Trump’s Venezuela Blockade Changes Everything — This Is How Wars Actually Start

Key Takeaway

When analyzing rapidly changing situations like market bubbles or geopolitical conflicts, track two timelines: what the evidence suggests will happen, and the inevitable delays that make things take longer than expected. This prevents both premature decisions and complete inaction when timing becomes critical.

Episode Overview

Tom and Drew discuss Trump's aggressive stance toward Venezuela, analyzing it through the lens of great power competition with China. They explore market timing challenges, the rise of ISIS-linked terrorism, and historical patterns of scapegoating during economic uncertainty.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Trump’s Venezuela Blockade Changes Everything — This Is How Wars Actually Start from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Tom Billy Show live. It is wonderful to have you. And speaking of people that is wonderful to have Drew, how we doing? Look at that. I like the the jacket's looking good. Thank you. Got Mason on the community today. Very exciting. We were talking about your mom before we started. I'll let that stay off camera. And then we've got the boys behind. We've got G, who wrote the music, by the way, for all the people that like that. G, I'm very impressed with the producing skills.

So, mad shout out to G. And then Eric holding down the technical fort. Thank you for being here, gentlemen. And thank you to all of you that are out there. Thank you for joining us uh as we speed towards the Christmas holiday. It's wonderful that you guys are spending this time with us. And in the new year, we're going to be going to a 3day a week cadence. So, starting on the 5th, Drew, uh yeah, that's January 5th, Monday, uh 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

I can't wait. All right. Trump orders a blockade around Venezuela. Many are calling it an illegal act of war that should require congressional approval, but certainly hasn't gotten it. The Bondi Beach massacre seems to be confirmed to be tied to ISIS, sparking more concerns about Islamist extremism and unwarranted prejudiced against Muslims in general. An MIT plasma scientist was murdered in his home, igniting speculation that he was assassinated for his discoveries. I've got my tinfoil hat on that one. I'm responding surprisingly strong in the conspiracy camp on this one, Drew.

That'll be interesting to talk about because even I don't trust myself, but it's fascinating. Trump's horrific Rob Reiner post continues to generate backlash. Susie Wild's new Vanity Fair interview has people wondering if she's turning on Trump or is just a shockingly candid person. The Schiller PE ratio just crossed 40 for only the third time in history, signaling that we are in a massive bubble. going to be breaking down for you guys what exactly that is, what it means. And despite inflation being over 50% above target, the Fed has cut rates recently.

The body scan, but the honest answer is that they had no choice. We'll be talking about fiscal dominance, our girl Lyn Alden, all of that madness as we continue to watch the markets. This is wild, Drew. I have really just a fast uh thing that I want to get out there that I don't quite know how to uh metabolize. But the weird thing about the way that all of this stuff plays out, whether it's the stock market, whether it's AI, there's two timelines I think I'm going to start tracking to keep myself sane.

Partly one is is is what it feels like. Like when you really just stop and look at the evidence, the rate of change, all of that, and you go, this is when this is going to happen by. And then And then And then the thing that you can account for, which is there's always inevitably something that makes things take longer than you expect that they're going to take. Uh so when I look at it, uh it really does feel like the bubble just inevitably is going to burst in the not too distant future that we're probably already seeing the first signs of it.

But I know that somehow this is going to drag out longer than we expect. It's one of the reasons that I don't just pull out of the market. Uh because it's like h I'm never going to get the timing right. I know that. But when you're watching it, it just all feels so inevitable. What's going on in the market is pretty crazy. But isn't this just like the AGI runway that we're waiting on? It's kind of like when you're on a plane and it's like shaky shaky shaky shaky shaky, then you're up and it's like, is it just the stock market's inflated?

It's a bubble. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Okay. Same figure. Gardner has a hype curve that probably sums this thing up the best, which is in the beginning you go through like these initial waves. So you go up and it's like this huge hype and everybody thinks AI or whatever is inevitable or in my case the bubble's going to burst. It's inevitable. And then you come down this slope of disillusionment where people are like, "Oh, actually it's not going to happen. The stock market really is going to go up forever.

AI is never going to get where we thought it was going to go." And then the deceptiveness of the um way that exponentials actually work then rockets. And it ends up happening over a longer time period, but then far more suddenly than anybody expects. And so, right at the time where everybody's like, "AI is a joke, bro. The bubble's never going to burst. These guys are all dumb." And then boom, it takes off like a rocket ship and catches everybody by surprise. And it's, like I said, Gartner mapped this out because it's so wellnown that this is the way that these cycles go.

Uh but that is cold comfort for everybody trying to deal with markets as people during the hype cycle start acting completely unhinged and then as it goes down and people are disillusioned and realize it's not going to happen as fast as you thought that then the narrative changes there everybody starts betting because that's how I view the markets they start betting on oh this new narrative is the real narrative and then everybody gets obliterated so it's like oh god it's this you know what ride you're on you're on you're on but because you can't get the timing right?

Everybody gets clobbered anyway. And so even take somebody like Michael Bur who gets the uh big short right on the housing market. Everybody thinks this guy's a genius. And then he ends up tapping out of the markets because he's like, I don't understand what's happening. Now, that doesn't mean that he's gone away. And it certainly doesn't mean that he's completely ejected from the markets. But it does mean that when he's playing with other people's money, he understands that there's too many confounding variables here. I'm not able to manage their psychology while also managing the money.

And so I'm going to try things. A lot of them are going to miss because unfortunately in many aspects of life, getting the timing wrong is the same as just flat being wrong. So I think about that a lot. Like I really feel like I'm growing to understand the physics of money. But I am so hyper aware that if I get the timing wrong, it just will be cold comfort that like, oh, I knew it would happen eventually, but I made all these huge bets, got the timing wrong, lost all my money, but ultimately end up being vindicated from a I told you it was going to happen.

But that's not useful in the real world. You have to both understand what's about to happen and get the timing right. And doing both is effectively is effectively is effectively luck if I'm really honest. No, you uh you're preaching it. I would that literally happened to me over the summer. I had like a uh micro strategy uh leveraged ETF play I was doing. I was like, "Oh, it's going to circle back. Oh, it's going to circle back." And then I didn't couldn't hold it. Couldn't wait.

It ended up selling early. Did a reverse split. So then the price like popped up and I'm just like, "Uh, I knew it was going to do it. I just So you're right. The wrong timing is being wrong." Um, well, there's one way to drive the economy and that is stealing other countries oil and that is what Donald Trump wants to do. Uh, I'm sorry. We're getting we're going for fentanyl or cocaine or something. What was the cover story? story? story? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I forgot what it is.

But, um, let's start with the true social post because I do feel like Trump is being very bombastic here. We know that this is his shocking. shocking. shocking. Yes. Yes. Yes. Wait, what? So I I I don't necessarily think that everything he's saying on this tweet is literal, but that is going to jump the start of the conversation of Izzy declaring war basically on Venezuela. So this is from Trump on True Social. Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America.

It will only get bigger. That's what she said. And the shock to them will be nothing like they have ever seen before. Until such time as they return to the United States of America, all the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us. The illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen o oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping. All that's missing is Epstein. For the thief of all our assets, for the theft of all our assets and many other reasons, including terrorism, drug smuggling, smuggling, and human trafficking, the Venezuela regime has been designated a foreign terrorist organization.

That's crazy. Therefore, today I am ordering a total and complete back blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. The illegal aliens and criminals in that Maduro regime has sent been sent to United States during the week and the Biden administration are being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace. America would not allow criminals, terrorists or other countries to rob, threaten or harm our nation and likewise will not allow a hostile regime to take our oil, land, and any other assets. All of which would must be returned to the United States immediately.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Do you know much about the land that he's claiming is being stolen? Like when he's talking about the stolen oil feed fields, is he talking that we had claims to oil fields in Venezuela? That doesn't seem plausible to be honest. honest. honest. We'll have to look it up. That's uh that's very interesting. I certainly had heard that. Um I try to always keep myself sober by reminding myself of when something becomes suddenly incredibly important. Was I thinking about that before?

So, for instance, if somebody all of a sudden starts banging the drum about China, I'll be like, "Yes, China's been on my radar. It's part of my mental map of how the world works and what's going on in the great power conflicts right now. Uh so cool that that's a part of my map. That one makes sense for me to really get enthusiastic about and be like this really is a problem. When you get something like Venezuela, I feel like I'm being led around by the nose where I'm like, okay, you're controlling the news cycle by doing this big thing there, but Venezuela wasn't on my radar.

So either I was mismapping the conflicts in South America. Very possible. No problem. I'll update my mental model and I'll get into it. But I'm always trying to be really sober about was this not on my radar because this wasn't a thing. He's got some other objective and this is just spin spin spin. He's getting me to look at something either so that he can do something else. I used to study magic. Misdirection is literally the game. It's like I want you to look over here and I'm going to go do this really awkward thing over here.

But you don't even notice it. And I know to be very paranoid whenever a politician is trying to get me to focus on something because either they're getting me to focus on the right thing but for the wrong reason or they're getting me to look at something totally unrelated so they can do something else. So when I map what's going on in South America not as what he says but as a proxy with China where we're dividing the world in half. This is Thusidities's trap playing out and we go, okay, we can't have China having a relationship with South America, that China is building what's called the gold corridor all along South America to try to get people to see that um yuan is being backed by gold.

That the reason that he's putting the gold into South America is so that all of those countries go, "Okay, we'll do business with you because I don't have to trust the yuan. I can trust the gold and the gold is actually here in our countries and we can get access to it and you don't control it in any meaningful way. Then I'm like, oh, I get it. We're going into Venezuela. Now I'm making a base assumption that Venezuela feels like an easy mark to Trump for some reason or he's more angry with them.

Very possible that Maduro if he's mapping Maduro as having messed with the 2016 election, which certainly he had uh truth something out about that previously. So if he hates Maduro, sees Maduro as an easy target, and that's part of his strategy to take back the Western Hemisphere from Chinese influence, then I'm like, "Ah, okay, cool. This all makes sense." But when it's just like, uh, this is all about the things he says it's about, I'm like, why all of a sudden Venezuela? So that's where I'm like, okay, it's entirely possible.

I just need to learn more about like what happened. Did they actually steal land? which the only thing I'm seeing on here and this is according to Gemini AI is that um in 2007 they reationalized um the oil in the region and we had Exxon and uh Konoko Phillips uh ventures in there. So that's one of those things where once they nationalized it they kicked all the foreign investors out. So but they were awarded arbitration billions of dollars in claims u from Venezuela during those times.

So it's not like they got left holding the bill or anything. or anything. or anything. Right. Well, so okay, we'd have to look at that to see if we were compensated fairly. Uh but assuming that we were compensated fairly, then it is what it is because I think that there is almost certainly going to come a day where tensions between the US and China escalate to the point that we kick out Chinese land owners of uh farms and if they're near like these are all rumors but or rumors as to the motivation but there are Chinese nationals buying land next to military bases and things like that which seems very sus.

So, it's like I could fully see us saying, "Okay, we're going to buy these back at fair market value because we now have these certain restrictions." China has all kinds of restrictions on who can own what, including companies in China. Uh, so that certainly turnabout is fair play. So, on that, I mean, look, it it is certainly not crazy for a nation to say we're taking back our own resources. I get that. I think Africa's future is going to have to require that at least some sort of partnership where you stop getting strip mined for your resources and you start mining your own resources to sell finished product which have way higher margins.

So I could certainly see Africa finally coming to that realization. I've heard them talk about it so I know it's on their radar but they're not doing the things they would need to do. So anyway, during that process, they would have to nationalize things presumably in the beginning, get people out other countries uh or at least push them down the supply chain so they can still be in the country, but you're going to be dealing with things that we've already processed and turned into this good where you can be a partner with us, but you can't like own a controlling interest, for instance.

So, if that's what's playing out in Venezuela and they did us dirty in terms of they didn't compensate us fairly for all the investments that we had made, okay, I see how he could be annoyed with that. But the level that he's escalating to on this specific country when I'm guessing that we've run into things like this before just begs the question, is there something else? But I fully want on the table. This could be I am not a scholar on our relations with Venezuela. Uh, and so it could just be something that I am unaware of.

Um, but my politician is manipulating my gaze. Alarms are going off extraordinarily loudly. loudly. loudly. And then, uh, this tweet's from Brian Cranstein. Um, Cranstein. Um, Cranstein. Um, Trump calling a complete and total blockade of oil is actually an act of war and declaring an act of war without Congress will lead to uh, illegit illegal initiation of hostilities. A president cannot legally start a blockade of another country of their own without a a formal authorization for use of military force AUMF or a declaration of war.

Neither exists for Venezuela. Venezuel he's a little bit wrong about this. So this is why Trump keeps declaring them as foreign terrorist organizations because we have a totally different playbook for that. So that ultimately is what's going to have to be adjudicated is is he able to declare these groups foreign terrorist organizations? So he has a totally different set of powers. um he's right in the absence of that. Um but they're running a totally different playbook. So if you want to stop Trump from doing the things that he's doing, you're going to have to go after his ability to declare them terrorist organizations.

organizations. organizations. The Supreme Court just ruled on on our soil, I believe. We'd have to look up the recent ruling, but I'm pretty sure they just said, "Yeah, he can declare uh groups on our soil as foreign terrorist organizations." and thusly go after them in that way. Um, this is all about the immigration being able to boot people out effectively without normal due process. process. process. Uh, so this is where this is all going to get messy. This is all going to be playing out in the courts.

But that's what they're going to have to check. Until then, he's just going to keep like all of a sudden the Girl Scouts of America because he doesn't like the ingredients in their cookie their terrorist organization and he's going to go after them. That is a joke obviously people, but um that's his game. game. game. Yeah. Do you think this escalates into four war? Cuz I don't think so. But the way that So again, I am currently mapping this though I am very open to realizing I need to update my mental model.

I'm currently mapping this as a hemispheric draw where we are saying, okay, we're going to have to give up on China in the east and so China is going to take the east, but we are going to put the hammer down on the west and so we're going to take this back. Once I think of what's happening right now as that, this all begins to make sense. So, no, I don't think it will escalate into war because if we're able to isolate Maduro from China and Russia, which is a question mark right now, to be honest, but if we can isolate him from China and Russia and just say, "Listen, we know you're going to move on Taiwan.

We're not going to say [ __ ] about it." Uh, but you're not going to say [ __ ] about any of this and we're going to take back the Western Hemisphere and this becomes the way that things settle down. Maduro will understand I'm isolated. I don't have the deep pockets, the militaries that I need to help back me up. So, I'm going to have to either leave and take whatever deal that I can get from Trump and just get out of town because he's serious and he's going to be going hard in the paint.

He'll say whatever he needs to say to come in blockade. Uh but the fact that Trump is doing it as a blockade tells me he does not want boots on the ground. Like, he's just going to keep taking your oil, keep taking your ships, make it impossible for them to get over to China, let you know we're in control. there are things that we want you to do and if you start doing them then we'll suddenly start uh not noticing that you're shipping oil to China but if you don't start doing whatever insert thing he wants done here um then we're going to keep going.

So I think this is so if you're the guy behind the guy, right? So you're not Trump, but you're the guy whispering in Trump's ear and you're like, "Okay, we've done all these regime changes. It was always was always was always sort of imperialism light." You realize that's not popular anymore. We've got an America first base. You've got to find a way to keep them happy while still getting the control that you want stroke need. And so, um, you run a new playbook and you're like, we never gave a [ __ ] about like having boots on the ground.

That that doesn't matter to us. We just want control. want control. want control. Uh, then it's like, hey, we've got this new idea, foreign terrorist organization, fly under the cover of this is about drugs and now just completely control the seas. I mean, this is me thinking out loud, so bear with me. But this is like the reverse of four decades since World War II. The promise that we made to the world was we're going to control your security policy so that we can effectively run the world.

We're going to control your security policy and in exchange we're going to patrol the seas. It's getting harder and harder to do that. And as drones become more and more the cheap weapon of choice of every guerilla style group out there, um patrolling the seas is probably just going to be way too expensive for one group to do. And so this is like sort of a reverse of that. like, okay, we can't control it by making it safe, so we're gonna go to hostile territories and be like, man, be a real shame if anything happened to this uh transit lane here.

Like, God, it'd be a shame if the biggest military in the world was just like, "Fuck you. This is my oil tanker. Thank you very much." Like, that's wild. And that's basically what we're doing now. now. now. No doubt. Do I have alarm bells going off for off for off for the world ought to be a moral place? Yes. So knowing with the full caveat of me saying, "Hey, don't worry. My moral alarm bells are ringing. I am merely trying to think through the reality of what is happening and what side of this we want to be on.

I don't know that I'm right that that's what's happening." But interesting thought experiment that goes like this. Um we we must remain the most dominant power in the world. As an American, you want that. You may not think you do because it's very pearl clutchy. clutchy. clutchy. Reserve c like for the reserve currency status or status or status or reserve currency to be uh the ones that get to tell everybody else what to do. Like Drew, oh god, this is so weird having this conversation with you.

Uh Uh Uh being the CEO is awesome because it's like even though I and I feel very comfortable making the statement, I outwork everybody in this company. No one wants to try to match me hour for hour. I just promise. Mhm. Uh, Uh, Uh, however, if I want to take time off, I can take time off whenever the [ __ ] I want. And the knowing that I'm in control that I decide when yes, when no is its own like mental release valve, that's awesome. that's awesome. that's awesome.

