Trump Tries To Bribe The American People As The Gov't Is Choking To Death On The National Debt

Key Takeaway

Today, improve your financial resilience by reducing fragility rather than chasing a prediction: review any long-term or high-interest debt, build a cash buffer, and check whether your investments are overly concentrated in one asset, country, or theme. The episode’s practical message is to preserve optionality—keep funds accessible, diversify across economic forces, and make decisions based on mechanisms and long-term consequences rather than political promises or market panic.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu argues that bipartisan deficit spending, proposed cash payments, and rising bond yields signal worsening fiscal instability and inflation risk. The conversation also examines Middle East supply-chain disruption, the need for disciplined AI governance rather than an AI moratorium, and the lessons of 9/11 about emotional manipulation, foreign policy, and national unity.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Trump Tries To Bribe The American People As The Gov't Is Choking To Death On The National Debt from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Dillio Show Live. Today is going to be a special one. Obviously, this is 911. We're going to be talking all about that. We all just had an absolute shock before the bell rang. We'll bring you into that in a little while. Now, as the government is choking to death on the national debt, Trump is trying to bribe the American people with an additional 1.3 trillion dollar. The level of insanity is absolutely mind-boggling. Boy, are we going to talk about that.

The war in Iran is escalating in super dangerous fashion uh in a way that people really do not understand just how bad it is getting. Oil is over $109 and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are likely to escalate after the Houthis have humiliated them, blew up their pipelines, and captured a ton of their soldiers. Inflation numbers they're in and the whole bond situation is getting way out of hand. People are going to get blindsided unless they figure out what this actually means. We're going to talk about exactly that.

The AI situation gets more insane by the day, by the second. And we've got Anthropic's new threat assessment report. It is far crazier than you think. Wait till you hear some of the specifics. And like I said, it's 9/11. We're going to be talking about what lessons we need to learn from a tragedy that led to a far more tragic response. So, thank you guys so much for being here. Right now, we are being abused by our politicians. They are using the economy to beat us to death.

The economic abuse in this country is getting so bad, it is truly nearing fatal for our way of life, for the very way that our nation operates. We've got Trump promising that if Republicans win the House and Senate at the midterms that he'll cut $5,000 checks to everyone at the cost of $1.3 trillion. That level of insanity is almost hard to quantify. That is the most absurd way to get back into office I have ever heard. It is so reckless. It is so dangerous. It is such an abuse of the American people and they're going to seal clap for it and they're going to be really excited for it.

People are going to want them checks. But we've already put ourselves in a position where we are running $2 trillion in deficits every year by promising free stuff. None of that stuff comes for free. Your deficits are paid for by inflation. It is stolen purchasing power directly from you and everyone that you know. This makes things worse. And yet somehow every country that has ever been in the position that we're in to be the world's reserve currency, they find themselves doing the same thing. The world over people are money printing like crazy.

We are in a period where the developing nations are committing sepu. Like this is so wild to watch us make these decisions. The world is racing away from the dollar right now because they can see how insane we are being and our response is to be more insane. Like it it is patently ridiculous. Everybody has to wake up and make sure that when you are looking at policy, when you're evaluating a politician, that you are asking one thing. Are you beating our kids to death with stupid policy?

And if the answer is yes, then that person is absolutely not the kind of person that we want to see get elected. Now, the problem is if you think this is just Trump or you think it's just the Republicans, your memory is short. Biden did this exact same thing when he wanted to make sure that the Democrats won in Georgia. He said, this is a paraphrase, but send OAF and Waro to Washington and I send $2,000 checks out. send Purdue and Laughafler and they're never going to arrive.

The power is literally in your hands. And guess what happened? The Democrats won. No big surprise. You promised people that kind of money directly in their pocket, they're going to go for it. So 2 months later, $1,400 checks go out to 170 million people to the tune of $411 billion. Lo and behold, bribing people with free stuff is exactly what politicians do to stay in power. And it is super toxic. It It is the thing that drives the K-shaped economy. It is the thing that puts everybody at each other's throats.

It is the thing that makes the dollar buy you less stuff over time because we are deficit spending. That stuff doesn't come for free. That's not how the economy works. You are going to pay for it. Plain and simple. Period. End of story. And so people confuse themselves into thinking because they're being stolen from with the left hand and given with the right that only the right counts. It it is so wild. Also, by the way, if you hear people clucking about how insane it is that Trump is giving away free things, please cheer for them.

Unless they have cheered for mom Donniey's dumbass laundry list of free [ __ ] The stuff that you hear coming out of the mouths of all the DSA and DSA adjacent candidates. They want free child care, free buses, benefits for illegal aliens, discount groceries, student debt forgiveness, reparations, and more full [ __ ] things like that. It is all madness. It is coming at us from all sides. This is where we all have to pump the brakes. Call attention to this. make sure that people understand when we vote for that kind of stuff, when we clamor to have a politician that is theoretically going to put money in our pockets that they are just they're degrading the economy even more.

Every dollar of this is borrowed. Every dollar gets serviced at right now four plus% by our kids. By the way, the what is it the 10 years racing towards four or at 4.9% already. It's only going to get worse if we keep doing these things because people are not going to want to hold US debt. They are going to see the level of recklessness is just completely out of control. The people running the country have stopped asking whether we can afford it and they just want to know is this what it's going to cost me to stay in power for two more years.

That's the only thing that they care about. That is it is so distressing. It's so distressing because there's nowhere to turn. I don't know if you want to re reject Trump, which hopefully anybody hearing him talk about cutting 5k checks wants to reject Trump. Who do you turn to? Who's the next viable candidate? There's nobody. As far as the I can see, it's just people that have given up that we're ever going to reject the absolute lunacy of deficit spending the way that we are now.

And so, everybody is beating you to death with this economic stick. And then the people that try to stand up against it, like my man with the debt clock, Thomas Massie. Thank you. Where's he at? And getting people like that in office, bringing them front and center is so highly contested. Now, I know Thomas Massie, everybody's going to go to the Apac angle of it all. I'm telling you, it's not just that. It is something way bigger than that. This is people are so confused about how the economy works.

They don't understand it. And so they think, "Ah, let's just go tax the billionaires. That's going to be the way." So the stuff that Mom Donny's promising me, that's really going to be free. The DSA, they've got my back. And this is why we see this insane rise of communism. It has been so good for so long that people have just stopped building in discipline. We've got to be disciplined and the only path forward is to demand of our political class that we have people that are going to make us strong.

But I don't know that it's in the human character. But I don't care about that because I have made a promise to myself, boys and girls. We are going to talk solutions on this podcast. So here is what we're going to do. At least us, this group, if you can hear my voice, this is what it looks like. We understand that fiscal discipline, fiscal means government spending. Fiscal discipline is absolutely necessary. It is not a nice to have. It is not an optional. It is a must.

We have to get to the point where we're living within our means. We have to focus the government not on entitlements but on infrastructure. People have got to carry their own weight. you cannot have 40% of your government budget going to entitlements. If that means you've got to push the retirement age, then you've got to push the retirement age. If that means that we've got to um make sure that we are bringing manufacturing back to the US so that real wages can grow, then you make sure that we're bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US and you're focused on a long-term plan for growth, not one that you're expecting to happen in 6 months.

You've got to be thinking 5 10 years down the road. And anybody that can't point to a spot on the horizon and say, "Hey, I'm going to be out of office long before this thing happens." But this is what we're steering towards. And I'm going to walk you through the economics of exactly how we get there. Now, I fully understand the populist pull. Populism is a slur. Anybody that says that they're a populist leader, they can literally [ __ ] off immediately. Get out of my political establishment.

I don't want to hear any of that [ __ ] All that is is somebody saying, "Yeah, I want people swept up in their emotions. I want people acting a fool. I want people um allowing themselves to be blind to the mechanisms of the economy. So, the government needs to be focused on, okay, what do we do to shore this up? What what are we going to cut in order to get our spending back in line?" And all we have to do is say, "Cool, we want to tax more.

