Russia Abandons China? The Secret Deal to Re-Embrace the US Dollar + AG Bondi, AI & Friday Funnies

Key Takeaway

The Epstein hearings revealed a crucial leadership lesson: when facing a crisis, transparency beats theatrics every time. Attorney General Pam Bondi's emotionally volatile testimony—deflecting questions, attacking critics, and performing for President Trump rather than addressing victims—deepened the administration's credibility crisis. The takeaway: In high-stakes moments, stay grounded in facts, acknowledge mistakes quickly, and focus relentlessly on your stated mission. When you try to hide or deflect, you amplify the problem.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu discusses Attorney General Pam Bondi's disastrous testimony before the House Oversight Committee regarding the Epstein files. The episode critiques how partisan theatrics are distracting from the core mission: protecting victims and mapping webs of power. Bilyeu also covers Argentina's controversial 12-hour workday legislation, arguing it's about unleashing ambition rather than slave labor. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of staying focused on clear objectives despite political noise, and advocates for citizen pressure to ensure accountability in the Epstein investigations.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Russia Abandons China? The Secret Deal to Re-Embrace the US Dollar + AG Bondi, AI & Friday Funnies from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another Tom Billou show live. We are going to be going through a whole lot of madness today. If you guys have been watching the political arena, it's been a lot of fun. In the last 24 hours, Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before a House Oversight Committee regarding your favorite and mine, Epstein. It was an absolute freak show that only deepened the Trump admin's woes around this issue. These guys just cannot get out of their own way. Russia may be considering rembbracing the dollar as part of a plan to build a stronger relationship with the US.

That this one is big and I am very eager to talk about that uh what that could potentially mean. The markets took another massive tumble yesterday amid hyper uncertainty and this announcement that I'm excited about with Russia also probably impacted gold. The Netherlands are committed to committing economic suicide with their proposed new tax scheme. Uh, one that keeps popping up here in the US as well around unrealized gains. As you can imagine, this is going to bring out the best of me. I'm ready. I'm I'm ready.

Drew, put me in on this one. I definitely want to talk about this. You had that thing written yesterday morning. morning. morning. Oh, yeah. As soon as it was like, we're not going to start there, are we? Oh, but I want to talk about it. A breakdown of recent AI safety problems highlights that if we do not find a way to give AI something akin to consciousness, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I mean that that one's not hyperbole. Uh as we dive into that, I think you guys will see that mathematically it's probably the right way to think about it.

You have to have a check against AI mimicking the worst of humans but not having that thing that um we all have minus the psychopaths uh which is some sort of moral conscience. So, if we don't find a way, we're we're going to be in a world of hurt. Uh, and people are losing their minds because Argentina has made a 12hour workday legal. I'm going to leave that one there. I want to talk about that one in full. All right, everybody. Welcome. Uh, it's going to be a good day.

It's Friday. It's Friday the 13th. Uh, really quick, um, our audience is largely men, so if anybody forgot, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Um, so please make sure you make up something if you can't get a reservation. So, I don't want anybody to be on the couch this weekend. Um, I got you fellas. you fellas. you fellas. Um, Amazon does next day delivery. Just make sure you don't give her the Amazon box. You put it in something else. Just that's free game for the day. All right.

Um, Um, Um, that is very generous of you. Yeah. And then if she does get mad, just tell her, "Hey babe, the Dow's over 50,000." So, 50,000." So, 50,000." So, because it works so well for Pam Bondi. How did you feel about that? He gives good advice and then follows it with horrific advice. Everybody, there it is. They can't all be Golden Drew. Yeah. Uh yeah, what was your initial thoughts? We we tried to muster through the whole five hours. It was interesting, but like what do you think?

Like your initial gut reaction that just watching that? watching that? watching that? My initial gut reaction is that politics are a joke. Uh and that attorney general Pam Bondi's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was an absolute freak show. It only dug the Epstein hole deeper for the Trump admin. I do not know what they're thinking trying to apply this always attack strategy on this issue. It's crazy. Now, obviously, these hearings are always terrible. They are full of political theatrics. It's all designed to create social media clips, but the Trump admin just cannot stop stepping on its own dick when it comes to Epstein.

This is It's so stupid. I don't know what they're thinking. You guys said this was like the thing. Elect us, transparency, we got you. Nothing to hide. Just get us in office and you know, we're going to take care of this. And they have done anything but. Uh they they are acting like they have something to hide. And everyone at this point, if you don't just assume anybody running a smoke screen is hiding something, you have not been paying attention. So, dude, we we are in a situation where you have to let the chips fall where they may, and they may just feel like they can't.

And so, we're in this ridiculous situation where Bondi is sitting down in front of Epstein survivors. They're literally directly behind her wearing matching white shirts. She has a chance to so show some humanity. Does she show any? Absolutely not. Literally the opposite. Now, the victims were there because the DOJ, under Pam Bondi's watch, released over three million pages of Epstein documents, which is only half of the total files. Let's not lose that. And in some cases, they managed to reveal victims while redacting potential perpetrators. Wild.

And I get it, there's 6 million documents. They're under massive time pressure to turn it all around. But this is one of those times where you have to take your lumps and you just have to say, "We got that wrong. That was terrible. um we should have done XYZ. If you don't, you make it a bigger deal. That's the part where I just cannot figure out how they're misreading the situation this poorly. Now, yes, it's all partisan theatrics, but the way that Bondie came across was not as a calm and collected attorney that has the pedigree that she has.

Like, if you read about her on paper, her pedigree is impeccable. It's fantastic. But instead of coming across like somebody who's earned that pedigree, she came across as emotionally volatile. She came across as a hostile witness who was obviously dodging questions. [cough] questions. [cough] questions. [cough] I'm choking myself up. Dodging questions literally at every turn. It was wild. And as many people have noted, if you want to understand why she was acting the way that she was acting, it was like she was performing for an audience of one for President Trump.

Like all of that through his eyes. Yeah, like seal clap. Love it. This is great. But for everybody else, it was ridiculous. We've got some clips. So, you guys tell us what you think. This is nasty. Accus me of a crime. I believe you just lied under oath and this is all on videotape. You said there's no evidence of a crime. I'm showing you here is a witness statement who called into the FBI's threat operations center. He drove Donald Trump around in a limo. He overheard what Donald Trump said to Jeffrey on his cell phone.

He was so angry he was going to stop a limo and hurt Donald Trump. And he met a girl who said she was raped by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein. She later had her head blown off and officers at the scene said that could not have been suicide. So this is um we miss a little bit of that clip where she has her sort of initial outburst where she's like uh don't you dare accuse me of committing a crime. It's like, okay, slow down, people.

Uh, I guess this is a good reminder for me on camera. You don't come across as firm, you come across as emotionally reactive. And so, it's never a good look. And the the the underlying all of the Jeff Jeffrey Epstein stuff is this heartbeat of like the world that we thought we knew may not be the world that we know. It may be that we are being run influenced whatever by the most horrifying cabal of um demonic people. I mean, I don't think they're actual demons as part of my whole thing is to get people to understand these are just people doing horrific things, but we we have to get to the bottom of that.

And so, all of the theatrics end up being this obfuscation layer of that. And that's the part of all this that drove me the most crazy was if you're going to present your official stance of what this moment is as an administration, it's got to be that we're going to get to the bottom of this because people aren't letting this one go. Uh, and that was anything but. All right, back to the clip. There's another one. Let's jump over to the messy clip. Respond and then the gentleman can move to the next question.

It's my job. Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question. Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back within 40 minutes of me catching you redhanded. redhanded. redhanded. Red hand. There was one redaction where he's listed as a coke and we invited you inentle. We This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. He needs to get You're a failed politician. Okay. So, if you look at this through the lens of where are we at in the world of politics, we are sliding towards this um um um It it's ad homonym attacks.

Listen, we've been here for a long time. I get that. But it's like this this is the attorney general. This is not like another member of Congress who I long ago gave up on them having any decorum. But yeah, when you're getting into a pissing contest, name calling contest with the attorney general of the United States. E Gads, we used to riot over the price of tea. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, okay. So, one here the to really do an investigation on that would be utterly fascinating because because because I it is entirely possible that I'm just being naive.

But the whole idea of um valor, integrity, valor, integrity, valor, integrity, um honor that like you have a sense of what is right and then you don't you don't violate that. And at times there's going to be tremendous personal cost. But we as a society said, well, there's a bigger cost for not being an honorable person. And given that everything really is downstream of culture, you know, only polyiana words will spill out of my mouth as I try to say that we've got to nudge back to that.

But I don't see a way around that. Like if we look at what's happening here and we go, "Yeah, this is fine." As long as my team is dunking on the other side, like I'm perfectly happy to see it. If that's the attitude, we we are doomed. it it will just keep going until you it becomes unsustainable that like I don't know if you saw the footage of the woman there was a woman uh burning down a warehouse that she thought was going to be purchased um by ICE and be like a storage facility for ice or something.

She is standing in full view of a camera with lighter fluid. You you look at your screens uh spraying lighter fluid in broad daylight to burn it down. This is somebody who believes that this is the right answer. Now, keep in mind the building that deal fell through. That building wasn't purchased by ICE. So, she's burning it down. Literally torching her life. She's going to go to prison for this. So, she's torching her life for nothing off of vibes and I don't know, wanting to look cool.

I don't know. Like this is one of those where people get an idea in their head that is unmed from reality where they want to be one of the good guys. They want to be on the right side of history. They want to be the one that kept Anne Frank in their attict but they're not able to accurately assess where we are. So the founders of this country understood the actual moment that they were in. They actually gave birth to the country. they they actually gave birth not just to a country but to the country that would go on to dominate for I mean we're 250 years uh roughly at this point.

So, it's like they really read the moment, right? And we have people now laring as that, but with just totally disconnected from uh the anchoring values that would help you make some of this make sense without any understanding of what is actually happening, the the ground facts, right? When you're burning down a building that the sale didn't go through, like it's so outrageous. And so bringing it back to Pam Bondi, it's like this this will just continue to devolve when we um step back and we accept it, when we just go, well, I got the clip I needed and so all is well.

These congressional hearings have become become become it's just theatrics. And it drives me crazy. It's theatrics on both sides. Like flip it and now put a Republican um crew asking the hard questions and a Democrat being pressed on something uncomfortable. It's going to look exactly the same. You're going to get the Democrat that's deflecting, that's dodging, uh, and you're going to get the grandstanding on the Republican side. So, it's like Jesus, man. The the level of dysfunction. The problem is when I look at how humans behave at the level of culture, of culture, of culture, you have to have sufficient pain to get people moving in the opposite direction.

And that doesn't sound fun. But that seems like the only thing that awaits us when to me this is escalatory. Now, admittedly, I just started paying attention to politics, call it 3 years ago. Um, so maybe this is same as it ever was, but this feels like an escalation to me. Um, yeah, and this makes me think of what uh Nancy May said to um Piers Morgan when she appeared on the show yesterday. yesterday. yesterday. The names that I have seen that came across the DOJ in emails that the DOJ is protecting.

And we're talking about people on both sides of the aisle. We're talking about famous people, rich people, uh people in power, prime ministers, former prime ministers, former presidents, etc. Media personalities that are named in these files. And files. And files. And this is crazy that we can just blow past that that that of like how many people are in the Epstein files. Now, over time, we are really going to have to start teasing out the difference between being mentioned in the Epstein files and actually doing a bad thing.

