.

I feel like you've been banging this drum for a minute. This is incredible people. So I wrote the deep dive. It comes out on Monday, right? The 900 days. Uh so talked about this on Wednesday. Uh I'm writing this thing about we've got 900 days of capitalism left. It's a claim made by Emmod Most Emmod Most Emmod Most and I'm like, "Yeah, I agree with that." And then I'm writing it. I'm like, "Oh god, is it really going to happen that fast?" And then as I'm like really looking at the building blocks, I'm like, "Is it going to take that long?" So, it's uh things almost never happen as fast as you expect them to.

But remember, even when you're not hearing any new output from AI, it's still all happening. And it it really is moving unbelievably fast. I wish I could give people the same sense that I had. So, yesterday you were saying I was um we have a guy here, his name is Brett. Shout out to Brett. Uh 3D artist. And uh Brett works on Project Kaizen, our video game. and he comes over to my desk literally, so this is Friday. He came to my desk on Wednesday and he's like, "Tomorrow, um, I'm going to need like the next thing that you want me to work on." And I was like, "Okay, cool.

So now imagine I'm standing flatfooted. I don't have I" He wants a character to build. I don't have one. I jump into AI and I create one literally just like clickity clack. It gives me a version and I'm like, "Cool, create this character, but I don't like this. I don't like that." And he then goes, "Clicketity clack." And from the image that I created using AI, he creates a 3D asset using AI that is that character. And then of course AI like smears things and does stuff like that.

And so he goes in and because he's a very talented 3D artist, he just changes it all. And now we have a dope 3D character 3D character 3D character that I love. And it happened in like two days days days because I remember how long that used to take. Did dude I had to pay. Artists are expensive. Okay. Uh art for a video game as of today accounts for about like 43% of the total cost. And these are like hundreds of millions of dollars for a game.

So, you're going to spend on a AAA game $100 million on the art. And I remember hiring the best artists that we could find. Truly extraordinary artists. They know who they are. Shout out to you guys. You've made such an impact on Kaizen. But they would spend a week, two weeks just on the concept art. art. art. Gez. Gez. Gez. So AI has already had massive impact that people don't understand. M I am convinced that a lot of the softening in the job market is just people going actually don't need to hire that person because we can get so much more done with just one person.

So this to me is uh a very big deal because you can imagine can imagine can imagine what's this going to do to teachers? How many teachers will we need? If you've got an AI that has been trained on the entire corpus of human knowledge that can explain anything at least as good but probably in most cases better far better than the teachers that can tailor every answer to that exact students comprehension level. And this this is like um there's not to keep bringing the show up, but death by lightning.

Garfield gets shot, but he doesn't die for quite a while, like a month or something after uh the initial gunshot. So, this is the gunshot that killed traditional education. It's just going to take a while for it to die. But this is the shot that killed it. It's it's going to die now. This is at the nation state level, man. And when people start looking at El Salvador, and they're like, "Wait a second, these kids now have more time for recess, the school, let's say we cut the cost in half for the school, and the educational outcomes are three or 4x better.

How will anybody be able to say that that's a problem?" And because they're already running pilot programs like this in Texas, we know what the it takes the kids two hours with AI to get increased educational outcomes that they were getting from whatever eight hours of schooling. schooling. schooling. So we already know this works. This is just scale. This isn't like a question mark. Is it going to work? Is it not? It's going to work. Traditional education is already dying. Guaranteed to be different within 10 years for sure.

Uh so yeah, this is a big moment. Yeah, I feel like it's already fractling at the university level. It just has to kind of get doodled down to the K through 12 stuff. Any technology that offers an advantage will come into existence. Every parent who is obsessed with the future prospects of their children, and not all parents are, fair enough. But every parent that's obsessed with the educational outcomes of their children will insist that they're enrolled in a school that uses AI once they become aware of what's happening in Texas once they start seeing the which again those results are already in.

And then once they see what goes on in El Salvador and so there will be customer demand for this. it will start with the wealthy because they don't have to care what the government funds but I think the US will go down this path very quickly if they keep positive results. Yeah, it's it's interesting. I I'm on the fence because it's like I like it but is it too new? Um but is it too new? Um I mean look there are going to be outcomes that we don't anticipate there always are but um in education no I don't think this is a problem.

I do think that you need a human at the front of the room uh in the beginning in the transitional phase. That will probably largely go away because what people are trying to convince themselves of is that AI will never be able to be that encouraging thing that made the kid believe in themselves. And I'm here to tell you that within 3 years, AI will be so much better at making that kid believe in himself that we are all going to struggle with the one thing that we have to worry about with AI, which is that when something can do everything better than us, where do we derive meaning and purpose?

And even if you'll grant me, okay, let's say that it doesn't happen in three years. Let's say it happens in 10 or even 15. Bro, unless you're 95 when you're hearing this, you're dealing with that in your lifetime. So um if you just had a baby today, this is before they graduate what used to be known as high school, which will not be the same thing in 15 years. But But But so yeah, a AI doesn't just get good at AI things. AI becomes more human than human.

It will be able to mimic anything that we want it to mimic. Now, it itself may have a totally different experience, but it will be able to mimic human behavior better than anyone else. the glint in its eye, um the way that it knows just when to encourage or when to push a student, all of that. AI will even be able to detect patterns deeply enough to know when to disappoint the child so that the kid has like a little thing, like a little beef, you know, just enough to be frustrated, like enough to give him a chip on his shoulder.

shoulder. shoulder. Yes. Yes. Dude, I'm telling you, like people really underestimate what a 30,000 IQ is going to look like. Sheesh. Um, on the backs of that, somebody said that Sam Alman was asked about raising kids with AI. He's like, "I can't imagine not raising my child with AI." with AI." with AI." Facts, dude. Dude, are people not using AI? Like, when I use AI, I'm just like, this is scandalous. Where was this when I was in high school? And I had to go to the local library of the local university, which was already small and ridiculous.

And I had to randomly pick up books that my teachers were like, "Look up John Lock." I don't know the [ __ ] John Lock is. Okay. And so you literally just start flipping randomly through pages hoping a sentence or a you know like a title chapter title catches your eye so that you can go find this and then like turn that into like a an essay. So wild instead of actually being able to uh engage with AI and be like all right explain it to me like I'm a fifth grader.

All right, explain it to me like I'm a senior in high school. All right, explain it to me now like I'm in college. And you can go through all of that from over the course of like 20 minutes, dude. It's so wild. So anyway, listen, if you want to worry about AI, you we should show the McDonald's thing. I think I put it in the page. That one scares me just because that one is Oh god, there's something so dystopian about it. So that one freaks me out.

And then uh where are you going to derive your meaning and purpose? Th those are like the areas of paranoia, but there's so much cool stuff that's gonna come out of AI. It's wild. It's so wild. Um, here is, if you guys can see, this is the fully automated McDonald's at Fort Worth, Texas. It's a pilot one right now. So, ordering is done at a kiosk, and I think everybody's now used to McDonald's with a kiosk. It's like split. Um, but the thing is like the actual delivery of the food is also automated.

Mhm. automated. Mhm. automated. Mhm. Um the only thing that's done by humans right now is food preparation, but if we look at the Chipotle bot that Chipotle is now uh piloting in another city that's making its guac force, those robots are already being in process, too. So, we're definitely going to see the first completely automated restaurant probably in 2026. At least a pilot of one. Definitely. Yeah, Definitely. Yeah, Definitely. Yeah, man. As a child of the 80s, I remember what it was like to go into a McDonald's and they had like the big play area and they had all the people behind the counter and you had to wait in line.

I don't know, there's something really enjoyable about it. Like the whole experience was awesome. I cannot imagine kids today responding to McDonald's the way that I responded to McDonald's as a kid. So, there is something sad about that, but whatever. That's nostalgia bait. So, bait. So, bait. So, they're going to miss they're going to miss the best thing in the world, though, and that's the hookup. Like everybody had a friend that worked at a fast food ice cream, some type of food establishment, and you'll go when your friend is working and you'll order something else and they he'll throw a Big Mac or something in there.

I buy a small fry, he'll give me a medium fry, and I'm like, "Thanks, Rob. I appreciate you, bro." And it was just a good time. Like now it's going to be Rob is a real person. Rob is a shout out to Rob. But he used to hook us up when we used to go to McDonald's. Uh and I just feel like that like that like that I don't know. It's gone. But here's the thing. They're going to grow up because I'm going to make this a reality if nobody else.

They're going to grow up playing Project Kaizen inside the game. They're going to be able to get these things called exotics. called exotics. called exotics. They'll the exotic will help them do these very difficult challenges inside the game. And then they're going to have like a real one, like a Teddy Ruxbin version of that character inside the game. Both the physical one and the character inside the game will be aware of each other. So, they'll have persistent memory across like whether it's the physical one or the in-game one.

one. one. And eventually they're going to have like literal robots walking around with them, walking them to school, listening about their day. Listen, I get why people can see this from a dystopian standpoint and we are going to have to put like anything this will escalate into a problem and if you let your kid isolate and they only know AI, like that's going to be bad. But if we instead curb some of this stuff and go, "Okay, this is giving us a lot of free time.

and this is driving costs down and now we do things to bring people together with some of that extra free time. time. time. Uh I think it will be absolutely incredible. And for anybody out there that's like what I really want is um either a like 4 day work week or a no day work week. I just really want my life to be leisure. You should be trying to implement AI as fast as humanly possible. And you can use all of the cost reductions to go be the most human thing ever to totally detach all of that.

But you'll be living in a world of abundance where things are basically free. So once the AI is here, you can decide how you want to engage with it. Obviously, all of this caveat caveat that it doesn't enslave or kill us. But um uh that just I don't know, maybe I'm totally delusional, but that strikes me as very low odds. And so it will be if people can handle the meaning and purpose thing, then it's going to be incredible. So this is where the future is asking you one question.

Are you Are you Are you a Minecraft player type or not? Because if you have to be force-fed your quests, well, I mean, then you can just ask your bot to tell you what to do and you go and do the the questing that the bot wants, go to the grocery store and get these eggs. Um, otherwise, if you can come up with the your own things that you're trying to do, hey, it's going to be so incredible. Oh my god, I hate that analogy. Maybe it's cuz I don't like Minecraft.