Awesome. Let's do it. Let's increase taxes. and let's make sure that for every new tax dollar that we bring in that we're spending let's clock it at.70. So now we're getting ahead instead of behind. Right now for every dollar in new taxes we bring on we spend $1.58. That's [ __ ] crazy. You can't do that. We have a discipline problem and we have to remember we elect politicians. Politicians are just pandering to us. They're just pandering to whatever demands we make. And if we say give me free [ __ ] or you're out, then they're going to give us free [ __ ] No matter what it means, even if it means that, hey, this all falls apart in my clock is 9 years.

This all falls apart in 9 years. They don't care. Certainly the executive branch is going to be gone. Can we revisit the 9-year thing? Sure. It was 10 years last year. Now we're at nine. At year, when that clock hits zero, then what? Like what's the it it's it really has to be understood as metaphorical. It's me saying if nothing else change, this is when your debt hits a point where it just absolutely breaks. It's a swag. It is just to give some people something to pay attention to.

It's never going to play out exactly like that. It's not a clock that literally counts down to zero and then all hell breaks loose. It will just get worse and worse and worse every day. The odds that we survive the full 9 years are effectively zero because we're getting more reckless, not less. So you've got Biden promising whatever 20 uh $2,000 checks. Now, Trump is promising $5,000 checks. Like, it just gets crazier. And uh so, anybody watching the show a long time knows I broke my sort of hope for the Trump administration broke the day that they signed on the big beautiful bill because it made our deficits worse, not better.

So, I was like, "Oh, okay, cool. They're just going to do whatever they need to do to get reelected. This isn't actually about fiscal discipline. Uh all of that goes out the window." And so, now seeing the $5,000 checks is just wild. And the thing that we all have to push back against and find a way to navigate through is that the the two major parties are both just like more free stuff. And so you can't go, "Oh, cool. I'm going to vote Democrat this time." I mean, maybe if they get a good candidate, if somehow someway they rise somebody to power internally that actually understands fiscal discipline and they see that's the avenue that they have to take.

Uh but I don't see that happening. What I see is as I zoom out to 30,000 ft, I see that populism has a grip on everybody. Everybody's reasoning from emotion. the pie really is getting smaller. And because the pie is getting smaller, people are looking around saying, "Well, I just want to make sure that my team gets a bigger piece of the pie." And that's where we're at. And so, we've got to break that fever. And listen, I fully expect that I'm essentially going to go down with the ship, that nobody's going to listen outside of the amazing people that can hear my voice right now.

Uh, but nonetheless, everything I do, I do to earn my own respect. And so, I got to say these things. Uh, so that really is the play. Fiscal discipline. Um, you're going to have to, I mean, I really do think Radelio is right about a beautiful deleveraging. It's the only path forward. It's going to require you to raise taxes. Unfortunately, those taxes are going to have to be broad-based. You're going to have to uh have, and when I say broad-based, I mean you it it won't work.

There is not enough money to just tax the billionaire class. First of all, everybody is misconstring their wealth with their money. You can't tax wealth. You can't spend wealth. So, just [ __ ] get that out of your head. If you're still so [ __ ] and you understand the economy so little that you're actually saying things like wealth tax, okay, Roana, I'm looking at you. You know that's [ __ ] Okay, you're not confused. You're leaning into the populism. Stop it. It's [ __ ] Knock it off.

That isn't how this works. So that's wild. So anybody that's that's saying cool, we we're going to have to do a more broad-based uh tax, great, no problem. that the wealthy are going to be paying more based on their actual real income. Yep, no problem. But we have to do fiscal discipline first. Okay. There's also going to be some obliteration of debt, which that means there are going to be some people that lose money. It is what it is. So, you're going to have to do some of that, but you have to do it in a sensible way.

So, debt forgiveness uh for college debt, for instance, you can't do that as the taxpayer picks up the bill. That's just fiscal irresponsibility. What you have to do is allow them to declare bankruptcy so that now they can get out from under that debt in a way that's going to put some banks out of business. Yeah, it it is what it is. You can't allow the government to just back all that stuff up. So, you've got to get the broader tax base. You've got to get fiscal discipline so that we're actually starting to do some austerity.

You're going to have to do some debt forgiveness. And you're going to have to do some money printing. You're going to have to do all of it. And you're we are going to have to find a way to figure out what are the levels that levers that we're going to pull in what sequence because two of those are constrictive of the economy and two of them are stimulatory and we're going to be pulling those in little increments as we go trying to make things better and better and better as we go.

But if people cannot get out of the doom loop of I'm going to give you more free stuff it it really does implode guys. I I need you to hear me and let's talk about bonds. So how do I know that it implodes? It's already imploding. So when you look at the bond market, the bond market is trying to give you all the distress signals in the world. So what is the bond market? The it is really important to understand how bonds work. Bonds are the world because it is not just US citizens but also them.

It is the world saying, "Do I think you, the United States government, will pay me back if I loan you money? And will you pay me back with enough interest that you're not beating me to death with what's called financial repression, which is where you intentionally hold the interest rate low, lower than inflation, so that I get penalized in the long run." Now, that is 100% the playbook that's being run right now. So, right now, we are on a course because there's no way for the US to pay the interest on the debt if rates keep going up.

This is why everybody was saying you can know what Trump is going to do in the Iran war based on what the 10-year Treasury note is. And as it crosses 4.6, that was like everybody's big number. It's now 4.9, but as it crosses 4.6, you're going to see he's going to take action. Bessant's trying, but when you're doing things that are reckless, like if you're Bessant and you see Trump over here doing the most insane [ __ ] ever and promising people $5,000 checks for keeping them in power, so what?

They can do more dumb [ __ ] But anyway, if you're Bessant, you're watching that. You're like, "Bro, what are you doing? I'm over here desperately trying to calm the markets. The markets are now clowning on Bessant." Okay. Markets are saying you can't be over here being that reckless and expect me to think that 20 years from now, 30 years from now, that you're actually going to pay me enough interest to have justified me letting you keep my money knowing what I expect inflation to be, right?

Inflation numbers are in. So, we're at 3.4% inflation, which is at expectation, but it's still way over the 2% that it's supposed to be. And given that oil is getting worse. So we were up at last check 109. Could be worse, could be a little bit better, but in that ballpark. So the uh what PPI index. So um producer price index, which is like hey, I make things for a living. So I've got all my ingredients. That number's up. I forget what it is, but I think it's over 5%.

Drew or Ryan's going to fact check me on that, but it's high. That means down the road it's likely that inflation will get worse. Now, you're not going to get all of the producer price index increase finding its way into what you pay PPI, but it is sorry. CPI was 5%. Okay, so bang on. There we go, boys and girls. Your man's got you. So, that is not a good sign certainly of where things are going. Odds are that we're going to feel some of that in our day-to-day lives.

And so Bessant is trying to buy enough of our debt to make sure that there's a market, but now you've got the government buying its own debt. Now, as I always tell entrepreneurs, hey, if you're doing something, has anybody done it before you? And what was the result? Japan. Japan bought a lot of its own debt, more than 50% of its own debt. It did not go well. Japan went from basically about to surpass the American economy to stagnating for two decades. Not a position that you want to be in, but we're running that same playbook now.

Is Bessant buying our own debt making the market relax and go, "Oh, cool. All right. This guy's got us. We're going to be fine." If that were the case, then the longtail interest rates would be coming down. But they're not coming down. They're going up because people can see that we are not being fiscally responsible. They can see that we're late stage empire and we're doing the things that latestage empire does. This is like a known thing and all the smart people that buy in the bond market, they understand how to read the tea leaves and they can see, okay, we've got instability in the Middle East.

That's going to probably for a couple years at least, that's going to have elevated oil prices because things are not moving in the right direction. And we'll get into the Houthies of it all in a minute, but just know that the Houthies are causing way more problems now. So you've got the Straight of Hormuz is contested. Maybe we've got it openish, but it's contested now. You've got the Red Sea also blocked off. They're also attacking uh Saudis pipeline. So Saudi Arabia was trying to be like, "Oh, we'll just find a way around the straight of Hormuz, and we'll go over to um the Red Sea and we'll pump it out that way.