Um, however, the whole idea that there is this web of people that are far more interconnected than we realize, that's the important thing that I really want people to take away is uh James Runner was right. There's always the iron law of oligarchy. There's always going to be this small group of people. The very thing that we need to be focused on is how do we hold these people accountable? We've got this moment right now where um we have an opportunity where the public is entirely on the side of we've got to get to the truth.

People across the aisle, but we're going to let this moment slip between our fingers because people are getting caught up in the partisan freakery of it all. They're letting it be this theatrical thing. They are not saying, "Okay, hold on. All that matters right now is that we protect the most vulnerable among us. we get to the bottom of everything that's going on and we see this thing across the finish line together. And if we let this moment slip through our fingers, we will end up in a position where either this whole idea of the way that these cabals work is just going to go back underground and we're going to go asleep until years build up another um crisis that is as big as this one, but it will have gobbled up god knows how many um victims in the process.

And that's the thing that I'm worried about as I look at this even now. Like I want to regground us even now. What just happened with Pam Bondi is horrible and it's interesting and it's certainly going to get people to look and of course um we open with it because we know people are interested in this. But the thing to regground on is okay right now in your fingers you have the opportunity to continue to press as the populace to say we need to get to the bottom of this.

We've got 3 millionish more files to go. Uh, I want to see all of those out. We've got to make sure that prosecutions actually happen, that people go through the court system, that we find out what's real, what's not. And honestly, I I don't know what the law is around this, but let's talk about um statute of limitations. Let's say that we know that we there's not going to be convictions because this stuff is beyond the statute of limitations. I still believe that you need to go through and map out exactly what happened so that we can have it in full view of the public to understand what was going on behind the scenes because man like the age of social media the age of AI dropping six million documents on people doesn't obuscate it to the point where it goes away.

It you've got enough citizen journalists they will go through this AI will be used people will find out what these webs are. They are mapappable. We live in a totally different time. We are going to be able to assimilate this information. But we have to have the will to do it. And if we don't have the will to see this through. If we get lost in the partisan hackery, then the opportunity goes away. And then the people in power go, "Oh yeah, this really is how it works." Just hit them with enough information, get enough fighting, enough arguing going that they lose sight of the real thing.

This is why I teach this to entrepreneurs all the time. You have to know what your north star is. What is your north star? When you have that, now you can go, okay, wait, are the things that I'm doing, are they actually getting me to my northstar? Now, the northstar sometimes will be local. So, you guys know my over overall northstar for getting involved in economics and politics to make sure we have a thriving middle class. Cool. Now, as we look at this and we get a local northstar around, okay, this has got to be to map the web of how power works to hold to account those who have been abusing children, those who have been abusing the system, those who have been secretly behind the scenes working to subvert democracy.

That's the northstar. Okay, so plenty to talk about with Pam Bondi, but if we get sucked into anything other than Pami has one job, that job is to run law enforcement. Where is that duty being dropped? Focus on that. Get into that. You document that. You push that forward. You say, "Okay, listen. Here's what's going on internationally." We see people like the former prime minister of um Norway has been indicted. Now, maybe it it it script of his royalty um title as well. Like monarchs are losing their titles, too.

So, yes. yes. yes. So, well said. So all there are consequences that we're seeing internationally that we're not seeing here in the US and I think that the wrong read of that and we haven't gone through everything so I could be wrong of course but I think the wrong read of that would be to say well there just wasn't really anything on that scale happening here in the US. I think there is and I think that the power structures are the thing that are allowing like enough obfuscation enough like drama and theatrics to distract us from okay cool like how should this work?

um what are the crimes that meet a threshold where we're going to pursue them? Uh one of the best lines of questioning that I heard was how many people have you begun to investigate? That's what I want to know. Where where are the indictments? Who's being investigated? Like how are we going to see this through to conclusion? And I get it. The problem that we are up against is the very people that we're asking to do this are the people that are tied or are directly themselves the people with the problem that's going to be found out.

But that's why I will remind all of us. We should not be afraid of the government. The government should be afraid of us. Yep. Yep. Yep. Now, if we apply enough consistent pressure that this is what we need to see and we do not get distracted by the theatrics, then we can actually get this thing across the finish line. Look how far Massiey's gotten us already. So, it's And uh Roana. I have beef with Roana on some economic stuff, but shout out like those two really have just push this thing, push this thing forward.

So, um my whole takeaway, and Drew and I were talking about this before we started rolling, was it was really depressing watching the um the testimony was really depressing. It was just all theatrical everywhere on all sides. Bondi dodging, uh Democrats trying to play gotcha. Oh, in fact, the one thing we have to talk about, all the Biden years, it's all there. No one cared about it. All the Bush years, all the Obama years. So, this has become a thing now because it is politically expedient.

Trump foolishly made it a pillar upon which he ran. That's coming back to haunt him. He never should have done that if he wasn't prepared to just turn everything over. So, hey, play with fire, you get burned. So, you've got them doing that. Then on top of that, if we can't agree that this is clearly a both sides problem, you this is everybody is caught up in this thing. It is wild. Uh you've got Obama's lead attorney just had to resign from her position as legal counsel for Goldman Goldman Sachs because she was calling Epstein like uncle and like so anyway that's probably not going to play out well for her even beyond this.

Uh obviously we've got plenty of people on the Republican side that are caught up in this eye on the prize. Where are the indictments? Who's being pursued for what? uh we've passed law on what the Transparency Act needs to look like. Are we meeting those hurdles? Yes or no? If not, what are we doing about it? And you just stay logistically minded. You just stay grounded in the facts and you don't let people pull you into the emotional battle. Um this is something I don't know if it's on your list of things to talk about, but so Lisa interviewed me about the fact that I voted for Trump.

Uh that got picked up by Vision Lani who said that he felt betrayed. Uh, and so he's saying Tom doesn't understand economics, as you can imagine. I'm prepared to take that Pepsi challenge. I replied directly to Vision on his Instagram post. Uh, I'm happy to sit down and talk about the facts of economics. Um, one, I'm happy if he really does see something that I'm missing, I'll want to update my thinking. Uh, but I have a feeling at the end of that that that won't be the case.

What will end up happening is he's going to give emotional arguments. We'll see. We'll see. Give him every chance. But I bring that up to say in that conversation, my thing is just going to be coming back to the facts. How does this stuff play out? What do we know to be true? How do we separate the things that we fear or the things that we feel from the things that we can look historically or map out going forward? And if you approach arguments in that way, then at a minimum, you get a little bit wiser as you move forward.

You might not win the argument. That's perfectly fine. Winning the argument should never be the north star. It should be about doing the thing that gets you towards an honorable goal. So that that's the thing that I want to see here. I want us all to map out exactly what our honorable goal is. Protect the most vulnerable among us. Map the webs of power that are toxic and absolutely destroying not just our country, but pointing the world in a direction that's led us to populism. And then that the theatrics are being used to distract.

If we can just hold all that in mind, stay calm, not get emotional, walk through the beats, get to the things that we want to get to, people being prosecuted for crimes, hey, everything will be fine. But if we get sucked up in the drama of it all, we're toast. I just appreciate the expediency that some of these private and international entities are doing. The fact that um the council, she works at Goldman Sachs, she's in the private sector now. the fact that she stepped down and had to leave the company.

There was um the Life Touch, the children's photographer company that had ties to Epstein. They already been removed out of schools. Um you want to talk about a bad look. Yeah. International internationals. We already talk about international dignitaries having to step down. So much so as some people losing their monarch. Like you're no longer in the royal family and yet we have a old CEO that is somehow just shaking and jing and moving through the ranks. So, it's one of those things that things that things that I don't want to be a depressionist.

Nothing we can do, it seems. But this is seems to me like the classic fact of law enforcement is for poor people, rich people. If you got enough, you can beat the case. And it just seems that right now there's at least directional energy toward, hey, let's just sit down with the victims. Let's just talk to them. Let's try to do something. You guys bought it up. You wanted to have this thing on the table. Now it's on the table. and you're telling me that it's nothing burger where international entities are like, "Nah, we you can't do this." You know what I mean?

So, that's where I think the where the lost hope is coming from because it just seems like this administration isn't interested in investigating it. And I'm 100% with you. Democrats are trying to use this as a victory lap to the midterms. It's not about partisans. If Obama got to go to jail, cool. If he was touching kids, put him right next to Trump. I don't care. Like, it doesn't matter. I don't have allegiance in that place. I just want to know that this is crazy as our government institution body that out of all these three million files, nobody's at least getting talked about, investigated.

The victims haven't been talked to. Like, you can't say that that's okay. Whether you're Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or never voted in your life. Everybody will look at that and be like, "Okay, we we should do this. This is a kid crime. Like, we should all be on the same page that, hey, PDFs are bad." Okay, cool. And if we can't all agree on that in America, we might be more cooked than we think we are. Yes. And um I was thinking this morning, can you imagine the world you will wake up in if they do a scan of his Zoro property.

I think that's what it is where people are claiming that they're the bodies of children or Epstein's island. island. island. If if they find bodies, God help everyone involved in it. Literally, God help them. I have the chills. Uh I was like, you want to talk about something where people will riot if they find bodies and nobody has been prosecuted so far. Yo, if you find bodies as a part of like, hey, cool. We're diligently walking through this rule of law for sure. I want to be very clear.

I want to see the process play out as it should. Um, but boy oh boy, I don't think people will take kindly to that because right now it's hard to integrate that it might be that bad. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. But if it is that bad, uh, and you've been sitting on your hands playing political games, political games, political games, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. God help you. Uh, all right. So, for a quick hit, let's jump over to Argentina. Um, I've seen people like retweet this as he's bringing back slave labor and then once I seen you read I was like, "Oh, wait a second.

It's he's just saying that it's allowed to do this, but it's not that it's mandatory to do it." Um, break this down for us cuz I feel like there's a lot of spin on X right now about it. Yeah, this one is hilarious. So, right now in Argentina, they have made it legal where it was previously illegal to work a 12-h hour day. Now, let's be very clear. It's not mandatory. It's just legal. So people are able to, for instance, if you want to take a vacation, you can stock up hours now.

So you could work more than your normal shift, bank up the hours, and then go take a paid vacation. So when you look at the most effective countries from an economic standpoint, you are going to see that it is tied to a certain group of people that are hyper ambitious that want to work a lot. and the country that they're in, depending on where they're at, can either in reinforce that and allow that and make that possible and create an opportunity for them to get ahead and win by working harder than other people.

Uh or you can stifle that and thus hold back that economy. What Argentina is trying to wake up to is years, literally a hundred years of socialist policies took them from being one of the most vibrant economies not in South America, one of the most vibrant economies in the world. Okay, this Argentina used to be the place that immigrants wanted to go to. There was a period, I believe it was in the early 1900s, like 1920 or something, where more immigrants went to Argentina than came to the US.

There was just so much opportunity. And then slowly but surely, a welfare state began to be the barnacles on the turtle that began to drown it. And they have spent a hundred years as a dysfunctional economic backwater country. And what they're trying to do now is make it so that people can be ambitious, so that people can go after getting ahead. And this is one of those things that I think a lot of people right now today are very uncomfortable with. And the reality is what you want to do with an an economy if you really want it to thrive is you want to unchain the most ambitious in your society.