And I'm very aware of how powerful that is. Now, for the last 80 years, America has been that for the world. We're the yes or no. Like it's the way that we want it. Not that we'll always be moral, but at least it's the way we want it. And so when you go, ooh, like we could lose that. lose that. lose that. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. We're certainly losing it in the Eastern Hemisphere. I don't see a path forward for America to continue to have influence like we had 10 or 15 years ago in the East.

No way. Like China's not going to stand for that. So unless Peter Zahan is right and uh China just literally collapses because of demography, demography, demography, um um um they're going to be the regional power in the east. And so now we've got the world split in half. So we'll be able to boss people around in the west, but we just lost half of the globe. And that's going to create that escalatory rise between us that will be very reminiscent of the rise between capitalism and communism in the 80s.

And so that will get dangerous first of all and then second just everybody wants to be the boss. So America I think rightly is not just going to go quietly into that good night because being pushed around by other countries sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so And so And so we know we've been doing it. Yeah. Like imagine if another country could come into us and be like, "Hey, we don't like the way that you dealt with all of the um you let's say when if if we end up kicking Chinese nationals out from owning farmland in America.

Big if, but let's say that we did that at some point." Um, if China fell some kind of way and they rolled up on the ports ports ports on the Pacific coast, uh, we'd be like, "This is an act of war." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would launch a thousand ships. Like, I mean that. But we're doing it to Venezuela. And Venezuela, hey, ready for the quote again? The way the world works, the strong will do as they will, and the weak will suffer as they must.

because Venezuela can't touch us militarily unless we're dumb enough to set foot on their shore and then you can just guerilla warfare us into poverty. But if we don't make that mistake, we can just stop all your ships. You're not going to be like, bro, 90 Blackhawks just like swirling around you like good luck. Or you shut down airspace over there, too. That's what I'm saying. So, it's like when you're this level of militarily dominant, dominant, dominant, um you can just tell people you're this is how it's going to be and you're going to like it.

Yeah. And so this is one of those where Oh god, like it's icky. This whole thing is icky. And because Go. No, I was going to say like I I understand the Chinese uh implication of taking Taiwan back because there's a national pride there. We were all together once. That's like us going after Alaska if Russia ended up keeping it in the deal or something. So I understand kind of historically why I can kind of squint my eye, close my eyes and say, "Okay, I understand why Russia wants Ukraine back.

I can at least sort of kind of justify it. But I feel like in this America, Venezuela, this is weapons of mass destruction 2.0. I feel like we're in another country that is resourceheavy and we should just try to get that resources. Like I don't understand what I understand. We're trying to fight China by saying this is our side of the court and we're trying to line up the field. But the only positive I see of us doing this is we're getting resources from them and that country is losing their resources.

I don't see any other historical tie. I don't need to see national security threats. Um, and I'm just honestly not buying the whole they're the hub of cocaine. cocaine. cocaine. Yeah, it does not seem like they're the hub of shipping cocaine into the US. That's for sure. I do think the drugs are largely, not entirely, but largely a distraction. distraction. distraction. But again, when I map this as a US versus China, you don't have a choice. So, if you're going to now whether Venezuela is the right battleground, that I cannot speak to.

have not looked at this closely enough, but when I think okay, you have to draw a line somewhere. So, where are you going to draw a line on the map? East west makes all the sense in the world given how hard it is to cross oceans. Cool. So, you draw a line and you say, "We're going to You obviously don't broadcast this, but you draw a line. You say we're going to let China slowly take over over over Asia and we're just going to do very little to stop that." But on the west, we're going to start building fortifications now.

And so if you have somebody um in your hemisphere that is partnering too closely with China, then you're going to do whatever you need to do to disempower them to get a pro-America pro-America pro-America um person in power in that government. And so that as far as I can tell, that's the play right now. They are trying to boot Maduro without putting boots on the ground, without doing traditional assassination techniques. But they've got a hit on him. So it's like, yeah, this is one step removed.

So that feels like exactly what's playing out. When I map it like that, I'm like, oh yeah, all every behavior makes sense. When I map it as anything else, it's leaves holes. leaves holes. leaves holes. Wild. Um, we'll see what happens. We'll keep monitoring the situation, but it seems like every week we're getting a little bit closer to it was the airspace one time, then it was we're seizing oil tankers and bombing boats, and then at this point now full blockade. um we're just going to keep you know participating in it and see what happens.

happens. happens. And I mean this is a message to everybody else like if you are in a similar position watch what we are doing here. here. here. Like he's doing it very loudly for a reason. Like they're not interdicting these boats quietly with a stealth team. They're just drone striking them and then tweeting about it. That's a flex. Uh, all right. Let's jump down down under, mate. Um, thoughts and prayers to the Bondi Bondi Beach uh, shooting and the victims. Um, I saw one article is a 10-year-old girl.

She just got her face painted. Despicable news. Despicable things just happened on there. I was so sad. Uh, but Navidid Arrum has officially been charged with murder. He's a surviving suspect in the Sunday's mass shooting. Uh, his father say, was killed. Um, ICE, they claimed allegiance to ISIS earlier. allegedly they were radicalized in the Philippines before moving to Australia to commit this uh act. Um this is wild and on the backs of foreignly in Syria. Um ISIS just killed two military officials and a a Syrian translator.

So it seems like ISIS is coming back. Like this is just so crazy. And it was on the first day of a Hanukkah celebration. So it seems very anti-Jew coded. Um how do you feel about this uh mass shooting terrorist attack? Yeah, it it's it's brutal. And uh all of this is begging the question of where this is all going from uh is the battle against Islamist extremists going to dominate the next 10 20 years. So yeah, I don't know. But it certainly uh it certainly seems like they are trying to export their ideology across the globe.

They certainly are far better at having children. So their birth rates are very impressive and we should be extremely envious. Uh obviously you have to be extremely careful to delineate between Muslim and Islamist with the extremist uh attachment going only to the Islamic uh side of things. So if you start thinking, okay, wait a second, this they really want a global caliphate, which means a they want the world to be under an Islamic um government. So a religious theocracy that runs um under the laws of the Quran.

Uh so if that really is the goal and they have been very patient and very diligent over the last I don't know how many decades that this has been a either intentional or unintentional but ultimately the same effect uh of them doing this but you're seeing that pop up more and more all across Europe. Wild uh Canada you're starting to see it a little bit in America. And so there are varying degrees of um immune responses from different countries. So, this is a big part of why you're seeing more and more countries across Europe, go to the right, protectionist, get these foreigners out, like that whole vibe, protect my culture.

Um, so we'll see if this really is something that escalates. It's really interesting. I know how much flak Sam Harris catches, but he's really had his finger on this since 9/11 and been saying his whole message and I Lord knows Sam should speak for himself, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, but my interpretation of what Sam says goes something like this. Uh, Christianity used to be a horrific um allconsuming mob that swept across the Middle East back in the 1400s and we were constantly killing and pillaging and so we had reforms and ultimately Christianity becomes far more peaceful.

So, please don't confuse what's going on within um the Islamic extremists with Muslims themselves, but they do need a reform. And so, they need to find a way to soften the edges, to reinterpret what's going on in the Quran, um so that you can get a more moderate version of this, export the life out of that, um and really let it be a religion of peace as it so often claims to be. Uh and the push back that I've heard on that or actually I shouldn't say that the compendium that I've heard on that is that part of the problem is that compared to the Bible which is much longer especially when you take Old Testament New Testament the Quran is just so succinct and direct and it's just like do this.

Uh so it becomes a lot harder for people to start selectively ignoring passages. So uh we'll see how it plays out but yes this is absolutely horrific. You obviously do not need um religion to get behind this to have a mass shooting. We've had plenty of mass shootings just from young disaffected men. Typically, white men uh tend to be your uh progenerator of that kind of thing. So, I don't want this to seem like Bondi could only this kind of mass shooting could only have been something uh pushed forward by an Islamist extremist.

But not talking about that would be stupid. Um, not talking about the rise of anti-semitism would be stupid. And the thing that scares me most is not understanding how all of this plays into um the pograms throughout history. Dude, when things go economically arry, Jews start getting killed on mass. Period. End of story. Like it it just repeats over and over and over. And this is why I'm like, if you find yourself saying the Jews are the problem, stop. Like you are falling into a historical pattern that is so like repetitive, it's ridiculous.

And the real question to ask is in times of plenty, why aren't you worried about it? Because if your whole beef is just, oh, I don't like the way that they approach the world. You think that some of their modus operandi is immoral or whatever, address that when everybody's calm and blood isn't boiling. When you start doing this kind of thing at a time where everybody's on edge and you know that it's a tinder box that people emotionally will just spark and go crazy, history tells you that people will spark, go crazy, and start killing them.

So that's where I'm like, hey, case in point. So, Bondi Beach definitely carries that extra punch of like this tends to be a wave that continues to grow and grow and grow and grow until um Jews really have uh very little safety left. So, yeah, it it does seem um very heightened right now, but it almost reminds me of the air traffic controller debacles that were happening at the beginning of the year. And every time a plane had an issue or anybody was late or something like that, we're like, "See, look, it's Trump.

See, look, it's Trump." But then when you went to the statistics, you looked on mass, you said, "Oh, okay. This happens." And this isn't the most that it's ever been this year. This isn't even the most that it's ever been last year. This is just the new renowned focus of the news lately. Um, terrorists are going to terror. There's been terror attacks all the time. Do you think that there there is something specific in this moment that is rising? Anti-semitism? Anti-semitism? Anti-semitism? Yes, hardcore. This is a historical pattern that looks like this.

Um, it is very smart to master money. I don't care who you are. I don't care your ethnicity, nothing. For whatever reason, Jews actually really [ __ ] take that [ __ ] seriously. And so when they um are teaching their like this is how to be successful as a Jewish person, one of the things that they're talking about getting into business, getting into positions of power, understanding money, putting yourself at that center. Um, and that's just smart. So part of the drum that I'm beating is just desperately trying to get people to understand how money works.

And so anyway, they do that. They get into positions of um economic power, which is very brilliant. This is only going to be like a tiny fraction of them, as would be true anywhere. anywhere. anywhere. Uh but because that's reinforced within the community, because the Jewish community certainly has a strong propensity to help each other, uh they'll end up getting into these positions of power. Nobody thinks about it in times of plenty when things start going bad suddenly it's not that oh they've just like anything else where you'll find any given ethnic group like one person gets into something and then they bring the next and the next that's just how it goes especially when you're the minority uh instead of looking at it like oh yeah that's just where they're drawn to their community hoovers up a bunch of talent into that area um you start going it's a cabal cabal cabal it's a secret cabal and it works against They're the enemy because they're a successful minority.

Nothing will get you killed faster than being a successful minority, by the way. So, they're a successful minority. They're identifiable. They isolate. Oh god. You get into like they've tried a simulation isolation blah blah blah. Setting that aside for a second. Uh it is almost always perceived as they are the outsider. They are successful. They are successful at our expense. So, they are taking from us rather than they've just mastered how money works. They are taking from us. Now, listen. Whenever you get a group that works amongst itself, they're going to wield undue power.

It doesn't matter if you're uh if that's true in video games, trading cards, business, whatever. Like you get you can create these very powerful groups. So when you do that, there's a religious line. Uh you're an identifiable group by name, by sight, whatever. whatever. whatever. And it's money where people really take that [ __ ] seriously at all times and especially when it feels like the pie is shrinking. So the pattern goes PI start shrinking. People can identify that they are plugged into the money scene. Uh they believe that they're doing that at their expense that they are the other and they go on the attack.

And so this then ends up becoming this very easily identifiable blameable group that people just build resentment for historically. Uh and so they target them and go after them. And like if you take humans as a species, there's two ways to look at what ends up happening with Jewish people. Way number one is to go, oo, this is weird. Us as humans, there's like this one subgroup amongst us, right? Like draw the bubble around all of humanity for a second. We're all the same. We're all one.

Like to an alien, that would be true. Like these are all the homo sapiens. Okay. Well, for whatever weird ass reason homo sapiens keep turning on this one little group. Cool. Super bizarre. Not a good look on humanity in my opinion. Uh way number two is to go, "Oh, that's weird. This one little group of homo sapiens. They keep [ __ ] things up. And depending on which side of that line, that frame of reference you fall under, depends on whether you uh are rolling up with the guns on Bondi Beach or you're mortified.

And the the great thing, if you can say that, is it was a Muslim that disarmed the gunman. And I could not be happier about that. So that it just brings into stark relief that people can see this trying to make any group Jews, Muslims, even uh people that are ardent believers in an Islamic state, it's never going to be monolithic. be monolithic. be monolithic. And so being very careful to treat people uh as humans, as individuals, not blinding yourself to patterns by any means. Um, but yeah, trying to stay as sober as you can to not just cram everybody into one group.

Yeah. Uh, and it definitely doesn't help with uh Candace's new uh new target after the Erica Kirk conversation. So, the new target? Yeah. So, the Erica Kirk conversation happened. It went well. According to Candace, it was good. Now, has Erica talked about it? I haven't heard Erica talk about it publicly. It was a closed door conversation. Candace's like, "I'm just going to kind of give you guys the highlights of it." But she was like, "But I was right about the um Egyptian planes and they have been tied back to Israel.

They just turn off their transponder when they go to Israel. So Israel has something to do with these things and it gets deeper." So then now it becomes like this whole like Israel is not related to it. And Israel a lot of times it's just a compared to Jews and then so I feel like there is at the end of the day going to be some type of Jewism like coming out of it. So Jewism it's Jewism it's Jewism it's I don't know how to read that but some type of Yeah.

Jewish uh racism, Jewish uh blame, Jewish something like there was going to be some type of negative that she's probably going to attribute to the Jews at the end of her right right right after talking. after talking. after talking. Love her to death. I'm I'm here for it. Shout out to Candace. She's she's still doing it. Um all right. And a couple more things I actually touch base on. The uh MIT Plasma Science Infusion Center. The director was shot yesterday in his Brookline condo. Um, Nuno FG Lorio um was shot last night um in Norfolk County District Attorney Office reports.

Um it's interesting though because when I initially saw this I was like okay like you know he passed um thoughts and prayers. I hope everything is okay. And then I saw this tweet from Ashton Forbes that said the director of the MIT's Fusion Lab research nonlinear phase mixing and magnetic reconnection state sponsored hit is not out of the question. And immediately I started thinking about like some type of like nefarious spy plot about like this guy just broke nuclear fision or something and big uh big electricity wanting to get him out of here or something like basically big oil is probably the more likely culprit.

Yeah. I mean look this so I don't trust my emotions. Hopefully everybody knows that about me right now. So I'm going to tell you the way that I feel about this but I understand these are emotions and unlike Candace who thinks that that's your cue that you're right. Uh, I always think that's my cue to be ultra paranoid of my interpretation because, huh, this feels too fun, too interesting. Uh, but this one really is fascinating. So, you flashback, Nicola Tesla basically realizes, oh, you can make energy free and it will just like flow through the air and then that man dies broke and alone.

And there were I think it was the bankers like this is where I'm at the headline level on Nicola Tesla, but there's some pretty damning headlines for sure about bankers going in and saying, "No, don't give money to this guy. He wants to basically give things away for free." And they understand free is hard to monetize. And so if all of this stuff is going to be free, that's going to damage all of our businesses. That's going to damage uh capitalism itself. So let's not do that.

Energy is a great way for us to make money. So, let's put the kibos on that. So, the fact that um when Einstein was asked, "What is it like to be the smartest man in the world?" He said, "I don't know. You would have to ask Nicola Tesla." That tells you that people that are smart understood like, "Yo, there's something about Tesla." Obviously, Tesla, the car company, Elon, I don't think named it, but nonetheless, has always been pro- Nicola Tesla because some of his breakthroughs. So, you've got a guy supposedly that is making similar breakthroughs that headline level goes something like this.

Um, Einstein was wrong. Don't think of the world as particles. Think of the world as fluid dynamics, including um plasma as magnetized fluid. M and because of that we're going to be able to do um basically room temperature um energy creation through fusion. I believe this is where it's like fision fusion. I I'm not an expert here, but imagine if you don't need a nuclear reactor to generate that kind of energy. You'd be able to output massive amounts of energy. People are claiming that this guy and many others have already shown that this can be done, but every time it ends up getting buried, shut down, whatever.

So, the fact that this guy that's supposedly having this kind of breakthrough uh gets killed in his house, like super sus. Now, because I find it so spy novel fascinating, I can tell part of me wants it to be true just because it's far more interesting. interesting. interesting. Um, so I need to be super skeptical. But this will be one that I'll be keeping an eye on because that would be both sinister in all capital letters, um, utterly fascinating if we're really having these kind of breakthroughs, and then, God, I wish Eric were here to speak for himself.

But I've always gotten from Eric Weinstein a sense that the government is either knowingly stifling science stifling science stifling science for reasons that I certainly don't understand or at a minimum just trying to control science. And Eric has talked about that they have made certain physics illegal to even think about. And I was like what? And he was like yes like there is a certain branch of physics that if you even think about it it's automatically classified. And I was like how's that possible? He's like oh it's very possible.

So um this all falls into that sort of like yo people really take their money [ __ ] seriously Drew. They take it seriously. But the one where this all sort of breaks down for me is I look out at all of this and I go, "Uh, but these same people are pushing AI forward as fast as they can." So, is this just big money interest? Like some people are over here on the energy side and they're going to kill who they're going to kill. Then you've got people over here on the AI side and they're going to kill who they're going to kill.