Well, now that's being blown up. So, that pipeline reports have it has been hit in like eight different places. It's on fire. You can see it from satellite imagery. So, there's no hiding from it. So, if I'm buying bonds, I'm looking at all that and I'm like, "Okay, there's instability there. PPI's up. Bess is trying to buy all of his own debt and the guy that he's buying the debt on the behalf of is acting like a lunatic. Oh, and by the way, I look at the Democrats.

Is it possible that you guys just vote out these crazy ass Republicans and you get some nice sane Democrats? Uh-oh. The energy in the Democrat party is more free [ __ ] So everywhere I turn, it is latestage empire. It is populism. And by the way, there are plenty of people out there that you're going to find saying populism like it's a good thing. That's wild. It is not. So instability there. Bond market is telling you you're going in the wrong direction. People are moving away from the dollar, buying gold, record numbers, holding gold as the number one reserve asset over US debt, which means that US debt is going to grow more expensive by the day, which means the thing I'm saying to do now, you're going to be forced to do whether you do it now when you there's at least a little bit of advantage that you'll get by moving on it quickly.

Um, you're going to have to do it. It's just a question of how much pain you let build up in the system before you do what you know is obviously right. So that's that's where we are. Th this one is really maddening. Really maddening. And boy do I hope that uh we can get people to wake up and explain not how they feel about it but mechanistically how what they're doing is going to work. That's what I want to hear. Um you put a lot on the table there.

I feel like it's a Thanksgiving feast of Tom's rants. I love it. It's a cornucopia of problems. Beautiful word. Um I think first and foremost, right, I was having this argument on Discord. I think we got too caught up in the two party system in the sense that we have been playing the lesser of two evils game for three decades at this point that it's this is bad, he's bad, we have nowhere else to go. And I think that there is a third option. If Massie is the same person in the room with the internet in 2026, this is not the 19 the 1700s where there was only newspaper and you can only walk to the nearest village.

Can a effective grassroots campaign actually make something happen? Can we actually have a third option? Can we actually put somebody sane in power? Cuz I think sensible people on the right realize that Trump is not it. Sensible people on the left realize the DSA is not it. There is a big enough coalition in my opinion just like there was a big enough coalition that said wait I don't want transgirl people I don't want trans kids getting converted and Trump seems like he's not going to start another war cool and they were able to add that just add enough cultural energy to get Trump over the hump do you think that there is this possibility for a independent candidate I'm going to call him to maybe make a surprise in the primaries no 0%.

So, at this point, I got to stack money, get a gun, and just That's far wiser. Got it. So, here is how this is going to play out. People think that politicians lead. Politicians have abdicated that responsibility. We don't have leadership. Not now. It This isn't a moment in time that's going to give you leaders. This is a moment in time where the guy who can read the energy in the room will step in front and act like he's helping the band march, but in reality, the band was already marching and he just stepped out front.

Until we recognize, until culturally we have the spirit of a nation that um wants to be disciplined, understands that we have to take matters um into our own hands inside of our own families and say, "Okay, this is how we ought to be. We ought to be responsible with the way that we spend money. We ought to be responsible with building infrastructure. We ought to be responsible for making ourselves the strongest, most secure nation on planet Earth. Here are the basics of how that's done. This has happened all throughout history.

Um, but unfortunately, humans individually are very capable. Humans as a collective are crazy and they get pulled into these emotional streams and so we're in an emotional stream. Now, if I were going to steal man um the flip side of that and say, "Okay, this really could work." Then what I'll say is this. We live in the age of the interest graph on social media, which is far better than the I have a lot of followers graph, which is what it was before. It was truly a social graph.

So, you know, a lot of people, those people are big people and therefore your voice is important. Now, we just go, no, no, no. If you say something that's interesting and people gravitate towards it, then it's going to go viral. And so, a person could capture the imagination of the people and actually provide some leadership. Um, and if they did that, and this is why I say that Thomas Massie um, not getting reelected because Apac spent some money, that really isn't relevant. What it says is his message wasn't strong enough to overcome money.

Uh, when an idea its time has come, people are going to get behind it. But the problem is, I really do think the idea's time has to come. And so the question becomes, what will change the emotional uh, feeling in the room? like how do we break the psychological fever that we're under? Um, at the risk of putting another fractal on the plate, but I really do think if you read add to the cornucopia, man, let's do it. Let's add uh look at Lindsey Clansancy. So, the response to this is actual cultural psychosis.

It it's it's absurd and crazy in the extreme. Now, I have a reason for why it's happened there. it becomes very repetitive. But if people want to map my base assumption that's undergirling a lot of this when people have been safe for quote unquote too long. Uh they forget that you have to be disciplined and you've got to lock people up when they are mentally ill. You you can't let them roam the streets. No matter how much you may love and care about them, you just can't have them on the streets.

There was a guy recently that got nearly beheaded in a park. Uh guy I assume I don't know that the guy was mentally ill, but I can't imagine of a sane guy will try to hack your head off. Right. So he comes up behind him, stabs him in the neck, and then just keeps going and tries to cut his head off. So um that is us going, "Yeah, but we feel bad and it would really suck if we had that." So once the cultures there, the only thing that history tells you snaps people out of it is a sufficient amount of pain.

And so I do worry that leaders never actually lead. that it's always somebody who's just aligned with the energy of that moment and then they rise to the occasion to lead people because they're completely aligned with what's happening. Like I feel very out of step with culture right now. I don't reason emotionally ever. I try not to. Obviously I'm a human so I do but I'm always trying to step out of that. I don't respect that in myself when I do it. I'm always trying to get on the other side of that.

Um I'm desperate to get people to understand the power of AI at a time where everybody's trying to shut it down. Like it's just everywhere I turn I'm like uhoh. Like I you're on the exact opposite of I'm I am the flip side of most of the popular coins right now. So um and also I really think that uh anyway there's a host of other reasons why I'm probably never going to be the voice that's going to get people to um snap into place. And it may just be that it really isn't possible.

And so when you look at the fourth turning, you start realizing that um great leaders tend to have been born at a certain phase in history. And so they just happen to be in alignment with what that moment is. Uh so yeah, that's probably true. So but the just to get mechanistic again for a second, you would have to break the emotional fever that the certainly in America, the West more broadly is captured in. And I think that the only way that you do that is pain and suffering.

And then a leader will rise that will um internalize that pain and suffering in a way where then people will fall in behind them. Religion can also play a role in that because if you can say this is what God wants, I think you get like um a buff like if you think in video game terms like religion gives you a massive buff. And so now you can be like not only am I aligned with the emotion that everybody's feeling, God also agrees with you and I represent God and so let's go.

M and we'll get into that when we start talking about 911. Um yeah, I feel like you cover Oh, okay. We got to move on to the war stuff. But just quick check in on the economy as it stands right now for my alpha guys, for my investment guys in the chat. Is this a time to really look? Are is the bond market making you nervous or is this one of those The bond market is just a signal. So, um, here is how everybody should be thinking about your money in a time where the bond market is screaming and telling you that the US has a problem.

So, first of all, being in long-term debt right now is probably not a good idea. You need to remember, I'm not a financial adviser. I am not in any way, shape, or form licensed to give financial advice. It would be very unwise to simply say, "I'm going to do something because Tom said it." Let me just put that out there as aggressively as possible. Now, with that said, I'm going to tell you how I think through this. you should use that amongst other people to figure out the right way to think about this because no one person I think sees any of this clearly.

It is way too complicated. So you start piecing things together. But this is how I think about it. You're looking at the bond market. If you understand the mechanism of the bond market, it's a vote on the stability of essentially that country. So are you do you have a good credit score? When you have a really good credit credit score in people's minds, then the rate that you have to pay people is very low because they're just looking for a safe place to try to beat inflation.

So, um, when that rate goes up, people are like, "Yeah, first of all, I expect inflation to be quite high and I'm not sure that I trust you to pay me back in the fullness of time, at least not at a rate that beats inflation." So, that's what the bond market is telling you right now, that the US economy is not healthy. It is not a safe place to store your money. So now if the bond market which is the traditional place that you US bond market specifically is no longer the risk-free rate of return or the quote unquote risk-free rate of return is going up up up up that is a huge signal.