Well, that's the problem. So, Minecraft, greatest video game ever made. Uh, I think it's still the most played video game and it is entirely you have to be self-directed. self-directed. self-directed. I love it. That that is a game like I'm going to start doing job interviews where I'm just like, "Show me how many hours you've spent in Minecraft." If it's over 10,000, I'm like, "All right, this guy is very self-directed." It's my level of spectrum. I like it. Hop on. Hop on. Um, speaking of AI, chat just released 5.2.

Mason, I'm putting you on the spot because you are my AI person. I feel like every time there's new AI update used yesterday used yesterday used yesterday you were the first person that told me Gemini was legit. He's like, "Yo, Gemini is good. We got to like use it now." So, yes, he used it yesterday. Tell me about the experience. What you think about it? So, I was actually working on coding something yesterday uh like a side project. project. project. Nice. Nice. Nice. I started on 5.1 and they did the model switch in the middle of like while I was in a chat like doing like a full thing.

And so then it switched models, lost all my context, and then I had to feed it every single file of the app I was building back. So that was annoying, but it was very good at like now it's giving me full outputs instead of just like go change this thing, but then there's five bugs I have to chase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been nice. Far fewer bugs. That's been good. I haven't uh been able to test like how good it actually writes long form writing, but we'll see.

I seen like the personality mode kind of I got that problem like do you want to keep it casual? Do you want to talk about do you want to be funny witty? Do you change any of those settings? Have you guys like messed with that? Uh I have I despise like the really like Grock unhinge mode and all that stuff. That is so wonky to me. I don't enjoy that at all. But I do like the where it feels like a collaborator. So I've given mine like a whole bunch of instructions on how to treat me.

Always push back. Uh don't overhype me. Like, but at the same time, if something's cool, like, yeah, like let's get in. Let's be excited. I'm an excitable person. I want to see that reflected back. Um, and so yeah, when you can find that sweet spot that's really tailored to your personality, it is a lot of fun. But for me, when once it starts spilling into like it's being silly or bombastic, I'm just like a cool throw up. G um right under uh Sam Alman's announcements of it, somebody threw up this graphic and I just kind I like actually laughed out loud because I feel like this is where we are.

like introducing the world's most powerful model and then it's just whatever company has a press release of that day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because um so we're just going in like this circle but literally but that's how fast this is improving. That's what I'm saying. You're not waiting on one company. It's like yo you get your like huge leap forward with open a today. Open AI today. You get your huge leap forward a week from now with Gemini and they're just like going against each other. This is why competition is so brilliant because these guys are all trying to beat each other.

There are some um changes to Figma where they're trying to compete with Photoshop. Yeah, I've seen that. Oh my god. Like the editing capabilities on a photo is crazy. You now just circle the area, tell it what you want it to be, and it just becomes that it's so wild. And it really does seem to understand design principles. So, it's not like it just tweaks everything. Yeah. If you guys can see your uh screens right now, now would be the time to look. Like this is completely crazy that you're able to do this kind of stuff.

Oh man, just it's so intelligent. Look at that. Do you know how hard that stuff is to do if you actually have to do it? Now look, I'd want to I would love this. Look at this. Look, look. Isolate Brunk. Now it's an element. Oh my god, that's so wild. So look, they're going to show you the best thing. They're going to have done 30 of these and two of them came out well and they don't show you the 28 that sucked. But this is pretty impressive.

Nice. impressive. Nice. impressive. Nice. Um, Um, Um, I haven't seen like a negative headline in AI in a while. I think they fixed character AI kind of fell off. They put a bunch of restrictions in there, so no kids are being coached in how to do suicide. It seems like it's been a bumpy road to get there, but now we're finally starting to see some of the payoff. Disney just announced a deal with OpenAI, so now in Sora, you'll be able to use Disney characters. I'm surprised that Disney was one of the first to move.

They've been so protective. I'd be very curious to see what all the limitations are. Uh because Disney is notoriously sinister when it comes to like the way that they treat their IP. They've got this gloss of like being really friendly, but behind the scenes they're just suing everybody. I feel like that's how Nintendo is too. Yes. Nintendo, same thing. So wild that these like kid-friendly companies are just just just Is it But if this Disney deal goes well, is this the end of like copyright IP?

Like Like Like no, this would be the beginning. This is where it's like the IP holders are actually taking steps to make sure that they have ownership over their IP that you either can or can't based on what they deem to be like the right way to use this. Th this is very interesting because now OpenAI can just openly admit models trained on all that stuff and so it's trained on it but you can only use it in these ways and this is going to be how companies maintain a level of control over this.

And I've long believed like these companies, look, they're so big that they don't have to think about it this way. But as somebody who's small, like I really want people to say mod Project Kaizen, yes. Like the more people that are playing this and using it, yes, please. Uh I want people to create fan art. I want people to be able to build assets that we put into the game that they can sell to other people so that other people can make money building inside of Kaizen.

That's how you get noticed. So, the fact that these guys are so stringent, like not wanting like even like imagine you go to a comic book convention, dude, they all stop people from selling like fan art of Mickey Mouse. It's like, bro, this guy is just trying to like scrape by a living like making art. Like, Jesus Christ. So, um I get why they're not going to let somebody build a t-shirt company off their back. I understand that. But like when you've got a guy who's making let's say $20,000 a year uh selling fan art that incorporates your character or whatever going after those guys just h it's crazy.

It's like going after a high school because they didn't pay you royalties for doing your Pippen or whatever. It's like come on man. Uh all right so uh Jerome Pal Jerome too late pal as Trump calls him just cut the rates. It was a 25% basis cut. I was hoping for like three or FOUR POINTS, BUT BUT BUT OH, CUT. OH, CUT. OH, CUT. YEAH, let's do it. What? What? What? So I can so I can get on the property ladder and then I can become a boomer that's not gonna sell and not gonna go anywhere and and the prices of the properties would just skyrocket.

They would remain out of reach. That's the problem. So So So I feel like you just got to be the first one there cuz just like in co like March to June it you was cooking if you got it but after that it just ran away. If you could be like standing you got all your paperwork done, it's ready. Your fingers over the buy button. I wouldn't even put it on the sheet. I wouldn't say nothing. I'm like, the rates. Hey, hey, hey, Mason. Now's the time.

It green light. We'll get on the property ladder and then we'll tell all the other people to stop being lazy and get avocado toast. There you go. I was so excited. I was so excited. True. I like it. Anyway, um you have a longer uh more interconnected reason on why they're dropping these rates even though inflation is kind of having some worry. Uh walk us through it. You want me to jump right to the chart? How do you want to? This is fiscal dominance. Professor Tom, like set us up.

fiscal dominance as far as the I can see they don't have an option. So they talked to big game for as long as they could but the reality is they're in 2026. Ah yeah the graph. So if you're looking at your screen you'll see this in 2026 we have an ungodly amount of debt that has to be refinanced and there was no way that they were going to refinance it at the higher interest rates. Not possible. You bankrupt America. So that that graph right there shows you exactly why the Fed had no choice.

No matter what they were saying out loud, there was just no way around this. Uh and so I had said a while ago like, hey, I don't know why they're not lowering the rates so that they can uh deal with that. Here we are. Now, the bad news is it's actually terrible that we have to do this because it's going to cause more money to flood into the system. You're going to get more bubbles created everywhere. This is one of those you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

Man, uh fiscal dominance is a bad place to be. Uh as a reminder to everybody, fiscal dominance is where you're in a position that the government is running deficits so extreme that the Fed basically has no good options because if they don't lower the rates, then they basically freeze the credit market because nobody can afford the interest payments, including the US government. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Uh and if they do lower the interest rates, then they flood the system with cheap money and you just get bubbles forming everywhere.

forming everywhere. forming everywhere. Uh you also inflate the currency. So um it's bad. It's bad. Like there there is no good option. You don't want to be in that position. We are in that position. And we're still Drew. This is the part that drives me crazy. If people are like, "Okay, cool. I'm only going to vote for politicians and policies that will balance the budget." Great. Okay. Hardship got to be austere. Never fun. But we got to do it. Uh we're not doing that. We're just like, uh it'll be somebody else's problem.

Everybody's betting I'm going to be out of office by the time this thing blows up. Or like if you ever heard the phrase, um how did you go broke first slowly and then all at once? I believe it was from Ernest Hemingway of all people. Um that is what happens. Like you try to deny deny deny that you have a problem for as long as you can because you don't want to face like I've been telling people one thing but the reality is something else. Like people just don't want to face that.

And so they drive off the cliff. This is Oh my god, Drew. I actually It's like a friend of a friend kind of thing, but I'm way too close to somebody who actually killed his wife and kids. Here's the real story. Can you believe this? So guy's broke, like broke. Lost his job like eight months ago or something. Was pretending to go to work every day. every day. every day. kids want to go to Disneyland. So, he's like 100%. Let's go to Disneyland. Now, he knows he can't take them to Disneyland because he's broke.

Gets closer and closer and closer. Now, instead of saying, "Bring the family together and say, listen. Really hard news. And I'm devastated as a man, but the reality is I lost my job eight months ago. I've been lying." You certainly say all this to the wife. I've been lying. I'm horrified. I want to get it together. We're gonna have to reduce. We're gonna have to move into a small apartment. I know this is going to be tough, but we're going to be resilient. We're going to get through this.

Here's the plan. Let's go. Instead of doing that, he murdered them all on the night. They were packed, man. They were packed for Disneyland and then he killed them. She like that is so crazy. That's what this is. This is like every economist knows where this goes. You go bankrupt as a country. you must default at some point, but instead of balancing the budget so that we can at least like push that as far out into the future as possible so we can slowly deflate the bubble, they're just like, "Well, eventually I'll just wake up and [ __ ] kill them." kill them." kill them." That's so crazy.

That's why I'm speechless. Yeah. This is why I'm just like, man, no one wants austerity. I get it. But you need it. You need it with you. You you you have to balance the budget. You have to. It's it is a non-negotiable. Yeah. Um with the 25% basis point cut based off of this chart alone, we saved about 30 to$25 billion just by refinancing in that small h like quarter of a percent. That's $20 billion that I guess takes it off like we're refinancing. But so you can even tell that they a small cut which isn't making ripples through society.