Like the whole Sam Alman like whistleblower like oops, he found he he wound up dead. So it's like he committed suicide even though he ordered Door Dash 20 years ago. boredom door dash bled all over his house. Uh yeah, stabbed himself postmortem. You know, I'm making that part up, but it is uh Oo, it gets weird really, really fast. fast. fast. So, we'll see how this plays out. Tinfoil hat firmly in place. Um it certainly fits my mental model of the world that this would be a hit.

I just like what are the odds that this guy gets randomly killed? It's interesting because this is on the backs of the Ford CEO saying he's going to cut like the lightning F-150 EVs and somebody retweeted like this is a bad move. EVs are the future. This is the only way you can make like autonomous driving like uh ice engines are going to be like the thing of the past. And then Elon retweeted was like yes it's weird that it like old indust industrialists they want to keep old industry like they're not not not that's not weird that's like so humans self-preservation.

Yeah. Yeah. So, is it one of those things to your point of like yes, the AI people are all in on AI, but on the other side, there's people who are like, "Wait, don't take my uh electricity. Wait, don't take my grid. Wait, you're going to nuclear fision? Wait, like there is somebody who makes money based on those oldfashioned power lines that's been up since the 1800s." Of course, you know what I mean? So, they might be a little bit more uh gung-ho to try to take as a professor versus like the AI guy on the other side who's dealing with his own level of competitors that he's trying to take.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably better to map it as money reaches a certain level. It attracts a certain kind of person to run these large companies. Um, you've really you have to have a certain type of personality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that personality, you've got to be willing to deal with extraordinary amounts of stress. You have to really be protective of what you've built and to you get survivorship bias, right? So how many other companies like OpenAI were started but they died off because they didn't have the Mchavelian abilities of somebody like Sam Alman who just is always able to find that next person to partner with whatever and he'll I don't know him and I'm certainly not intending to um say that he's done anything nefarious.

I I literally don't know. But you certainly have to be willing to do what it takes um in all of those situations because there's going to be a thousand breaking points for a company along the way. And so the only ones that survive are the ones that navigate those moments well. And so you'll see things like even just reading about um Disney, Disney was doing like union busting and things like that. Like you just to get to that level, you might be the nicest guy in the world, but when your company is put in jeopardy, then you got to find a way to navigate it.

So anyway, it attracts that kind of person. And so if you're mapping this around, oh, when these companies get big enough, where we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars, like that's the kind of thing where, oh, the CEO winds up dead, so you understand like, okay, yeah, I can't [ __ ] around with these people's money. Like, uh, if you know that Saudi Arabia hacked up Kosigible, the journalist, it's like, well, what happens when they just invested $150 billion with you and it's like, they expect you to do X, and you're like, no, no, no.

for moral reasons, I gotta do why. Out comes the bone saw. So, it's like you get sober real fast. Remember, China disappeared. Jack Maw, one of the richest people on planet Earth. So, it's like the it humans are a dangerous species and they are a danger to themselves more than anybody else. And so, yeah, these are real things that people have to think through. through. through. And so, if you base it on, all right, they've achieved a certain level of money. We're now in the zone where we might start doing some really crazy things that the energy guys are going to kill people that jeopardize their way of life.

The AI guys that reach a certain level are going to kill the people that jeopardize their way of life. And it really comes down to what humans will do to protect power and wealth. And that is the far more terrifying thing because then you can't isolate it to any one thing. You can't say like, "Oh, this is just the old dinosaur energy guy problem." No, probably not. This is a this is how you amass power and you have to wield it when you have a challenger.

And if you don't wield your power when you have a challenger to back people out early, then the like in a video game, if you've got like a whole bunch of easy mobs, like it's all cute and fun until they're overwhelming you because there's just so many of them. And so this is partly why you have to have antitrust legislation is that they'll just keep killing off all the small competitors. It was fascinating to watch Microsoft was just notorious for this. Um they would buy companies up just to shut them down because it was like we can't have these people like they're starting to compete with us.

Gobble them up now while they're you know 10 million instead of waiting till they're 100 million or a billion. Uh, and so it's going to be the very rare player that can refuse the $10 million offer, exceedingly rare that they'll refuse the $100 million offer. And if you start refusing like real offers, then they start making things very difficult for you. And whether that's lobbying Congress to get them to regulatory capture so it just makes it impossible for you to get in or whether that's like, you know, rolling up and it'd be a real shame if something happened to, you know, your top employees or whatever.

So, uh, yeah, it gets gets rough out there on them Wall Streets. We get to the top. Um, and we can't go through this, uh, block of terror attacks without bringing up Rob Reiner, um, who was murdered. Unfortunately, him and his wife by his son Nick at 32 in their Brentwood. Um, uh, I hate Was he confessed? He just got he just got arrested. I know he got arrested and I know there was blood everywhere and a lot of people were saying it was him and then I guess he was at they were at Conan Bryan's house and they got into a huge argument and then left and then he allegedly stabbed them.

So, I mean, look, does it look like he's guilty? Yes, it very much looks like he's guilty, but so that we don't get sued by anybody. Allegedly. anybody. Allegedly. anybody. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. allegedly. Um, favorite Robiner film. Oh, when Harry Mets Ali. Nice. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Watch it every year at Christmas. Really? Really? Really? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's on the queue now. It's about to happen like soon. Uh, we've already watched it. Oh, it already happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that one's an early one for us.

Absolutely fantastic. This is Spinal Taps. Also absolutely brilliant. And then a sleeper that really has stuck with me in terms of my mental model is um Stand by Me, which came from Stephen King's The Body. Yeah. Uh, Uh, Uh, I don't think I've seen that one. Oh my god, it's so good. River Phoenix when he was a little kid. Just really, really a great movie. And the book was also great. It comes from a nolla called Different Seasons. Different Seasons. Different Seasons. And there are four stories in it.

Three have been made into uh movies. The other one is Sha Shank Redemption. Came from the same story or the same book as the body, which is Stand by Me. just shocking that these came from Stephen King, but really really good. Um, and then I'm sure you've seen uh Trump's tweet about uh Rob Reiner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you died from TDS, which I think is like, like, like, boy, do I wish I hadn't seen this crazy thing to say. Um, initial thoughts. I'm going to pull it up, but um, it so my initial thought is that it's grotesque, that it reveals a man that is narcissistic in all capital letters, that sees the world only through his lens.

Now listen, I get the temptation when you're the president and really so much actually is about you. But to so parse the world that when somebody's stabbed to death by their son, you're like, "See, I told you this guy was a lunatic about me." What? Like that's so wild. So yeah, that one, look, I obviously Trump broke me when he proved that he is perfectly willing to drive us off the fiscal cliff. M um but this this one was like whatever little bit of like well maybe it's like this is so gross.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, this is so horrifying. Um and then this is a treat this is the tweet. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, tortured and struggling but once very talented movie director and comedy star has passed away. Together his wife Michelle reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling de disease known as Trump derangement syndrome. Sometimes referred to as TDS, he was known to have been driven crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J.

Trump. With his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness and with the golden age of America upon us perhaps like never before. May Robin Michelle rest in peace. Here's the thing. This is um something for all of us to consider. There there are some things that um we just don't do, right? And it's purely cultural and there's no sort of universal reason why we just don't do it. But it's like taking pot shots at people when they die is just like we just don't do that.

Yeah, it it's protective of your own what will inevitably be an awkward uh dehumanizing, embarrassing, humiliating moment for you. And so to show like to pay that forward and be respectful like even Rob Reiner when uh who certainly has come after Trump very very aggressively, come after the right very very aggressively. Uh when Charlie Kirk was shot was just like this is horrible. Nobody deserves that. I don't care what your political views are. Yeah, 100%. Like you can go be mad and other times you can go bang pots and pans and freak out.

Um but when somebody dies, like we just don't do that here. Like that's so gross. And so watching this like lose its firm footing that we don't do that here is the thing that makes me even more sad than that he did it is just like hold on. Like we're living in a time where I can't take for granted that people are going to be quote unquote presidential. I can't take for granted that people are going to be classy. I can't take for granted that people are going to have some [ __ ] grace.

grace. grace. It's like this is why even I find myself saying people need Jesus. Like godamn like Trump need Jesus. Like this is crazy. You need something in your heart that just says, "Yeah, I've got a chance." Like, let's say that that ended up being his most popular tweet and people loved it and it was just like rockus applause. I would still want something on his shoulder being like, "Bro, that's just icky." Like, "What are you doing?" Like, it's just disrespectful to the human experience. Forget that this guy's your enemy.

It's disrespectful to the human experience. So, anyway, I say that to myself as much as anybody else because I can run through my mind hearing about an enemy combatant or whatever that got shot AND I'M LIKE, "AH." SO, UM, YEAH, but I really want to make sure that, um, that I don't feed into that side of myself. So, anyway, PSA to me if nobody else. Um, yeah, Jason, uh, from the All-In podcast said, "When a self-described racist like Nick Fuentes can so easily establish a moral high ground on the president of the United States, we're in a very dark place." Uh, this is what Nick had to say about the tweet.

Uh, Uh, Uh, forget for a moment that we are in a war. war. war. Someone gets murdered by their son. It's a horrific tragedy. This is a horrible story. And nobody deserves that. I don't care what their politics are, what they said on on the internet or on television. Nobody deserves to be murdered, stabbed to death with their wife by their own son who they tried to help and their best friend discovers the corpses. It's despicable. And it's despicable to make fun of that. And I do think that, you know, look, somebody like George Bush passes away of old age at the very end and you talk about his political legacy.

That's one thing. Some guy, some producer, some civilian dies at the hands of his kid. It's such a grizzly situation. It is objectively awful to make fun of that. Now, if Trump were actually doing what he promised to do, you could overlook the fact that he's a douchebag. You could overlook the fact that he's vain, that he's a narcissist, that he's tactical but not strategic. You could overlook all these things if he was bringing home the goods. goods. goods. That was kind of the deal in 2016.

You said, "We don't love everything about Trump, but you know what? We're willing to we're willing to accommodate. It's an acquired taste, but it's okay because he's doing all these other things." Well, what's actually the pitch now? We get nothing. We get no concessions. There are no deportations. That we haven't ended one of the wars. We haven't remade the federal bureaucracy. And then yeah, that could be up for a debate. But is that is there something to that that that Trump lost his credibility because there are people still struggling.

There are people still hurting. Marjorie Taylor Green actually just did a tweet that said 76,000 Republicans in her district are going to be hit by these ACA uh hikes in the new year. So, is there something to Trump had grace when America was winning, but now that people are starting to kind of feel it, he might need to be a bit more cognizant of things he tweets and things like that. Sure. In terms of when the audience is with you, you can get away with a lot.

And when the audience turns on you, you can get away with nothing. If canceler culture didn't teach people anything, it's that on a dime, you can go from as a comedian like, "Oh, that shit's hilarious." to like, "Bro, that's grotesque." grotesque." grotesque." Uh, so yeah, read the room for sure. But the so the thing with Nick Fuentes, admittedly I have a problem with this. So uh that Nick has the right take on Rob Reiner is that's pretty damning of Trump. Like you should never be outclassed by um the person who goes to bat for Joseph Stalin.

Stalin. Stalin. I really can't get over the Joseph Stalin thing. And I can tell that uh Nick is really going to become a for Nick already is a force. He's only going to grow in popularity. There's a poly market for whether he becomes president. that that scares the life out of me. Uh so I'm just like if you've read about some of the things that Joseph Stalin did, which I've talked about many times here before, like all of a sudden Trump's comments about about about Rob Reiner are mild mild.

Like I would much rather Trump be making comments about Rob Reiner than do like 1/100th of the things that Stalin did. So, um, that one I just have a hard time wrapping my head around. So, anyway, it is terrifying that Trump got it so wrong on this minor thing and that Nick actually got it right, but when you step back and look at the broader picture of what Nick is saying, it gets way more terrifying. Um, Kate Blissful just dropped a banger of a comment, and I have to address it.

They said, "Y'all can advocate for fathers to be plucked up, beaten, and shipped to a country they never visited because of their heritage, but talking about this man is where y'all draw the line. I don't get it." And um Abrego Garcia was just finally vindicated, got out, they brought up another uh case against him. The judge threw that out because it was obviously retaliatory. So, he's 100% free back in Maryland, everything that he was supposed to be, like he had asylum. He was lawfully allowed to be here, all these things.

and he was kind of the quintessential piece of see this is what's wrong with immigration system let's get him out here let's get him out of here and then the Rob Riner situation everybody's clutching their pearls and there's certain ways that that they have to kind of parse the world I think it is interesting that in certain situations we have moral lines and in other situations those moral lines seem like they should be equivalent but they're a little bit less there's higher they're lower lower lower well so all of this stuff is very obvious but there's two ways to talk about this there's the accusation that she has made that's entirely false if she's talking about you and me Uh and then there is the oh it's weird that morality is relative.

And so let's start with the first the accusation that somehow we were celebrating that we were certainly not. Um on that I don't remember the exact words that I said but knowing my mental model it goes something like this. If this guy is here illegally and he has done bad things then we should get him the [ __ ] out of the country. If he is not here illegally or he has not done bad things and he needs to go through due process and everybody calm the [ __ ] down.

So, I don't know anything about that guy. And so, I'm always going to present myself as a thought experiment. If he's this, do this. Uh, I do this. If he's this, do this. Uh, I know myself well enough to know that's what I would have said about um Garcia. So, her accusations in that sense are false. Uh, the other side, the whole thing I'm trying to get people to understand is that your morality is relative. That you are trapped inside of a frame of reference. that frame of reference will uh determine what you look at and what you see.

So what you witness as so there's an awesome quote remember it well when people speak they cannot help but reveal themselves. So when you hear people talk when you watch Trump tweet like he's revealing himself. This is why that tweet about um Rob Reiner is so damning is that he revealed that as Nick said, it's like, bro, what is your moral compass? Like, is it just it's just all about me and that's all the [ __ ] matters and so everything I do can be looked through the lens of like I'm only going to help Americans if it helps me.

It's like that's what that tweet is about. And look, that's not going to be the end of his presidency or anything like that. But could that one be a if you plot a graph of audience with you or audience against you? Is that going to be a dot on that? Yeah, probably. It's not going to like turn it 90 degrees so that it's like, you know, half of everybody now is just 100% against him. It's not going to work like that. But that. But that. But it like it's not a good look.

And I think people are going to remember it. I'm certainly going to remember it. So, um, yeah, keep that in mind. Everybody's morality is will appear relative from the outside. It may even be truly relative because they have not mapped out at least what they aim to be. Remember the vast majority of humanity steers entirely by emotions that is by evolutionary design. So if you selectively destroy the regions of the brain that are tied to emotions, people cannot make a decision. Like they can't make a decision.

Not that they don't want to, not that they're confused. They're not confused. They will literally tell you why one option is better than the other and then you say, "Okay, cool, but please pick." They can't do it. They will stay there forever glitching out. Uh, so emotions are the thing that allow you to parse through an incredibly complex world. So, I get how if you've not taken the time to define this is my moral compass and therefore even when I feel like moving in a different direction, I'm going to force myself to go over here down this direction.

um you'll just go by whatever feels right. That's what evolution has programmed you to do. So on that, never be surprised, never be confused. Um but keep my name, ouch you down, man. Uh but the subjective morality I think is the issue that America is going through right now because I think half of the country thinks that Palestine should be free and it doesn't matter that I would get murdered if I go there, but it's their autonomy. And then the other half feels like I should be free to only take care of my friends and family.

I shouldn't have to take care of other people. And everybody kind of feels what the other should and shouldn't do. And I feel like we always had this difference in morals. Like morals have always been subjective. What do you think changed that made it so drastic? Is it just over time? Is it? Well, so I think you would have to look at all of human history and graph like sort of mass chaos like here. And then we go through this really interesting period where religion is like the dominating force.

And so at least all of the murder and horrific things that humans never stop doing. In fact, it was probably worse back in the day. That's at least groups of like, hey, the Catholics are going to go kill everybody and take your [ __ ] or whatever, but at least they operate as as one group. And that was the idea. I think from an evolutionary standpoint, we have circuitry in our brains that say, "Oh, give me something like give me the biggest umbrella that you can give me and I can group up with a huge number of strangers and still move in a given direction." Mhm.

direction." Mhm. direction." Mhm. And so the way that I interpret the very famous Nichzche quote that we killed God and we'll never be able to wash the blood off of our hands is that as we have abandoned traditional religions that gave us all unifying morality, we realize very quickly you can rebuild morality. However, the odds that that will be subjective and different than other people goes radically up. Now, you take that, we've already begun fracturing. fracturing. fracturing. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Because everybody's building their morality up off of something else.

And then on top of that, give people social media so that they have just this incredible tsunami of information and other viewpoints that they can step in and out of. Uh, and you get further fracturing so that you've got all kinds of people with I'm just millions of different like micro frames of reference that they can be going through the world, which is why Nick Nick's followers have a name. They are the groers and you've got America first, you've got mega like you've everybody's got their own little tribal identity and those tribal identities carry with them a frame of reference and I'm sure that any of us can have multiple frames of reference that we step in and out of.