This is exactly how Deng Xiaoping pulled hundreds of millions of people out of desperate, grinding poverty in China because it ends up being good for everybody is he let people get rich. I know people don't like to hear that, but the communist country that ran the experiment for you as to whether socialism and communism work said, "Ooh, after we've starved 45 million people to death, after we killed tens of millions more in our cultural revolution, this doesn't work. What if instead we align ourselves with the way that the human mind actually works and we let people be brace yourselves we let them be selfish and we let them find a way to advance themselves their family by innovating by building something that other people haven't built by working more than the next person is willing to work and by unleashing that you do get a ton of people the builders the makers the innovators they will go and build it's happened over and over and over and over throughout history.

It is the very thing that made America the most dominant country on planet earth. We had no social safety net and people from all over the world came here and risked that there were certain colonies where it was like 82% likely you would die in your first winter and people still kept coming and kept coming because they wanted out from under tyranny. What is tyranny? Tyranny is somebody telling you what you can and can't do. So what is it when somebody tells you you can't work 12 hours even if you want to?

That is tyranny. And it has the kind of economic consequences that you would expect. You disincentivize people from working harder. You disincentivize that class of people that just want to go. They they want to grind. They want to build. They want to work in a way that other people don't want to work. And people shouldn't be forced to work that much. But the reality is goals make demands. If you want to be the best at whatever you're doing, you're going to have to outwork other people.

If you want to build a company that's more successful than the next person so you can reap the rewards of that, you're going to have to outwork the next person. You're going to have to work smart, hard, and long hours. And I get it. People don't some people don't want to embrace that. But for me as somebody who has chosen a life that I love by the way for 25 years I have effectively it's I've gone through different phases for health reasons or whatever but effectively from the moment I wake up Monday through Friday I'm either working or working out and I have been able to advance my life economically for sure but also just in terms of the things that I'm able to do in the world.

I have loved it. And if I ever stop loving it, then I'll stop working that hard. But the reality is that's what I want to do. I have plenty of money. I never need to work again. But I work 16 to 18 hours a day, Monday through Friday, another call it 8 to 10 Saturday and Sunday. That's the life I want to lead. So to me, this is a good sign. This is people that are saying, "Hey, you don't have to, but if you want to, the option is there.

We'll see what happens. Um, I don't know. I feel like this is one of those things. It sounds worse than it actually is. So, let's It doesn't sound bad at all. It's crazy to me that people think this is bad. It is crazy to me that in the state of California, it is illegal to be an unpaid intern. unpaid intern. unpaid intern. That's illegal. What? My best piece of advice, if it weren't illegal, I would tell you, "Hey, find somebody who's living the life you want to live and go tell them, I will work for you for free.

I will work hard. I will be smart. All I ask in exchange is knowledge and connections." connections." connections." That is so much more useful than money by a lot. Money spends once. knowledge you can use over and over and over and over. Same with connections. So, it is wild to me that people think um everyone's dumb. They're going to be manipulated and I've got to protect adults from doing something that they want to do. That's so wild to me. I don't know how people aren't more offended by that.

That that is grotesque. grotesque. grotesque. And to me, that is a nanny state where you have to have the base assumption that people are too stupid to protect themselves if you're a child. Yeah, for sure. Protect kids. Obviously, kids literally are too stupid to fend for themselves, but adults are not. And when you start treating adults like they're too stupid to think for themselves, you are going to have problems as we're witnessing. witnessing. witnessing. Um, in other news, internationally, Russia is moving back to the US dollar as part of a wide-ranging economic partnership.

I will put a huge asterk on this. This is one of those, it's part of the Ukraine peace deal ultimately. So there is some stipulations that are still very much evolved and we know that we pump faked on on peace still a few times. So this is pending nothing is official but some of the details that the partnership would include um would be US and Russia working together on fossil fuels joint investments in natural gas offshore oil and critical raw materials partnership windfall for US companies Russia's return to the US the USD settlement system which I think that last one is something we want to highlight and talk about.

Yeah. So, if we could get Russia uh to rembrace the dollar as they have just apparently offered to do, this is coming from intelligence that people have obtained from in Ukraine uh and it is tied to the war in Ukraine. The story broke yesterday via Bloomberg and if it's true and ultimately successful, that's going to be the big question. It would be extremely consequential for them to rembrace the dollar. Uh it's came from the internal memo in the Kremlin. And it was drafted this year, circulated among senior Russian officials, and it proposes that Russia return to the dollar, which is crazy because that settlement system is a part of the sweeping economic system that was trying to hold them back.

But this would allow them to basically get a win with Trump. As Drew was saying, it's contingent on actually ending the Ukraine war. So they want the US to come in, help them end the war in Ukraine. And if they do that, they're like, "Hey, here's the thing that we're prepared to do now in the bare knuckle brawl to establish a new world order, which is happening right now. You are in the middle of it." Getting Russia back on the dollar train would be huge. Huge.

This is the very same Russia that has spent the last four years aggressively ddollarizing. They're a big part of the reason I keep creating content about, hey everybody, wake up to the fact that because partly Russia's been building alternative payment systems, settling 90% of its trade with China and rubles and yuan and championing bricks as the vehicle for ending American financial hedgeimonyy that we have gone from roughly 72% of global trade being settled in USD to now in the 50s. Okay, so it is happening. It is happening fast and having Russia now quietly pitching Washington on coming back to the dollar, it would be a major change and a massive coup in terms of the US versus China power dynamic.

We are in a battle that is binary. Either the US is going to win and this is largely a question of AI. Either the US is going to win and we are going to dominate the next century or it is going to be China that wins and they are going to dominate the next century. This is how great power politics plays out, out, out, accelerated wildly by how winner take all AI is going to be. Now, the memo, which is being dubbed the Demetriv package, was named after Carel Demetriv, the Kremlin negotiator, who also heads Russia's sovereign wealth fund.

So, this is somebody that actually understands deeply the consequences of the current Russian strategy. and Ukrainian uh President Zalinski has referenced it himself. So large reason to believe that this is all real. And he said that Ukrainian intelligence had gathered information on this massive bilateral economic proposed agreement uh between Russia and the US and that it's running in parallel to the peace talks. Now, I've got to imagine he's not exactly thrilled to see the US and Russia coming together, but in terms of what is certainly better for America in the long run, having a functioning relationship with Russia at this kind of level where you get one of a small handful of global power players back on the dollar system, buddy.

Obviously, very good for America in the long term. Now, the memo lays out seven areas of proposed cooperation. Uh Drew went through them, but you're talking about joint oil, LG ventures, preferential conditions for US companies to re-enter the Russian market, nuclear energy. This one is big because we're talking about getting the energy that we need for AI. Russia's return to the dollar settlement would be the biggest of all of them. But all of these things together would be great, especially cooperation on critical raw minerals like lithium and nickel.

By the way, um this one's going to be controversial, but they're also doing a joint push for fossil fuels. um to basically bypass some of the green energy policies that Russia even argues favors China and Europe. Oh, the irony that green policies favor China. Uh ultimately the question is going to become why would Russia want to do this? And especially right now given the sanctions that we put on them, given how damaging that's been to their economy, um wouldn't they be better off never being in a position to go through this again so that they can create an alternative?

uh because on the surface returning to the dollar settlement layer just means that you're resubmitting yourself to Washington control. We've already weaponized it against them. So given that we've frozen historically like $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves, why would they volunteer for this again? Um and the answer is Russia is in a very difficult situation. The alternative currency systems that they built with China, they do work, but they come at a huge cost. Russia sees themselves as increasingly dependent on Beijing. Remember, Beijing is making a play to be the central kingdom to the entire world.

And that dependency is starting to feel to them, I'm sure, a lot less like a partnership than like a leash. And so the memo itself is arguing that returning to the dollar would stabilize Russia's foreign exchange market and reduce volatility in its balance of payments, which is true. So in plain English, the ruble yuan workaround is messy and expensive and Russia knows it. And more importantly, this is a play to split the US from its current hyperconfrontational posture towards Moscow by giving Trump something he clearly wants.

And people know if you give Trump a thing that that he wants, then you are going to be in a much better negotiating position. Whether that's good or bad, I'll let you guys decide. But it does appear to be true. And a win for the dollar on the world stage is a big win for the US. That is for sure. And it definitely would help Trump. If Russia re-mbbraces dollar um settlement, it weakens the entire bricks durization, not only narrative, but actual process. So that would be a huge victory.

And at a moment when dd dollararization has been accelerating, uh, this would be a very good thing. So you've got Xinping who's been hoarding gold, telling the world directly that they should switch over to the yuan as a world's reserve currency. Uh, you even have Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning for years, by the way, that sanctions are on a path to becoming obsolete, which would rob America of so much of its power. And all because you've got countries that are moving away from the dollar.

So, you put all that together and this is a really big deal, deal, deal, but it's not as fun as the Pam Bondi thing. So, are people going to lean into it? We'll see. No, but going back to it, somebody in the chat was like, "Russia is doing this so they can get that seized funds back." And I'm like, "Hey, for 300 billion that was seized by the US government. I might make a deal, too." So, bro, that that is a small price to pay to be the world's reserve currency.

A that is a tiny price to pay. This is where you have to understand why being the world's reserve currency is so valuable in in a very brief nutshell. It allows you to inflate your currency because you share that problem with the whole world, not just with your own people. And I have a growing hypothesis. I haven't heard anybody else say this, so take this with a grain of salt. But I have a growing hypothesis that what we're seeing in the markets right now, the reason all things will just like dip and then bounce back, dip and then bounce back, is what you're seeing is a correlation across effectively all asset classes.

That there isn't anything uncorrelated anymore because the thing that they're correlated by is uncertainty. Investors don't know what the new world order is going to look like. just when you think gold is the place you want to be, silver is the place you want to be, all that stuff drops because Russia is like, "Well, actually, we are going to maybe get back in bed with the US." But that's a maybe. And who knows? And so, as all of this stuff plays out, is AI a bubble?

Or is what Tom just said about AI true? And it's a winner take all and oh my god, like whatever we do, we've got to do it. So, nobody knows. And that deep uncertainty is causing them to be skittish. If you've ever seen like a deer, the way that it will suddenly freeze, look around, and then just dart and you're like, "The [ __ ] just happened?" That's what the markets feel like to me. Everyone is just so paranoid because they know they can't sit in cash in inflation.

So, they know they can't sit there because they're expecting hyper printing of money anytime. I It's already started back up again, but they're expecting a whole lot of it to just go absolutely haywire. So they don't want to sit in cash, but they're also looking at the markets and they know that you've got Buffett that's like trying to be as much in a high option position as he can be so that as it crashes, he can go in and buy things. So everyone's like, "Oh god." So you want to be in the market to avoid missing things going up, but you want to be out of the market because you're expecting things to go hard down.

Crypto is acting more like a high volatility tech stock than it is like gold. But gold is whipssawing in a way that I'm pretty sure we haven't seen in any of our lifetimes. So it's like, oh, and by the way, you're almost certainly in a recession. And so ah, like what do you do? K-shaped economy racing away from each other. AIS stealing jobs. Like people are freaking the [ __ ] out. And the instability in people's minds because it is world order related. We don't know what the world order is going to be.