It still is another 25 like it substantial. So that's only a quarter of a percent. We can only imagine, you know, 8 trillion coming through. So I'll be very curious to see how far they take this. take this. take this. Like is this the last cut? Probably not. And if Trump is able to effectively take over the board of the Fed through loyalists, loyalists, loyalists, how far do they cut, man? That's the part that really scares me. And Trump's already playing a game of chicken where it's like, we're going to grow our way out of this.

Are we like uh I'm not so sure. Uh I think that we can on a long enough timeline with AI, but like you're gonna give me got to give me like seven yearsish. Uh and we will have such a bubble. If we lower rates, we'll have an insane bubble problem. And if we don't lower rates, then we'll freeze up the credit markets. So it's like, oh god, this is going to be so interesting, man. This is going to be very interesting in in a uh train wrecky way, but nonetheless, but nonetheless, but nonetheless, um and this is also on the back that home prices in the US, they went negative for the first time in over two years, just meaning net prices have gone down versus going up.

Um so it seems like corrections are starting to happen. They have to listen, job market is softening, I believe, largely because of AI. Uh job market is also softening because we've had a K-shaped recovery, but you certainly the people that don't own assets, their dollars worth less and less and less. Prices have been going up. Uh you also deported self-epported like if you put them all together, it's like 2.5 million between the whatever 900,000 or something the that we've like manhandled and booted out of the country.

Then you've got 1.5 milish that have self deepported. And so we've got uh 2.5 million people, some meaningful percentage of those were competing for houses, had bought houses. People are saying that banks are now having to deal with foreclosures because people got deported. That meant that they were illegal, but somehow got governmentbacked loans to buy properties. That's crazy. So anyway, you put all of that together and now you've got declining home prices. Now only It's only been two years since you had it. Two years ago is not like everybody was like, "Oh my god, yay." Yeah.

yay." Yeah. yay." Yeah. Uh but at least it's trending in the right direction. And listen, I get it. I'm a homeowner. I have a lot of money tied up above my property. And for my own sake, I want the value of my property to go down. You've got to have a thriving middle class. You've got to have a thriving middle class. Like I just don't get how people cannot put two and two together on that one. So, uh yeah, housing prices have to come down ideally by building more houses.

Build more houses. That is the punch line. But yeah, Austin just had a um a graphic that came out. They had over 1500 home apartments that were under $1,000. And I'm talking about like in downtown was in the map. Um Caleb Um Caleb Um Caleb because they uh have let more apartments be built. be built. be built. That was just Yeah. more uh housing options. options. options. I also think people are starting to leave Austin if I read that correctly at the headline level. Like there for a while during co like Austin was just like the place to be.

Uh and now we've got people that are like 105 in the summer. No thanks. uh and they're piecing out. I don't know like if the outflows are already that substantial or not. Yeah, it's definitely a model though of the reg when you deregulate housing and you have more supply the overall price for sure. Houston is a phenomenal example of that. I when I wrote the deep dive on the housing problem, I didn't realize that Houston was like forever. They're just like yeah build of course like whatever the market will bear go for it.

and it's just kept housing prices nice and steady where everywhere else is like going up and to the right. Um well, it seems like there is some policy changes that are happening to get us more fiscally responsible. On one side, we have Senator Ran Paul. Somebody shouted him out in the chat. I forgot who that is, but your boy's doing something. Um he has started the movement to audit the Fed. Um my investigation uncovered over 600 billion in quiet payouts the Fed made to major banks while taxpayers got nothing but inflation and losses.

Um, these are some witnesses that are doing to talk about their fed uh their uh testimony, but ultimately he wants to audit the Fed and the secrecy and restore sound money. I know this is like music to your ears, bro. This this is like he's flirting now. Like, yeah, this is exactly what we need. Are we going to get it? Probably not. Um, but if if we could make it understandable to the public the public the public why central banking is so bad, we could. That's how you start to get to fiscal responsibility, being able to balance the budget, getting people excited about um, um, um, wanting to grow, but wanting to grow in a way that's actually sustainable, that's built on like a real solid foundation.

This is how I feel. the top of the show for anybody that that wasn't with us, we were talking about Project Kaizen. Somebody was asking if we had merch like t-shirts. Yes, we sold out. We never restocked and we didn't restock because because because um when we were first building Kaizen, I was really trying to build hype and the game at the same time and it was just a fool's errand because I was so excited about it. And so I've had fantasies of doing all kinds of things from trading cards and like anime and all that stuff.

And I was just like, hold on, people have to care about the game first and foremost. get people playing the game and then that's like my bright line. If enough people are playing the game, then I'll start doing ancillary stuff. But you got to focus on making the game dope first. Like I want people to want like all the growth and the money and yeah, let's go. Like I want them to want a booming economy, but it's got to be based on we've got a balanced budget.

We're only using a reasonable amount of debt and then from there we can do all these cool things. But it will force people to be fiscally responsible. But while you have the central bank, you don't have to do any of that cuz you play this crazy shell game which causes like this insane like 150year decline because it's 150 years. Nobody gives a [ __ ] And so they're just like, "Ah, that'll be my grandkids problem. I don't have to think about it." And so they just let it play out.

But we are all unfortunate enough to be the ones that are now music just stopped and we realize, uhoh, there's not a lot of chairs. chairs. chairs. Uh so we have to deal with this problem. But you're not going to be able to deal with it until you can get people to understand why a central bank is such a problem. And I just don't know if you're ever going to be able to, which is why every empire just drives off the cliff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um it's interesting too cuz Okay, Rand Paul wants to audit the Fed.

And then on the other side, um Scott Bessent, we could throw this up too. Uh Scott Bessent just rep prioritized a financial stability stability oversight council. It was one of the councils that was formed after DoddFrank. The priority of it originally was uh risk prevention um was risk prevention. So that way banks aren't taking uh predatory loans, things like that. But he rep prioritized it to make growth its first order cons concern versus like stopping risk. And economic security is financial stability. So we need to get people economically good before we start worrying about the people that are able to afford the predatory loans and kind of go chasing the wrong way.

So one of the things that he's starting um that he formed was four uh working groups. The first one is a market resilient working group that focuses on treasury markets short-term wholesale funding, equity and credit markets. A second group is household resilience, household balance sheets, debt saving, insurance and credit access, housing and mortgage. I feel like that's the middle class one focus right there. AI working group and how AI can strengthen financial system resilience um risk AI AI can pose to um financial stability. And then the last one is crisis preparedness and tech risk about cyberuh attacks disruptions at key service providers risk from advanced technologies including quantum computing and geopolitical and techdriven threats.

So it seems like on one sec on one side Rand Paul is trying to audit the Fed so that way more trans more transparency can be shown and then Scott Besson is saying hey we need to start figuring out how we can grow our way out of this from a let's not worry about chasing bankers and trying to throw them in jail. let's instead worry about what in the market we can do to make sure more people can get on that ladder. So, it does seem like there's a a bunch of different options to approach to fix that money debt problem.

Um, so this does seem like a good sign. We'll see what a good like a good sign. We'll see what actually comes out of with this, what legislation they come up with that can actually help versus it just being another council that talks about it, releases a report, and then nothing changes. So, changes. So, changes. So, here's how I feel about this. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. We can all agree that beating your wife is bad. Yes. Yeah. I think Okay. Okay. Put it three married people in the room.

Yes. Yes. Okay. But if you're going to beat your wife, don't do it in a visible way. Get a phone book. Like distribute the blunt force trauma, right? Like things that are going to be easy for her to cover up with her clothes. Uh I need we need an allegedly button. We are not giving legal advice. This is what Bess is doing. This is still top down. We have a central bank. We just think we're smarter and we're going to beat our wife in the right way.

And I just want to say stop beating your [ __ ] wife. Stop beating your wife. How hard is that? Stop beating your wife. That don't try to beat your wife better. Stop. So this is like some talk about how we beat her better. Now somebody somebody said tell them you're taking them to Disney World. That's dark. That's dark. That's dark. That is very That's dark. But that's my type of humor. humor. humor. That's my type of humor. That's so dark. My bad. Go ahead. So Oh god.

Is this is this a step in the right direction? Probably. But like if you actually want to solve the problem, you I get it's a very big change, but you've got to balance your budget. You've got to if you're going to keep the Fed, it has to be with a balanced budget. You cannot both have a machine that lets you print infinite money and a spending plan that lets you spend infinite money. That is how you get yourself in trouble. My ideal would be that you shut down the Fed.

My ideal would be that you have um constitutional amendments that amendments that amendments that control spending so that people you want a little bit of debt and you never want it to escalate. And so by putting in rules that like stop that, that would be so much better for the American people, for the middle class, like it yeah, that that's where I want to see this all go. Um, I think about this a lot in video game development. There's two ways to do things. You can do it from the top down, and we've all played games, most the vast majority of games are developed from the top down.

So, you're in a level that's handcrafted. They're going to get you to turn where they want you to turn. They're going to place lights in certain places that draw your eye and all of that. And they try to make it feel like you're not on rails, but you're on rails. There's only so many places that you can go. That's way number one. That's top down. I'm going to tell you how to play this game. Then there's way number two, which is what we're doing with Project Kaizen.

Everything is procedurally generated. You're building it like you're trying to create a real universe. And you're saying there are a set of rules. And then whatever comes out of those set of rules, it is what it is. And so there are rules that generate the terrain. There's rules that generate caves. There's rules that generate monsters. There's rules that generate everything inside the game. And so you don't go in and say, "Ah, I want this to turn to the right or whatever." You go say, "I'm going to tweak rules." And then it it changes across the whole thing.

And then people play the game how they want to play the game. The free market is where you set rules and then you let whatever happens happens. And if that means that a bank fails or whatever, then the bank fails. If that means that somebody loses their house, they lose their house. If that means that a company collapses, the company collapses. Whatever. The rules are the rules. And if you felt like, oh, that like we didn't want that particular circumstance to lead to something bad, then you see within your confines, can you change the rules?