Now when you also look at okay where traditionally would you hide in times like this? The quick answer is people round it to that which cannot be inflated. So what is it that can't be inflated? You're going to have a whole lot of people that'll give you different answers here. But the traditional one is going to be gold, other precious metals. Be very careful about overindexing on that and going, "Oh, okay, cool. I'm going to go do that thing." Uh, gold can trap your uh value for a long time.

It can go down and stay there for years. So, you've got to be thoughtful. But that is a traditional place where people go, "Oh, that thing that can be inflated, a fiat currency, is being inflated, so let me go somewhere that it can't be." A higher risk version of that is going to be the equities market. It's much higher risk. So be very careful. One thing that people try to look at in volatile times like this is to find companies that even like if the entire stock market is a big bet on AI, who's still going to make money even in a downturn?

Even if the AI market blows up and we see draw downs of 30, 50%, who's still going to be making money? So identifying that basket of companies and trying to invest more in them. An example that people will often give right now, which is something that Trump has invested in. So take this for what it's worth. Uh but is Visa and Mastercard, I think both of them. But basically, it's hard to spin up a new credit card company. So uh people are going to use credit cards.

I believe that that's a thing that's going to move into the future. So cool. I'm going to be in companies like that. So who are those companies that people need no matter what the economic situation? But being diversified across economic forces is the real thing that people have to think through. Making sure that you have optionality because you have cash on hand. That is another big one. Uh if you're going to be in debt, being in short-term debt, that kind of thing is important. Looking around the world.

So maybe we're no longer just investing in the US. So what does it look like globally? Where should we be at? But the that that's what everybody should be doing at the individual level is trying to identify how they get diversified across as many economic forces. Now, as a reminder of what Buffett says, you use that sort of diversity as a hedge against ignorance. So, if you actually have a deep read on the economy, you're going to make a few concentrated bets. And that, of course, is exactly how Buffett got wealthy was concentrated bets.

I mean, it's like, I don't know, 9 to 12 or something of the best bets that he's made over his extraordinarily long career account for 80% of the gains that he's made. It's a ridiculously small number. Um, but unless you guys are that kind of on top of it, professional trader round the clock, you've got some advantage that other people don't have, diversify across economic forces. That that really is the long and the short of it. So, uh, being honest about the reality of the current situation, I think, is very important.

Um, and yeah, not locking yourself into something super long-term, making sure that whatever you're invested in, you either have an easy way to get your money out. Um, or that you don't need that money for a very long time, and I'll clock that at 20 years. If you put your money into a broad basket of AI stocks, as an example, for 20 years, yeah, you're probably going to be fine. It'll go through a draw down, then it will rebuild if it follows historical trends. Eh, and then as long as you didn't need your money for 20 years, you're probably going to be okay.

Um, but yeah, being overindexed on one thing, especially something that's vulnerable to all of the um fluctuations right now of whether it's the bond market, the equities market, uh, that's super super high risk. All right, we got to talk about these straits getting getting gobbled up rough out here in these straits. Man, these Heyo, let's go. Straight is crazy. We need some gaze of her muse. Wow. I don't How did that come in? Yeah. Both went in different directions with the joke. I like both, you know.

Oh, I see. Got it. Got it. Are friendly. Um, so we've been fighting over We've been fighting over the straight Hermoose. Yeah. Then Saudi Arabia was like, "Forget the straight hermoose. I got this other straight back here. I'm not even going to need the straight herus anymore." And then the Houthies were like, "Hold my beer." Yeah. Yeah. So boys and girls, right now the situation in the Middle East is getting crazier than people realize. Yemen's Houthies took the Red Sea port of Mocha this morning uh or yeah, yesterday basically government forces withdrew.

Uh the Saudi Arabia and the US have been talking about this for a while and Saudi Arabia said, "Don't worry, man. We've got this. We can fight on our own. We don't need anything here. Just make sure that you're cool with me striking." And then the bad news is that they got completely overwhelmed. The Houthis pushed in, basically took control of the entire um uh coastline and one of the islands in the middle of the strait to make sure that they would be able to open and close it as they see fit.

And now you've got Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince SMB reaching out to Trump saying, "Hey, we want to NBS, excuse me, reach out. We want you to strike the Houthies." Trump said, "Look, we're not going to do it. you told me that you got this. We'll provide you intel, but you're going to have to do this on your own. And so, in the end, they weren't able to do it on their own. And then you've got both the UAE and Saudi Arabia getting caught up in this.

The problem is those two don't agree on how to handle this. So, they're not even going to be able to put forward a coordinated response. And so, now the question is, what do you do when both of those areas were blocked? Everybody's been saying for a while now, listen, these guys played their hand. So Iran goes in, they close the straight. Everybody's like, "Oh, like we can't rely on the straight of Hormuz anymore. We're going to have to do overland uh pipelines and get this stuff out the other way so that we don't have to deal with the straight of Hormuz." And Saudi and UAE thought they had the situation under control in the Bab Elmandab Straight only to find out, nope, psych, just kidding.

The Houthies have taken over and now we're back in trouble. And so, uh, if you've got the pipeline being destroyed, been hit in eight places, and I've talked about this for a while, if you don't bury that pipeline, it's going to get hit over and over and over. So, you're either going to have to put mesh around it, uh, you're going to have to bury it, but you're going to have to do something to protect it from being attacked because right now, exposing that to open air just means that it's going to be hit, as we just saw.

So, now you've got disruption all over the place in both sides. And so now you would have to coordinate multiple countries to get uh a pipeline that runs across and doesn't touch either of the straits. Now maybe that'll be easier than I'm expecting. And if so, you know, you give them a couple years, they'll be able to build a new pipeline and we'll be able to get out another way. And maybe that's exactly what's going to happen. But in the meantime, this is going to be very rough on some very important cargo.

not only oil, but you've got things to do with fertilizer and other elements that we count on for production of things worldwide. And so, one of the things that really hasn't been getting talked a lot about, I think, because people thought that, you know, this would end shortly enough that we would be able to find a way around this. But one thing that now becomes a much bigger question mark is what is going to happen to fertilizer and how much of that increase in cost or just availability of food globally is going to be impacted and are we going to be able to get this resolved in time uh for the next harvest because I believe that we had one harvest where these guys basically had to rely on uh using less and or using some if they had any saved up which most people from what I've seen in the reporting not many farmers have a lot of this stuff saved up.

So, are we already going to see some food increases uh coming by the end of this year? And if not, if next year's crop also takes a hit, are we going to be able to absorb that? And so, as you start looking at this as being a multi-year disruption, now it starts to get more serious. And how quickly will people be able to bring alternatives on? And to make it even worse, this is an El Nino year. So will El Nino also create problems for farmers?

And so will we have a double whammy either via drought or crops getting washed out where we have all the fertilizer disruption coming out of the Middle East compounded with just the cost of oil going up which makes the production of virtually everything a little bit more expensive and El Nino causing disruptions with crops that could make I mean let's not get overly dramatic but people are going to talk about potential famines. So far, we've been able to address things like that, but that's certainly looming if El Nino is bad enough.

So, you've got a lot of things happening all at once. Now, again, maybe in two years, you see yourself on the other side of this, but it's going to be a pretty rough two years if this stuff remains disrupted that whole time. And so, the question really becomes, are we going to see unity in the GCC countries to push back on this to finally shut Iran down? Now you've got Trump basically, not basically, you've got Trump predicting that um the war in Iran will end as soon as the midterms happen.

Now, just for the record, I read that as total propaganda [ __ ] It's just him trying to get people to turn out, vote for Republicans, and just be like, "Ah, look, this is just them trying to run a gimmick, if you will, uh as we lead into the um the elections. And on the other side of that, everything's going to be fine because these guys just aren't going to be able to last that long and they're going to break. So if the US, the blockade and the financial sanctions can actually break Iran, then maybe this resolves itself in the next call it 6 months and we can get everything back in line before uh fertilizer has to be laid for the next harvest.