In fact, that's really interesting. When I'm in my CEO identity, I'm very different than if I'm in my husband identity for sure. And so, I mean, you try to have I try I'll speak for myself. I try to have a master morality for sure. There are just things that I think are right and wrong. I've said a gazillion times what my northstar is, human flourishing. Uh, and so I try to adhere to that at all times. There's no way that I'm perfect. Um, but that is what you're seeing play out is just the infinite fracturing of frame of reference.

reference. reference. How do you think that manifest in the 2026 like midterms? Like is there going to be the I was a Republican but he made me icky. I'mma leave. Do we think, dude? If if he does not put money in people's pockets, the Republicans will lose in an absolute title wave of blue. Period. Full stop. Yeah. It's It's really about money. And things are going to get Let me explain for a second why it's about money. Because I think people think money is icky. And um that is dumb.

The reason that is dumb is you're closing yourself off to a fundamental reality of the way that humans are. Money is simply the ability to motivate somebody else to do what you want them to do. And so that do what you want them to do could be um get me the RAM for my computer. computer. computer. It could be uh get me the gas to put in my tank. Could be get me the sandwich that I want to eat. It could be build me a house.

Whatever. Uh it could be dear landlord, I would like you to fix my plumbing. Um I'm in New York and it's cold. I want a heater. Like that's what money does. It simply allows you to have economic force in order to get other people to do the thing that you want them to do. Now you take that away and now all of a sudden it becomes about physical power. And so it's like I get you to do what I want you to do because you don't have any other way other than persuasion to get people to fight back against me.

I'm a Sug Knight type [ __ ] I'm going to come in and I'm going to do whatever I want cuz I can just I can literally break your bones. and you get such a strong pain signal that you're like, "Yeah, I don't want to go through that anymore." And so now simply being bigger and physically stronger than you, I can do whatever the [ __ ] I want. So what smaller people realized was, oh, there are other ways to handle this between specialization. And so now we have to come up with some monetary system so we don't have to [ __ ] barter chickens for bedcloth.

Um, so it's like you get into this thing where we all become these economic units. when people stop realizing that economies developed because of all those things um a desire to survive, right? Economies are born when you're playing an open world survival crafting game, which is real life. And it it just helps everything become so much easier. So that's why it happens. But people think it happens because of billionaires like they don't even understand like they're not mapping cause and effect. They are not thinking up for first principles.

Um, troll me if you want for always bringing things back to that, but that's how you navigate the world well is by understanding the cause and effect. Um, you seen anything in chat, Mason? I feel like money is always the tense issue. I'm doing a quick scroll myself. I feel like we landed the plane on this one, but before I move on, not particularly on this one, though. Nice. Nice. Nice. All right. Um, the White House uh had a profile done by the Vanity Fair uh by Vanity Fair.

The interviewer allegedly was going through the White House over the last year. She had access to um meetings. There was even a portrait in there that kind of showed the whole uh Trump cabinet. So, it seemed like this is like one of those backstage at a concert type journalist. It was actually like in the day-to-day life with them. Um but some of the quotes that came out weren't too flattering of the Trump presidency. Let's uh cover it. House Chief of Staff Susie Wilds telling Vanity Fair, "Trump wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle." That rare interview from Trump's closest aid is providing new insight on a wide range of issues.

She describes Trump as having an alcoholic's personality, noting that Trump, who does not drink, operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do, nothing, zero, nothing. While also saying Vice President JD Vance has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. and Wilds adding Attorney General Pam Bondi completely whiffed her handling of the Epstein files. Wilds does acknowledge the president himself is in the Epstein files but not doing anything awful, saying the two men were sort of young single playboys together. In response to the article, the article, the article, so then yep, in response, Susie Wilds didn't like it.

She tweeted, "The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president White House staff in the cabinet in history. significant context was disregarded and much of what I and others said about the team and the president was left out of the story. I assume after reading it that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team. team. team. Um spinners are going to spin. So is this what the vanity fair was like?

I see an opportunity here and take these out of context. Of course. So well first of all one thing uh imagine that the journalist has a frame of reference that points what they look at and what they see. So, you don't even have to go all the way to nefarious, though that might be warranted for her to hear the things that she wants to hear from Suzie. So, I remember one time, I think I've told this story before, talking to this guy that I worked with, and person A, um, the person I was talking to hated person A and loved person B.

And I went on a business trip with person A and person B. B. B. And person A, the hated person, saved our ass. Uh because person B, the loved person, was completely [ __ ] up. Like it was wild in the room. I was like, "What's happening?" And person A comes in, saves the day. It was awesome. I come back and tell the person I'm talking to who hates person A, "Person A saved the day." And he goes, "I knew it. That [ __ ] guy's a moron." And I was like, "Wait, I just said person A saved the day." And he was like, "Dude, I knew it.

I told you that guy was stupid." And I'm like, "What is happening right now?" I'm like, "Stop. person A saved the day. And he was like, oh [ __ ] He was like, I so think that guy is dumb even though you did say that twice. He was like, I couldn't hear you because my mental model was so person B good, person A bad. And I was like, it literally that left an indelible mark on my psyche. In fact, that's probably one of the reasons I was like, "Holy [ __ ] people are really trapped inside their frame of reference." like seeing that play out in real time because the guy that I was talking to is incredibly smart, but he literally could not hear the words I was saying.

It was wild. So, yeah, there's there's that. Now, she may also just be a political hack and be totally nefarious. So, there's also that. Now, I very rarely do interviews in print. Like even back at like the height of my Quest days where I was getting a lot of requests for print, I learned a very powerful lesson early on. So I got interviewed for somebody who wanted to know how somebody as successful as me like manage their time. And so I was explaining to them how I use transitional moments.

And I'm talking about how I'm like always learning something and I uh read while I'm brushing my teeth or I read while I'm cooking or walking or whatever. Like I've got headphones in all the time. I read while I'm falling asleep when I wake up. When I say they made me sound like a psychopath in that interview, I was like, "Wait now, they did not misquote me, but by stripping out the most like the one where I was being tongue-in-cheek or funny and then not in any way showing how we were having a playful conversation when I said it and then she just lifted that one line and was like, "Tom billio has a very extreme way of living that I don't think most people would like.

Insert whatever the quote was. I don't remember." And I was like, "Well, I'm not doing print anymore." So, because at least on a podcast, like what I've always said to people, because the team will be like, "Well, will you go on the show? It's probably going to be antagonistic." And I'm like, they can't make me say something I don't believe. So, I have no problem going on the show. Now, if they deceptively edit, and we've all seen that is very possible to do, then I would have beef.

But, typically on a podcast, you don't get that. I certainly haven't had real problems with it. So, but print is wild. So I the thing that I'm most shocked about is why on earth did Susie go to Vanity Fair which is not exactly going to be a friendly and I love that they will go out and do things with unfriendly people but print like print is the easiest place to make somebody look crazy or to paint a narrative. So anyway that one's just weird. I don't know why she did it.

Um she did it but Donald Trump Jr. who you would expect if he thought, okay, that Suzie is trying to do something now to go on the attack on Trump. He came out, defended her like unequivocally. It was just like, she's amazing. She's the best person for my dad. Like, love, love, love. So, um I will assume that there's no fire here. Yeah, I'm not reading this whole entire thing, but Susie Wilds is by far the most effective and trustworthy chief of staff the president uh the chief of staff that my father has ever had.

um she was a loyal fighter from him from the moment she came on board. So, and he goes on to say like, "Listen, there's nothing here. She's amazing." Taken out of context. Yeah. So, it's interesting. But yeah, to your point, it it's Did they set them up by going on Vanity Fair? It didn't seem like a friendly, but that was that was that was I think that that was like Yeah, that was a a vanity like literally a vanity play by Susie. Like, oh, Vanity Fair wants to profile me.

Of course, I would love to go. I don't know. She's always assued that kind of stuff. So that was the only thing where I was like this is not somebody who like craves the spotlight. But anyway, I haven't read the full article. So, um I will say that she strikes me as the kind of person that you'd want on your team. Here's one of the weirdest things about being a CEO, and I imagine this is times a gazillion if you're the president. People are afraid to tell you the truth.

And they might be afraid to tell you the truth because they're worried they're going to get fired. They might be afraid to tell you the truth because they don't want you to associate them with bad things. But it's like the person that will actually tell you the truth is by far the most valuable person on your team. Uh if you're wired like me, like I am so convinced that the only thing that matters is to know what's true. I don't want to be uh overly flattered.

Listen, if I did something that's good, I want to know for sure. And that always feels lovely. But the thing that I want is to know how the world actually works. This is why I call it the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that you can get better at something if you put time and energy into it. So, it's like, "Hey, Tom, you're doing this thing. You're completely [ __ ] it up. You have a goal and because you're [ __ ] that thing up, you're not going to achieve your goal." So, I'm like, "Wait a second.

I've gotten this far in life doing that thing poorly and now you're going to help me do it well and all I have to do is take the sting of like, oh, currently I suck at this." Yeah. Word. Because I know how potent goals goal achievement is. Like, you can actually get things in life, do things in life that other people can't get or do. And I'm like, "Okay." And so, wait, I just want to be clear. All I have to do is take the emotional self-esteem hit that I suck at this.

Yes. Okay. Like, that's how I look at the world. I'm watching other people psychological immune system in full swing, lying to themselves about who they are and what they're good at. And I'm just like, but hold on. You're bad at it now, but you don't have to be bad at it forever. But you will never get good at it if you can't admit that you're currently bad at it. So, you do have to take the psychological hit of I'm not as good as I want to be.

Uh, and I get it. That's not fun. It's not fun for me. It's not fun for anybody. But it unlocks something so useful. It's not how most people live. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, we'll keep look at the situation. I don't know. I feel like it's it's over. Like Vanity Fair got their article out. They got their clicks. They got their magazines, the subscriptions. Like you can't undo print. I feel like once well also politics is a reality show that we all just want to watch.

Um here here is a fascinating thing when deciding that I was Is my wife in the feed? My wife is in the feedu. Ah it's been a while. You also changed your uh thing unless somebody's faking you. She's not pink anymore. What is somebody faking her? Is that Lisa? I'm not sure that is Lisa. I'm checking. I'm checking. I'm checking. Well, does YouTube give like numbers like that? like that? like that? So that is not Lisa unless she has a burner account. Oh, that's icy. That is icy.

Anyway, uh it's me. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Um okay. It's going to be hilarious if it actually is her, by the way. But uh Okay. We were It's her burner account. Yeah. Right. Um we were talking about Oh, when I decided to shift the show over into politics, I was looking at um what what are the engines? Cuz the reason I wanted to move away from the phase one empowerment stuff was I was bored out of my mind and was very much afraid that it was spiritual entertainment that people look that 2% are going to change 98% are not.

And so here I am uh interviewing people that were boring me to tears. They were all saying the same thing over and over and over and only 2% of people are going to change anyway. So I was like I can't keep doing this. So I needed an engine. What's going to be the engine of the show? So when I was doing Mindset, the engine of the show was someone writes a book on mindset. We have them come on. I give them the best interview around that book that's ever been done.

Great. Uh then I was like there are better engines than that. And there are three incredible engines. incredible engines. incredible engines. Sports, Sports, Sports, religion, and politics. And I was like politics and in politics obviously is money and all that. Um Um Um that was the only one I was like oh I could stay interested in that forever because it remains very consequential. There's obviously a reason that I lean economic uh whereas other people might lean towards something else in that bucket. But um it is it's a huge engine.

So it is you're going to have like a neverending list of things to talk about once you understand that people want these engines because they are the thing that like occupies their mind from an entertainment value perspective. So there's a reason that I liken sports to religion, religion to politics. Like it's a thing. It's a thing that sparks strong emotion and makes people want to invest their time in understanding who the players are, what they're doing, right? It could be a player in Congress. It could be a player on the court.

Doesn't matter. It gives people that same sense of I'm investing in this drama. drama. drama. Um, allegedly it was Lisa. She was just on the wrong account. She switched accounts, popped back in. That's interesting. So, she has a burner that we know about. That's funny. But it still has uh her name. That's That's a bad burner. Yeah, that's the worst burner ever. All right, let's jump over to the economy. Um too late. Fed pal uh just cut the interest rate 25 uh basis points. Uh let's hear his address on it.

In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks risks to employment to the downside. A challenging situation. challenging situation. challenging situation. There is no risk-free path for policy as we navigate this tension between our employment and inflation goals. A reasonable base case is that the effects of tariffs on inflation will be relatively short-lived, effectively a one-time shift in the price level. Our obligation is to make sure that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation. This is this is why it's important to understand there is different risks to employment having risen in recent months.

months. months. Drew doesn't like to see me happy. Yeah, it is. Uh this is why people have to understand there's a difference between um inflation and prices going up because everybody thinks of them as one and the same. But prices have gone up from tariffs. But if he's right, it bumps once. It doesn't keep going. Inflation is exponential. I think people confuse doubling rate with exponential and they think, oh, for something to be exponential, it has to double every year or whatever. No, no, no. That's it's doubling rate.

Exponential simply means 3% a year, for instance, would be an exponential because 3% on today's number is different than 3% on next year's number because next year's number is 3% higher. So, it's 3% on a bigger number, then 3% on a bigger number again. And so your the inflation is actually exponential at that point. Now that tends to lead to a corresponding exponential growth in prices, but they are two separate things. Inflation is adding more money to the money supply money supply money supply at a rate that's different than the rate of productivity.

Oh, I almost hate that I'm starting to actually really understand all this stuff because you feel like you're intentionally leaving something off. Uh but yes, so inflation inflating the money supply, prices going up, the response to the fact that there is a larger number of dollars chasing the same number of goods. So they're two separate things. So he is drawing a distinction between that. Anyway, back to my man. The balance of risks has shifted. Our framework calls for us to take a balanced approach in promoting both sides of our dual mandate.

Accordingly, we judged it appropriate at this meeting to lower our policy rate by a quarter percentage point. percentage point. percentage point. They judge at this uh meeting to lower it by a quarter of a percentage point. The thing that jumped out to me was the no risk-free path. So on the upside is on the down upside is inflation. On the downside is employment job loss. So he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. It seems like in the economy right now. Do you ever hear the shaggy song wasn't me and he's like but I I've got you on video.

Wasn't me. You were humping on the counter. Wasn't me. But bro, I have you on camera. Wasn't me. We're now in the you can't even deny it anymore phase. Like people have been screaming that I've got video of you humping on the floor, on the counter, in the bedroom, all of it. And uh everybody has been saying wasn't me. There's no problem. Nothing to see here. And that denies the physics of money. And so it is inevitable that he was going to find himself in this position.

We are in fiscal dominance. Fiscal dominance has consequences. Fiscal dominance is where you've racked up so much debt that the reality of compounding interest means that if you were to raise rates, which is what you should do if bubbles are forming, and we'll forming, bubbles are forming, and we'll get to the um Schiller ratio in a minute, but bubbles are forming. When bubbles start forming, you raise interest rates to make money more expensive. And that begins to drain liquidity out of the markets. Okay? So that's what he should be doing.

Uh but he can't do that because compounding interest says that compounding interest in the fact that your loans roll over. So you finance them for a certain number of years and then they'll eventually come due. Now we have a bunch of money coming due. Like when you see the graph 2026 is the outlier of outliers. It is just an obscene amount of money. It's a little bit it's about a quarter of our debt. A little bit under that. Oh my god, it's so big. Yeah. So, we've got this huge wall of debt that we have to deal with and at the rates of interest that we were at, we'll we will literally bankrupt the nation if we were to refinance at those rates.

That's why people like Lyn Alden were like, "Guys, there's no universe in which they don't lower rates. They have to. It's not a question. They there's no option. so he can make all the noise that he wants by 2026. He's going to have to lower those rates because he's not going to suicide the US economy. Now, we'll we'll kill it. We'll poison it slowly. Like, we'll make it smoke like 40 packs of cigarettes a day. Uh but we're 100% going to do the money printingtick until we hyperinflate.

Like there there is nothing else. You're just trying to buy yourself time. you kick the can down the road in the hopes that AI creates a productivity miracle and you grow your way out of this and you don't have anything else to do. Your only other option is a beautiful deleveraging and I wish he had called that something else like a violent restructuring because that's at least honest. Um, so your only other option is a violent restructuring that will just devastate a ton of people. Uh, potentially spin you into a depression, but nonetheless, like it's the only thing that you can do other than guarantee the patient dies down the road.

So this is the moment where the Fed is doing a bad thing. They absolutely should not be lowering rates. They should be raising rates or at a minimum leaving them where they are. But they can't. So now what? Now what is you are going to fuel bubbles and when bubbles So now let's pull up the Schiller thing. I have something that I want to read to people. So uh the Schiller PE ratio just crossed 40 for only the third time in history. The Schiller PE ratio also called the cape cyclally adjusted price to earnings measures how expensive the stock market is relative to its long-term earnings power.

not just this year's profits. So if you explain that in plain English, the stock market price is divided by the average inflation adjusted earnings over 10 years. Okay, so the key difference from a normal P& ratio is it uses 10 years of earnings which smooth smooths out booms and busts so recessions. Uh it's inflation adjusted so it's real purchasing power not nominal noise effectively. Uh it's designed to spot bubbles. That's the whole point. Like is this thing overpriced? Now to give you an idea what normal looks like historically since the late 1800s.

So over 120 30 years. Uh the long-term average is like 16 to 17. We're over 40. Okay, so it's 16 to 17. A cheap market where it's like, whoa, what's going on? Is anything less than a 10. An expensive market is anything over 25. 25. 25. Extreme bubble territory is anything over 30. And crossing 40 is historically insane. insane. insane. And we're at 40 right now. and we've only done it three times. Now, why is this a big deal? Uh, the Schiller PE greater than 40 has occurred during 1929.