But then again, whatever plays out plays out. But instead, we pick winners and losers. We're now investing directly in companies. That's [ __ ] wild. That is China. What are you doing? Um, you say, "Ah, we're going to save this company, but not that one." During the 2008 crisis, right? We actually bailed some companies and let other companies fail. Uh, banks, same thing. We're going to save these banks, but not these banks. Like, that is crazy, man. So, what you end up doing is enriching the wealthy people and further impoverishing the poor people.

We've all seen it play out. like it happens over and over and over. So, you've got to set rules that allow people to be economically mobile up and down. People have got to be able to lose. Uh if people can't lose, then you get a cast system. And that's where we are now. So, I I'm I think that of my options, the current administration is slightly better, but it really is it's a better form of abuse, but it's still [ __ ] abuse. Yeah. It it seems like I get what we're supposed to do, but it just seems like we're too far gone at this point.

Yes, almost certainly. So, it's not no longer a question of if, it's just a question of when and how prepared you can be for the when. Yes. Like, so please understand, I really hate the way that Bitcoiners will say, Tom, what's the problem? Bitcoin is a life raft. just exit the abusive system into this better system. And um they are correct. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. But the reason I hate that is that most people won't do that because they don't understand it. understand it. understand it. Whatever the default system is is the one that I will judge as being moral or immoral.

immoral. immoral. And the default system, the way that you have to pay your taxes right now is US dollars. and US dollars are being manipulated to the disadvantage of anyone who doesn't own assets. You're you're you are being knowingly stolen from, but they use words that don't make it feel like that. And so yeah, I uh I always end my deep dives with the equivalent of here are your life rafts because at the end of the day, none of us can control what happens at the level of society, but we can control what we do individually.

But I really am distressed as a person. Mhm. I'm just distressed that the system is just going to break and some people will be just fine because they will have long ago jettisoned themselves from the abusive system. abusive system. abusive system. But it's still rough to like sit back and watch. Like it is cold comfort to me that 70% of Americans during the Great Depression still had a job when 30% of Americans Americans Americans don't and they're like really like out on the streets. Just doesn't feel good.

So anyway, I don't see a way around it. Uh I'm not delusional enough to think that I can change everybody's mind. Unfortunately, if we if we went the full austerity route, there would be that 30% number would be would be would be directionally correct. Because think about it, okay, we slashed entitlements, we cut military spending in half, we have a budget that instead of being 1.5 trillion over budget, we are now two trillion underbudget. And we just knocked that debt down in like six, seven years, we cut it in half.

It's awesome. But those six, seven years, those entitlements reform, cutting the military spending. There's going to be some old retired pensions that going to be impacted. There's some kids that are just in the military just so they can get a charger and not have to pay house. Like there's a lot of people that will get impacted by it that would some will go into the private sector and that would be awesome, but there would be like 30% kind of on the streets thing. Is that Is that Is that You ready for the really bad news?

I can't believe that people don't talk about this. Uh official unemployment rates like 4%. There's 8% of prime working age people that have just ejected out of the job market. They're not even counted. So your real number is like 12%. 12%. 12%. 12%. Bro, that's almost halfway. And we're just like, we're going to UBI him. [ __ ] that. That's how you bankrupt the country. country. country. Like, hey, [ __ ] Get to work. This is where I'm just like dead shark eyes. I've got exactly zero empathy for somebody who's able-bodied and is just like, "Yeah, I don't I don't want to work." Uh, yeah, go work.

Go pick strawberries. Go mow lawns. Go whatever. Like, get a jo OB. So, people will not do that until they are pressured to do that because if they can get free money, they will get free money. money. money. They'll get free money. And so, it's like uh what? So yeah, we you have to balance the budget. And if that means that we've got to stop a whole lot of entitlements, we have to stop a whole lot of entitlements. If we keep in mind, who gets hurt by all of that?

The very people that they're saying they're helping. The middle class just gets wiped out. So if you're in the middle class and you're like, "Oh, I'd rather be poor and not have to work," then I'm going to lose. But to be eligible for ed uh benefits, you're not in the middle class. You're in the poor class. Correct. So, people are intentionally making themselves poor so that they qualify for the free [ __ ] I'm saying that's parasitic. What are you doing? You've got a kid that you're letting live in the basement or so.

Lisa and I briefly were looking at getting into housing. Thankfully, I could tell something bad was about to happen with the housing market. We got out in like 2007, right before it all went bust. But anyway, during that time, we were looking at houses and there was a house we went to where there was a woman who was stuck on her couch. She was like 650 at least and I'd never seen it in person and I was like godamn there were cockroaches. When I say everywhere you think everywhere and I was like if she can't get up how does she stay that fat?

Now imagine that thought bubble like above my head and in walks a kid and hands her a popsicle. And I was like, "You've got to be [ __ ] kidding. There's no obese people on the Serengeti because you get eaten or you starve to death. So, you stay lean enough to [ __ ] move around. But if you've got people that will bring you the popsicle, you can get to 650 lbs." I'm just saying stop with that. Don't enable. That is crazy. That's abusive. Like, that's abusive.

You can't do that. Like that kid is mean-spirited. That kid is like, "Fuck you, [ __ ] You're going to stay on the couch. Here's a popsicle." Because she's a drug addict. And so he's just bringing her the drugs. That's wild. I would think ill of you if you were like, "Bro, can we rap early today? I got to get the heroin to my mom." Be like, "What? like, "What? like, "What? Bro, you can't go take heroin to your mom. What are you doing?" So, uh, that's how I read that situation.

So anyway, we are going to bankrupt the country allowing people to like do nothing. That's crazy. You can't do that. I never wanted to prompt something in AI so much by right now of like imagine this for a second. We go into housing and it's just like a cartoon version of Tom and Lisa going to a house and then they go and then rat cow like that. That that's Wow. that's Wow. that's Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh animated short playing out. That's that's what I mean.

Like I was literally like directing it in my head like, "Yo, that would be visually um hilarious." hilarious." hilarious." Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Um Um Um terrifying is more like it, but yes. Yes. Uh is that is that the broader problem with society? That's mouse utopia, right? utopia, right? utopia, right? It's one of the problems with society. It's not It's not It's not Yeah. I'm not saying obesity, but just the fact that we have gotten to a point that we know we're going to get taken care of.

Whether it's the kid with the popsicle or if I stay below this income level, I'm going to get a wick check or if I like we know that these things are coming. coming. coming. Yes. Yes. Yes. We don't have to then do the thing. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. This is why so I was once asked by a mother uh and she was like, "Look, my kid is really stalling out. He's not pushing himself. He's a bright kid, but he's not doing anything with his life." And she was like, "Help me." This was like peak motivation, Tom.

And I'm like, "Huh?" And so I always just run through what are the physics of the situation? And I said, "I'll give you an answer, but you're not going to be willing to do it." She's like, "No, no, no. I'll do it for sure." I was like, "Okay, here you go. Ready? Uh, find the seven or eight people that he respects the most, that represent who you want him to be. Have them kidnap him, take him to a desert island, and then stay there for 6 months.

He will work to earn their respect. Period." And if earning their respect means getting in shape, working hard, like taking responsibility for himself, like going and doing his thing, you he will be unrecognizable in 6 months. But it's got to be people for whom he wants their respect, and they have to be people that are worthy of respect. This can't be a bunch of low lives. lives. lives. And I was like, that won't work most of the time. That will work 100% of the time. But it's so ownorous, no one's ever going to do it.

the people are never going to take that kid out into a desert island because they're not going to spend their [ __ ] time out there. Um, but if you want to get tough, then I go hang out with David Gogggins for a year. You will come back the hardest [ __ ] ever because if you want his respect, you're going to find you've got gears you did not realize you had because he's just not going to put up with that [ __ ] He will have an expectation and you either live up to it or you don't.

And this is why single parent households become such a problem. Dads by default tend to be the one that like bears the standard. Mothers want to make sure that you're happy and loved. You need both. Both of those are insanely valuable. I love that my mom made me believe that I could do anything. God bless you, mom. I love you so much. You have no idea. She was exactly what I needed. I could get emotional if I let myself. But I also needed to be told, "Hey, like you need to get off your ass and get to work.

And I'm not going to put up with this bullshit." And we build character in this house. And that's what it means to be a bill. And so get [ __ ] to it. Simple as if I only have one problem. If nobody's loving me and telling me that I can be whatever I want to be, problem. But if nobody's like, "Hey, you want to be who you want to be?" You're going to have to work and you're going to have to work beyond what you want to do.

You're going to have to outwork other people. This is a competition. And so you have to go get good. There's no way around it. This is something I tell entrepreneurs all the time. There are certain problems that we're going to get to and I can't make them go away for you. I can help you learn how to think through this problem, that problem, whatever, but eventually you're going to hit an issue where the only answer is go do something awesome. And if you're incapable of doing something awesome, your business is done.

And I can't make that problem go away for you. So, America's in a position where there's certain problems I can't make go away for you. Money has physics. I can't just give you a bunch of free [ __ ] Doesn't work like that. there's not enough billionaire dollars on planet Earth to just keep funding that where we've got more and more people on some form of assistance. It's something like what was the number? How many people are on assistance full stop in America? It's a lot.

And so it's like uh yeah, can't have it. have it. have it. How many people are on assistance? Um it seems like your conversation though um is about environment. It's not necessarily about the kid. The thing is just you want to be in an environment that fosters that fosters that fosters good outcomes or like they get motivated by it. Because I'm going back to the mom and the kid in a basement thing. Like yes, getting kidnapped in a desert island is a perfect world scenario, but practically there probably is a mom in the chat who does have a kid who's a little bit too much in the basement.

Is it you need to just drop them off in a Serengeti? You need to kick them out. What's the thing that they're missing or the is it just they need to be in a better environment? What's what was the thesis? thesis? thesis? Environment is massive. So the thesis is a study came out recently that said that parents have a massive impact on their kids up to like seven or eight and then it diminishes greatly until they're like 11 or 12 and then after that a parent's influence on their kids is effectively zero.