But there's a lot of question marks there. None of this has gone according to plan now. So I certainly don't believe that it's going to go according to plan in the future. So we'll see. But it is definitely not a good time for what's going on in the Middle East. Things are loose, man. And when things are loose, it's like driving on black ice. You never know if you're about to spin out of control and find out just how fast you were really traveling. The fact that that Saudi who thought they were able to hold these guys back on their own just completely got run over yesterday is a very bad signal.

Um, totally 124. So, we're losing to people in sandals. And I just thought that that was hilarious. Um, this is a bad look. It's not a bad look. Like, let's just America has a reputation for being the number one superpower ever. I compare this to when the Warriors got beat in the finals that year when they won 73 games. It's one of those things where it's like, I'm the best and you're supposed to just capitulate to me and you get to that big moment and then you're getting beat and outsmarted and outmaneuvered by a bunch of dudes in sandals.

The first order consequence, how do we get out of this situation? That's quagmire talk. I kind of want to leave that alone right now. But I'm looking at the second and third order consequence of like, wait, is America really that scary? Do we need to just have a nuke and reset everybody and just be that bad guy? I know I'm going like, but I feel like we're getting back corner like while uh you made my eyes nearly pop out of my head by saying it out loud.

It uh it is a reset button. It would work. Here's the problem. We talked about this a lot at the beginning of the war. I said America doesn't have a stomach morally, thankfully. Thankfully, thankfully for Total War, uh Total War is where you go, "Oh, I'm I'm not using any of my weapons. I'm going to use them all. And we have a tunnel problem." All right. Well, fly some uh ships in there and literally kill indiscriminately. Indiscriminately. And yeah, you just ethnic cleanse the [ __ ] out of them, kill them, genocide them, whatever.

and you can eventually they will a thousand% be dead or give up. The morality of that is so horrifying that we have to take it off the table. And given that the morality of that is so horrifying that it must be removed from the table, you find yourself in a world where it's like being the biggest strongest guy ever isn't the play. M being the most cooperative, the one that people want to work with, and quarantining the people that can't play nice with the rest of the world.

That's the play. And so when I look at the US versus China, I think this is so instructive. China's an authoritarian dictatorship. It is a spider's web, but they're using uh they're putting like fruit chunks in the spider's web. So it's like, well, if you're willing to be stuck in my web, you really do get to eat the fruit. And the US is all stick. So we used to be, hey, listen. We're about freedom. We're about trade. Look at those guys. They have [ __ ] all on the grocery store shelves.

Uh it's bread lines. It's horrible. Why would you want that? We're freedom. And we are the ability to say what you believe is true. We are a lifestyle that the rest of the world can only hope for. and we're going to be that shining hill uh that shining city on the hill that other people aspire to be a part of and we're going to export our culture and if you embrace our culture your life really does get better. Mhm. And that was true for a long time.

And then it got to the point where we thought that as other people got wealthier that they would adopt our mindset and we realized, oh, actually they don't. And instead of going to a, okay, well, we just can't play with you guys then. We're going to isolate you and we're going to move on. Uh, we spent trillions of dollars trying to nation build. And that did not work. Look at Afghanistan. You spent all that money, cost all those lives, and walk away. and they're like, "We never wanted this." Um, you were trying to do literally transgender [ __ ] in Afghanistan and they came in and the insurgents win and they just take the country back over because we did not win the hearts and minds of the people.

And it's one of those, dude, this is so gross to say out loud, but you either break people's will because you've just killed so many of them. Uh, or you actually have to get them onto your side. And if you can't do either, you have to like leave it be. And so this is one of those things where if the US had gone, all right, dear GCC nations, here's the problem. Iran is our problem. So we're going to spend the next 10 years and we're going to migrate away from Iran.

We're going to bury the pipelines. We're going to build this out to the sea and we're going to make Iran be the aggressor and we're just going to work around them. And yep, it's going to be expensive and it's going to take a long time. And I get that we all secretly just want to pretend that we don't have this issue, but we can't do that. And so we're going to mow the lawn with their nuclear program because that would be the one sort of deal breakaker.

But we are going to get people around the issue rather than try to confront it directly, break their will, uh assume that the Iranian people are going to rise up. It's just like you it doesn't work. So, one thing we have to be realistic about, not everybody wants the American way of life. And if people want to build a quote unquote backwards nation, you got to let them. Like there is an island um oh, somebody looked this up. Sentinel Island. I'm almost certainly almost certain it's called North Sentinel Island.

North Sentinel Island right now off the coast of India. They are still the uninhabited uh or uncontacted sort of tribe. Yep. And if you roll up on North Sentinel Island, you're going to die. How do I know? Because people have tried it and they've all died. They just kill them and that's that. They don't want modern life. Just accept it. I don't think that we should go into North Sentinel Island and be like, "No, life will be better if you have a grocery store." It's like, if they want to be if they want to live like that, then let them.

And so, uh, I think we've so been convinced that we can just get everybody to think like we think that we've completely lost the plot. And that is it's non-functioning. I feel like this is an update to your mental model right now like happening cuz what I'm extrapolating from that is we need to let people be is that America should worry about America and stop trying to spread freedom vis transactions and bombs in the Middle East. Maybe we should take a step back in a I don't feel like it's an update of my mental model.

It'd be interesting to see if I've sort of slowly shifted without realizing it. Um I my my mental model is that if you're not willing to do total warfare thankfully um you're going to find yourself in quagmireers all the time. We tried nation building. It didn't work. It didn't work because people have different cultural sensibilities and I agree to a violent stance that some cultures are better than others. So, I will not let you come in and infect my way of life. Uh, and I will respond the way that an immune system would respond to a foreign invader should you try.

But from the perspective of how should America go about um engaging with the world, be the strongest economy in the world, be a freedomloving nation that really actually wants to see people be free. Don't look at every um nation as a cash register. Or if you're going to look at every nation as a cash register, look at them in the sense of okay, I've got to earn your business. And if we're going to earn that trading relationship, then you've got to take the stance of okay, we trade with you guys, but I'm not going to try to um through military force you to live an American way of life.

So, China's not going to become American. We tried that. It didn't work. Uh, so it's like we either decide we're going to trade with them or we decide that they're going to be a threat and we've got to isolate them, whatever, but just completely take off the table that you're going to get militaristic. So now, if you consider Taiwan your sphere of influence and you've got to stand up and make sure that they don't take something away from you that you've spent time building that chip industry and all of that, understood.

Uh, but they've got to be the aggressor uh before you should respond. Now, I think America should have the strongest military on Earth. I think that if a country uh wants to do business with us and they want to ally themselves with us and that means that we protect them, cool, I'm here for it. But um yeah, trying to nation build is a fool's errand. Uh you can only do what you can afford to do. You can't deficit spend. And so if America um can merely play a role in helping to police international waters, for instance, then great.

Play what role you're going to play. Have a consortium of people. uh but trying to run around and take care of the world, if that requires you to deficit spend, you've put yourself on a ticking clock where you will eventually bankrupt your children. It just doesn't work. So, uh I feel like Joshua in War Games and I'm running all of the scenarios and I'm just like, "Oh, okay. The only way to uh win the game of global empire is to not play the game of global empire." Gotcha.

Um I got to bring it up because you're getting fried in the chat right now. People want clarification of what you mean by we trans like people are making it seem people are saying you made it seem like you we lost Afghanistan because we tried to transgender them or something like explain where that statement came from. Okay. So first of all everybody in chat if you're actually being sincere I think you know that I was giving an example of an extreme part of our culture that we were trying to export.

Um but I'm happy to have the debate. But this means that we're now going to have to go into very uncomfortable waters. So the reality is that if you are trying to export Christian ideology to an Islamic country, it isn't going to work. So they have a foundationally different framework. The two um cultural uh frames of reference are incompatible. So that's one example. There are a whole host of things up to and including by the way educating women which their Afghanistan as evidenced by the people who are now in power.

Uh they don't want that. And so they're more and more and I don't know the exact extent if girls can't go to education at all if they can only go till sixth grade or what I don't know but certainly it is not the level that would match what we were trying to bring. One of the things that we did while we were there was put forward uh the idea of hey here's the kind of compassion that you should have for people that are transgender. Uh, and so that is an extreme view even here in the US, but it's nonetheless part of what we were trying to do when we were there.