1929. 1929. You might have heard of a a famous thing there called the great stock market crash, the great depression. Uh, 1999 to 2000, the dotcom crash and 2021 to present, which is now. So, in the first two cases, real returns over the next 10 to 15 years were flat to negative. Valuations didn't grow into it. prices fell or stagnated uh while earnings caught up. So there is no historical precedent where buying at these levels led to strong long-term returns. Like it took Cisco just just now, like a week ago, just now got back to where it was during the dot boom.

That's 25 years. That's wild. That's wild. That's wild. So nobody wants their money locked up for 25 years. So this is why we dollar cost average. Yeah. You you don't want to look at this market and go, "Oh my god, number go up. This is amazing. We're all good. Everything's wonderful." Now, at the same time, you don't just want to pull out of the market. That's what I was thinking. So, you dollar cost average. Look, because the future is so uncertain. I'm always just dollar cost average.

The the odds that you get the timing right are effectively zero. Unless you are Ray Dallio levels of I've got 150 researchers that all they do is think about this every day. I've got an AI that trades in milliseconds. uh my fiber optic cable is like 9 millimeters from the terminals that they're trading with to make sure that this [ __ ] is like the fastest fastest fastest ever. If you would know how to frontr runwater um on a trade, then by all means do it. If you don't know how to frontr run a trade, know that other people are front running you.

So it's like you just don't do it. That's not the play. The play is to go okay over very long periods of time what usually ends up winning dollar cost average in to a very broad basket of goods having enough cash on hand that you can survive a uh extended period of time to me six months is the absolute minimum like minimum like minimum like dude dude dude yeah you you if you have to move back into your parents basement or get five friends in a studio apartment so that you can save up money literally do that um so to get six months on hand that's got to be the goal.

I keep like 3 years of cash on hand. Um just again peak paranoia. I can't see the future clearly. Nobody can. So um you want to give yourself maximum optionality. Now I'm still dollar cost averaging in. Um but the I'm not like hey because the things have gone up so much that I'm just like dumping in. This is the great time. It's like I get most paranoid when everything seems like it's only not investment advice. Not investment advice. Talk to your financial advisors. We can't get to two times in one episode.

Um, episode. Um, episode. Um, what about can I just buy gold? Gold, silver. Gold, silver. Gold, silver. You can, but just same thing. Be paranoid. Dollar cost average in. Assume that you can't see the future clearly. Uh, there are no such thing as sure bets. There have been plenty of people that had their money trapped in gold for like 20 years because gold went flat and just wasn't the thing. And even though yes, it is exactly the kind of thing that you want to own as an inh uh inflation hedge, it doesn't mean that the market values it as such.

So you have to be very careful. Um the odds that your money will retain the like sort of average price of gold. Yes. But if gold's like really doing a runup, you could get way ahead of yourself for a very long time. And gold right now has been on a runup. Now, full disclosure, I am dollar cost averaging into gold because I am way more paranoid about um inflation because let's say if the market collapses, what will they do? they will [ __ ] print money. So, it's like, well, where do I want to be?

Bitcoin, gold, etc. Again, not financial advice, and I'm literally not the guy. I'm the guy out here. I'm going to tell you everything that I'm learning, and then for you go do your thing. I will tell you what I do. But I I like at the end of all my videos, I give very similar advice. It is essentially the all-weather fund strategy. It is I don't know what's coming and so diversify across against a wide set of economic forces. I don't tell people go buy this stock or this specific thing or any of that.

It's like uh because I don't know what will happen. happen. happen. So, um yeah, people need to understand the cause and effect and then bet on their own understanding. It's like otherwise you're you're going to get caught offguard by someone somewhere. Let's jump over to Warren Buffett cuz he's been sitting on a historic pile of cash and he had some concerns about US fiscal policy fiscal policy fiscal policy and obviously we wouldn't want to be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell.

Uhoh. Uhoh. Uhoh. And that's the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. I mean, it's the it's the it's the the Do you know how damning that statement is? statement is? statement is? He's literally been sitting on like half a billion dollars like, "No, I'm good. I'll wait it out. No, I'm sitting on a half a billion. No, more than that. Half a trillion. It's got to be. I'm sitting on an ungodly amount of money. And what is the one thing I know I don't want to do it with it?

Leave it in USD because I believe it's going to hell. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Back to it. of a government to want to debase its currency over time is there's no system that beats that. You you can pick dictators, you can pick representatives, you can do anything. But but the people there there will be a a push toward weaker currencies and of course that is I mentioned very briefly in the annual report that that that fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States because because because it's it's made the way it is and uh and uh all the motivations are to doing a lot of things I I want to jump in being very vague.

Yeah, I want to jump in here for the idiots in the room. Uh it is what it is. To me, that sounds like the Fed's going to Fed. Like, yes, yes, yes, it's at this point. You pick the representative, you can pick the leaders, but the Feds, which already can Can we like throw up in our own mouths a little bit that he just said you can pick representatives and all that? What? What do you mean? Do you mean vote or do you mean like influence with money?

But yes, even if you just say he just means vote, both parties are going to spend recklessly. And do you know why, Drew? People like free stuff. Because people like free stuff. They [ __ ] voted for mom Donnie. mom Donnie. mom Donnie. That is so wild. That that is that's really scary. Now I am because I understand the opposite is tyranny. I am prepared to be um pushed around by the mass of people who just don't understand what they're voting for because I don't want to have to try to control them.

It's the only thing that I think is worse than them leading me down a terrible uh fiscal path. Um but that's really scary that people just they don't understand. The information is there. It's in public. People like uh Buffett have been talking about it forever. Ray Dallio turned it into cartoons for people. It doesn't matter. the vast majority of humans are never going to take the time to understand this. And I imagine if I were reading the chat that we don't even all agree on how all of this works.

So it's like it is so wild that I can tell people exactly how this is going to play out and it's still going to play out exactly like that. That that's really that could black pill me. I refuse because that's not a good way to live life. But that could really blackpill me, dude. like that one's wild. wild. wild. Um I I kind of want to dig in on this a little bit because I'm I'm split as well. Um I love Arthur Hayes. We got an interview with him coming up at the top of the year.

You guys are gonna love it. Um giving you your crypto alpha for 2026. Um but the thing about him that I love is that he's so like, "Oh yeah, Fed's going to print money. Um they're going to do this, they're going to do that." And it's not like a if or we need to see. Let's see what Trump does. Let's see what China calls us back. Nah, they're going to print money. It's going to happen. So if they when they print money, if they if it does go into a recession, they'll just print money times two and then this will happen or they'll print money times one and then this will happen.

So it's like they already kind of skipped it. And I feel this same energy for Warren Buffett right now where it's like, yeah, blue wave, red wave, Republican, Democrat, fiscal policies is what it is. I don't want to keep my money here. And I'm just like that everybody's just matter of fact. I So I guess abandoning the Fed isn't an option. Like everybody's just kind of moving as if it's even too late to kind of do that now where it's just now. I was like, "All right, we just going to have to ride this out and see.

Hopefully, we could just what is it? Uh, brace your head so that way you you at least don't get head trauma. I might break all my bones in my legs, but maybe I won't get a headache. I don't know. Like, Like, Like, we're going to crash." The way Yes. The way that I think about this is let's say that you tell me I have a hundred people in a room. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And they're going to be fasting until they ring a bell to leave. And Tom, I want you to bet on how many people will fast until they die.

And I'm going to ask a couple really basic questions. Um, you know, is there any incentive for them to stay in the room? And you'll be like, yes, and it's minor, whatever. So, I'm like, it doesn't save their family if they starve to death. No, nothing like that. Then I'm be like, a 100% of them are going to ring the bell and go eat because I know what hunger feels like. And people will never vote for anything that will cause the abrupt like problem. Mhm. Mhm.

Mhm. They will always, literally always vote for the thing that gives you the slower off-ramp, even if it ends up wiping out way more people. So, So, So, it just is. And so because I'm so aware of how humans actually behave that I'm like, "Yeah, they're like they're going to print money. We're the world's reserve currency." So we'll print money until we're not the world's reserve currency anymore. That will be the only thing that will check us hard enough. Um because it's just you only get 100% of the inflation.

uh and it's we can obuscate it and it doesn't quite feel like as direct and so you can get away with it for a long time and so yeah we're going to do it now listen even that you should always leave room for maybe not maybe something maybe AI right like and we don't end up having to print so it's like never assume that you can see the future perfectly but god it's just that's how humans are printing money makes it slow And it spreads it across everybody.

And unfortunately, it also makes for wild inequality. And I also know that inequality causes people to kill people. And I say it that bluntly so that people don't waste time like shucking and jing. It's like, what causes uh what caused the French to behead the king? Inequality. Inequality. Inequality. um what causes you to um storm the palace and kill the uh prime minister's wife? Inequality. It's like th that's the thing that people ultimately find just unbearable. And so you have a system where you know people are going to the very people who are going to be the most angry about inequality are going to drive inequality with their votes and they literally can't see it.

That's why I'm like, "Wait, um, you have a headache, let's say, and instead of voting for Advil, you vote for another hammer blow to the head." I'm just like, "Wow, that's what I saw." If I'm unconscious, Tom, I won't feel the headache, obviously. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's something like that, but it's it's just it's really crazy. It's really crazy, but this this is life. is life. is life. We've got a super chat on Warren Buffett. Buffett. Buffett. Let's do it. Hey. Hey. Hey. Yeah. Super chat.

Um, I hope Trump isn't taking advice from that 85year-old detached from reality, no self-awareness millionaire economist. Blockchain is This is Warren Buffett. Yes, this that's what they're referencing. referencing. referencing. Got it. Just making sure. Blockchain is the future. I can't use an email. We did this. We did that. Shut up. That is the super chat. Well, the super chat was fun and I thank you for that. Uh, okay. So I get their perspective on blockchain. Certainly Bitcoin makes all the sense in the world and there is no doubt that progress is made one funeral at a time, not one insight at a time.

All of us are prone to becoming the old person. So brace yourself for that. Um, my bigger concern is that I I I have a worldview that does not allow me to enjoy the thing that other people allow about um Hey, there there are exit ramps for the 10%. Oh, sorry. Really quick, he's talking about uh Arthur Laugher, not Warren. Arthur Laugher. That was a hard right. Yeah. So, that understood. understood. understood. Yeah. So, Yeah. So, Yeah. So, got it. So, period. Warren Buffett finished. Now let's talk Arthur Laugher and we hope he's not taking well Arthur though I don't feel like Warren I at least get the criticism if Arthur at least understands all of the mechanisms.

My only beef with Arthur is he's just too optimistic. So I think Arthur believes there's a magic wand somewhere that's going to fix all of our problems. He literally can't tell you how or why things are going to work out well, just that they're going to work out well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, uh, what? If you don't tax people, it's prosperity. prosperity. prosperity. Yeah. So, I'm just like, okay, hold on. The it nothing that I've seen in life tells me that it's going to play out like that.

Uh, Reagan was not dealing with the kind of debts that we're dealing with now. Reagan did not have the kind of stacking crises that we've had from 2000, 2008, COVID. Like, we're in a wild position. Look at the M2 money supply. It's insane. Uh so anyway, you can go watch the episode with Arthur and I I argue in real time. real time. real time. Uh so you can see all of that and it's in living color. For those who know, Arthur was one of the authors, the authors, the authors, the author of Regonomics.

So he like established it. He was one of his chief economist economist economist and he was lovely. I really enjoyed. He's the best. He's my he's my adopted uncle. Um he also got a minimum of freedom medal. Medal of freedom like the highest presidential honor a civilian can get. So like he's recognized on a in US history for his contribution to economics and which is why we wanted to talk to he started the laugher curve but yeah yeah yeah I was very grateful that he took the time to talk to me and he was wonderful.

We don't agree on everything but it was very very enjoyable. Uh whether Trump is listening to him or not is a whole other question. I would imagine he is but not whole cloth. Um but Trump has embraced blockchain in a big way and I don't think Arthur is against blockchain. I don't remember any alarms like that. Anyway, Anyway, Anyway, he was he was leading in the stable coin. But, okay, I want to just ground us really second um really quick. Um cuz it's the holiday season.

I got a bunch of screaming kids in the background. Um I got to do this double. Trump hooked me up by not taxing my overtime. So, I'm about to get a check from that. Okay, you you're the cause and effect person. Where I'm at right now, I can't afford a house. I got to figure all these situations out. What's the cause of effect in here that I can actually apply to my day-to-day life? I am Joemo. Joe the plumber. What was that dude that they were talking about in the od like I am that guy.

So the cause and effect. Why is this a big deal if it's money printing? Can I do something that makes the money pinching impact me positively? What's the one what's the cause and then the effect and then the then what's the dominoes that I can say okay I see this thing coming let me just get in here and I can get a bump whether it's% whatever like what is that like? Let's walk this throughout with this 40% the 40 give us the whole like paint picture of the economy really quick of just where we are now where we think fiscal policy is going to go and you want me to include the 40 uh PE ratio ratio ratio ju just to just to say like okay we're in a bubble right now and fiscal policy is saying this so these are the two things that are going to happen next when these two things happen next you can either do these things in order to benefit from that that let's speedrun it and then you push on anything that uh you need more clarity so what's going to happen is uh right now we owe so much money in debt that our interest payments are the number two line item now we passed Medicaid and defense uh so already the vast majority of the money that you take in to do things in your country you're just spending it to service the debt so you basically said hey dear kids in the future we're going to spend all your money now and we're just going to leave you with a bunch of debt so we're going to do a bunch of cool things and for all the people that die before that runs out America was going to have been awesome uh the America that you're going going to get handed.

It's going to suck because you're either going to go through a violent deleveraging or you are going to just be saddled with so much debt that you can much like millennials and Gen Z, you just can't get ahead. So, um that's where we're at. So, to deal with that, because we have to refinance the debt, we're going to have to lower our interest rates at a time where we should be raising them. And by lowering them, we're going to create all these bubbles. Now, the bad news is we're already in a gigantic bubble that's only happened three times in history before.

And every time they've happened, something bad follows in the stock market. In the stock market. So the stock market is probably about to get hammered because eventually people will sober up unless AI delivers a miracle, which is possible and is what everybody's going to spin you on. Uh so the stock market's almost certainly going to come crashing down. And when it does come crashing down, the people that can afford to keep you hired, they're now in a bad situation. Because right now, the people that can afford to hire you are still in a good situation.

Stock market's doing great. We have a K-shaped economy. Average person who's not invested, which is 90%. Life sucks. For the people that are invested in a meaningful way, 10%. 2025 has been [ __ ] awesome. Okay. At one point, and it's already started to adjust a little, but at one point I have made [ __ ] millions of dollars this year. So, it was just like, yay. Um, so those people are like, yeah, hire new people. It's all good. Yay. Love it. When the stock market crashes, a lot of those dumb [ __ ] are doing it all on leverage.

So, they're just toast. They go from I'm worth $10 million to I owe $3 million. Like, dunzo. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So, now they're firing everybody and they either go out of business, stop buying [ __ ] if they weren't running a business and were just wealthy, um, or they just retrench and they stop like investing so much in their company they're not trying to grow. So now the economy begins to decline from a GDP perspective. So you go from the uh amount of money that we were collecting put us in the 130 not that 123 debt to GDP ratio.

GDP ratio. GDP ratio. Uh that number now starts going up faster 124 125 ever increasing towards that 130 mark simply because the economy is so bad our GDP drops and we're just in a really bad position. And now you go from roughly 12% unemployment. I know people will challenge that number because they're not combining actual unemployment plus people that aren't even looking for work anymore. Put those together because that's 8%. With the fourish percent, you're at 12. That 12 becomes 15 becomes 20. You've now got real [ __ ] like Great Depression style problems.

Okay? So, that's why bubble crashing is scary. So, what will the government do? The government's going to go, "We're not going to let that happen. So, we're going to inject a bunch of money if the stock market starts coming down. We're going to lower the rates even more. We're going to print money. We're going to buy treasuries and bonds and all that [ __ ] to prop the economy up. And now, for the average guy, the reason you hate that is every time we put money into the economy to prop it up, we're making everything more expensive.

You're not getting paid any more money. So, now all of a sudden, the cost of everything is going up. You can't make ends meet anymore. We're propping up the market, which is holding stock prices artificially high. So those rich bastards are staying rich. You're getting poorer by the day and dare I say more angry. And that is causing you to vote for more free [ __ ] which only makes the problem worse. And so they will print money to pay for your free [ __ ] And now the flywheel just really starts revving up.

Which is exactly why Warren Buffett wants the [ __ ] out of American dollars because he's like, "Fiscally, you guys are irresponsible and I do not trust you at all to go, we have to balance the budget." And if you don't balance the budget, it keeps getting worse for the average person. Nice. I get that. Now, now that I have the background, how should I respond to the market? How should I play in the market? market? market? You have to own assets and you need to be in a the widest set of basket of assets possible.

Call it 12 to 15 uncorrelated assets, meaning they are subject to different economic pressures. So being in the stock market is very different than owning gold. Okay? The stock market is a growth asset. It's risk. So it's like I think this number is going to go up. So I'm going to have some amount in my stock portfolio. Now is not the time to dump everything in all at once because two weeks from now, a month from now, a year from now, whatever, that number could come down.