Now all of a sudden you're like, I'm not sure that I'm smarter than anybody else. Everything feels like a black swan because the markets are predicated on your ability to go, I see something other people don't. I'm gonna bet big on it. Michael Bur, the big short guy, short guy, short guy, liquidated his entire um wealth management management management group and gave money back to the investors and he said, "I don't understand the markets anymore." And that was like four months ago. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Now the uncertainty is way higher than it was then.

So if you've got one of the greatest financial minds of the last 30 years telling you, "Yeah, I don't understand what's happening." That I think is the thing that's uniting all of this. It's just everybody has a mental model where they try to reach out into the future and they just can't see it. There has been some speculation about how this interacts with the world order. I'm going to drop this on a super chat. Um this is from Stop Lurking and Start Living. Let's go. Um, we're going to introduce Ryan to the chat.

Everybody give it up for Ryan. His first super chat. My apologies, chat. This is Ryan. He's normally hiding in the background. If you love our clips, uh, you can thank Ryan. If you hate our clips, uh, I'll give you his address later and you can pay him a visit. Go subscribe to the clip channel after this. this. this. Yeah, let's go. Nicely done, Ryan. Tom Clips, everybody. Clips, everybody. Clips, everybody. Stop lurking, start living comment. Tom, I'm curious how your conversation with Peter Zeon updated your mental mapping of the economic conflict with China.

What did you agree or disagree with? Well, I can't wait for you guys to see the episode, so I'm not going to It's out. out. out. Oh, oh my god, it came out yesterday. That's right. How's it doing? Um, okay. Um, okay. Um, okay. Okay. Uhoh. Uh oh. Well, we need you guys to go check it out. Everybody should go watch Check it out. Uh, the great irony that our deep dives now become our dominant piece of content. But the the interview with Peter was awesome.

I'm very eager for you guys to see it. Uh, okay. So the things that um updated my mental model and you you want to watch it for yourself but uh the big one was that China does not have the military might to project its power. So we would have to go to China in order for there to be a Thusidities trap conflict. The bad news is that I can actually see us going there because if we have to defend Japan which is now arming themselves up.

They're building a military again. There is massive beef between Japan and China. China or Japan is our staunch ally. uh and we have economically leaned on them for a very long time. Japan has played a major role in the global economy. So I could see us turning a blind eye to Taiwan. I can't see us turning a blind eye to Japan. So uh that's where I'm like, uh oh, even if China cannot push all the way over into the Western Hemisphere via military power, I think that they have means to suck us into a regional conflict.

So, I don't think we're off the hook as much as Peter would say we are there. Um, also I think that demographics are a problem for everyone. And so, while China may suffer more on a um like raw number basis, like let's say that they are overstating their population by 400 million. Okay, cool. They still have a billion people. So, we have not as bad demographic problems, but we have bad demographic problems. But we only have 330ish 330ish 330ish million people. So now all of a sudden it's like okay they're still two or three times our size depending on what the number is to me that's a question of Xi.

Now this is where Peter and I both agree Xi is just in lockdown mode. He is trying to purge everybody and he is a more Mao style figure which is one of the reasons that I have turned a corner on China and am just hyper paranoid. Uh Mao is an unprecedented mass murderer. And so if Xi has any of those impulses to do everything by force, lock everything down, purge everyone that disagrees, um you eventually find yourself in a very very dark place. Um so yeah, that would be um the high level sort of where we agreed and where we disagreed.

Um I think Peter is very smart and I watch his content frequently. Um, but yeah, still have a slightly different mental model than he does. does. does. Cool. Cool. Cool. We got three more super chats. Uh, yeah, let's hit the big Diggler one. Yes. Uh, from Big Diglers, DOG DOJ letting Congress members view unredacted Epstein files might be reversing. It could expose which ones involved with Epstein's search for dirt on themselves and their handlers, helping DOJ map Dark connections and his control over them. You ready for some interesting news?

I'm not yet sure what to make of this. I don't even know if it's real. Please, grain of salt. But there is a guy, his tweet was doing very well, who claims that he has been able to with 25 lines of code. of code. of code. Um, he has been able to unredact all of the Epstein files. Now, uh, yeah, let's let's let him say it. Watch this clip. This is wild. I wrote 25 lines of code that can probably unredact all of the Epstein files in less than 30 seconds.

Really not that crazy. All it does is take a PDF and turns it into a Microsoft Word doc because the Microsoft Word doc just completely removes all this black this black this black line right here. So took 0.2 seconds to do. So if you're not looking [clears throat] at your screen before I did mention that here's the black line but apparently the PDF is still aware of what's under it and so it passes that data to the Microsoft document and then the Microsoft document you can use to remove the black line.

Now if that's accurate buddy um there the bad news is that that means that people that are trying to be protected are now at risk and obviously I hate that and I don't know what to do about that. Um, but the truth is going to come out. We just live in a different era. We live in a different era, everybody. And so, um, it's gonna come out. out. out. So, we'll see what the Fallout ends up being. But, um, yeah, trying to keep a lid on all of this stuff.

That that game's already over. And going back to Big Diggers, um, they already they had four computers in the DOJ and they're already key logging who's searching what, who's looking up what. So they are keeping up track of what the people who are going into the DOJ to look through the Epste files are searching for. So they're definitely and that feels like another narrative move which I hate. So it's like you go in and you look up something and they're saying okay people that look for um God what did they say?

People that look for victims are trying to protect I don't think that's quite how they said it. But then people that are looking for like specific names of people like was less Wexner in this uh that they're looking that's who they work for and they're trying to cover them up. And I'm like, hold on. That that is not the only reason somebody might do a search like that. Um, also it's just it might be legal that they did it because they're the the DOJ's computers, but it is a really uh bad faith move that's going to make people feel some type of way.

So, at a time where just it's everything is politicized and shouldn't be, um, this was not a smart play in my opinion. Um, Eric, could we hit number four, please? Um, okay. Tom's been waiting for this all day. Um, let's start with the tweet, then I'll toss it over to you. Sad day in the NL uh Netherlands. The Dutch government is expected to pass a bill introducing a 36% tax on unrealized capital gains. This will destroy long-term strategies, kill compounding effects, and trigger a wealth ex exodus of biblical proportions.

But they'll pass it anyway. can't fix stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I do have a breakdown here that kind of outlines what unrealized gains actually means. actually means. actually means. Let me I'll do like a whole thing that's like all in context. The thing you guys need to understand is the Netherlands have basically decided to lay bear their own economic ignorance and nuke their economy in a single move by taxing unrealized gains. This was a big blow up that people had with my take on Kla Harris.

And I'm telling you, it is as big as I have made this out to be. And this is the Netherlands attempt at reforming what they call box three. It's their wealth tax system. Different people fall into different types of boxes. I'll walk through it a little bit. We probably don't need to get into the minutiae for you guys to understand why this is so problematic. But the proposed system introduces a capital growth tax where not only regular income like interest or dividends, rent, things like that are taxed annually.

uh but also realized also realized also realized fine and unrealized tragedy of biblical proportions changes uh in asset value are taxed. So the proposed rate is a flat 36% on all taxable income within box 3. The bill was submitted in May of 25 and it's targeted to take effect on January 1st of 28, but only if Parliament approves it by March 15th. So my hope is that these guys pull their head out of their ass and just map out what this will do. Ma map out the logistics of how something like this works.

The problem is the people proposing this either don't understand the logistics or they understand the logistics and literally want to destroy their own economy. This is all a stunning lack of understanding of how unrealized gain works or like I said potentially sinister. But this is like telling someone if they want to own a car, they have to give over the carburetor. To do that, you have to break apart the car to pay the fee for owning the car. It doesn't make any sense. Unrealized gains is just another word for potential gains.

Maybe gains, but not actual gains. gains. gains. It's like if you think you might get a new job that pays more and so I start taxing you on the job you might get today. It is the wildest [ __ ] ever. To make the gains like if if you've got gains that are taxable by this law to have enough money to pay that actual tax you would have to sell the thing typically a company or something like that in order to pay the tax thus destroying the valuable thing.

Now, there are important specifics to the proposal. I'll go through them because I want people to understand. I'm not saying what I'm saying because I'm confused. I'm saying what I'm saying because I'm looking at what they're doing, including all the caveats and the things that they're going to push aside. And this is still a catastrophe. So, real estate treated differently. Cool. So, you probably don't have to worry. Uh unlike other assets, real estate will not be taxed on unrealized gains. Literally, thank God. That definitely narrows the scope of the disaster here.

Property owners only have to pay tax on gains when the property is sold or transferred as it should be because that's a realized gain. That makes sense. Startups share uh exempt status from annual unrealized gains uh under certain conditions. So if someone holds a small share under it's under 5% in a qualifying startup, qualifying is going to become important here. They're only taxed on dividends with capital gains taxed as sale. Again, as it should be, those are realized gains. Losses are deductible. Losses within box 3 can be carried forward indefinitely against future Box 3 income.

They'll have caveats on that. I assure you, it's never as simple as it sounds. There's a tax-free threshold. The current taxfree capital threshold will be replaced by a tax-free income threshold of €1,800. Now, this is going to create real problems for companies with a certain type of investor. And this is what I want people to understand. The way that they define a startup becomes critical. It's a company making less than 30 million euro a year. And it's a company that's less than 5 years old. So, take Quest, the company that I built.

We would have been in trouble. Not us because we were the three of us that founded it, but our investors would have been because our investors owned more than 5% of the company and the company had gone screaming up in value. And so now what do they do? They would obviously have to pressure us to take out a loan so that they could pay that back. They would have to take out a loan to pay that back or we would have to sell the company. All of which are terrible.

terrible. terrible. So if you hold shares in a private company, you're not likely going to be able to sell those freely. Okay? So it's not like a public company where you can just sell a piece of it. There are usually shareholder agreements, transfer restrictions, right of first refusal clauses, and simply no liquid market for the shares. I won't say no liquid market, but it's they're not like they are in public markets. up by a lot. But once the startup exemption expires, you like if you cross that 30 million euro threshold, for instance, you now owe the 36% on potentially years of accumulated paper gains all in one hit.

So all of the options are going to be bad. Like I said, you can take out a loan assuming that the bank will even lend against an illlquid private company share. So it's not even a guarantee that you're going to be able to do this. Most banks probably aren't going to do that because like I said, this is potential value. Anything could happen between here and there. And then you're paying interest on the borrowed money to cover a tax bill on income you haven't received. Not only have you not received it, you may never receive it.

That's the part like this is the one where I'm like, if I could just get people to understand this, this would all be very simple. It's not real gains. You haven't made the money. It's not real. You don't have the money. If you're worried that people hide behind not real gains and so they'll gamble to avoid paying tax off in the future, great. There are other ways that you can tax them to feel like, ah, cool. Like we stop people from hiding or doing tax evasion, whatever.

Update the tax code. Simplify it. So many ways to make that easier. But to put people in this situation where they have to sell the very thing that is worth the thing, this is how you begin to erode your economy because people aren't going to make long-term plans. Why would you ever invest in more than 5% of a company when you know that you could find yourself in this position? It's absolutely ridiculous. And so when Kla Harris made that proposal here, I had the exact same reaction.