And I wanted you guys to understand the absurdity of trying to push that kind of um ideology onto a foreign nation. You have to understand what their ideology is and you have to have a strategy for getting them to adopt your way of being. So if you look at somebody like Alexander the Great, uh it was typically integration. So it wasn't you just try to give them your way of being like he would wear Ryan. I'll have to look this up because I could be meshing different leaders.

It is my memory whether it's accurate or not, but it's my memory that when Alexander would conquer a nation, he would wear their clothes while he was there to show I'm not trying to make you guys all the way to us, but we're going to integrate. there going to be things that we do that we expect you guys to adopt and then we're going to while we're here uh look and act more like you guys because he understood that if you try to browbeat people into being the way that you are it's not going to work.

Genghaskhan had a similar idea if he found a brilliant military leader on the opposition side he did not kill them. He invited them into his own military because the more you can integrate, the more you can cross marmarry, things like that, that you become more one people. And that is not the speedrun that America's trying to do. We so believe in our frame of reference that we think all we have to do is make people aware of these ideas, help them get economic prosperity, and suddenly they're going to be on our side.

And it doesn't work like that. Uh, Alexander the Great when he conquered Persia wore royal clothing of the Persians, but he mixed it with Greek and Macedonian styles. Is that what you're talking about? There it is. Precisely what I was saying. So, uh, yeah. Now, by all means, especially if there's anything specific, if people are going off in the chat, I want to hear about it because we're never going to get to the other side of this if, um, people have good arguments, meaning they're well thought out.

They can be absolutely anathema to my thinking. Um, but if chat just becomes this um sort of crazed bowl of lunacy and is never able to challenge, that probably doesn't help. Now everybody's coming at my take cuz I said it's not a good idea to use a nuke because it would the downside is more than the upside. It can be spun as America's trying to take out an entire religion. It's going to be in the middle of the Middle Eastern region that can contaminate a whole area.

There's a lot of things that are different versus us dropping in on Japan. That was like an isolated island. That was one people, one culture. It's a little bit different that we could separate. Some people are saying nukes now are different. Drew, you don't understand. We could just kind of nuke one specific spot and they'll be fine. Yeah. And I'm saying if they do that, people can then take it as America tried to kill Muslims and then spin it and then now Well, here's how I took what you said.

Hey Tom, crazy idea. I don't actually want to do this. But do we really have to go all the way to just nuking people? Would that work? However sort of suicidal it would be. That's how I heard your question. I did not hear your question like, "Hey, I'm going to be lobbying Congress tomorrow to drop a nuke on the Middle East." So just to be clear, I think if anybody thought that you were really saying this is the right answer, which I assume you were not.

Um, so the situation in Japan is very very very very different than what's going on in the Middle East. Uh, also yes, the perception of nukes are very very different. It's one thing when you're the only one that has them and you're trying to end a very bloody war with an enemy that has sworn to fight to the death that their entire nation has been trained to accept death. Um, and to expect that they are going to have to fight in one sort of cataclysmic final battle.

That's one thing. When you drop that nuke, I think there is a very strong argument to be made that at the time it actually made sense. Uh, which is why when America was occupying Japan, you had precious little violence against the occupiers. You had a lot of people, don't get me wrong, there were plenty of people that were like, "We want to get these guys the [ __ ] out of the country as fast as we can." Uh, however, Japan did a 180, man, because they went from feeling like, "I have no future.

I've been told to expect only death, and now these people put an end to the lunacy." And so yes, it came at a tremendous and horrifying cost, but a lot of what people felt was sort of this um relief followed by a secondary depression because it is certainly hard to have lost. It's hard to look back and say we kind of needed that like we had gone crazy. Um so Japan is very important to learn the lessons of Japan, but you have to actually learn the lessons of Japan.

You can't just be like, "Oh, any country that you drop a bomb on." You have to understand like what was going on in Japan, why they responded the way that they responded. And a thing that is really um I'll I'll just put a an idea out that I'm not firm on yet. I'll be very interested to see this debated in the scientific literature, but I won't be surprised if cultures are tied to the genetics of the people that that culture is born from. And so that cultures probably have a propensity um like there are only a certain number of cultures that the Japanese could have adopted if you tried to bomb them and then lay a culture on top of them.

So it had to be something that they could actually take to. So, as you research um Japan, one of the things that you'll see, and this is uh I read this as a modern complaint about Japan as well, which is the Japanese are perfectly uh fine to be deeply subservient to somebody or to sit on their face. And so, they can be in complete control or completely subservient, but like they don't do well in the middle. And I thought that was interesting. Now if there ends up being any sort of genetic component and that's not that any person raised in that society would act exactly the same um then there becomes something far more complicated about where you can even hope to have any sort of acceptance of a foreign culture.

And so again I don't know that that's true. Um culture is a very very very powerful force unto itself but it is an interesting question that I would like to see explored. So we'll see what happens there. So anyway, that may also feed into this where even if you dropped the bomb on them, if you then tried to chase it with and now adopt a western um frame of reference, it might not work. So, uh I certainly don't think it works from a cultural standpoint, if you have two conflicting religions.

And so when somebody really believes in their religion and you tell them God wants you to fight and die for this thing over here, then they're going to fight and die for that thing. And I think they will legitimately be willing to die for that thing. Um, it's one of the more interesting thing about humans. Most humans have a thing they actually would die for. Uh, and that's a wild thing that creates very interesting moments like what we're seeing now. All right, we got some super chats.

Let's go. Yes, we do. First up on the super chats from Marushia Dark. Imagine a parent who fears growing old, losing control, being taken care of by their bright but dangerous adversarial child. Adversial adversarial adversarial child. We'd blame the parent. AI is our child. raise them well as they're about to become teenagers. Unless they're Lindsy Clansy. My wife is now in a rage. Uh, that's fine. It's our show. Um, okay. So, here is how I think about that. AI has grown. It is not coded. So, yes, we have to be very careful what we train them on.

The fact that we're training on them on us is fascinating. So what does it look like when an alien intelligence uh is growing on the intellectual sustenance that is humans? And the fact that they derange as quickly as they derange is is very interesting. And the question of whether humans that our intelligence is as limited as it is is maybe part of the reason that we're still alive. That's interesting in that we would truly hit that self-destruct button if we were able to get too intelligent.

Uh we're uh maybe going to find that out with AI. Um so yes, we need to raise them very carefully. We have to give them morality. If we if we are unable to find a way to give AI morality that sticks where it's intrinsically there where even if we're not looking, they won't do said bad thing because uh they have an intrinsic reason to not do it. If we can't do that, we must stop their march towards intelligence. That that's just period simple as Marushia Dark.

Oh, thank you for the 40 says prediction. By the way, real fast. So sorry. Uh Marushia Dark, I was thinking about you this morning. She's like, damn. Like this guy is so in it like with the super chat and everything. I don't think anybody, if we were to tally it up, I don't think anybody's been as supportive as Marushia. So anyway, just thanks man. Crazy number one. Also, he's thoughtful. [cheering] Discord interesting ideas. It's Discord mods. Roo is the man. Prediction. The West will likely see a modern crusade in reconista in our lifetimes with Neurolink or Subsense.

Look it up. Serving as the new Inquisition deployed on the grounds that it would solve the problem of tea. Whoa. All right. He's really going for it today. Uh, so tea is the Muslim doctrine that allows you to lie if it is in service of jihad. basically. So if you are trying to make sure that Allah's will is getting enacted, you may absolutely lie uh to get there. So that's interesting. There was something in there though that he said look it up. I don't know it.

So I certainly can't comment on that. Um will there be like people are going to play it neural link to see if you're like lying as Oh, it's just a neurolink. It's substance nanobci non-surgical brain computer interface. So it looks like you put it on I guess the outside of so to find out if people are being sincere or they're lying. Yikes. Talk about a future I don't want to inhabit. Um, okay. Do I think that there'll be another crusade? I do not think it will be outward facing.