So you just start saying, I'm going to put 10% of my wages into the stock market. I'm going to do it every day. Whether number is going up or whether number's going down. Hey, the stock market just crashed by 50%. Cool. I still put 10% of today's wage into the stock market and then on balance it will tend to work out. If you go, "Oh my god, everything in the stock market looks so good. It's going so well. I'm going to dump everything in right now." That's when you run into trouble.

That is not the game that you want to play. So anyway, that's what you have to do. Owning a broad basket of assets is the only escape hatch. There is nothing else because of the way that economies work. Now, the bad news is what mo most people actually do, they slip into what Daniel Conorman, the Nobel Prize-winning uh economist. Technically, he's a psychologist, but he won the Nobel Prize in economy. Uh what he economics what he realized is um that people fall into something called the loss domain.

And once they're panicking because they can't make ends meet, they just gamble. And so if you want to know why, you can bet on um how many snowflakes will fall on a square inch of Manhattan or whether Elon Musk is going to um tweet while on drugs or oh god, what was my favorite? There was one that was completely unhinged that I just could not believe people allowed to bet on. Um but nonetheless, people bet on everything. And I'm really I know I've talked about this before.

I'm really forming a hypothesis that if you want to know where we're at in the market, look at Pokemon prices. Pokemon prices. Pokemon prices. Are Pokemon prices up right now? Pokemon prices are going down, but only because all the hype energy is moving to One Piece. So, I could say right now, look at One Piece because it's the one that's big up. But if cards are going way up, that's people they are so far out on the risk curve that every alarm bell you have should be going off.

So when those numbers grow at a sensible rate, sure, fine. Like anything, it's a scarce item. And so fine. If people want to invest in that because they find it's like a stock, but it's visually cool, great, no problem. But when the numbers are just skyrocketing, it's because there's so much liquidity in the system. Bubbles are forming everywhere. People are trying to find that place where they can put their money and still get a return because the normal stock market starts slowing down. Then cryptos start slowing down, then memecoins start slowing down, and so you just keep pushing out farther and farther on the risk curve to try to find some place to make that money.

So, okay, I'm back with Joe the plumber. His kids got louder. Um, 10% of my income I have to bring it into the stock market. Um, if I only have 10% of my I that was just a number. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But okay. So, let's say I only have 10% of my income to spread across these assets. M is there a place that between stock market, crypto, gold and silver is those are the only options or do you think there's more? there's more? there's more?

Those are definitely not the only options. You want 12 to 15 uncorrelated asset classes. asset classes. asset classes. And right now Bitcoin's really correlated more like a tech stock. So even that I wouldn't say is not as uncorrelated as gold. This is why I own both Bitcoin and gold. Um long term I think that Bitcoin will act like gold, but it doesn't right now. Right now, it's the sexy, highly volatile thing that people want to get in for some of that quick cash. Very few people get into gold because they think it's quick cash.

Gold is far more, hey, it's been around for thousands of years and it's protected itself from inflation and so I'm going to park money there. If you're putting money into gold and you've got a 25-y year time horizon, like I'm parking it there so I don't get eaten by inflation, but that's not money I expect to touch for 10, 20, 25 years. That's probably a far more realistic way. If you're in the stock market and you're not thinking years, like you're in trouble. So, um, yeah, that that is how I'd be thinking there, but you really do want to go wide.

So, how do you go wide? There's all kinds of ways you go wide. This is where I'm not an expert. Unfortunately, people have to really start learning about this stuff. So, if ideal is 12 to 15 asset classes, I'm probably in six or seven. So, it's like even I like every time I tell people to do that, I'm like, I got to [ __ ] like do more of this. But it's like there's only so much. I can only learn so quickly. Uh, so I'm learning as fast as I can, but like that kind of stuff.

When Ray Dallio says 12 to 15, that's where I get that number. 12 to 15 uncorrelated asset classes is you're looking all over the world. You're looking at emerging markets. Um, you're looking at established markets. You're looking at uh commodities, so energy, uh miners, like there's all kinds of stuff. But what is scarce and valuable? That's basically where you want to be. You want to be in things that are scarce and valuable and likely to at a minimum hold steady against inflation and ideally go up a little.

If my if it was going to be the same amount as the rent I'm paying now and won't stress me economically on a day-to-day basis, should I buy a house now or should I wait? So uh the way that I see a house is it is a forced savings account. account. account. So if you feel confident in your wages then being in a house can be great. It forces you to save into that savings account. The bad news you want to go somewhere with very low property tax.

The bad news is that you can end up losing everything if you can't make those payments. Now you would have already done that in an apartment. So there's that. Um, but most people tend to extend themselves a little more in a house. So, you end up losing a little bit more. It's a little bit harder to deal with than uh if you were renting. Renting you cross the thing of like, yeah, I'm not going to see any of this money, but I also don't have to fix everything myself.

And so, you're not paying for the privilege. So, it's like in a house, you're paying for the privilege of storing that money because upkeeping a house is expensive. Property taxes are expensive. In an apartment, somebody else has to deal with the upkeep and all that. But, they're going to charge you enough that they're covering their mortgage. So, keep in mind you are paying someone's mortgage, but it feels very different. Yeah. Um, I'm back with Joe the plumber. His wife wife makes great meatloaf. Um, her uncle just died.

We're at the repass. He left him some money. He probably has like, you know, 10K, let's say. Should he pull a Warren Buffett and wait to see where it is or should he like start this? It's very different. So, when Warren Buffett says that he's waiting to see where everything goes, he's like, I'm going to [ __ ] with some yen. You know, I've got a little bit in yuan. uh you know I own a mine in Chile. It's like he's he's got a way deeper repertoire of things that he's like pulling on.

He understands what's uh bonds to own, treasuries and stuff like that here elsewhere, whatever. Like when he says that he's sitting it out, he's sitting it out in the most sophisticated way possible. possible. possible. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. That [ __ ] is not sitting in one big bank. Uh he Yeah. He's doing things that are deaf that will protect him from inflation, etc., etc. So for other people to sit out, they're going to a miss out on the opportunity for the growth because they just won't be paying enough attention.

Also, emotionally, they're going to panic. When stocks drop, they don't think now's the time to buy. They think, "Thank God I wasn't in it. I want to stay the [ __ ] out." Warren Buffett is not like that. Warren Buffett understands business fundamentals. And when the numbers return to normal, he'll go right back into the market as if nothing like ever happened. Like he so gets the game. He's just like, I need this number to be this. I need that number to be that. and like when those numbers hit, boom, he buys back in and he's just got such a system and he's reading so many like quarterly reports and stuff like that, like he really understands like the heartbeat of the markets in a way that the vast majority of humanity does not.

So, um, just be very thoughtful. You sitting out looks very different than Warren Buffett sitting out. sitting out. sitting out. Nice. Joe De Plameumber, thanks you. Happy to do it, Joe. Um, we got a super chat. We do. We have two actually. First one from Sammy Peter super chat. super chat. super chat. Please can you do an interview with Ron Paul? He was warning us about the Fed and USA debt. He wrote a book and the Fed in 2009. You're saying a Fed and the Fed in 2009.

You're saying a lot of things he said and you will get a lot of views. By the way, Laugher is a funny very funny guy. Yeah, he is funny. Uh, may I be as sharp as he is when I'm 85? Uh, I would. Yeah, 100% I would interview Ran Paul. Have we gone out to him? We haven't. We waiting to hear back from Massie. Um that's top of the year. But yeah, once the year circles out, I would love to do a couple of those guys.

Yeah, it'd be dope. I'd do Rand Paul. I would do Ron Paul. I would do both. Yeah, I just had I just put both of those down. Uh next one from Marouchia Dark. You said you used to be a Dowist. Which beliefs do you retain and where do you break with them? What are your thoughts on Allan Watts and what and are you familiar with the concept of spiral dynamics? I find it a useful framework. I know nothing about spyro dynamics, so I can't even comment at a headline level.

Uh, I don't know very much about Alan Watts. The little bits that I've heard were never that compelling for me. Um, but every now and then I'll see a quote from him or something, I think, oh, that's pretty interesting. But then when I go to watch like the videos that people make about him, like they're cool, but um, I don't know, whatever. I'm certainly not a hater of Alan Watson in any stretch of the imagination, but just does not speak to my soul. And then what parts of Dowoism do I retain?

Dowoism for me morphed into understanding the way the mind works. So what Dowoism felt like for me was somebody that actually understood the psychology of humans that were trapped inside of a frame of reference. He didn't talk like that. He talks like very mystically, very poetically, which really spoke to me uh when I was younger. But that morphed into a far more like tactical sense of um this is how the human mind works. this is how we get trapped. Uh I think he was really just trying to get people to understand that you're stuck inside your brain.

So in some ways you could say my entire world view is informed by Dowoism and I took it very seriously for quite a long time. Uh but no Daist would recognize the way that I talk if that makes sense. But like I still love the Dao Deing and like if I'm somewhere and I see a copy of it, I would buy it. if it's by the Mitchell guy who translated it. I think his translation is the best. Um, so yeah, that was life-changing for me. But I think of the world more in technological terms, more in physics terms, more in like simulation theory, like that speaks to me far more.

Um, but any Dowist would recognize the way Yoda talks, Morpheus talks. Morpheus ends up becoming probably a far more um vital um vital um vital influence in the way that he encapsulates the ideas than LaZa does for me in later years. But there you have it. have it. have it. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet. Cool. Uh all right. We talked about this at the top of the show. AI data center is coming to save us all. Um Bernie Sanders has some problems with it. Um this is a very interesting uh like video he did.

We're probably going to stop and start and go through it a little bit. definitely want your opinion on this cuz he's kind of taken the opposite effect after Trump just signed that EO that removed uh regulations from the state level. Uh let's see what Bernie has to say about it. Thanks for joining me. Let us be clear. AI and robotics are the most transformative technologies in the history of humanity and will have a profound impact on the lives of every man, woman, and child in our country.

Factoid. Just a few points, just a few points that we need to be thinking about. One, about. One, about. One, who is aggressively pushing these technologies? technologies? technologies? Well, surprise, surprise. It happens to be the very wealthiest people on Earth. People like Elon. Okay, it becomes hard to take this part seriously. When Elon ran around Congress for like five years trying to get people to listen, he's uh Elon's probably not the smartest person on Earth. He's the most effective by a country mile by by the widest margin in human history.

There has never been anybody that has accomplished what he's been able to accomplish by amassing talent, convincing people to do what he wants, to give him the capital, all that. Like there's quite literally never been a more effective human. So, he just could not get anybody to [ __ ] listen. And so, my big punchline with the things you're about to hear him say is that what Elon figured out and what everybody will figure out is when something is complicated, there are only two modes. Ignore, react, and fear.

Then there is the reality of game theory, which is any technology that promises an advantage will be developed. So you can hobble yourself, but you're not going to be able to hobble the rest of the world. Now, the reason I hate the way that he's looking at Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Teal, they're not just some of the wealthiest people, they are the wealthiest selfmade people. So these are people that figured out how the world works and have been able to amass extreme amounts of wealth by seeing things other people don't see, by understanding things other people don't understand.

And understand. And understand. And the reason that they're building these things as fast as they can is most importantly because they can generate a just massive [ __ ] ton of capital by doing it. But also because they understand the profoundity of the technology. What does that word mean? Uh that it's going to be extremely I mean literally profound. Uh it's just a fancy spin on profound but um but um but um they understand what it's going to let us do. And so the only thing that somebody like Bernie should be talking about is how do we deal with the transitionary period well because the technology is going to come into existence.

And so now that we know that, let's stop wasting time saying that we need to stop it or slow it down and instead let's say how do we map out what is going to be a very difficult transitionary period. We can't control the globe. So trying to slow down isn't going to be the right answer because you're just hobbling yourself. but not the technology. Um, so other countries are still developing it at that time. Yeah. And you don't have to go far. China is developing it.

If you are locked into Cid's trap uh with China, that just is what it is. And remember what the what game theory tells you is that we'll lie to each other. So China will say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should have global regulations. Everybody needs to chill the [ __ ] out." and then they're going to go in a back room and develop it as fast as they can because the advantage of becoming the first is actual possible global domination. So this this cannot be overstated. You cannot have one country.

You you can't create a treaty where everybody slows down because they won't actually slow down. The advantage is too big. So they will just lie and they'll say they're slowing down in the hopes that other people actually slow down and then they can win. So, it's a winner take all technology that promises more um profound output than any technology in human history if far lesser technologies got developed. Even though remember when we first tested the nuclear bomb, we knew there was a nonzero chance that it ignited the entire atmosphere and killed everything on planet Earth and we did it anyway.

So, I just want people to stop wasting their [ __ ] time that it's like but there's some non-zero chance that we get enslaved or killed by the AI. It doesn't matter. This technology is going to come into existence. Now, I understand some people are going to like they're literally they're literally they're literally they're screaming at their TV right now because I'm being so fatalistic. Not trying to be fatalistic. I'm trying to just acknowledge the world works in a knowable way. We are in a deterministic universe. The human mind works in a certain way.

These things are going to happen. It just there are some things that make sense to fight against and there are other things that make no sense to fight against. Th this is one that makes no sense to fight against. So now, dear um aged self-made wealthy person who always throws shade at billionaires. Uh, could you please tell me your plan for the transition? Because as we bring on the world's greatest technological change of all time, something that will make energy costs zero, that will make capitalism cease to exist, none of it's going to matter.

Um, how do we bridge the gap? That matters. People should be talking about that. Got beef with calling them self-made. Then chat's [ __ ] Enjoy chat. That [ __ ] I literally have no patience for that. Um, that was a complete sentence. Okay. So, yeah. Look, do we want to take them one by one? Do you guys really give a [ __ ] if they came from a good family? Not, you know, how many people come from good families that have money uh and so they have the idol time and dad in Brentwood stab their parents to death or they do [ __ ] nothing and they do nothing because they aren't smart enough and they don't have the discipline and they don't map the world according to cause and effect.

It's like this is such a waste of time to call somebody self-made. Do we have to look at what that they literally came from? Nothing. Um it that that is so dumb. These are people that whatever they were given, they built so much more with what they had it building is hard. No matter how much [ __ ] money you have, these are people who are effective that were it fine. They took $10 million and turned it into uh 150 billion. Great. That gap is so massive. I get that in this age where so many average people are iced out and they are dealing with a shitty economy and you are dealing with a shitty economy and I have every bit of empathy for you.

Literally I am on here screaming into the camera over and over and over day after day after day fighting to make sure that people have their shot that they get out from under this debt that people stop money printing on you. I am literally fighting to get the economy back to something that average people have a shot to go up or down. I am a rich guy banging pots and pans saying that rich people should be able to [ __ ] up and lose their money. So listen, I'm with you.

But we've got to be realistic about what makes somebody worth listening to. And efficacy is one of those things. Okay? These are the people that allocate capital better than anybody else on planet Earth. and actually build at the level of engineering better than anybody else on planet Earth. And to throw them out with a bathwater because they've been successful is [ __ ] ridiculous. And every time I hear him talk, that's what he's doing. It's stupid. And so if we actually want to make life better for the average person, then we want to make sure that we understand what the brightest among us actually think is possible, how we go about doing it.

They're able to actually understand things better than the average person. They understand nuance where other people don't. And yes, they will tend towards tyranny. And yes, you cannot follow them blindly. But can you look at what they're doing? Try to figure out how they're parsing the world. Try to figure out from an engineering perspective what they're building, where they think that this goes. Yes. So anyway, uh if chat wants to continue down that path, we certainly can. But I'm I'm curious of what their definition of self-made is cuz at this point I'm I was looking through the chat as you were talking just now.

I'm like, "Okay, like is there something that they were expecting?" Um that didn't happen. I I don't know. Um I think it's basically if you're not middle class, lower middle class when you start, then they don't consider that self-made is how I'm reading it. Yeah. But I don't think we need to stick here. here. here. Hold on. Yeah. So, one one last thing that I will try in in and what what I'm trying to get across here is that uh the categories that you put things in are going that's frame of reference.

Somebody said time is self-made. Great. Great. Great. But I I feel like nobody y'all don't remember the Jeff Bezos before his glow up when he had that bad combo over and he was in the small office and they were selling books. That's not self-made. That's I guess I guess Elon Musk came from an emerald mind. So they thought he was balling like, "Okay, cool." But the way that people refer to that, as far as I can tell, Elon didn't get any money from his dad on that.

He got from his dad was beaten. And that actually probably is why we have the Elon that we have. Like you need somebody with a real scary chip on their shoulder. Uh anyway, we're going to get hung up on the wrong thing. So, boys and girls, please, I beg of you, uh be careful of the way that you categorize things. Look at everything through the following lens. I'm trying to get somewhere. There's an obstacle between where I'm at, where I'm trying to get. How do I remove that obstacle?

That's it. And so, if these guys can help you understand how to overcome an obstacle, use that information. That's all I'm saying. And when people shut them down and I don't know who said like keep in mind Bernie's not saying to get rid of these uh I think you technically said billions. He has said over and over and over that billionaire shouldn't exist. So I don't know what other words he has to say before you realize yes he does exactly uh resent them want them to not have that level of capital etc etc.

Uh anyway if you map them as people that have done something nefarious you're going to blind yourself to oo they're really good at the game of capitalism. If you can go in and say capitalism is the thing that pulls people out of poverty, I don't want to go down that road. Anyway, uh they have demonstrated an ability to do something that only a very very very very small number of people are able to do. And so what can we learn for ourselves to be able to overcome the obstacles that face us to get where we want to go?