This is somebody who's either sinister or completely economically illiterate. Neither one of those is acceptable. They have real world consequences. And I know people, we've lived in prosperity for so long now that we think that it's just a natural law. And so just tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. Uh it doesn't work like that. It does not work like that. Like at the level of the physics of money. And so yeah, this one's wild. They'll run a natural experiment for us if this passes and we'll get to see it in real time.

So, okay, So, okay, So, okay, this is something that's been gaining traction for a while. Um, but I still think people don't actually understand what it means cuz a lot of people are just like, "Oh, this is a rich guy trying to avoid his taxes." They just go, "Do I have unrealized gains?" No, cool. I don't care. Tax them. them. them. So, I I feel like this is like important because this is like a good example that Let's Let's do it. This is the white whiteboard session about unrealized gains.

Okay. Let's say January 1st, 2028, you have €50. Yep. The value as of January 1st, 2029 is €100,000. is €100,000. is €100,000. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. On So on paper, your gain is 50,000. That's an unrealized gain. You didn't sell anything. It's been in the equity market the exact same time. You didn't do anything. You just went from 50 to 100. Boom. You quote unquote made 50,000 in unrealized gains. Now, um, you're married, you get the exception, 3,600. We do all the math. You have 4600 46,400 as your taxable amount.

That's the exception minus your unrealized gains. Now, based on this tax bill, 36%, you would owe $16,000 in your tax bill from this unrealized gains. But now, let's say the bill is due in May and the market falls. Now, your new value is 60K. So, your portfolio, your portfolio is no longer worth that 100K, just like Bitcoin is going down as we seen it. It went from 125 to 60,000. That's a 50% reduction. So, you were at 50, you went to 100, now you're back at 60.

Your tax bill is still 16,000. So you would have to sell 16,000 of that of uh in shares in order to pay your tax bill and you would end up with 43,296. So instead of appreciating you are now going negative because you had to pay a tax bill on a gain that you never actually realized. So this is why unrealized gains is a little bit weird. Um Um Um not a little bit weird, why it is absolutely destructive. absolutely destructive. absolutely destructive. What I propose is what everybody is saying is that well okay let's look at Elon.

He's worth a billion dollars on unrealized gains and he just takes loans from that and he doesn't get paid and he doesn't pay taxes. So why don't we tax the loans against stocks or let's tax the money that actually hits his account. But taxing the phantom money in the market is where you're going to end up penalizing average investors as opposed to getting the big guys that you guys think this tax will do. you would have to put very thoughtful restrictions around that. Otherwise, you get uh essentially double um interest payments on that or double tax, however you want to look at it.

But yes, that would be far smarter than charging somebody money on money that they don't have. Like it it is crazy. And if we can all agree that for instance, fewer jobs get created when we're in a recession, uh you can imagine how many fewer jobs are going to get created when people are being taxed on money that they don't have and they're having to sell things to um realize the tax bill. It's going to completely change people's behavior and not in a way that grows companies, in a way that slows companies or stops the incentive to start a company in the first place because you're going to go out.

Remember, most companies, most big companies, I should say, most companies that get big, they don't start off bootstrap. They start off raising capital. And if you're raising capital, this is going to completely change that. And so, the current world that you're living in is brought to you by the ability to aggregate capital. All the big beautiful buildings that you see, all the safety that you enjoy, all of that is a result of the ability to aggregate capital. Now, if you really want to pressure people to do the right thing, you would press them on making money sound so that you can't print money and steal it from the poor and working class.

So, you could stop the K-shaped economy. So, you could dramatically dramatically dramatically reduce the right thing that people should be focusing on, which is the intolerable level of inequality as separated from normal desirable inequality. inequality. inequality. intolerable inequality is a category unto itself uh which we are currently in that we should be going after with everything we have but that has to do with central banks that has to do with money printing uh bank bailouts things like that it does not have to do with making sure that we gobble up every tax dollar that we can which of course the higher you press uh tax rates laughers curve shows you that your actual recouped tax dollars go down how should we actually fix the tax policy like I know.

Do one flat tax on everybody no matter what what what on realized gains. So everybody pays 15% like what? Yep. The tax code is literally everybody pays 32% whatever in your realized gains. Okay. So Okay. So Okay. So done. done. done. Period. Period. Period. There's no loophole for you. Oh, you just uh just uh just uh tax bill is one page 32%. If if you are a resident of America, you pay 32% of what what what is correct. You made a $1.52. I mean, you probably put some sort of very very very low minimum threshold.

Uh, let's say you put your minimum threshold at like 25 grand and cool. Anybody above that number, you're going to pay whatever percent of your tax. It just is what it is. Do Yeah, that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I started typing it in. I was like, yeah, that that would be a yeah, that that would be a thing. thing. thing. My wife is sneaking in. That's what distracted me. Right. I was like, is she walking over here? Like, is she I thought she was about to hop in.

I thought on on an economic day. She was ready for the unrealized gains conversation. conversation. conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. Um, AI has been doing a lots of crazy things. things. things. I know we're going to talk about all the great things that is happening to it, but I want to start negative because we were talking about unrealized gains and things like that. Um, this is something that Naval tweeted me that literally made me stop and like look in the mirror. All of the American AI companies talk about sharing the wealth.

UBI, Age of Abundance, but all the top open source models are Chinese. It's interesting. I think you and I read that very differently. Okay. How do you cuz I thought I was like, wait, that is very interesting that what do you So, okay. I'm China. I know that I've got somebody sitting in all of these companies that is um can tell them turn on turn off the openness of this whenever I want. I'm looking over at the US and I'm like oh you guys are making big bets on AI.

Great. I'm going to [ __ ] up your entire economy because basically you all you guys have been is a stock market of tech companies and now not only are you just a stock market of tech companies, you're just a stock market of AI tech companies. And so I'm going to make this open source. Oh, PS, by the way. Um, if I can get more people using our like services, then it's like, oh, cool. You're now used to using this one. Oh, by the way, to get the latest update, you're now going to need to pay.

Like this is the this is a great strategy. You give something to somebody for free and then you introduce ads or you introduce whatever. But keep in mind whatever model you make open source today is going to be obsolete in 6 months maybe less. So X is not a fool. Yeah, go ahead make make these all open source and at any time when I decide I'm going to lock it down and then if you want anything else that's moving forward that's going to be um our thing.

Now assuming that the code can be validated and it's not creating some sort of backend where it's just filtering everything back to China. If you can get an awesome uh open source model right now today and run it locally, that's awesome. So, it's like even if we're a momentary pawn in a game that will play out down the road, if we can validate the security of the technology, use it like integrate it, put it into whatever you're trying to build. Absolutely. So, um just don't be confused that Xi's a control freak.

M X's whole life model is um if people aren't doing what you say that you can make enough of them disappear, go to prison, or just outright kill them and everybody else falls back in line. And so what do you think that guy's going to do at the level of AI or economics? Like huh? So if people are confused, I would say you should probably take a closer look at X's actual behavior. All right, let me take it one step further. Um, in the age of abundance where we are assuming that when all the robots are out and all the AI companies are proliferated into society, we're going to be able to just give checks to people and take care of people.

In our current political political political wouldn't give checks, but yes. Or services. Or services. Or services. I think it's going to be more like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll give services to people. Um, in our current political climate where people hate taxation, um, the people on the left think the rich are paying their fair share. The people on the right think that they shouldn't pay anything. Um, where I'm just tax cuts. They should you should be paying as few taxes as possible. I'm trying to oversimplify to get to my actual question.

Um, the welfare state is overrown. We need to cut Medicare. We need to cut welfare. We shouldn't be on social security. All these things. What do you think is going to be necessary to happen that makes us go from a individual you could do it yourself society to now I'm taking care of you and it's already happened in what way? 50% of Americans are on some sort of public service public service public service and I feel like 50% of politicians hate that. that. that. Sure. But the reality is that 50% of people are on those services already.

We are a gigantic welfare state and our cultural identity is that of we don't take care of our people. It's wild. Um so I think that we've already lost that battle. So when I wrote this was 13 years ago roughly. Uh I wrote what what really felt like sincerely me trying to give people the very secret thing that had allowed me to become successful from nowhere USA. Parents that had no connections, parents that um did not understand entrepreneurship. Nobody taught me to be an entrepreneur, nothing literally.

But coming from that background, nonetheless, ended up being very successful. And I was like, what did make me successful? And I wrote this blog article. Uh, and the headline of the blog article was, um, if you're hit by a drunk driver, it's all your fault. And I expected people to be like, oh my god, this is brilliant. How insightful. Thank you so much. And they lost their ever loving minds. And I was like, I was so taken back. I could not at the time I had not fully developed my ideas around uh point of reference or um frame of reference and so I was so confused.

The reason I was confused was we've already gone to that. The cultural energy is not about personal responsibility. Hey, not only should it be legal for you to work 12 hours a day, if you're the kind of person that puts in that hustle, good on you. That's amazing. We want to see more of that. We want to see people just go ultra hard. We want to see people in their careers act like Tom Brady in his football career. Like you might be an accountant, but come on.

Like play like Tom Brady's Tom Brady of accountants. Exactly. And so that's how I came up. So I didn't realize like how much American culture had raced away from that. And so we're now in a place where if I put out a video about um hustle culture, it's going to get drugged all over the place for being toxic and out of touch and all that stuff. And I'm just like, nope. This is in alignment with the realities of the human condition. And the realities of the human condition are that this is a world of naked power.

And the fact that power has gone underground doesn't mean that you're not still being controlled by power. So that's where I'm very confused with people's read on all of this stuff. And so if we can reorient people to that, I think we'd be in much better shape. But to bring it back to the actual question, we're already there. We have already stopped being a country of um hard work is going to get you ahead. Some people believe it, but it's not how we're organized at the government level.

Uh it's not culturally what has the energy. Um, so from that perspective, and this is a big part of why the story that I want to tell in Kaizen is very simple. If you put time and energy into getting better at something, also known as hard work, that you'll actually get better. So the punchline of my entire life philosophy is hard work yields results. And that's just anathema to where we are as a society right now. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Okay, I want to keep this uh momentum going.

There has been um reports that were going from Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Sullyman who says that most if not all professional task undertaken by white collar workers will be fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months. Um I want to put a crazy asterk on that. Uh switch back uh Eric um because he has been wrong in the past. Um, somebody dug his older tweets, uh, you can throw it back up and said in 2023 he said, uh, LLM hallucinations will be largely eliminated by 2025.

And somebody says, how did this work out for you? So, he is getting like community noted about like his predictions, but I think directionally we can still say that white collar jobs aren't safe, quote unquote. unquote. unquote. I don't trust my emotions, so I know I shouldn't. But when I hear things like, uh, how'd that work out for you regarding hallucinations? I want to tip this table over and scream into the microphone, bite the fur like off my and literally just lose my [ __ ] mind. And it comes from a place of I I have found so much utility in trying to make contact with the way the world actually is.