Uh because the kids she's 14 I'm Yes. This is the 11 to 15. The reason that I focus on that from projecten perspective is 11 to 15 is what's known as the age of imprinting. It's where a kid, they don't realize why they're doing it, but they are programmed to push away from their parents and drink from culture. from culture. from culture. And so that's where it's like the friends and the general culture that they're in become a far bigger influence. This is why generations are different because you're not influenced by your parents.

If you were, then every generation would be the same. You're influenced by your parents when you're really young, but after that, it's about what environment are you growing up in. You're going to talk like your friends talk. You're going to care about the things your friends care about. you're not going to care about the things your parents care about. And so at that point, it's like, well, if they're in a toxic environment, then they're going to do toxic [ __ ] Gang culture, right? That's, hey, you're trying to earn their respect.

And so you will literally sell drugs, beat people up, murder, whatever. But you're trying to earn your peers's respect. And so if you just go, oh, that's how the human mind works. Got it. I'm going to find people whose respect they want to earn that are worthy of respect based on my value system, and I'm going to plug them in. And as long as they either can't get away from them, because you will, no matter what group I put you in, if you are isolated, you are going to try to earn that group's respect.

If you've got options, then it gets a lot harder because you're going to pick the group that you want to earn their respect. But you've got to find people that are worthwhile that this person wants to earn their respect. And then the the architecture of the human mind will take over. You don't have to do anything else. They will just want to be like that person. And so they will start doing the things that that person does. And if those things are positive, then cool, they're going to do positive things and it's going to be great.

But if they're around people that are doing dumb [ __ ] then getting status in that group is going to be doing that dumb [ __ ] And now here is like to really drive this home with boys. Do you know what testosterone actually makes you do? People think it makes you more aggressive. It doesn't. What it makes you do is aggressively pursue whatever is high status. So if you think of testosterone as the status seeking hormone then things are going to make sense. So if uh petting puppies the most is the highest status thing that you can do then high testosterone will make you pet the most puppies.

I'm not kidding. If being aggressive is the thing then you will be aggressive but it's actually about seeking status. So now if your kid gets status for how long can I milk mom and dad for money and stay in the basement then that's going to be the thing that they do. If status is like go out, crush it, like win in the markets, win in business, whatever, then that's what they're going to do. And these games end up being pretty regional in that it's who are the people that you're surrounded with.

So you could be the most goth goth ever. You could be the best trader on Wall Street. You could be in sports. Whatever. It's your group, that intimate group. What do they care about? about? about? That's interesting. I didn't know that it was a status thing, but I now that I'm thinking about it's like, yeah, aggression. Usually you're a bunch of bunch of bros who are in the gym working out, playing sports. You have to be aggressive that gets it. Or it's about girls and then you're a bunch of dudes who want to get girls.

So that's where So that's interesting how those things line up. line up. line up. Yep. Yep. Yep. Um maybe we need to put them around a bunch of a place where emotional maturity is the status game and then testosterone make them all a bunch of emotions. emotions. emotions. I mean, look, good luck with that one. But but this is why so because men pursue women so relentlessly at least historically historically historically uh and women cared about access to resources this is why guys try to get rich rich rich so you break that which I think we have effectively done and you start getting into weird territory where people don't celebrate building creating growing succeeding it's like that's not the game like you're a tryhard or like you know it's cringe or whatever to sincerely pursue a goal That's crazy.

That is a sign of a sick society that's going to be replaced. be replaced. be replaced. Um, somebody said eventually you're going to start suggesting corporate work camps like they have in China that forces people to work. Why did you smile? It's like it's not a bad idea. No, I smiled because um that's the moment that we're living in right now where people are suspicious of ambition, aggression, drive, and of all the things with my value system that people should not be suspicious of. I will I think I said this on camera many times, but I'll say it once more.

Uh the statement that most accurately captures what the human experience is really like is that the strong will do as they will and the weak will suffer as they must. So yeah, go ahead. Go be weak, whatever. [ __ ] I don't care. Like I can't I don't have to suffer the consequences of your life. Uh and you don't have to work as hard as I work. But there there are physics to this and people that under like right now the vast majority of human remember 10% of America owns 93% of the assets.

You are getting bullied by people that understand the market. [ __ ] bullied and they are getting all the money to everything that they want because they understand the system. They are aggressive. They are smart. They educate the [ __ ] out of themselves. They take big risks. They go in. They do the damn thing and they will bend politicians to their will and all of that. and you will get your money inflated to [ __ ] zero because you're afraid to stand up and be aggressive.

You're afraid to say, "Yeah, I want to get good. Yes, I'm going to [ __ ] grind. And yes, while my friends are out in their 20s getting drunk and all that [ __ ] nope, not me. I am working. I am trying to master something. I understand that skills have utility and they let me do something in the world that other people can't do. And oh, PS, by the way, the world is a [ __ ] competition. And I get that some people do not want that to be true, but that is true.

And look at Ukraine. I bet they believe that life is a competition. Look at China. China felt that they had had a century of humiliation. They said, "Nope, not anymore. We're going to compete." And they went from an absolute economic backwater that was starving the vast like tens of millions of people to death to being the most dominant economy and military on Earth. And now America's having to contend with that. Life is a competition and it is only from within the protective walls of a country like America that people can confuse themselves into thinking that it's not.

We have a little bit of push back I got to throw out there. Uh this is from Martin Muldone 8166. There are many people that work two jobs and are barely getting by. Afraid give me a break. Is this his first day here? Mhm. I don't think so. think so. think so. Okay. Um, so I'm very grateful. I'm not going to get cheeky. I'm very grateful for you being here and I'm very grateful for you challenging ideas. I love that. I think that's smart. Very strong.

Uh, I consider myself a wild aggressive advocate who is trying to answer the question, why do you have to work two jobs? jobs? jobs? You may not be part of the problem. I was addressing something and someone else when I said what I was saying. The reason you have to work two jobs uh it could be multivaried. I don't know you. So, but here is a very common one that because of globalism, people have been unable to negotiate their wages for 40 years. years. years. When you have a situation where people can and do just go, "Oh, you're too expensive.

Cool. I'm either going to import cheap labor or I'm going to export the job to cheap labor." It puts the working class in a very difficult position. And so, to make ends meet, you end up having to take two jobs. So I'm not saying that universally people are lazy. I'm just saying directionally we are creating an incentive system where being lazy is rewarding. And so show me the incentives I will show you the outcome. More and more people are going to get lazy because that's what the incentives are.

Also culturally I would be very surprised if you would not agree with me that culturally it is acknowledged in young people that it's a bit cringe to be very goal directed to really pursue something. Um, hustle culture went from being like, "Yeah, that's awesome. Like, people are really grinding. They're really trying to do something." To like, "Oh, bro, that's gross." Um, so if you read something different in culture, I'd love to see the data that you're looking at, but all the data that I see points in the direction of more and more people, not that everyone is doing it, but that more and more people are going for the easy answer, that culturally we do not celebrate the successful, culturally we do not celebrate the driven.

Um, we think of it as pathology. We think of it as something to avoid that we all want fewer hours worked that we want less engagement with our careers. That's my read. read. read. John Billy during the last 50 years there was no AI dummy. It's apples to oranges. There was no AI. I'm not sure what he's trying to get at there. there. there. So you can't just work hard to get ahead because AI is not going to kill it anyway. Oh, so that's somebody who is looking at the future and saying something bad might happen in the future.

Therefore, I'm going to stop today. That's a mistake. So, I get it. I am constantly paranoid about where AI is going to be. I have a belief that on a long enough timeline, the problem that we're all going to have to deal with is meaning and purpose. But today is not that day. So, today you can still get ahead by mastering AI. So, my advice to people would be instead of throwing up your hands and saying five or 10 years from now, this is going to hand me my ass.

uh just be the last man standing that is so good with AI that you can do things other people can't do. Now one day I may completely change my pitch and be like hey the state of AI the only thing that makes sense now is and then insert whatever answer actually makes sense in that moment but right now today there is still a game to be played and won and AI is a tremendous tool. It's incredible what it lets you do. I get that there is a fear that people can feel looming in the background but I would not give into that.

Somebody said, "Slaves, never burnt out. You'll be okay." That's crazy. See, but this is what I'm saying right now. I'm not watching the chat to know if that's like a minor voice or if that's like a 30% voice. Um, but that is in culture. I know that when when I first started 10 years ago on camera, there was still a big voice of people that were like, "Yo, I love it. Like, this guy's so hardcore. This is awesome." And then slowly over time that the voice of like, "Oh, this is so gross.

This is so cringe. like this guy's just hustle culture like oh it's disgusting and I was like wait what uh so so so cultures change cultures change uh all right we have some super chats we do first up from Mr. Super Super Super rethink the debt tool. Physics defines what we can do. Everything else is just man-made. Um, caged equity is the primer for the book I told you about last week. Uses interest as a wealth building tool. Let me know if you need that one again.

It's a little Yeah. Uh, can you put it up on screen so I can read it for myself? Think they got that? Okay. Rethink the debt tool. I don't know what they mean by that. Physics defines what we can do. Yep. Everything else is just man-made. Okay, fair enough. Caged equity is the primer for the book I told you about last week. Uses interest as a wealth building tool. Uh yeah, all of that on the surface seems to make sense, but I don't know what you mean by rethink the debt tool.

So debt is incredibly powerful. It just becomes a problem when you take on too much. So I am very aware of debt being nearly magical. uh it's just that people tend to abuse it and that's where we're at. We're in the part of the cycle where debt stopped being magical a very long time ago and it is now incredibly problem or I should say that at the government level we've taken on so much debt it's not magical anymore it's wildly problematic but at the individual level of course it still remains insanely powerful interest compounding interest as um I think it was Einstein that said the greatest force in the universe is compounding interest so yeah totally agree totally agree totally agree what they might be saying is like can we rethink how debt works because like from physics debt is a thing that we made up.

So, can we rethink? Yeah. All the problems are man-made. So, if that's what he's saying, we totally agree. agree. agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All all the problems are man-made. The problem is the human mind works in a certain way. And we've had thousands of years to see will it play out differently this time and it never does. So, humans once taken on mass are a certain way. And so, fighting against that strikes me as futile. Uh you nudge as much as you can because humans are malleable and so you can like move people in a direction.