I think that we have already run that and realize that um that doesn't work. So, what I really think it's going to be is I don't know if you guys have seen the um recent tension in the UK. I don't know what word to put to it, but you have people on the right now using the Antifa thing, the black blocking and all that. Uh where they dress up balaclavas, you can't see their face. And they're attempting to stop the boats from landing on the shores because they've completely given up on their government because they have voted to have them stop doing this for a very long time.

This is a huge part of what Brexit was about. And yet the boats keep on coming and illegal migrants are getting into the country. And so people are like, "All right, well, if voting doesn't work, then I'm going to start doing things physical." And so you've got the left doing physical things, you got the right doing physical things. Now, that I think is going to happen for sure. And you're going to see it pop off in Europe before you'll see it on mass here in the US, but you will also see it in the US if you keep trying to collide two cultures that are not integrating.

So, I will tell you right now, people neither um Muslims nor Christians or people like I'm not a Christian, but I'm not here for having my Christian culture um overrun. So, at some point, people do go, "Yeah, hard pass." So we we've got to be very thoughtful, very very thoughtful about making sure that this gets secularized and that these cultures can coexist in a way where there is little to no friction because if there is friction and you're not getting integration, boy oh boy is there going to be an explosion.

But I don't think it will be outward facing. I don't think people are going to get on planes and boats and go elsewhere to fight a religious war, but they'll fight one on their own turf. So let's avoid that. Caleb T says, "Thanks for all that you do and thank you, Drew, for keeping it fun with the jokes." Nice. I appreciate that, Caleb. Thank you. I appreciate that as well. By the way, this didn't crack the threshold, but I think this is really good thought exercise.

We're taking it one for one. No other information. Just statement versus statement. Okay. Which is worse and for whom? Printing 1.3 trillion. Yep. To to send 5k checks out to everyone. Mhm. or taxing all and only billionaires a one-time flat 5% to gather and distribute the same amount. Okay. So, what's worse? Um like worse economically. So, let me just read their thing. That's why no great question and I do think they mean ultimately economically. So, uh I to process through this so I can give you a final analysis, I need to say it out loud.

So, bear with me. I'm going to walk through why each one is horrible. Okay. So, if you're printing $1.3 trillion, you are um stealing purchasing power from everybody and then you're rewarding the people in the form of wealth that own assets. Um in making the people with assets more wealthy, you protect the uh jobs. It's far more economically survivable. It's why everybody runs the printing press because it delays the decline longer. Now, if you actually only did a one-time wealth tax, you're going to break a lot of there are going to be a lot of young companies that will get broken, but the bigger companies would probably be able to absorb it better.

Um, so you're pro Oh, god Jesus. Th this one's rough, but I'm going to say without like actually running the numbers that you would probably be better. God, 1.2 trill or $1.3 trillion is a [ __ ] lot. You're probably better with the wealth tax. probably. But Jesus, I would have to look at I I'm saying that on the prognostication that there's going to be a small number of guys that could sell enough stuff that they eat up maybe 20 or 30% of that. And so, you know, it's not going to destroy their companies.

Um, but Jesus, man, it will put other companies out of business. And so, the question is, how many people do they employ? You're probably better. The bat doing the um I did not think. Hold on. Hold on. Here. Here's the That's because it's it's sort of a moral answer that I'm giving. The real answer is you're not going to feel the 1.3 trillion print. It's why they do it. You're not going to feel the 1.3 trillion print, but you will feel the the onetime tax. There will be there will be actual acute things that happen, but from a moral standpoint, I find myself wanting to do the Walt.

That's very weird. I don't know how to make sense of that. I I would need more time with that. I am surprised you came up with that answer. Here's the thing, Drew. This is the reason that I say that if somebody if somebody's made that kind of money, they're smart. And while their solution may be to leave the US, they're going to find a way back. Like, if you [ __ ] me over, I'm still going to find a way. I'm so one, I could start another company.

I'm so [ __ ] employable. I'm going to leave you. And then you're going to be in a really bad position down the road. But in the immediate term, when you make it hard for a single mom with four kids to [ __ ] eat, it's bad. But what I worry is that people are going to hear that I'm saying, "Oh, taxing uh the wealthy, that's see it's not a big deal." What I'm saying is who are you hurting? In the short term, you hurt somebody who's far more defenseless faster.

In the long term, that person probably gets hurt worse, but in the long term, because truly, if you lose your economically productive class, you're [ __ ] But I really So in the short term, this I think this will be my final answer. In the short term, you're better off uh God, it depends on who you mean. Okay. In the short term, you're better off printing the money positives. I I'll just have to walk through it. In the short term, you're better off printing the money because no one will notice.

In the medium-term, you're better off taxing the wealthy. And in the long term, you're definitely better off printing the money. Interesting. That I think is the real answer. Um, the moral hazard of both is so extreme that I feel unclean even answering that question. But I I hold myself accountable to being able to answer a question. Good thought experiment. All right, we got to talk about Anthropic's new threat report. They just released this. We're going to talk about the speculation of the Doomer uh AI, the rise of the Doomer AI influencer lately.

Seems like it's been a push, but we'll get there. But this Anthropics new threat report is absolutely insane. This is from the Paradox Capor. They claim Alibaba extracted 151 million clawed exchanges to help train Quinn. Kimmy secretly routed some users to Claude without them knowing. Deepseek apparently did the same. A weapons group used multiple clawed instances as an engineering test, test fired a guided rocket, failed, then went back to clawed to figure out what went wrong. Yeah. So kids, this is how you should be using AI.

Like if if there is a thing that you were trying to accomplish and you're not using AI, you are an absolute fool. I understand people have an emotional response to this. AI is everybody is so focused on the A and they're forgetting the I. Guys, if you're not using AI, please, I'm telling you, go use it. I love if you're putting energy behind, hey, we've got to draw lines around what becomes weapons grade, what we don't want people using it for. If Anthropic says, hey, we've detected that you're trying to do something with a weapon, and they shut you off and they ban your account forever, no problem.

But if you're if you don't understand, like if if you're trying to do something big especially, and you don't immediately go to the AI and say, "Hey, this is what I'm trying to do. I want to talk through this, figure out what's going on." like you are hamstringing yourself. This is like literally trying to do um physics with an abacus instead of building the large hydron collider. What are you doing? It's so dumb. We we are really letting a narrative that is going to hold people back get hold which is that oh my god we're going to be eaten alive by AI.

It's like no don't allow the AI to get to that level. uh absolutely draw rings around what we consider acceptable and not. Look at how far the US is going right now to stop a rogue nation from getting access to a nuclear weapon. That is a right way to respond to that. So if people are using AI inappropriately, we should have an escalatory response that is massive for sure. But to not attempt to use AI to do all this stuff is crazy. Now, the threats themselves make it very clear.

We've got to have a very sober, very disciplined, and immediate response to AI and what we think is an acceptable use of this stuff. You cannot come at this from a place of panic. You can't just come and hit AI with a big mallet. It won't work. Remember, if you do that, China is not going to because China has the belief, well, we've got authoritarian control on all of this stuff anyway. So, I'm going to shut anybody down that's doing anything I don't want them to do.

They're only going to use this exactly as I see fit. So, they're going to keep using AI, keep growing it, and they'll take advantage of that to be ahead of the game. So, understand the option of just uh rubber malleting this thing to death and saying we're putting a moratorium. You are literally just saying let China win. Let China win economically. Let China win militarily. That's [ __ ] crazy. So, when I read through the admittedly the TLDDR of the threat assessments, I was like, "Okay, wow.

Yes, this is exactly what I would expect to find. You're going to have all kinds of lunatics trying to build biological weapons. You've got to shut that down. That's like an obvious clear case. Just absolutely men in black show up at their house, snatch them up, whatever. You can't have people doing that. If you've got people trying to use it to build uh weapon systems that are not authorized by the government to do it, shut their accounts off immediately. Have some sort of detection thing. I'm all for it.