So if our goal is to fix the economy and even if we think these guys broke it, it's like if we can understand how they got where they got, great. Now, if you think it's pure luck and these guys are really dumb, I can't help you. Uh because that frame of reference will your whole life is going to be confusing. If on the other hand, this is you, not me. But if on the other hand, you go, "These are incredibly evil people, but they're very smart and so there's something that I can learn from them." Great.

Fine. I wouldn't waste any time trying to convince you otherwise. I that's perfectly fine. As long as you're trying to get the information that's going to allow you to do your thing, wonderful. Uh that is not the vibe that we're about to see. All right, let's get back to my mans here. mans here. mans here. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Teal, Bill Gates, and other multibillionaires. So, here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about. Do you believe that these guys, these multi-billionaires are staying up nights worrying about what AI and robotics will do to the working families of our country and the world?

Well, I don't think so. Pause. I think that these very very um I I'll grant him assume that they're not. Maybe they are, but it honestly doesn't matter. This is why I think thought experiments are so important. So um what he's trying to do is impugn their motives, but their motives become far less relevant when we ask the question, now what? So let's say that they're not staying up nights thinking about the average working family. What are they thinking about? They're thinking about getting even richer, Tom.

Okay, fantastic. What are they going to do to get more wealthy? They're going to build AI, right? Yes. Um, are they going are you worried that they're going to use it to run a government and that they're going to break off and now open AI is going to control the world or XAI is going to control the world? Is that your problem? Because China and America already control the world. So what the problem is? So you're just saying another like person has entered the race. So now I've got to worry about US.

I've got to worry about open AI, XAI, and China. Cool. But same problem. So nothing has changed in my problem set other than I just don't like that this guy is in the country instead he's a company. company. company. Okay, I guess maybe that feels less comfortable because it's new and it's weird and it feels very cyberpunk. I get it. But the problem set has not changed. You have to worry about somebody with bad intentions controlling the most powerful technology in all of human history. Great.

So that's the problem we have to contend with. Impuging technology saying we got to slow down. That doesn't solve the [ __ ] problem. It just says not here. It's not going to be our billionaires. It's going to be somebody else's. It's so dumb. As at a minimum, these are going to be weapons that the US government will be able to use to their advantage to protect ourselves from other people. Now, maybe we become the evil empire and we use it to dominate and enslave. That's a tomorrow problem.

For now, just do the thought experiment one step down the road. What did this really change the problem set? For me, it does not change the problem set. First of all, I don't even know that they're trying to do that. there. These guys have proven what they really do is they make things that people want to buy. So my instinct is they're going to make [ __ ] that people want to buy. So they're going to ask me to use this [ __ ] thing and then I'm going to use it to do the things I want to do.

Cool. So now I've got these guys running to build something which has what they've done historically is they make things people want to buy. So they're going to turn AI into something that I want to use. Great. I'm here for it. So back to my mans. very rich men want even more wealth and even more power. power. power. Okay, pause Okay, pause Okay, pause and for a whole bunch so welcome to human history. So there is a subset of men typically, not always but typically that they the creator of the simulation has seen it necessary to imbue in the human mind a ambition which is rounded to that and and and that ambition in some people they get such an extra helping of ambition that they literally want to conquer the stars.

I think it's one of the most terrifying aspects of the human personality and one of the most exciting. So yeah, that that's very real and trying to say that humans are bad. Like this goes back to the I love women. You can't imagine how much. But I think it is lunacy. It I'm offended when people are like you need to like say less, take up less space so that women have a shot. [ __ ] that. They can either out compete me or they can't. And if they can out compete me with better eyes, better eyes, with uh better ideas, then I'm all for it.

And there are plenty of women on planet Earth that can out compete me. Yay, good. Go do your thing. thing. thing. Um but I'm never going to make myself smaller so that somebody else can shine. I don't give a [ __ ] And that is what I see here. A we don't want these guys. Them being ambitious is dangerous. Get the [ __ ] out of here. Like humans, bro. Right now, people are just being slaughtered on mass because that's what humans do. So, you don't have to convince me that humans are dangerous.

But what you do have to convince me is that we should hobble ourselves in a race to create the most freeing technology and the most dangerous weapon at the same time. And that I'm going to hobble myself so other people can do. Get the [ __ ] out of here. Like, I want Imagine this is World War II. And he's like, "Bro, bro, bro, these really rich guys want to make nuclear weapons so that we can beat the Germans. And we got to stop them. You need to chill with that [ __ ] I'm not going to let somebody that uh if they get the power can run the entire world just go unchecked." That's wild.

Also, it's interesting that he also has gotten more wealth and more power as time has gone on. That's thing. God bless him. Well done, man. like well for real well done Bernie you understand how to market you are very good at understanding your customer your product maybe politics but he really understands his base I love that about him there's a ton to learn from Bernie but I can't tell if he's cynical or if he really is just so trapped inside of a wealth bad frame of reference that he somehow makes some weird caveat for himself.

I don't know. But it's it is a negative self-defeating mentality when he could be focusing on things that really matter. Like, hey everybody, uh, printing money, giving [ __ ] away for free, not balancing the budget. That's [ __ ] the poor and middle class. Let's stop doing that immediately because either Bernie is dumb as a bag of rocks or he actually doesn't give a [ __ ] because he's not banging the drum for the very thing that would make life better for the poor and working class and that is make an economy that doesn't print money.

You've got to balance the budget and then and this part I don't know he may actually be banging the drum on this and then I'd be totally in lock step with him. You can't globalize. I wish you could and we'll be back to it because he's like a [ __ ] accordion but right now you can't you got to get power back in the hands of the workers from a negotiating standpoint reasons that is very dangerous. Number two, what will AI and robotics mean economically for the working class of this country?

Well, don't listen to me. Listen to the people who are developing those technologies. Elon Musk recently said, quote, "AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional." End quote. Correct. Correct. Correct. Bill Gates predicted that humans, quote, so is my man really saying that he wants working to be mandatory? Getting them camps, bro. So that's a little crazy, first of all. So this is why I'm saying the transition the transition the transition is going to be scary transition is almost certainly going to be bloody and violent.

But on the other side if work really is optional then we only we have a new problem which is meaning and purpose. But the I bet if I said hey Bernie I'm going to introduce legislation for 4 day week. You in 4 day week capt you with me? Be all for it. So why why not zero? Why don't we go to a no day work week? Like so this is what I'm saying. Like this stuff would crumble under pressure because then the the I would back him into his own um value system and ultimately he's going to get to um yes, I want to make sure that uh people don't have to work if they don't need to.

And then it's like, okay, well then guess how we get there, Bernie. We get there with AI. The very thing that you were trying to stop because what you're actually worried about is a transitional period. So let's focus there. focus there. focus there. Won't be needed for most things. End quote. Dario Amodi, the CEO of Anthropic, warned that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entrylevel white collar jobs. collar jobs. collar jobs. I mean, that's just in the near term, Bernie. Bernie. Bernie.

If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive? Now, we're in the transition. Let's go. No income. No income. No income. Correct. Correct. Correct. And I don't want to break the bad news to you. I know it won't shock you, but very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this. Three, something I worry about a whole lot and that is that millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated isolated isolated from real human relationships and are getting their emotional support from AI.

from AI. from AI. Pause it. Here's the thing. If you were to ask him, he has like if I said to you, "No, no, no. For real, the emotional well-being of a child that grows up connected to AI will be more uh healthy, welladjusted, you good?" He's not going to be able to say yes to that. that. that. He's going to be like, "It's not human. There's no way. This just isn't right." Um, so people just have an intuition that it's a bad idea, not that in practice we know it's going to be a bad idea.

Now, the great news is my default is yeah, you need to limit their exposure. You don't want it to be zero. Uh but you do just because there's always some unintended consequence, some thing like pherommones and without that like the brain doesn't develop right. So, it's entirely possible that there's just something we don't see. So, if I had kids, I would definitely I would expose them to AI. I would keep it like in reasonable limits. Mh. Um, Um, Um, but this this is one where if you run the thought experiment, you will realize people don't know why they're opposed to it.

They just are. It I think will take on a religious connotation very quickly. That was always your take too that it was going to break religious before anything else. moment about a future when human beings are not interacting with each other and are spending virtually all of their time with devices instead of people. Is that the kind of future you want? Well, not me. Needless to say, there is both if I'm honest about AI and robotics that needs to be discussed, needs to be analyed%. But one thing is for sure.

This process is moving very very quickly and we need to slow it down. No, we do not. We need all of our people all of our people involved in determining the future of AI and not just a handful of multi-billionaires. multi-billionaires. multi-billionaires. That is why for a start I will be pushing for a moratorum on the construction of data centers that are powering this unregulated spread. But people are just so convinced that they're like you know what I see things clearly. Let's do all of this from the top down.

Like if entrepreneurs decide they don't want to build data centers great. It is what it is. They are supposedly reading the market. They've got the most selfish incentives. Selfish incentives when played out on mass tend to work out well as long as you watch out for the worst abuses. People are always convinced that they get it. Ah, I'm smart enough to do this. [ __ ] wild. [ __ ] wild. [ __ ] wild. Yeah. Ultimately, that's what we wanted to get to is that a memor a moratorium on data centers stopping the advancement of them.

There's been multiple local municipalities that have like banned votes and motions to bring data centers to the like to their shores, to their towns, to their cities. So, it seems like the tide is turning where it used to be, oh, data center, Amazon wants to come here. Cool. Let's give them as many data centers and warehouse space as they need. And now we're starting to feel like, you know what, maybe we don't want this in our town. Maybe we don't want to bring this in. Um, we need more data centers to get to the level of AI that we actually need.

Where do you think this balancing act is? Is it just they AI needs better press? like, well, how do we turn the mass? mass? mass? Well, I don't think that AI needs better press because I think that most people have already integrated AI into a pretty heavy degree in their life, if you're under 40, the odds that you're using AI effectively every day borders on 100%. So, yeah, like from that perspective, again, a technology that promises an advantage, if the technology can't actually deliver on that promise, it's going to go away.

It's not going to matter at all. But if people are having the same experience I'm having, like it is wild what AI lets you do. I mean absolutely wild and it is getting better by the day, it is incredible. So from just a utility perspective, it's already delivering on it. Now we are definitely from a valuation standpoint, we are way way way in a bubble. Uh but from a my everyday life, like I can't, dude, I never search on Google anymore ever. I just go straight to chat.

What about this? like it. I am shocked at how fast in eight months it just completely upended my behavior. So that kind of um adoption I think is going to be pretty close to universal. Now I don't have an addictive personality. So it's very possible that there are other people getting sucked into a trap that I'm not. I know a lot of people did with social media. Social media never had that kind of impact on my life. my life. my life. So you know take it for what it's worth.

But I don't think that you um do prohibition to stop people from drinking. it doesn't work. So, you're not going to be able to prohibit AI. If AI offers an advantage, people are going to use it. Period. End of story. Yeah. Um I feel like we talk about this a lot, but now it's starting to actually practical legislation is now being passed. So, we're starting to get away from the sci-fi utopian future to what actually needs to happen in the next couple days, months, years. Um OpenAI just, you know, they announced their code red.

They're sprinting as far as they can. They just dropped the image generation model. Um, Gemini is just released their model. Anthropic is clicking something for the top of the new year and uh Elon is teasing XAI update coming at the top of the new year as well. Is it one of those things where if we do figure out a model that is powerful enough it would sidestep this like can we innovate faster than Congress can legislate? We already are. Like this from that perspective this is already crazy.

So to give you an idea um the most recent version using the arc testing method people are saying that chat GPT 5.2 has something around 147 IQ. It's crazy It's crazy It's crazy bro that's crazy. Einstein was like 165. So this is like high high high high high. So we'll see. It obviously isn't general intelligence yet, but it scored 92% on its ability to generalize, meaning you don't have to train it. train it. train it. It just learns a bunch of lessons, generalizes it to this whatever thing.

Uh, and so they have this like pattern matching test that they give these computers, the AIS, and historically they've just been god awful. You give it to an average human, they can usually find it like four or five, show me four or five slides and I can figure out the pattern. Uh, AI is now performing in the 92nd percentile. So it's like woo like we're we're really getting somewhere. So uh and they went 5.1 was 88%. So they went from 5.1 to 5.2 went from 88 to 92%.

It's like damn. So these these are big jumps with small incremental rapid changes. 5.1 only came out like two months ago or something. So in two months they jump from 88 to 92. It only takes so many of those jumps to be at 100% where it's like, whoa, this thing is completely capable of generalizing generalizing generalizing uh its intelligence. Now, I'm sure once it's able to do that, people are going to be a well, still not quite. We'll see. But man, it is uh it's very impressive.

impressive. impressive. Nice. Uh Nice. Uh Nice. Uh shout out to the guy with 148 IQ in the feed. feed. feed. AGI, AGI, AGI, God bless God bless God bless 2026. 2026. 2026. Um, I I'd be just headline reading. Something tells me that the math says that it's supposed to be 2026, but it's going to be more like 2028, but that's just me being like, "Oh, these things always take longer than we expect." But, so, I've said this before when I was writing the 900 days until um, capitalism is game over.

At one point while I was writing it, I was like, "It's not going to happen this fast." And then at another point, I was like, "Maybe it's going to happen faster." So, it's one of those where, God, man, I don't know. It only takes one breakthrough. Like if they at 147 IQ, if the AI can self teach, it's game over. this will rocket away from us because it is um if if you have a thousand people with 147 IQ that never sleep and you just give them an unending number of problems and just say look start by making your own like methods more efficient and you put a thousand people on that with 147 IQ like whoa that like and then it goes okay cool now go get smarter and then you've got a thousand people with this improved learning algorithm going and getting smarter and suddenly it doesn't take two months to bump up four points takes two hours hours hours and now it's like oh now we're uh 151 now we're 160 now we're 185 over the course of two months like that's where that self learning loop is the breakthrough.

But does that happen in 26? Does it happen in 27, 28? Does it ever happen? That's the question mark. And you really need that sort of flywheel of it can self-improve for it to really hit the kind of pace that people are expecting. And then you've got distribution. You've got to actually get it out into the world. You've got to it's got to be able to communicate with other servers and things. So like that stuff then takes its time to work its way through the system.

But every time I look at this, I just think the only thing I know is three years ago, my life already looks very different because three years ago, I've got this great marker. When I think about what game development looked like for me three years ago, it is comically different to now. Like comically different. So when I think what is if in three years we have an equally large jump, that's where this starts to be. Okay, there's I can't even anticipate what that would look like because to have that big of a gap between where I'm at now and the new place is just like you're you're into the territory of oneshotting a working app.

And what happens to the world when you can oneshot an app like Apple TV? That's that's the kind of thing where it's like if you're doing that in three years all of a sudden because I see this a lot in gaming. Um there was YouTube just announced YouTube gaming all AI based you prompt a game and then they display it played in web I would assume a web-based game that you can play on YouTube that's AI prompted that's now that's today they see that the technology is good enough that they're doing a beta launch.

So, as a game developer, I'm like, "Ooh, in 3 years, that's at a minimum going to siphon away some percentage of the time and attention." And so, even if the game isn't as good as what I'm building, like the amount of time that people spend on my type of game is going to go down just because because because more alternatives more alternatives more alternatives in in uh food, they call it sheriff stomach. People only eat so much. So, people only have so much time that they're going to spend gaming.

And so, now some of that is going to go to what YouTube is doing. So, it's like, whoa, like you really got to move fast. Yeah, I'm calling it. 2026 is happening. AGI, it's going to be AGI, that's the one. There's too many competition, too much uh trillions of dollars in the AI bubble market. People don't want that bubble to burst. So, even if it's not all the way ready, they're just going to rush it. And I feel like it's either going to take Sam Alman is going to see a really break big breakthrough from X AI and be like, you know what, f it, release it.

And then that's when it's all going to go to [ __ ] And then, And then, And then, so you expect something bad in 2026? 2026 AGI announced in some capacity 2032 um Skynet of some capacity. And I don't know if Skynet is just this ominous being or if Skynet is the United States president and we all become Venezuela and now we have a blockade around our country and we're not allowed to leave. Put by AI um put by other countries because of how powerful our AI has become.

Oh no, no. If our AI is that powerful, it'll just shut their ships down, make it impossible. Yep. But at that point, they're going to have like some type of EMP equivalent to AI by 2032. If you actually like imagine for a second you have like a 250 IQ AI and you can spin up a million of them, everybody's toast. It does whatever the [ __ ] it wants. I I still think that there's going to be limitations. Even if it's like they have to rethink technology and now it's like Faraday cages and analog signals and they're going back to Morris code that AI AI AI Do you know how bad things will have gotten if we're dealing with Faraday cages and analog code and [ __ ] Uh, first of all, a 250 IQ AI will be able to read that from drones with like uh supreme optics and [ __ ] like it you that's where it's like you just have to hope it doesn't become antagonistic because if you've got a million people with a 250 IQ that are disciplined and not like um you know unable to interface with the world because they're so autistic.

It's like yeah the that that is not an army you want to face. All right, you guys get the predictions 2026. I'll see you guys next year when AGI is announced. I'll tell you, we'll get AGI before we get the Epstein files. That That really might be true. All right, let's do some Reacts content because there's been some cool stuff I've been seeing lately. Um, strawberries from Dyson. Yes. Yeah, this is wild. Yes, that Dyson. Yes, that company. They stopped making hair dryers and vacuums and they established vertical farming, which I think is just cool in general.