Um, so and people in the community have been extremely kind to remind me that I am not actually speaking into a void. So I'm very grateful for that. So we can even if this is a purely deterministic universe and we have no willpower, people still do respond to ideas. Uh, and so being a vessel uh, for ideas, hopefully highly useful ones is a perfectly serviceable existence from where I'm sitting. Cool. Next one from World Rally Family. Uh, I appreciate that you started asking the right questions and went down that rabbit hole.

The discussions we're having here are very important and the deep dives are making a difference. Wow. Thank you. Uh, word world rally family. I appreciate that very much. I really do hold on to comments like that, especially when I'm writing a deep dive and think, man, these take a long time. Uh, so thank you. That means a lot. And that you would spend money to say something like that is very meaningful. That's all the super chats we got. Nice. Thank you everybody for the super chats.

No joke. Thank you guys. Appreciate your uh generosity support. Thank you for those that are just being in the chat. Thank you for all the people that argument. Um some dude roasted me earlier in the chat. He was like, "Speaking of dates, when's prom, Drew?" And I'm just like, "Oh." "Oh." "Oh." Oh, that's rough. That was a good one though. But have you reached back out to her? He got me. Yeah, we talked. Um that's it. That's what we get. Yes. Nothing yet. Channel your inner Candace, man.

Like you got to give us like setups. Okay, let me tell you. This is the breakdown. Uh, breakdown. Uh, breakdown. Uh, not happening. not happening. not happening. Cuz low key, I feel like the show was bad luck cuz I I've been I've been excited about two people on the show and I say something on air, a week later gone. gone. gone. Interesting. That is I have to admit that's tough. Like when you know like oh god like there's going to be that additional layer of scrutiny.

I feel you. you. I feel you. Uh, okay. I want to bring up the game awards last night. Um, the game awards just happened and Claire obscur exhibition 33 set a new record. I think they won seven awards if I count that right. right. right. um from best performance, best overall game, best game direction, game of the year. Like they pretty much swiped it any uh game debut, the performer won best performance. best performance. best performance. Um have you played as I have. I have. I have.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it the better best game of the year? Uh it's very good. Would I give it best game of the year? I wouldn't, but I get why people, the game that I would probably give it to, I get why people would be like, "No way." Um, which is a more obscure indie title, but it's just really gotten under my skin if people have ever heard of a game called Mega Bonk. Bonk. Bonk. um that game for me and maybe because I just haven't encountered as many games like that, but it's like um basically a rogike but with like this really fun RNG to it and like a really old like school aesthetic, but I just really find it enjoyable.

enjoyable. enjoyable. Um Claire Obscure was good, very good, but the acting was insane that I was very impressed with. But it was like once I got the gimmick, which is like the the timing, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be a game where I just learn the timing and that's it. Run to next boss, boss, boss, rhythm, rhythm, next boss, rhythm, rhythm." Uh, so while I can recognize and appreciate why people are super into it, and it's certainly a worthy um game because it is done very well.

It's very slick. Um wouldn't make my It's not my choice in ter if you just look at how much I play other games, that one's not in heavy rotation. rotation. rotation. Got it. Um and lastly, Moist Critical was the game content creator of the year. So, shout out to Moist Critical. That guy like gets views. gets views. gets views. Yeah, he be he views views. But he falls into that millennial millennial millennial uh creator for me where there's a lot of anger that makes me just a little bit sad about millennial gamers.

And I wish I could convince them to have more fun. I don't think they'll recognize themselves though in the way that I see them. So probably futile. But um I forget who we were having this conversation with, but I was oh at the Christmas party. And I was like, look, I've lived through way more of these like game transitions than a millennial gamer, but I don't have any of that same frustration and anger. I'm just like, oh, cool. Indie titles are where it's at now. It's not the AAA games are like they're wasting everybody's time.

They cost so much money. They're not innovating. But the indie games are. So, there's this sense that people feel betrayed, I guess, by the IP because they love the IP so much. Uh, and so maybe this is just a whatever you loved when you were 12, like if that gets betrayed, you you just are always going to have a hard time with it. Uh, and because the games that were big when I was 12 were like Mario Brothers. Uh, I feel very differently. It really may just be that simple.

Um, but for me, the energy shifting away from, let's say, film to TV and video games, like even though I was a film guy growing up, I didn't feel betrayed as movies fell apart. I was just like, "Oh, the energy is now in gaming. Cool." So, I moved to gaming. Uh, now within gaming. Oh, the energy is not with AAA anymore. It's with the indie titles. Great. First of all, as an indie developer, I love that. Um, so I can't I can build an internal model of people that are mad, but I can't internalize it.

So, I don't feel it. So, I'm always when I watch him always critical. Uh, he's very good. He's very entertaining, but he's also often very angry. And so, that just always hits weird for me. Got it. Uh, all right. The conspiracy the conspiracy theories are true. Instacart is using dynamic pricing. Um, I've been saying this for a minute. Door Dash, Uber Eats, all those, there's different prices on the app. So, when you actually go into the store, a lot of them, they bake in their margins into the price.

So, double check that. Um, but yes, they are accessing personal data of users and then adjusting prices based on that data. If someone can afford to pay more for items, the prices increase. You may have heard of dynamic pricing. Well, now Instacart is accused of using this controversial practice to charge customers wildly inconsistent prices on the same products. This is infuriate infuriating food delivery service. Instakar is being accused of char Okay, he's repeating himself. Um, yes, it can lead to shoppers being charged an extra $1,200 on groceries annually.

Um, nearly threequarters of grocery items it surveyed were sold at different price points. That is crazy. So, So, So, I mean, I felt like this is Uber does surge pricing. This that's dynamic pricing. pricing. pricing. But hold on. So, there's two ways to do this. There's the way that Amazon does it where it's like we are adjusting prices by the minute. And so, like when we used to sell way back in the day at Awareness Technologies, we had a product that we were selling on Amazon.

And so I had a meeting with Amazon and they were like actual [ __ ] about like we're like guys we can't have the channel conflict. I need to know that the price is going to be you know within these bounded ranges. They're like nope if you want to sell on Amazon we are going to do what we are going to do and there's going to be a way bigger price fluctuation and that was really obnoxious and they had like the arrogance of knowing just how big they were anyway.

So you've got that where they can adjust prices but it's for everybody. Now, if Instacart wants to say across the entire app, no matter who you are, this is the price, but it changes very rapidly. Okay, cool. No worries. But if they're going to go, ah, Drew, I can tell by your spending habits, you just got a bump. Great. We're going to charge you more. That's [ __ ] sinister. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, dude. That is sinister. So, um, you want to say, hey, here's another thing that adds to people not being able to make ends meet.

the second that they see that your um willingness to spend more is there, they're just going to keep charging you more. Now, it's like, dude, you literally can't get ahead because the companies are using dynamic pricing to get the same percentage of your money as they've been getting before that that they've got to put consumer price protections. That's insane. Now, being able to dynamically fluctuate across the entire app so that people are like, we're all being treated the same. Sometimes the prices are up, sometimes they're down.

Yeah, that I get. That's just like the fact that the world now lets you repric things that quickly is great. So people can take advantage um of like okay either knowing when a price like something happens to the price of oil and so now instead of people getting um like just having to eat it. It's like oh we can like make all these micro adjustments in the price and so everything sort of stays balanced and we spread out the pain and suffering. But when you just go, "I know how much you can afford and I'm gonna keep billing you." That's wild.

Like that. Yeah, that's bad. that's bad. that's bad. Michelle Quinton in chat said, "No, but seriously, I built a cart of things I needed from the store on the app, but I decided to physically shop. I spent $70 less and got the exact list." Sheesh. Well, Well, Well, yeah. But that's You're just saying I'm willing to go into the store. Cool. If people are willing to pay extra to not have to deal with that, I love it. I love that that's available. But you it is evil quite frankly to go ah I bet you can afford more instead of just saying these things cost this much these things are more expensive and so now I'm like airwan right they've got like this uh raspberry was individually grown by a nun in Guatemala and it's like it's got a name and a birth certificate and so you can buy each individual raspberry like knowing who grew it.

Great if that's your stick and you want to do that. As rich as I am, I think Arowan is insane. I cannot believe that people do the majority of their shopping there. That's crazy. Uh but hey, that it is an option. option. option. Love it. Love it. Love it. But But But you walking in and people like looking at your jeans and your shirt and being like, "Okay." And then the price show up differently for you, that that is bad. Um some people are surprised by the pearl clutching.

I've heard really really really sinister. You mean capitalism? Somebody else was like, "This is capitalism at its finest." So, break that down because some people are like, "Yeah, I don't get it. What do you mean? Isn't this supply and demand? Isn't this what you're always talking about, Tom?" That's amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. Uh, okay. So, remember, I'm not a nogo guy. Um, I have a northstar. My northstar is a thriving middle class. So, now it's like, okay, what are the things that we want to do?

So, a company should be the government should be pretty hands-off. So, company can charge whatever they want. Uh if you want to offer really expensive things, do it. Uh but if you want to deceive the public, that's not good. Uh and if you want to individually price things for that person, I hope everybody can understand that at a minimum they should have to disclose it. disclose it. disclose it. Uh so that you can decide like, yeah, I'm not going to participate that. That's really stupid. Um so consumer protections exist for a reason.

You want light touch regulation. You don't want to overregulate. It's a bit like debt. A little bit of regulation goes a long way because um humans will take advantage of you. They will like if you don't have any regulations, they will just burn your mate off you to death. And so we know that humans will um expand into amoral activities until they are forcibly stopped. forcibly stopped. forcibly stopped. So we do have to put those checks. Great. You put the checks. You keep them as light as you can.

You certainly don't want uh for instance, you don't want um antitrust stuff. You don't want somebody to be able to monopolize an industry because then they can do grotesque practices like this and there's nowhere to go to get beyond them. Um, so you just don't want to overregulate. So a little bit of debt, great, a lot of debt, problem. Little bit of regulation, great, a lot of regulation, problem. So, but I mean if I don't know if people think I'm like an avatar for them for capitalism or something, um, I think capitalism is far better than what we have now, but I think unchecked capitalism will become a problem real fast.