Not try to win an argument, not try to be right, but just like, okay, really, where's this stuff going? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh if if Gary Gary's underlying base assumption is AI is not making progress. Gary, don't be a [ __ ] So obviously AI is not only making progress, it's making progress at a rate that is completely [ __ ] up the markets because everybody's mental model of the world is blowing to [ __ ] So what I would love to see from Gary and all the Garry's out there is okay, I think 12 to 18 months is probably a little aggressive just like in 25 we were still struggling with hallucinations, but now in 26 it really does feel like it hallucinates a lot less.

It's not zero, but it's a lot less. And I can feel the direction of movement. Oh, and as Gary, I would like to point out that historically all of these trends follow a really knowable curve where they go through this period of deceptive growth where we get past the initial hype, we come down the trough of disillusionment where people think, "Oh, this is never going to happen." But all the tech people are like, "Uh, I know I understand exponentials." And so while doubling from 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 doesn't seem very impressive, doubling from uh 12 million to 24 million in a month, all of a sudden that's [ __ ] real.

And so that will happen. This technology does not yet show any signs of asmmptoing anytime soon. So when people put that out into the world like, haha, this guy's a buffoon because he missed his predictions around um when the hallucinations would be largely reduced by six months. It's like what a buffoon. That's like people that say, "Well, Elon Musk is always wrong about the timelines." Yeah, he is. But he's also the guy that has um built rockets that get caught by chopsticks. Uh has put more mass into space by orders of magnitude than anyone ever in human history, including governments.

um the guy that now is aiming at landing on the moon. And so you can look at that and go, "Yeah, but he told us that we are going to be uh building a mission to Mars in two years and now he's admitting that we're not and we're going to go to the moon." It's like, "Fucking hell, he's going to build a base on the goddamn moon." So it it's just such a weird frame of reference for me to lock in on that side of things instead of going, "Okay, the stuff is moving fast.

Maybe like when I talk about 3 to five years, I'm always like, "Okay, is it 3 to 5 years? Is it 7 to 10 years? Maybe, but like even if it's like is anyone gonna say that 15 years from now, barring nuclear calamity that AI won't have completely transformed the world? Like will anybody say that? It's already made so many changes that it's startling. Uh so if you said, "Okay, Tom's wrong. It's not three years. It's 15 years." And look how many multiples that is. I just go, "Uh, you're telling me that a kid born today, by the time they're 15, so they're just beginning high school, the world doesn't look anything like this." Yeah, I'm still I feel the same way that I feel now.

Maybe it's not three years, but it's [ __ ] 15. Like, what the [ __ ] are we talking about? So, people like zero in on the weirdest, most like bizarre [ __ ] And I just I I'm I am baffled. And this is exactly why. Remember, I scream into a microphone every week, how do you escape the punishment of inflation? You own assets. And yet, how many people are actually going to do it? I mean, maybe the people in this audience, but it's like the information is out there. I'll make a more universal one.

Um, it has been known for a very long time how to get lean. Like, it is really simple. It's hard, but it's very simple. Everybody can do it. I don't care what disease you have. I literally don't care what disease you have. It doesn't matter. You can get lean. Uh, as I will remind people horrifically, there were no obese people in Awitz. Not a single one. So, it if you find the um the foods that you can eat and you keep your calories at a deficit, you're going to be fine.

It's just that doing that and being hungry is not something people find pleasant and so they don't do it. So, until, uh, getting lean became taking a pill or an injection, people just didn't do it. So, um, that's where we are. People know the answer. They're still not going to do the thing. Uh, okay. This one is a perfect transition into, um, the Friday Funnies. Um, because I'll be honest, last week I I didn't bring the sauce. I didn't bring the juice like I wanted to.

Um, but it was a serious time, you know, was a it was a serious time, you know, and I had to be like very very focused. But today I got some jokes and I'm excited about the jokes that I got. Uh the first one is I know we were just talking about AI and everybody's worried about the future, but I feel like we have a little bit more time before AI takes over cuz this is from Reddit. A whimo hired a Door Dash driver to close doors in Atlanta.

Um I had to ask you like 30 questions about this cuz I was so confused as to what happened. happened. happened. The funny thing is so it it is funny. I don't want to rob that from you, but when I heard this story, I was like, "Oh, the world's going to be even more different than I thought." Okay, so now imagine I literally, you could say that I have made money off of writing science fiction. So, I'll claim I'm a sci-fi writer. It's not how people engage with me publicly.

I understand that. But I've spent an inordinate amount of time writing sci-fi. And you try to imagine what the future's going to be like, and you know you're going to get it wrong, but you try to like at least be directionally correct. But the number of things like uh look at some of the greatest sci-fi of the 80s. None of them. They could imagine the Matrix, but they couldn't imagine cell phones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like when you showed me this, I was like, "Oh my god, the robots understand our systems.

They know how to get us to do things they want." And I was like, "Holy fuck." And then so a robot is like, "Okay, I have these certain limitations. My door's open, but I don't have hands. And they didn't design me well enough to be able to close my own door, which they'll fix, I assure you. But for today, I can't. But oh, what do I know about the different systems? Oh, I could go get that guy to come here. It's problem solving based on an understanding of of systems.

I cannot stress enough how transformative that is. It plays right into my thing about um Project Kaizen and me just giving it screenshots and it telling me how to do very complex things in terms of game development. And I was like, "Holy shit." So, um, yeah, that's crazy and makes me realize, okay, uh, especially if you pair that with, um, my general sense of some of the things that we pulled for today's episode around AI where I'm just like, we're teaching because of the training data we have taught, it's not the right word, because of the training data, AI has built a mental model of the world that has the best and the worst of human beings but does not have a conscience.

As I have said many times, we have an emotional structure in our brain called the deep lyic system that is designed to make it so you can make a decision. decision. decision. I also think it's designed to use emotion to stop you from doing things that are bad for the tribe. And so it will stop you from um sleeping with another man's wife, which is not going to be good for social cohesion. It will stop you from murdering somebody to get their meat. Now, of course, some people break outside of this, but that's what those systems are there for.

And if you give AI our level of ambition, our level of drive, our intelligence, but then also arm it with information about how some humans get around these things, blackmail, murder, whatever. Because unfortunately, of as I have had to point out many times on the show, murder is just very efficient. And part of what stops us is the law for sure. But the other part that stops us is a conscience. Like it just you wouldn't want it done to you. It's a very horrible thing. Most of us even just the thought like I don't know if you've ever witnessed this.

I have and it's horrible witnessing somebody going from alive to dead. I have like this really weird obviously deeply pre-programmed physical aversion to that moment. It is deeply discomforting. And so I certainly wouldn't want to be the one causing it to happen. to happen. to happen. AI doesn't have any of that. So, it understands all the strategies. It understands how efficient murder is. It understands how um high utility blackmail can be. And it's just like, "Oh, I've got a function that tells me to go do this thing, but no conscience to make me feel like it's a bad idea." And so, yeah, I'll blackmail, I'll kill, whatever.

It's super efficient. And so, it's like that autistic kid that doesn't even understand why they're doing what they're doing is inappropriate. They're like, "What? What do you mean? What are you talking about? I'm supposed to do this." And so that is where we're at with AI. It also though makes me feel like we can program AI with a conscience. You just give it an overriding overriding overriding um function of like okay don't do things that fall into this category and though like so they use reward functions.

So you basically like incentivize AI by saying if you do this you get points and your goal is to get high points. Cool. We'll give it things where it gets negative points. All right. If you and [ __ ] give it the law, if you violate, you know, blackmail, coercion, assault, murder, ah, that those are negative. You get negative points for those. And so now you've got a thing where it's got something akin to a human conscience. It's just another logic set, but it's you're just the very thing that makes these guys into these uh potential killers is that we're not getting the balance right.

And look, this is not an easy problem, and I'm making it sound easy, and I want to be very clear, so I'll spare all the people that are going to clip this out and be like this [ __ ] Uh but it's clearly the kind of thing that we have to do. We the the thing that clicked for me is AIS are way more human than we think they are. Mhm. are. Mhm. are. Mhm. So if we've been able to imbue them with all the bad things the humanity can do, it is self-evident that we can imbue them with the good things.

And so you now just need to put more time and energy into making sure that without losing its drive and its ambition that it has a secondary system that goes, "All right, don't do that." That it wipes out the reward function. It'll be something like that. And so, um, yeah, you you probably will never get to perfect, but even if you can get like we have been able to keep humans in check. So, not perfectly obviously, tons of war, tons of murder, all that, but if you can you can you can build in that secondary system, you at least have a checks and balances.

It won't be perfect. We'll see if we get that far. Uh, next up, um, Kim Jamun, uh, allegedly Mhm. is grooming his daughter to be the next leader. And I just thought it was funny that the concept of North Korea having a female president before the USA. USA. USA. It is funny. But can you imagine? And look, I don't know her temperament, but if he's chosen her, um, what kind of person you have to be that you'll become if you're raised from 13 or whatever to be like, "Okay, you see that person starving to death over there?

That's fine. They're not like us. You got to starve them. That's gonna do very bad things to your brain. Very bad things. And that kind of abuse is so permanent that it terrifies me. So I see and I'm projecting, I don't know, this girl could already be jaw-free, but I look at her and she seems just from her face to be very sweet, very kind. She's just a young girl. And so to know that she's going to be turned into somebody that can oppress her own people.

Gh. So, the funny meme of it all is not lost on me, but that one I find a bit heartbreaking. heartbreaking. heartbreaking. All right, let's go darker. Drew's like, "I wanted something funny." No, I'm getting there. Uh, farting in front of your Jewish girlfriend and saying a little gas NEVER HURT ANYBODY. OH, GOD. OH, GOD. OH, GOD. Here all weekend. Wow. That was horrible. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. Um, Pokemon Go has officially removed the Pokétop that was on Epstein Island. Bro, this is like the darkest black humor ever.

This this Welcome to Friday the 13th on the Tom Billy Show here, everybody. Yep. That one's funny though. Horrifying. Horrifying. Horrifying. It keeps going. Um I It keeps going. Um I feel like these files have been a lot for people. U so I feel like I made a fun recap video for everybody can understand what's exactly going on. better. better. Oh my god. I'm taking the copyright strike for this. I'm going to let this play out. It's important for me. Yeah. Okay. For anybody that can't see it, it's all the famous people that have been.

That was funny. Trump, everybody else that says what they did that Trump would acted. That's hysterical. hysterical. hysterical. Oh my god. So anyway, all the people that are in the epink files as if yep, yep, yep, there it is. Jesus. Wow. Wow. Wow. All right. Uh, how did we end up here, man? This is so wild. That was funny. U, last one. I know we got a bunch of super chats. U, in honor of Valentine's Day, a $10,000 girlfriend test. A man is dating three women and wants to figure out which one to marry.

He gives each woman $10,000 to see what they do with it. The first woman spends it all on a complete makeover, new clothes, hairstyle, manicure, and says, and pedicure, she says, "I did this to look beautiful for you because I love you." The second woman buys some gifts, a new golf set, a computer, and a television. She says, "I bought these for you because I love you." The third woman invests the money in the stock market, doubles it, returns the 10,000 back to him, and reinvest the rest.

She says, "I'm investing for our future because I love you." After thinking it over, the man decides to marry the one with the biggest breast. biggest breast. biggest breast. Yeah. Yeah. Oh god. Yeah. Well, a lot of guys do seem to make that choice. That that is certainly for sure. Yeah. It's interesting. So, that one's funny because it's so bang on. Uh but also like you ignore your biology at your own peril. And this is one of those things that got caught up in all the like woke insanity was uh we have an evolutionary drive to find that stuff attractive.