So, when people talk about AI and technological breakthroughs, I want to see way more of this. Oh, you will? and more uh and less of uh Sora AI slap. Yeah, this is if you guys aren't looking at your screen, I mean, this is really incredible. You're getting these they're not quite megalithic structures, but they're getting pretty big where they're able to do all of this inside, get these things to grow. Uh they're all mechanized, so they're moving so that the light is hitting them in different ways.

They pick the strawberries individually. Uh they've got different grow lights and stuff. I It's really incredible. What humans are capable of already is bordering on the magical and then what they're going to become capable of is absolutely mind-blowing. But this is where it's like when you see this stuff, yes, you're going to get things a lot cheaper. But the bad news is that um there's going to be fewer and fewer jobs because all of this stuff or or the jobs that we do have go so far upstream into having to be like a highle engineer um that it gets it gets interesting.

That's my obsession is the transitionary period. But this kind of stuff is mind-blowing. Yeah, it's cool. And as somebody who grew strawberries last year, we lost a bunch because we didn't like I didn't put it in a basket to hang cuz that how you can increase it. So even seeing them hang it, I was like, "Oh, that's like great." And then they have a UV light on top of the light so that way it hits with mold cuz I lost a batch of strawberries because of mold.

Um, and Drew, I love that you've gotten into strawberries. Anything. It's so fun when people go deep on something and they like really start to see how this all works. It's a fun feeling. Growing food has changed my perspective on life in a lot of different ways. Wow. Yes. Wow. Yes. Wow. Yes. Give us a couple of hits. Um Um Um something you always say, universe is like rules. like rules. like rules. Yep. Yep. Yep. Like like like gardening is rules. If you plant it here, put it here and water it consistently, it will grow.

And that's something that I see is both as a allegory of life and as allegory of like your goals and your dreams and like a lot of people want their dreams to just grow, but they don't water it, they don't soil it, they don't do fertilize it, they don't nutrient it, they don't prune it. So there's a lot of those things that just in flowers. You see it? And strawberries are like the bully of berries, which I didn't realize. didn't realize. didn't realize. Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.

Yes. They like like they um like spore out. So you put a strawberry here and there's grass all around it. You'll have strawberry leaves everywhere like like they rapidly like expand. So it like took over another strawberry basket that had to cook. So then they started cross-pollinizing. So then that had like a sweet tangy. I have like a picture of it. It's like a half red half white strawberry. So there was like hybrids mixed in. But it was just kind of but that's just also the effect of like when you have a good idea it can then spread to other people and then it can so it's like ideas layered in it.

Half the Bible is farming analogies and then once I actually grew something I was like it makes sense. I get Jesus now. Uh Uh Uh that's amazing. I love that. Um so yeah I was I think that's cool. I think we need to do more of that and since you guys are kicking out all the illegals we're going to need somebody to pick the uh food anyway. So why not be robots? robots? robots? There you go Drew. Uh okay. This is something that also made me uh laugh.

Uh I want to talk about this for a little bit. Um we're actually going to do a poll. The poll would be guys, do you care about this? Yes or no? And then the third poll is I'm a woman and I care about it. I so I so wish Lisa was here in the feed. I think she's gone now. Boo. But uh this kind of stuff is fun. So guys, do you care about it? Yes. No. Third option, I'm a woman and I care. Fourth option, I'm a woman and I do not care.

care. care. That was to Mason to create the poll. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Yep. Yep. Yep. Thank you, sir. Here we go. So today we have the top things men don't care about because women today have seem to have gotten this confused. So let's get into it. I'll settle with these are in no particular order. Number one, materialistic belongings. We don't give a [ __ ] about your Birkin or your Gucci bag or your [ __ ] sandals or your dress. None of that. We don't care. True.

True. True. True. Married men. True. Obviously Obviously Obviously true. True. True. All all the all the guys in the room are giving me a thumbs up. Materials belonging. belonging. belonging. Technically Eric said I didn't hear it. Shame on Eric. Do you care about materialistic belongings? So if your wife got a new Gucci bag, would it be like, "Oh my gosh, honey." gosh, honey." gosh, honey." Cool. Okay. All right. So any more attractive or really any less attractive? Number two, how much money you make. That has no bearing on your attractiveness to any man unless they're above because why would we care?

I would say that this one there's probably an inverse correlation. So the wealthier a woman, the more men are going to be like, "Not so sure about that one. M because you want to be able to provide and if she sets the bar too high then it's like uhoh. So, but yes, in terms of like the like the like the old adage that Jay-Z would still date Beyonce if she were working at McDonald's, but the other way is not true. 100%. true. 100%. true. 100%. Don't care about what your wife makes.

I'm getting a head. Well, I will tell you when you say it like that, men care what their wife makes because the use of erectile dysfunction medication goes up 3x if you if your wife starts making more than you. than you. than you. Erectile dysfunction medication, bro. Like that did not suddenly impact your ability to vaso constrict. That tells you that an erection is largely a psychological phenomenon and you're just like, "Oh god, I no longer feel powerful." And dunzo dunzo. Okay. All right. So, so men care just this number two is asterk.

Number two, they don't need you to be making money. Okay. Okay. Okay. Money you make if it ain't being used is on us. Number three, your career. Now, if you're passionate about something, that's great. You know, it'd be great to not talk to a woman that's a [ __ ] complete bum. But it does not make you any more attractive. Does a woman's career make them any more attractive? attractive? attractive? No. No. No. It can. It can. in a way that he didn't just address like passion. For me, it's like um certain it's like an additive thing.

It's not like a I need to see this from you. You need to meet a threshold, but then it's like, oh, you do that. That's just interesting. interesting. interesting. Are you saying it would be cool to have sex with like a pilot? Like it's like that type of thing. Like, oh yeah, she's like a nuclear engineer. Is it like Pokemon you got to catch them all? Or I've had me a pilot. I've had a sue chef. sue chef. sue chef. As a thought experiment, I haven't had an account.

You got to catch them all. Nice. Haven't had it going yet. That's kind of a What's the most I'm the only one who can talk freely about this because I'm not married. What's the most exotic job occupation occupation occupation um that I have? I mean, yeah, I'm in LA so actress isn't that like No, come on. That's that's nothing. that's nothing. that's nothing. Um Um Um if you were in Kansas. Yeah. Yeah, that would be more interesting. Uh interesting. Uh interesting. Uh a like a materials engineer.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Work for like a makeup company. I'm definitely doxing somebody. I was going to say, damn. Um, that's the most interesting like, oh, okay, I care about your job. Um, nobody that worked for the government or something. That's what I need to do. I need a James O'Keefe. I need to get in on there. Start going to DC, hitting these lobbyists. these lobbyists. these lobbyists. Um, yeah. If anybody has a cool job story with somebody that they had sex with, drop it. Oh, Lisa is here.

Uh, what if I was a nurse versus a lawyer? Uh, so yes, that's actually this to me is where it comes down for me. Like I want I like that Lisa is passionate about things. I would have a very hard time if a she wasn't passionate about something and b ideally that we share that passion. But I wouldn't be as stoked if she were a lawyer if that meant that she just was constantly away from me. So that would be hard because in a relationship I don't see given how much I work I don't know that Lisa and I would have survived if she had an equally obsessive career like she does now but we weren't doing it together.

So like if I wasn't involved in Women of Impact in any way shape or form but she was as hardcore as she is about it now that'd be tough. So building together for us has really been incredible. But if she was like, "I don't want to keep working." I wouldn't mind. Like if because she's a world-class artist, literally my wife can draw. You can't imagine. It's so good. good. good. If I came home every day and she were up drawing and she wanted to talk about it and she was so alive creatively, she just felt good.

I would not care at all that she wasn't in a traditional career. I just need to see her feel alive and be excited about something. something. something. Yes. Um, somebody said they bagged a neuroscience scientist. Yeah, you won. That's not bad. That's a good one. Take that. that. that. Okay. So, careers, we're all, you know, unless it's like novel, we don't really care as long as you have the passion. And he addressed that. So, I give you that. that. that. Just because you got a doctorate and a [ __ ] MASTER'S DEGREE.

NO GUY EVER SAID, "Holy [ __ ] dude. She's got a master's degree. That's hot as fuck." No guy ever said that ever. And last but not least, not least, not least, now on that one, I will say like if she's got a masters in something that's interesting and like she's really like game to talk about it, that would be dope. I love that Lisa is smart. Like that is a lot of fun to be around. And so on that one, like I would disagree. Somebody that's really gotten themselves educated on something for me is very sexy.

Now I just need her to be into something that's interesting to talk about. I don't need her to have a master's degree, per se, but that is a pretty good indication that this is somebody that cares deeply about something. They've learned about something. They probably of a certain intellectual caliber. That's nice. Like I am not interested in someone who I can't relate to intellectually. That would bother me. Yes. I I think those are two different questions though because a lot of times we hide masters and secondary like degrees as intelligence.

Yeah. When really Yeah. Like there's a lot of people who are just like 14th and 15th and 16th grade and I think that's different. different. different. that's different than a passion that they went to. I'm seeing it as an indication that perhaps they are they hit a certain intellectual threshold and they're, you know, really into a topic. Like even just hearing you talk about strawberries, I'm not interested in strawberries, but it was interesting to hear you talk about strawberries. So that kind of thing would be cool.

So I'll abstract it to I want a woman who's passionate about something and smart. Yes, agreed on that. And number four, this one's going to be controversial. lips and nails. You do this for other women. women. women. Never once have I heard a guy say, "Holy [ __ ] dude." Like, "She's pretty hot, but she'd be a lot hotter if her lips were ginormous. She'd be a lot hotter if her nails were painted pink instead of blue. She'd be a lot hotter if her eyelashes extended 15 ft off her face." No guy ever said that.

I don't get the lashes thing at all. At all all all in terms of why they do it. Do you even get it like a basic extended lash? Cuz like there's some comedy routines out there now where I can't believe they're serious. serious. serious. But when Lisa puts on fake lashes, it looks dope. looks dope. looks dope. But she's she keeps it metered. So I would say I am both ways. So on the weekend, Lisa doesn't wear makeup, doesn't do her hair, none of that stuff.

And I'm just as attracted to her because she's my favorite human. Um Um Um but when she like gets dalled up, I enjoy it. So I've got no beef with that. Like I don't need it one way or the other, but it is both are enjoyable. You like for her to be put on like made up. up. up. I like that it's a gear she has that she does sometimes, but it is certainly because we're such home bodies. I see her not done up way more than I see her done up, which is perfectly fine for me.

I'm having a great time. Find my wife very sexy. So I've got no beef with no makeup. Uh but then if we go out and she's like, "Oh, I want to get doled up." then and she puts it all on and yeah, it looks awesome. So, for me, I like both, but I definitely agree that women will get far more extravagant than a man cares about. Um, and for me, there is a point of diminishing returns, especially with plastic surgery. Oh, plastic surgery can get terrifying.

Especially, Especially, Especially, it can get terrifying. But look, getting old can get terrifying. Let's not get it twisted. So, uh, that one is like I reserve the right to touch some things up as I get older, Drew. I'm not gonna lie. I would never pressure my wife to do it, but if it felt like I look at like somebody like Brad Pitt, obviously recently had some work done. Looks great. Count me in. So, uh, I don't think it's there yet. It still scares me a little bit, but the technology is getting so much better.

Could I see myself in 10 years? Yeah. I can see it. Uh, fellas, makeup, hair, nails. That's very specific. That's East Coast coded. Uh, okay. What's the What's the uh poll? What's the poll at so far? Polls at 31% yes, they do care about it, 56% no, and then 4% of women do care, and 9% don't. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, mostly don't care. mostly don't care. care. care. Sounds about right. Um, lip injections do need to stop. I feel you just the official. Um, I do not understand them, but I was born with full lips.

So, yeah. I have to say people gone a little haywire with that. The thing if you're going to get work done, you've got to have like a photo of yourself or something that at the beginning you max it out to what you want to look like and you say, "I'm never going past that." cuz people just keep going bigger and bigger and bigger and that's what scares me is like bro you got to know when to like tap out. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that is wild. People get like dysmorphia of all kinds.

They end up looking like a [ __ ] alien. [ __ ] alien. [ __ ] alien. It's It's weird. It's weird. It's very distressing. Very distressing. Very distressing. Very distressing. Uh Uh Uh does she has she gone all the way? She looks crazy. I'm going to need you to pull it up this very instant. I I was not even I haven't seen it. Madonna for a minute. I was like scared. Uh, like I don't uh I'm trying to think of that's airbrushed to death. Okay. Yep. We got She got stung by a bee.

Like that is way is way is way and like the jawline was overly chiseled like like like uh at that angle it looks weird. It It looks Yeah, it she looks crazy. Yeah, I'm not a fan. And she was she didn't need that. Um but you know it's there's that mental thing. Here's the thing, bro. Women like that is the hardest thing ever. You literally are judged by your attractiveness. Like that is sexual market value 101 is how attractive are you and that [ __ ] fades. It's 22.

You peak out at 22. That's hard. You're going to if things go according to plan, you're going to spend the vast majority of your life on the other side. For guys at least, like you're building wealth into your typically 40s, maybe even 50s. pretty rare that you're still like really in an accumulation phase into your 60s, but like you spend the bulk of your life like getting more and more attractive attractive attractive women. It's like by the time you even understand what's going on, like you peek out and then it's you're on your way down.

way down. way down. I forget. Oh, that woman's pearly things. She had a Oh god, how did this go? Let's see if I can capture it. It was like, um, how do I find a like a smart, fun guy that like, uh, really wants to settle down and get married? And she goes, in your 20s. And I was like, ouch. It's like, that's true. That's why it hurts is like, you have this window where you're going to be peak attractiveness. You're going to be able to get them to pay attention to you as a real human and then build a lasting relationship with somebody.

But like that's going to get tougher and tougher as you get older for sure. Plus people just get scar tissue. And so over time it's like the odds that you find like somebody to really settle down with and it just feels comfortable and good. It's not impossible by any means, but it gets harder because people have scar tissue. So it's like I still want to ask for an update update update on on on the woman who had no scar tissue and you were like oh my god she's so like optimist.

optimist. optimist. I was reading that cuz I wanted um yeah we continue to talk. Uh, we do have four super chats. Oh, okay. We got time. Super chat. Oh, [ __ ] We got to get him. Basically, cuz we chat allowed him to dodge a bullet. You two like there was that's a con for the win. That was a conspiracy. We've been had everybody. everybody. everybody. All right. First up from Marushia Dark. We need to up our rhetoric game and drive home the idea that taxation is theft and welfare is blood money.

The same as if schools and hospitals were funded by the mafia. Damn. Welfare is just naked bribery of poor people, bread, and circus. God damn. All right, Marushia, I'll follow that on X. Let's go, man. I want to see that reception. I There is something to the rhetoric game about it because if you let X tell you all your problems are because of illegal immigrants and the two million that left, it's fine. That just means the housing market is cheaper. 2 million that left, oh that's fine.

We're not going to have any more killings. Like everything is kind of tied to this one thing. So I do think there is something to if you get rhetoric behind you, you can make any narrative be true. So yeah, uh here's the bad news. Everything is tied to one thing and that one thing is debt. is debt. is debt. So debt made possible by a central bank. There you go. Dead and money printing. Uh next up from Sadne Peter actually hello. hello. hello. You looking very festive.

What? Uh What? Uh What? Uh ah so good to see you. All right, so we've got we got to get to these Got three more from Sadney Peter. First up, uh Tom Ron Paul, Ron, not Rand, warned everybody about the Federal Reserves. Don't confuse him with Rand Paul. He said years ago, this system is unsustainable and people didn't listen to him. He even predicted that Trump won't balance the budget. Yeah. So, and forgive me because I did originally say Rand when I meant Ron. I did slide it in at the end, but yes, uh they are different though.

Father and son. Um, yeah, that is a bang-on prediction that I should have been able to make and was still very sad when it happened. happened. happened. And they followed that up with, Tom, this is like deja vu. You might be the second coming of Ron Paul. He even campaigned on that idea. He wrote a book on that idea. And I think he came to the conclusion at 90. We need the country to crash for people to change. Well, I got there a lot faster than he did, but yeah.

And the last one, but Tom, it is still too risky to only use chat GPT. It has been wrong about simple information like medical advice. It has been so wrong it's bad. But Google was right on that topic and Grock was right. So I still need all. Yeah. No, I think it's very wise to check against them. You also develop an intuition about the kinds of things that it gets wrong. Uh like when I'm doing my deep dives, which I'm sure by the way have had mistakes.

I have no doubt about that. But I do try to fact check them against each other. Uh you start to learn the ones that seem just like no no no hold on that can't be true. Uh so from the perspective of does it speed you up? It's not perfect. No solution that I found is perfect. But they speed you up a lot. They reduce the error rate a lot and they're the creators of the AI are reducing their error rate of the AIS. So over time I think you can expect that to get a lot better.

Cool. That's all the super chats. All right, everybody. As a reminder, we are rushing now towards the holidays. Holidays for me are like this completely sacred period of time. So, Friday is going to be our last live until the new year. So, just brace yourselves for that. And then in the new year, we're going to be going live three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 a.m. Pacific time. Uh on Friday, it'll still be the normal 6 a.m. Uh so come in for that.

And in the new year, they'll only be two hours long. Friday, which is our last one of the year, uh will still be 3 hours normal, 6:00 to 9. So, hope to see you there. Sending you guys all love and we'll see you on Friday. Later, everybody. Peace.