Um, somebody said when you say regulations mean like price controls, what what should they actually be doing? Because this is a this is the innovations of AI, right? Like AI is allowing us to get the data that fast and process it at a pace that we never had before. had before. had before. Yes. And so that's great from a all things um moving up and down in unison for everyone. I love that. That's great. It's a great uh invention that will allow people to protect margins that will allow people to look for oh the price of oil went down and now a company's going to go oh I don't instead of like a grocery store might go the cost of oil just went down so instead of me getting additional margin what I'm going to do is get additional customers and so I'm going to lower my rates and so now everybody's competing with each other to charge the least amount that they can to draw people into their stores and everybody understands oh these guys are competing on price now the consumer wins.

If on the other hand, we just let people use technology however they want, they will eventually become exploitative. And so you want some sort of bounding box where it's like, hey, use AI as much as you want in terms of controlling your prices. However, here's the regulation. You can't treat people differently. So, you've got to set one price that applies to everybody. Now, you can change that price as rapidly as you want, but it has to apply equally to everybody. Great. No problem. But let me make it easy for people.

Let's say that at my store, if you come in and you're Chinese, uh, I'm charging you double. We cool? We good? I hope not. That's shitty. So, I get why we would say, "Hey, can't do that." But you can do if I want to raise the price uh from one minute to the next that that I can do that, but it is blanket. It affects everybody. everybody. everybody. Got it. Okay. So you talked about um the thriving middle class being the north star and somebody in chat said what's the KPI to measure a thriving middle class.

class. class. Okay. So I think that there's a small basket of things that you want to care about. So uh your let's say cost ratio to buy a house that's going to be one of them. Why cost ratio to buy a house today? Because it's the only asset that people understand intuitively that will protect them from inflation. So it's like like like ratio against wages. What's that? What's that? What's that? Ratio against wages. Yeah. So, let's say that back in the 80s it was 3x the the median uh income to buy a home.

Now, it's like 5.5x. So, it's like, okay, that's bad. So, that's going to be one of them. Again, for the reasons that I just said, it's economic armor against inflation. Now, if we didn't if we had sound currency, I might give you something totally different. Um, the ability to make more money over time, that's going to be another one. the raw number of people in the middle class, the discrepancy between the wealthiest people and the middle class. Like you're just going to be looking social mobility, right?

So, um that somebody can escape the middle class and get wealthy, but they can also fall back down. They can go from the middle class to poor. They can go from poor to middle class. Like you're it's going to be a small basket of things like that. Um period. period. period. Sweet word. Sweet word. Sweet word. Um, okay. This is kind of messy, but I'm into it. into it. into it. Democrats just dropped a batch of photos, 95,000 photos in total received from the Epstein estate, and some of our favorite people are on there.

Um, Donald Trump. Trump. Trump. Who's that? So, this is presumably a Epstein victim. Epstein victim. Epstein victim. Yeah, the victims are black. Or are they blocking her out to make it seem bad? Um, I'm assuming the black dots are the victims because that's why it seems like all the women's faces are blacked out and only the men are being shown. shown. shown. I'd be very interested to know. So, this is uh Oh, okay. That that one's not great. great. great. Uh, when a picture speaks a gazillion words.

Yeah. The Woody Allen story is crazy though. Is the craziest. and how he managed to escape scrutiny for as long as he did is wowza wowza wowza like that that's a different um but yes so this is fresh news I just got it on Twitter somebody slipped it over to me so they're dropping the pictures now I'm trying to see if I find something that's actually meaningful but this seems like just another gotcha distraction for these files that we're never going to get even though Trump yeah the part and I mean I know I say this every time this comes up but uh the question is did Trump do something illegal with women because we know that Trump is horrific with women.

Horrific. So, uh, that one's not the gotcha. The gotcha to me or I I thought he was unelectable because of his history with women. I was like I remember telling the team because they were freaking out when the election night back in 2016 when it looked like, you know, he was doing better than people thought. I was like, "Guys, go home and relax. This man was caught on tape saying, "Grab him in the hoo-ha." I was like, "He's unelectable. There's no universe." Well, apparently there's at least one timeline where it's possible.

So, yeah, I I'm certain that that's not going to be how you get Donald Trump. But if he were doing something illegal now, we need to go ham. So, if it's underage women or whatever, like, yeah, if he was trafficking, trafficking, trafficking, obviously man's got to go down. But if it's just more, hey, guess what? Trump was a horrifying womanizer, that clearly didn't stop people. Yeah. Uh, okay. I'm back to our regular scheduled programming. That was a nice little fractal. I was like, "Oh, they released photos.

It's going to be something damning." And it's just Trump doing this a bunch of times with licking his lips at girls. Um, all right. The US Senate just reject a just rejected a Republican proposed solution for Obamacare. Um, I feel like that's been it wasn't really a solution, but we'll get to that. This would have given money directly to the American people in HSA accounts as opposed to giving it directly to big insurance companies. The bill was backed by Trump. It was defeated 5148 and there are a couple Republicans that actually voted on the Democrat side and it did not get passed.

Remember, they need 60 votes to get over the hump. the hump. the hump. Why did you think this wasn't a solution? I'm very curious. Um because they were proposing giving $1,200 deposited into HSA accounts when the subsidies would have reduced insurance premiums from doubling. So throwing an extra 1,200 on top to me is just adding like you can get a student loan and a student loan grant. Like yes, so now it's $1,200 less than I would have to pay, but you're just giving us less money for a problem that needs to be fixed as opposed to fixing the problem.

problem. problem. It's interesting. Here's how I look at this. Mhm. this. Mhm. this. Mhm. For the same reason that parents should have school vouchers and be able to take their tax dollars to whatever school they want so that the schools have to compete on educational outcomes, you should want people to be able to go to whatever insurance company they think is the right one for them so that they're not in a situation where the insurance company's stocks have like tripled, quintupled since the Obamacare act. That tells you where the economics are going.

the economics are going to the healthare companies. We want to empower people. So the healthare companies have to compete on price and product and right now they don't. So somehow someway and this felt like certainly directionally at least the right answer. Somehow someway we have to figure out how to make the uh companies compete. And right now when the government's just like paying everything, you get into the weird system that we have now where it's like, um, hey, you guys sent me a bill for $800, but then when I send in my insurance, you raised it to $1,600.

Uh, what gives? Oh, yeah. The $800 is a price for people without insurance. Okay, but when I have insurance now, it becomes more expensive for me. Yes, that's correct. So, wait, if if I just don't claim it off my insurance, can I get the reduced price? No, you can't because now we know you have insurance. That's real. So that's so crazy. We shouldn't be standing for that. This is exactly how people get rad across the coals and health insurance becomes like a grotesque monopoly. A cartel is probably a better way to think of it.

And we're there. Like we have to do something. something. something. Absolutely. And I don't But that's the thing. This doesn't solve the monopoly problem. This doesn't solve the choice problem. This doesn't solve Wait, wait, wait. Why doesn't solve the choice problem? choice problem? choice problem? Because there's two insurance companies in California. you either have United or you have uh Kaiser. So whether the insurance that I have available to me right now is in two buckets. I can either pay more and get a higher premium or I could pay less and get a smaller premium.

But there's not a different bucket of bucket of bucket of but if I know I don't have to negotiate with the government, I have to negotiate with the individual. I as a entrepreneur go oo there's an opportunity here. So, a big part of the reason that people won't try to build alternative health care um programs, insurance companies, whatever, is that it's so monopolistic to even break in is going to be insane. And so, this is where it's like, oh, I don't have to convince the PBM or whatever they're called.

I have to go and talk to the individual and say, you just got your $1,200 check. Trust me, you want to spend it with us. And so, now we start getting people actually competing. We get entrepreneurs innovating. But when the money is tied to the government now, it's like the worst crony capitalism ever. It's going to be whoever's closest to the spot. Like, you're never going to get I I feel like I get the the intention behind that as opposed to it. It comparing it to school choice is a little bit different because school choice is me as a parent saying I can go to this school, this school, this school.

But even insurance in general, you have to be a part of a system to then get into the door. I hear you. And it is scary. But let me let me not even not even scary. It's not possible because possible because possible because No, it is possible because what ends up happening like look at school choice. What will happen is you'll get a bunch of charter schools that right now there are entrepreneurs sitting on the sidelines because parents it's too hard. You've got to go in and figure out okay what kind of system are we going to use to try to get these kids and if parents were like I can go wherever the [ __ ] I want.

You'll get all kinds of schools that pop up. But with schools you can do that. Yeah. Now you just need the money to so that way they can pay they can afford to go to the schools they want. But you can change your school district right now. Lynn goes to a school 30 minutes from our house because it's a better school. So, but you you're not able to take your dollars there. dollars there. dollars there. So, what are you doing? Are you giving a different address?

Are you paying for it? Like, it? Like, it? Like, no, that's the thing. They're like in Arizon uh Arizona, it's a red state. They allow school movement. So, they're not they're not paying for the bus, but they're paying for the transactioning. And it's not a private school. So, that's there. But what I'm saying is specifically for insurance. Wait, what part of the analogy doesn't work? Because my argument is very simply that if the parents control the money that entrepreneurs will enter the space if they don't then you will get a dir of that that that with HSA accounts one it doesn't get directly into your pocket it goes into a separate health care account the healthcare account are tied oftent times to health insurance companies themselves that's the first like layer there's there's insurance options that allow HSAs insurance options that don't allow HSAs HSAs HSAs all right I'll have to look at it I don't have enough data so it's one of those those those concede temporary defeat only out of ignorance.

ignorance. ignorance. It's just No, it's just because you can't go to a hospital and say, "Hey, I want to pay out of pocket." What? Like, if that was the case, then that would make sense. But everything you would do through a hospital, you'll go blow through that $1,200 in 5 days. And so, you think we're better off leaving that inside of the system that we know is, my words, corrupt, horrific, and bad for people? No. The subsidies haven't been approved yet. So, it's not like them saying no to this made the subsidies get passed.