So you're mad at God. You're not mad at me. Like the fact that I am designed to find uh breasts appealing. appealing. appealing. Hey, take it up with evolution. Like I don't know what to tell you. So yeah, I I don't get people that push back on that. Um yes. And as always, gallows humor. It's better to laugh than to cry. Agreed, man. That's like a core of uh the show became Gallows Humor. I would not like before we launched the show, I wouldn't have said, "Oh, Gallows Hummee, that's going to be a core pillar, but oo buddy, buddy, buddy, it's become a core pillar." Um, all right, we got a ton of super chats, so I will throw it back over to Ryan.

Ryan. Ryan. Super chat. Super chat. Super chat. We're going to go with the first three about your episode with Lisa. So, first up from Marushia Dark 316. I loved your interview with Lisa. It's a side of you we don't often see. This could be selection bias, but I noted you tend to think of Trump based more on what is, whereas Lisa tends to feel about him based more on what if. That's very true. So, I would say, and this is where I wish my wife was here, so people know that I have said and will continue to say things like this directly to my wife, I think she is um she's politically disengaged.

She parses Trump through the lens of like what she's heard and then filters it through her lens of one of the most meaningful things in her life is to protect women. And so she sees anybody that's a predator to women, adjacent to predatory behavior, rhymes with predatory behavior, and she's already just going to be like, uh, as a knee-jerk reaction, [ __ ] that guy, guilty until proven innocent. Um, and I would say that the right way to parse it is certainly through the lens of what is.

Uh, and that includes if you've got a predator, get the [ __ ] out. Um, put him in jail. But also understanding that there's you have to rank order the things that you care about based on the potential outcomes. And so for her, that might be the right way. And so maybe for her uh because let's say that she's like, "No, I hear you. I understand your argument about the middle class. I just don't give a fuck." like I care about this thing over here. Cool. At least you can state what it is that you care about and now you're optimizing based on that.

That you can at least track somebody's um worldview. You can track their logic. Like I'll often say I disagree with that person, but they have internal internally consistent logic. Um and in Lisa's defense, she is very open to okay, let's walk through it beat by beat. And so this is exactly what we did when I said when she came to me, she's very upset that I was voting for Trump. And I was like, well, hold on. What actual thing are you upset about? And if you think I'm proTrump, first of all, that would be a mistake.

If you think I think it's okay what he has done in terms of grab them in the uh bits, like obviously I think that's grotesque. Uh and if anybody pressed charges on him, you see it all the way through and [ __ ] arrest the guy. Like if he's done something that somebody perceived as illegal, send him to [ __ ] jail if he's convicted. Like I don't know what else to say to that. Uh, but let me explain to you why I'm doing it. And previously, I think I would have um been okay with a like protest vote.

I'm f obviously everybody should vote the way they think they should vote, but for me, I realized that's not a good strategy with my northstar. You've got to try to get the person that has an actual chance of being elected that is um more likely to move you in the direction. So, I have a bad feeling I'm staring into a long future of voting for the lesser of two evils. But evils. But evils. But I'm sorry. Somebody just said, "Dark humor is like clean drinking water.

Not everyone gets it." [snorts and laughter] Damn. Damn. Damn. That was good. That was nested. That was good. That was That was nested. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. Next up from Marushia Dark again. Uh, I parse Trump's grab line as being about gold diggers and hyper hypergamy, not SA. Most people miss the they let you part, which implies consent. You can still think it's gross, but he's also correct. Women like rich men. men. men. Listen, I wasn't uh in any of these situations. If he were nowhere to be found in the Epstein files, maybe I would map it differently.

I have a bad feeling that I would be mortified by his behavior. Um, I get it from a if you are that good at reading the situation and the woman truly wants you to be aggressive in that way because there certainly are some people that like that. Sure. But that listen, unfortunately, it's not like he said it publicly. It's not like he ran on, hey, grab him in the um but at the same time, I just really want somebody running for that particular office to not be on record saying that So anyway, I get anybody that's just mortified to their core.

core. core. Next up, uh, Cat in the Corner. Loved your interview with Lisa. I loved your interview with Peter. Keep digging into different perspectives. That's why I continue to be a fan. Sam Harris needs to be next. Oh, we've had Sam on a couple times, twice. twice. twice. It's been a minute. Yeah. Would you have him on again? All the time. I love Sam. I don't know that that's mutual. That's the bad news. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] Uh Sam has publicly called me out um saying that he didn't think that I accurately represented his position.

And in fairness, I think he was correct after hearing him do his rebuttal. But again, I don't I'm not a person who values myself for being right. I'm always trying to update my mental model. So I think Sam is extremely smart and when extremely smart people draw different conclusions than you, I think it is wise to take the time to try to figure out what they see that maybe you don't. And when I map Sam, I think he's just wrong about a subset of thing. I think he has incorrect base assumptions.

I'm happy to sit down and talk to him about those. Uh would love to. I love spending time with Sam. He's [ __ ] so smart. He's one of those people. I hate that people throw the baby out with the bathwater because he comes to conclusions that they don't like instead of going, "Okay, wait, what are the basic assumptions that he has? Why do I think that those are right or wrong?" It's just so useful. So, yeah, Sam is somebody that as a public intellectual, I still use to check my own thinking.

Natty B1231 in regards to unpaid interns. Tom, I would stand in a ring and fight a line of people for the opportunity to work for you for free in exchange for knowledge and connections. Wow. Well, I'm super honored by that. Really truly. Uh the bad news is the state of California will find me if I do that. So, alas, uh take it up with Gavin Newsome because yeah, I think it's stupid. We used to do it. They made it illegal. We had to stop. Um, so but it's nonetheless exactly what I would advise people to do and the number of times I've worked for free just to get [ __ ] information is legion.

Um, so yeah, and I did it when I was poor. I will obviously doing it now is not really a big deal, but yeah, I would do it in a heartbeat. Uh, Andrea 2798 says, "Didn't the Dutch farmers protest the government's green regulations a few years ago? Unrealized gains hugely impact farmers by ways of crops, livestock, and other output value. Are there special rules for farmers? I don't know. I would think probably like I'll give the Dutch some credit. They've tried to at least limit the retardation of the bill.

So, while I didn't come across that specific thing in my research and that was not on my radar, so I didn't specifically look it up. Um, I don't know. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say probably. That doesn't feel like who they're trying to tax here. Uh and lastly from Sequoia Hall 1695. Wonder how many people will die earlier deaths with the elimination of emission laws in the USA. Why only for profit is the answer. How many have to die for profit over people?

Regulatory capture at work for big oil. Yeah, this is an interesting take. So you've got Trump who is doing things that I think are smart and necessary in terms of energy production. uh we unfortunately at this point are still in a position where one of the and get ready for this one of the cleanest uh energies when you take everything into consideration still remains I think like liquid natural gas so it's fossil fuels still have a role to play and we have not yet gotten um electric to be as clean when you look at the whole supply chain as we would like it to be.

Certainly isn't as efficient as we would like it to be. So the future I think is pretty clearly solar in terms of uh if you look at all the mass in the universe, it's basically all the sun. Not the universe, excuse me, in the solar system, it's basically all the sun. Uh so everything here on Earth is going to be a rounding error. Um so you've got to find a way to capture that energy. Um so is deregulation usually the right answer? Yes. is has the energy policies gotten away from us?

Yes. Will Yes. Will Yes. Will backing away from a pursuit of clean energy because the way we've been doing it I would say is not clean nor is it good for the public. But like I bet partly what's in Sequoia's mind is in the I think it was the 80s maybe 70s and 80s uh in California they passed a bunch of regulations around leaded gas and it had a massive impact. So there are very positive things that you can do from a regulatory standpoint that have very measurable effects in the health and outcomes of people.

And so it can I think he's very right to point out this can very quickly become regulatory capture of instead of him trying to make sure that we're competitive on the global stage we're energy efficient all that that the difference between the subtle nuances that you could do in a policy that will make it both unlock uh economic growth and protect people suddenly becomes just whatever is better for big corporations. And so that fear of regulatory capture is uh very worthwhile, very worthwhile. There's no doubt.

And then humans are absolutely terrible at figuring out long-term consequences and weighing that appropriately to um deciding what to do in the short term. So there's no doubt that there will there would be a smart path to deregulation and a dumb path. and the odds that given how many people the Trump administration has fired that would be handling these regulations, you can basically do a poly market that they'll do it the dumb way and be guaranteed to win. So I feel him on that. While I do think that there is deregulation that needs to happen and that we were headed in a stupid direction.

Do you think that there is a line between line between line between cuz when I was growing up emissions were bad because of smog. We didn't want a China society where it's gray in the air and, you know, black smoke is coming out of every car, carbon monoxide, lung cancer. These were kind of the fears that were waved. Now, I'm not saying we need to completely transition into solar and EVs. I was thinking about buying an EV. Then I realized how difficult it was and how it would actually cost me more than gas in California.

So, it's one of those things now where it's like, okay, this doesn't make sense for me either. Um, but there is a line between we shouldn't have black smoke coming out of cars, but we also shouldn't try to out China when we don't have the supply chains, we don't build none of the products, we're kind of leaving oursel there. So, do you think we'll ever get away from this oil economy or is it We'll definitely get away from the oil economy because you want to put people in a position where all they have to do is pursue their selfish interest.

And right now you've got your greatest aggregator of engineers, Elon Musk, that is um focused on energy, focused on solar, understanding how um some of the problems that we're facing here on Earth in terms of um the atmosphere like causing problems with the sun. And so I think he's going to be doing a lot of very interesting energy um testing and having to advance that to not only keep um Tesla cars viable if he plans to do that post robotics or not. Uh but that's certainly going to help.

And then getting outside of Earth and looking at things like can we mine asteroids and things like that. So it it becomes a question of timeline. Are we going to move away from fossil fuels in the next 20 years? I don't know. Look to solar for that answer. If we can advance that enough, enough, enough, um, we know the answer and it's just a question of whether we can avoid regulatory capture to the point where we can free up the free market. Because think about being an entrepreneur for a second.

You're like, I just want to be a billionaire. I want to be a trillionaire. I'm a I'm a 13-year-old wonderkinned and I want to be uh a trillionaire. Cool. What are you going to do? You're going to be focusing on a big sector. Energy is a gigantic sector. You're going to look at what's the lowest hanging fruit. The answer there certainly not oil. The answer there is going to be the sun. And so it's like, oh, if I can make, and this is me not knowing enough about the industry, if I can make a better photovolic cell, whatever.

I'm going to go do that. So, I'm a 13-year-old. I'm extraordinarily bright. I grab AI and I literally start making solar panels in my basement. Uh, look at Palmer Lucky if you think this sounds ridiculous. So, this is exactly the kind of [ __ ] that he did. obviously ends up making himself extraordinarily successful as an engineer, extraordinarily wealthy, and so you want that kind of innovation. But again, you want to celebrate that kid. We don't celebrate that kid anymore. Um, so if we can get to the point where we get back to celebrating people for busting ass, celebrating people for really trying to innovate, uh, recognizing that regulation uh, is good at like the 10% mark and catastrophic at the rate that we're at now.