These subsidies are officially gone. Um, Big Beautiful Bill is not bringing them back. This was just a stop gap. They're saying, "Okay, because your your premiums are going from 10,000 to 20,000, we just going to throw in $1,200 on top of that. That $1,200 is not doing nothing for nobody. So, let's actually solve the problem. If we got to if everybody's premiums got to double and people got to drop off their health insurance and a couple people got to pass so that way we can get the pressure to actually fix the problem, let's do that." But, I just think this was a stop gap that isn't actually going to lead to progress.

progress. progress. Um, Um, Um, this is a big one. It's got to this is a big one. It's got to be solved. be solved. be solved. I do think Obama was crafty in creating the um ACA because right now it is more it makes more sense for the government instead of paying half to health insurance companies and then Medicaid Medicare for the people that are entitlements. It makes sense to merge those. And if you merge those two, that's what 75% of the healthcare insurance market. So then singlepayer is just like one more leap away.

So I think that the ACA set the framework to lead to a singlepayer system, which I understand it's terrible in Europe and all these other places, but I think where America is right now, that probably is the better solution versus deregulating, opening up the floodgates and letting everybody figure it out cuz I think that generation, whether it's 5 years or 30 years, it's going to be too bloody for people to just be like, "Yeah, but it's going to be so great in 2020 when Utopia like they're not looking for that next thing.

We couldn't handle a million deaths. I don't think we're going to be able to handle the two, three million when people don't when they bring in pre-existing conditions. People with cancer get kicked off. If your asthma is too bad over a certain age, you get kicked off and all these people are now out in the cold having to pay cash and that 10,000 is is is I agree with you from a societal standpoint. We're not going to be able to tolerate it. But let me tell you how many more people die when your country goes bankrupt.

So, uh, this is one of those that people are like, "Yeah, but that problem's not for 10 years and so I don't care." That oh my god, that really drives me crazy. and we will one of the things that will accelerate the bankruptcy of this country is letting people smoke and be overweight and then still cover their healthcare. You can't do that. do that. do that. Is there a if we were to approach it first principle? So throughout the health whole health care system out the window, we're starting from the very beginning.

Um beginning. Um beginning. Um is it simply like deregulation? As long as you're not getting injected with a rusty scalpel, go for it. as many health insurance companies as many like just and let competition kind of do its thing. thing. thing. I mean you definitely want competition to do its thing but this is an area where you want regulation. You do not want people um like again this is weird how often this comes to my mind but in Death by Lightning Garfield dies from infection because the doctor was a [ __ ] and didn't believe that germ theory was real.

Uh so you want to put regulations in place that are like here are the standards that are expected to be met to maintain your license as a hospital so that when somebody is going to a hospital they know are you like do you have the A rating in your window like a restaurant or like what am I looking at here um so you definitely want some rating hospital rating hospital rating hospital yeah because otherwise people are definitely going to lie spin whatever um you don't want that so you want people to know ah I can trust trust it.

They've got their license. All is well. Um but then beyond that, like here's the calculus that I think people run. Elites say something to themselves like, "Ah, some people are too stupid and so we're going to just make the government take care of everything and then they don't realize how many points of exploitation they create for like the health insurance companies." And so it's like guys, like I get the impulse to want to make sure that everybody's taken care of, but you you really can't because you create a vulnerability where the system will be abused.

And that's exactly what we have right now. Like you have people that act as if they can't control um a large portion of their health outcomes. I agree that some people just get a raw roll of the dice and they've never smoked a day in their life and they're 12 and they get lung cancer. That really does happen and that is freakish and I understand that we want a system that's going to deal with that. I love that. But what I don't love is the 650 pound smoker who's like, "Yeah, keep giving me all my health care because I can have every precondition that I want.

Oh, and by the way, keep doing things that we know are absolutely terrible for my health outcomes." And I also hate the government telling you, "You can't be fat or smoke. You should be able to be fat and smoke, but you've got to carry the weight of those consequences." I do not want the Chinese government style thing saying, um, you're not allowed to eat Doritos. It's like if I want to eat Doritos, I'm going to eat Doritos, but the consequences should be on me. It It's interesting because it's like entitlements are the thing that we need to figure out one way or another.

Like we have to lay in that plane. I think we might be too far gone that we might just have to roll insurance into the government. And then here's the thing, too far gone just means we we are going to let this problem roll until we go bankrupt. And I just want to remind everybody the current rate we're on, that's roughly 10 years. This is not something that's like 50, 75 years out in the future. This is it's already the second biggest line item that you have for your country.

We we passed national debt like done. I think we just passed Medicaid. So, uh that's interest. That's just interest. So already the fact that we are that far in debt is forcing us to do something incredibly reckless at the Fed, which is lower rates. And so now we're doing something that's going to damage the economy that's going to continue to make inflation run hot. And we're just like, yeah, but we can't ask people to retire later. Yeah, we can't ask people to um accept that your health care your healthcare is going to be more expensive than the next person.

We're just not prepared to let them deal with that. And it's like, so we're just saying, yeah, in 10 years everything breaks instead of selectively breaking some things now. Yeah. I don't know. We got to see. Maybe China got to figure it out. Maybe that I mean, look, China's uh solution is terrible. We do not want to do China solution. solution. solution. I'm speaking health insurance like because I I think everybody points to Europe and says Europe at least has health insurance. They pay lower cost, better care.

There is a level of to your point, we do need to I'm g use the word tax, but people who are further from the healthy medium should bear a larger cost than those that are closer to that healthy medium. healthy medium. healthy medium. Um, but I still don't think that that will balance the budget because of all this baked in minutia, cronyism, consolidations that happened cuz growing up there was 17 healthcare insuranceances. So to your point, it's like if this person says no, this person says no, you know what?

F it, I can just go direct and pay out. pay out of pocket. But a lot of those other options now have either been consolidated or gone away. It just now makes it more difficult. So that's why I'm like maybe we do just roll it in and then now it's one person doing all the work and then they get the brunt of the basis of it. They get the grunt of the anger and all this other things we have and everybody else just gets fired and disseminated.

I don't know. Um, yeah. I mean, listen, we do not have the appetite to do what needs to be done. And so, as of right now, we either grow our way out of this through AI or we run into a brick wall. Those are your options. options. options. And so, the divide will continue to escalate. By the way, if any I've been asked so many times, Tom, what would civil war even look like? Uh, it would look like it looks now where you've got states fighting the federal government.

um you've got people fighting each other in terms of uh political assassinations and the like. Uh so you just get what we have now, but it escalates and as we march closer to the breaking point on the debt, it will manifest as that kind of civil conflict. So I don't know what other roadmap people need to believe, oh yeah, this really can get unhinged. This can get completely out of control. it will look like more of what you already have. Like we're already marching down the path.

It's not like you have to come up with some uh grand understanding of how this all plays out. You get more and more fraud. You get more and more um each party fighting for we've got to get the shrinking piece of the pie. That drives more resentment. You get a wider K-shaped economy. That drives more envy and resentment. You get more people being politically violent. uh and you get more like rejection of constitutional federal powers between the state and the federal government. We've already got people in the military.

I don't even want to use the phrase they use. It just seems like feeding into the politics of it all. But we've got people in uh Congress telling the military like, "Hey, just so you know, be a real shame if we had to prosecute you when we get back into power." And so you should be really deciding whether you want to listen to the elected president of the United States. Like it's so crazy. like this is certainly in my lifetime that's like unheard of. So we are already moving in that wrong direction and this is an economic cause and that's why I'm like I get it.

It's tough and I get it. Nobody wants to say that yes if you're and this is but one example if you're obese you're going to have to pay more. It just is what it is. And yes, you're going it. We are in my opinion far better off putting the money in the individual's hands and letting them force force force companies to compete for their business than we are the government trying to do all this stuff and creating a European style, which by the way, if you've been in Europe and seen up close, they're like my family obviously because they can afford it.

But my wife's family, I should say to be more specific, they all have private insurance and they use the government one when it's like a easy thing. It's small and they don't have to wait. Ah, they'll use it. But so often it's like, oh, it'll be four months, five months for you to get like uh my wisdom tooth hurts. I remember my mother-in-law, if I Oh, god. These are directionally correct uh realities, but not literally correct. She had to have her gallbladder removed. And she, when I say pain, dude, anybody that's had um their gallbladder back up because you're getting stones know how like unbearably painful.

And it was like months that she had to wait. It's crazy. It's crazy. Uh, all right. You got something coming up, right? up, right? up, right? We do, everybody. We have got Impact Theory University. We've got something coming up December 16th at 1 p.m. Pacific. If you guys are a founder doing a million dollars or more in revenue and you're serious about scaling to eight figures, I want you guys to join me. Most founders think that they're going to fail because of market conditions or strategy.

But in reality, what people fail from fail from fail from is people. It's bad leadership choices. It's poor hires. You ultimately get eaten alive by your competitors because you don't have the right people. You lose to your internal politics. Hidden underperformance is a big one. and the silent churn that can build up if you don't have your culture in the right place, if you're not using the right KPIs, etc. And I'm running a private workshop where I'm going to show you guys how to fix the people problems inside of your company that are going to just absolutely demolish your growth.

All right, this is not for everybody though. This one is for founders that are at 1 million plus. But if that's you, click the link in the description or just go to tombillwu.comleership and register for the workshop which is going to be all about how to hire well, how to run a company well from a leadership perspective. Again, this is Tuesday, December 16th at 100 p.m. Pacific time. Hope to see you there. All right, everybody. It's that time. Thank you guys so much. If you haven't already, by the way, subscribe.

Subscribe. It helps a lot. Smash that subscribe button. Thank you guys for being here. It's absolutely wonderful. and we will see you guys next weekend. We do have one minute and one super chat. chat. chat. Oh, let's go, Mason. Let's do it. This last super chat is from Moab O Moab Overkill. Would you be willing to interview Joe Lemont from Alpha School? He seems to really want to change education for the better. Seems to really care. He also seems very willing to do interviews right now.

You may share some goals. So, that's the school from Texas, if I'm not mistaken, that's killing it. Uh, I would bring them on a live. I probably wouldn't do an interview just because it's outside of what performs for us, but getting him on a live if he's easy to schedule, I'd certainly do that. Sick Sick Sick word. word. word. Nice. Nice. Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you guys. Thank you for the super chat. All right, everybody. Have a wonderful weekend. We will see you on Wednesday. Later.