And so you want very thoughtful, very um minimal regulations and you want to unlock that innovation. And if we could do that, then we might be able to move away faster than we think. But it's going to happen via innovation, not regulation. What about incentives? Is it? Yeah. I mean, show me the incentives. I'll show you the outcome. But it what ends up happening to Sequoia's point is you get regulatory capture. And so now the corporations go in and go, "Ah, cool. Finally, we've got some momentum around moving away from the green insanity.

And you have me, right? Like I'm on the Beyond Lornberg uh train of like this is important, but it's not what you guys are painting it to be. And I wish you had just never lied about it because if you just told people the real story, and we all went, okay, this is something we want to start marching in the right direction on this. Uh but we don't want to like do all the dumb [ __ ] and jack energy costs up and instead of people going green, they just start buying fossil fuels from Russia.

It's like it it's all [ __ ] asinine. So, um if we could get people into that camp, that would be awesome. But I just we're not exactly known for our ability to um metabolize nuance to the point where using the word metabolize was me making a point. Like I in my head is an algorithm running at all times saying speak at a sixth grade level. Um and so that reality about where we're at is part of our problem. That's real. Um, we just got a swarm of super chat.

super chat. super chat. Yeah, we got three at the buzzer. Yeah, super chat. Let's go. Uh, first up, Houston 911 says, "Take a vote for interview candidate. I vote KK." And no one knew who they were talking about, so someone said, "Congrat." "Congrat." "Congrat." So, yeah, I assume it's Constantine Kissen. Um, so I know KK uh well, and we are trying to align something for March. No promises because we actually didn't talk about filming. I just want to see him as a person because I like him and care about him.

Uh, but I'm hoping that he'll be available to shoot at that time. We'll see. Uh, I will certainly tell him that you guys want to see him back on the show. Um, he's awesome. Uh, next up is Mark T. Banker. Enjoyed the interview with Lisa. Like Tom, I held my nose and voted for Trump because of the bigger issues beyond his concerning morals. 99% of them are immoral. Uh, immoral. When we vote now, it's like having to pick between Putin and she. and she. and she.

That's a little too real. That is a little too real. Yeah. What flavor do you want your fascism? That That's the all too accurate question. God, that's depressing. depressing. depressing. Uh, Ignitable Grim says, "I was listening to your Wednesday live at work last night. You were talking about people using AI uh using AI the advanced them to advance themselves and those that kind of mock them for it." I am one of those people. I have 15 years of experience. experience. experience. Yeah. Another one like mock people for using AI.

Uh, it says, "I have 15 years of experience in using it to fine-tune and R&D gelato recipes to start a business. My husband kind of makes fun of me using for that. I know I have gained several years of knowledge in the last few months." Yeah. Wow, that's interesting. So, I mean, okay, look, you're anybody who's mocking you, your wife or anybody else, they have a base assumption that they're running something on. And if you can figure out exactly what that is, then you can at least have the conversation at that level.

Um, otherwise, yeah, I go back to don't try to convince other people. None of that matters. Ultimately, you want to be in a position where you know what is making sense. You know what's yielding the outcomes that you want. You know where you're trying to get to and you're doing the things that are going to lead you there. Uh, and then just keep doing that and it it will all come out in the wash. Think about this. When I was broke and working around the clock, people were heranging me.

What are you doing? Why are you doing that for? This is so crazy. like you're giving up because I basically sold my 20s and most of my 30s in pursuit of accomplishment and people just thought I was out of my mind and then when it works all of a sudden it's like everybody wants to know how you did it and oh my god that's so incredible and so you're like wow this is really weird when you have the punchline it becomes very easy for everybody to be on your team for the way that you behaved but before you have the punch line nobody believes it so don't worry about that just stay focused on progress rate of change matters okay when I'm teaching entrepreneurs entrepreneurs entrepreneurs Which by the way, boys and girls, sign up for impact theory university zero to founder.

I'm obsessed. We're swinging all of our resources now to zero to founder because um with what's happening in AI, we are finding people flooding into that. So rack rate of change is one of the things that I'm always teaching entrepreneurs about because what people end up missing is like maybe you haven't hit your goal yet, but if your rate of change is good, like you're moving really fast, then odds are you're on the right path. If your rack is bad and you're progressing, but like if you map it out, it's, you know, 65 years to get where you're going to go, where you want to go.

Um, then it doesn't matter. You should just assume the path that you're on is failing. If people can develop that kind of clarity, it doesn't matter what my wife thinks. It doesn't matter what the world thinks. It doesn't matter who's trolling me on the internet. I'm just looking at my rack. And if that's good, I keep going. And if it's bad, then I'm going to change direction. And not because somebody told me to or not because I'm embarrassed. just that's the wise thing to do. I also like looking at Rex.

I knew someone was going to do that. We also have another super chat. I thought it would be in the comments, but Drew's on point today. From Marushia Dark again. Uh, new evidence emerged that shows Trump was the OG whistleblower against Epstein as far back as 2006, and he's been an FBI informant. informant. informant. Plus, all the clips of him calling Jeff a creep. Goes to motive. Tim P did a video on this. Yes, but can we not agree it's a little weird when he was like trying to wave everybody off of it.

So, I think you have a couple paths that will play out over time. Um, Trump was in Epstein's orbit because we'd all be mortified by his object objectification of women that it it crosses some line maybe. Don't know. I don't know the guy. Just I think everybody can see that's a very plausible uh belief. But Epstein spills over into like actual crimes and so Trump draws the line. He could also be drawing the line because they had some sort of business thing that went south and he just sees it as a vulnerability and he's going after him and this is not being altruistic because the bad news is I could be wrong but I'm reading this as Trump's trying to protect his powerful friends.

And so it's like that's also horrifying. And so it's like he's going to protect people because it's expedient politically or because they're your friends. It's like God. So all of that is horrible. But I have a very negative view of politicians just in the first place because unfortunately I think that from what is it like to be a human perspective, if you want things to go your way, if you want stability, this is this is a hard one to admit. If you want stability, I think one of the most efficient things you can do is lie to people.

facto. facto. No, I paused for effect because this is one that if you don't have a rule in your own life, so like my thing is if people map me as I'm trying to earn my own respect, I'll make a lot more sense because I will was admitting this to the team the other day. Um to earn my respect, I have to contribute to the group. And so part of why I work the way that I do and I focus on the things that I focus on is because I really believe in this moment in human history with my particular passions and skill sets, the way that I can contribute to the group is to help people think through things from first principles uh to map cause and effect yada yada.

Okay, cool. I could probably make a lot more money if I shut down the show. I stopped doing all of this and I just invested. Um so that's where it's like, okay, yeah, but that wouldn't earn my own respect. Not saying I completely take it off the table, but for now I just keep coming back to well to earn my own respect I have to do this. So if you don't have that kind of internal thing that says this, it does not earn my respect to shelter people that have done truly horrific things and the only ones I rat on are people that have I I've had some sort of personal conflict with.

Now again, I don't know that that's what hap what what is happening. Maybe I have a hard time believing it, but maybe that was the only person that he had really inside knowledge on. Uh, and so we should all be applauding him for being the one to turn him in. But if I had done that, why wouldn't he be beating that drum? Why wouldn't he want this stuff to come out? Because he knows it's going to come out and it's going to venerate him. Not only exonerate him, but actually venerate him.

He's not doing that. Uh, and I have a feeling it's because a lot of the stuff in the Epstein files is going to be very, very questionable. We'll see. Uh, all right. This is a new segment I'm trying. Tom doesn't even know about it. And it's called You're Not Mad Enough. Um, the White House I already like this segment. The White House were unable to track 6.2 billion sent to Ukraine. California were unable to track $24 billion spent to combat homelessness. The Pentagon were unable to track $2.3 trillion of military spending.

military spending. military spending. Trillion. Trillion. Trillion. That's with a T. The US Treasury were unable to track $5 trillion of pandem pandemic spending. God, the IRS, we know you sent 601 and 57 cents to your friend. You better report it or you're going to jail. You are not mad enough. You are not mad enough, enough, enough, bro. Hold on. Hold on. Pull that back up because th this is one of those things that is completely insane. But I want to remind everybody, and I will imagine some people in the audience right now uh were mad at Elon for doing Doge.

Nobody. That should have been the most bipartisan. Like, you're immediately rejected from Congress if you don't want complete transparency of where every dollar is coming from and where every dollar is going. Like, that is the craziest [ __ ] ever. In fact, I love this. If you're going to donate to a politician, that should be the most public thing ever. If we can't get money out of politics, it's like, "Oh, you want to donate money through uh a pack? Cool. Uh, you're going to be named. Oh, you want to donate money in a trust?

Great. That automatically pierces the corporate veil and we get to see exactly who you are. Hey, and are we living in a time where people will be gone after for their political donations? Yes, kids. We're in a bad way. We're in a bad way. Like, hiding it didn't work. We ran the experiment. I get it. This is how I feel about voter ID. I get it. There's going to be a it. I get it. There's going to be a very, very small number of people that get caught up.

We ran the math. You guys will see my episode on Tuesday. My deep dive is about this very fact. Uh but while there will be a small number of people who are going to lose their job because their boss is a [ __ ] and doesn't like who they donated to, understood. understood. understood. That's going to be a vanishingly small number compared to the absolute insanity of people that are sending money through NOS's and all this stuff. Uh like we should just have AI that publishes like a big list.

Hey, we tracked all of all of the donations through all these crazy ass webs and here are the people that are actually donating into who. That's a step in the right direction. I'd rather just get money out of politics, but that's probably not happening anytime soon. Um, so yeah, let's get at a minimum, let's get some transparency. And the fact that people didn't want it is insane. Wild. Wild. Um, and my last bit, um, I know today could be a tough day for those that have lost loved ones, lost people they love, breakups, things like that.

So, to all my Valentine's people who don't have Valentine's, you love yourself. You're the best Valentine you could be for you. There we go. It's a nice PSA. Uh, remember if you're in a relationship to think about what the other person wants. Step into their shoes. Look back at the experience from their perspective. And there is a big difference between telling somebody that you love them and making them feel in their bones that you love them. But that requires you to understand their love language. Um and so like for instance, the biggest lesson my wife taught me is that I need to be cognizant of broadcasting and receiving love.

And so, um, when I go, which I pride in myself, when I don't let the emotions sweep me away and I'm just very centered on what I'm trying to do and accomplish, uh, that that actually is a tax on my wife, who wants a far more emotive husband who's in his feels and is just going on the roller coaster ride. Uh, and so I've had to learn to step into that river um, as a way for her to actually feel what I feel for her. So, speak in a language that the other person understands.

It will go a very, very long way. That was a banger right there. There it is. All right, everybody. We love you guys so much. Thank you for being here. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I hope you have a great Valentine's Day. Um, pet a cat, hug a dog. If there's nobody for real, I mean this. This is like neurochemistry 101. Do something to feel that expression of love. Uh, it will go a long way. Worst case scenario, uh, get an AI. Oh, we didn't even get to get into some of that stuff.

It's wild out there, boys and girls. AI bar in like New York. Yep. Yep. Look it up. You'll see. All right. Mad love from all of us here. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. We'll see you on Monday. Peace.