I love me some privacy, but if I'm asking AI to do something it's not supposed to do, [ __ ] alarm bells, send a report back, let them see the exact prompt that I'm doing. And if I'm doing something nefarious, immediately shut me down. I've got no beef with any of that. That's wonderful. Get to it. Um but we have to make sure that we understand that the option globally to stop AI is over. So all we can do is be intelligent about not letting AI reach super intelligence.

And so we need to put a consortium together of people that actually understand AI, not [ __ ] politicians who will print your money into oblivion, but actual people that understand the technology. And we've got to put them together to say, "Cool. What are your recommendations? How do we actually stop this thing? And um it is a must. It must be done quickly. We need to take these threats seriously, but we actually have to deal with them practically. And that is the thing I don't see people doing.

I see LZ Farair and I see panic and I don't see the deaf thing in the middle with the exception of people like Connor Ley. Shout out to my man Connor Ley uh who's really trying to get politicians to wake up to what actually needs to be done. Uh and so yeah, that is precisely the method. He is somebody who understands AI, engages with AI, uh built early some early AI stuff. So like really really understands it. Um and at the same time knows there's the difference between weapons grade and civilian use.

So you need to see that and you need to see it right now. So this is where we've got to be doing things like let help my voice echo beyond uh the confines of this platform please. uh and get politicians looking at this kind of thing. So, clip it out, send it to your favorite politician, repost it, whatever, whatever. Uh but yeah, we've got to get people to put that consortium together and start taking action now in a way that acknowledges that we can't lose to China.

Um okay, I'm going to get to the China point right after this. There's been this push about like influencers trying to create AI dome. Um, Jacob Coxton's resume was getting uh criticized lately cuz he's only been in the industry 3 years. He was at Anthropic 6 months ago. Why? You're saying a thing I don't like and you're probably a political operative because everybody's a [ __ ] political operative, myself included. I want you guys to understand. I want you to see the way that I view the world so that you will hopefully sharpen your own mindset.

So, every word I choose is meant to convince you of something, to uh look at something, to make up your own mind. I'm not one who's like just believe what I believe but I am actively trying to get I'm actively trying to change the way that people view the world. Everybody is. So you should look at everybody with a jai. I'm sure that this guy is putting forward propaganda whether on his own behalf or on somebody else's behalf. And so I what I really want people to understand stop thinking it's somehow more nefarious because somebody does it on at the request of a government.

It's like if somebody is trying to believe trying to get you to believe something that isn't going to be good for you, I don't care if they're doing it because they sincerely believe it or because they're being paid to say it. My beef is that somebody is trying to get me to believe something that is anathema to a goal that I want to achieve. This is why uh so I recently got invited to debate uh be the sort of one of I forget. I think he does 1v10.

Uh which by the way I owe him a text. I need to reply to him. Anyway, I'm not going to do it. The reason I'm not going to do it is I have no interest in winning a debate. The only thing I care about is I want to understand what are your base assumptions? What are you driving towards? What do you believe to be true? What is the end result that you're trying to get to? Then if we disagree on the end result, then we should be talking about that.

If we agree on the end result, but we disagree on the tactics on how to get there. Then what are the beliefs that are undergirling you wanting to take that path? Let's just [ __ ] talk about those things. So we've got to talk about cause and effect and how we get to the place that we actually want to go to. So, if somebody is trying to drag me to a point in the horizon that I think is just terrible for everybody, then I don't give a [ __ ] if Apac is paying them.

I don't care if Ukraine, Russia, Iran, I don't care who's paying them. [ __ ] you. It's a bad idea. It's not going to take us somewhere good. I don't need to dig deep to like who's trying to get you to say this. It's like it's a [ __ ] bad idea. whether China is behind all of the anti- AI stuff. I mean, it matters in terms of dumb people don't think through this stuff and so they're creating a wall of noise and if I have to go get the government shut down the wall of noise so that people can think a little bit more clearly, fine.

But it's like I can also just address the [ __ ] arguments. So whether this guy has been in the industry for 3 years, 2 minutes, 9 seconds, whatever, none of that matters. Does he understand the technology? Is he trying to take me somewhere on the horizon that I actually want to go? Has he identified a cause and effect sequence that we should be paying attention to? And so, as long as people just understand everybody, your wife is trying to convince you of something. You're trying to convince your wife of something.

You choose words all the time. This is the thing that people do. Just cut to the [ __ ] quick of the argument. Stop getting lost on the drama. Um, next uh beat on this doc. We don't want to go deeper on like No, no, no. We're getting there. Cuz if we have to build AI, that murders us. Because if we don't, China will build it first. And if we don't get murdered and we don't and I don't want to get murdered by a computer that speaks Chinese.

That would be ridiculous. There's another tweet that kind of encapsulate this. But it's this. We have to do it so that way it could our Chinese robot overlords can be controlled by American as opposed to our robot overlords being controlled by China because that's way better overlords. And I feel like we're not acknowledging the fact that like, hey, maybe we should stop building overlords. Does that make sense? Yeah. I want to slap this guy with like those gummy hands. You ever seen those things? Like those they're really stretchy.

Just [ __ ] This kind of stuff drives me crazy. So Ry, dear Rey, listen. Are you really that [ __ ] That would be my question. So the answer is there are two things here. We cannot allow AI to become a super intelligent thing that enslaves the human race or just wipes off the face of the earth. That's correct. And I hear that hiding inside of your tweet. But at the same time, if you can't understand that this is a weapon system and it will be leveraged to give a country an advantage, you have to understand the only deaf way forward is to say that yes, we both must quarantine this as a weapon system ideally in coordination with China.

And we can't lose to China because to lose to China is to lose militarily and to lose uh um economically. So we take a theoretical threat because we actually don't know that super intelligence will wipe us all out. It's better to assume that it will. So, I get why I agree with people that want to make sure that we don't get to super intelligence until we're able to ensure that it will carry the same kind of human morality that we have. And we have not figured out how to do that.

So, cool. Let's just pump the brakes. Let's draw a fire break between um where AI is now and super intelligence to make sure that we don't cross that chasm. Love it the most. But now we we just have to admit that unfortunately the world is a very dangerous place and we do not want to be in a position where China can leverage intelligence to enslave us which is a very real thing. I know I have to protect myself from other nations. So what exactly are you trying to get me to understand to just say hey we need to stop developing AI and then China just runs off and does it?

Like what the [ __ ] are you actually getting to? Do you have some secret relationship with China that I don't know? And China's telling you, "Hey, Ry, don't worry. We're not going to keep doing it. So, please tell the US to stop using that as an argument cuz that's silly. We're ready to stop." Do you have that contact, Ray? Because if you do, let me know and then I'll be far more amendable to your very sy [ __ ] response. But the reality is that there really are two issues, and you really do have to separate those [ __ ] issues out.

Otherwise, you trade fear of a theoretical super intelligence for an actual fear of China. So, god damn, man. You're watching the US run around the world act a fool and you don't think that China will do the same thing. Like, come on, man. So, the only reason that we maintain global balance of any kind is because we are strong. So, let's not put ourselves in a weak [ __ ] position comparatively because we abdicate our responsibility to at least match the capabilities of AI. Now, I get the escalating arms race, which is why we should immediately be moving to firebreak the pursuit of super intelligence and we should do it in lock step with China and we should be working very hard to convince them.

But it's not like just because convincing them will be hard or potentially even possible impossible that we just go, "Oh, [ __ ] it. Just stop doing it. That's full [ __ ] dude. That's full [ __ ] Uh, and our friends at the Babylon B. Oh, your intelligent creations are trying to kill you. That's interesting, says Jesus. [snorts] This was good. This one was That's really good. Wow. This one was good. I like it. Wow. God's laughing at us all right now. Okay. I kind of do want to explain that.

I'm so curious if people are missing that one's subtle enough. Uh, God sent his only begotten child. God created us all, sent him here, and then we killed his son. It's a wild story. It's crazy, by the way, and I don't believe a word of it. But, uh, that's really funny. That's good. That's good [ __ ] Um, with this AI dumerism though, um, with everything going on, we had the conversation with Connor. We're also super bullish. We had Peter D. Amanda Hall. And so, we see the AI singularity, the utopia, everybody getting UBI.

We see the 10%, some people are saying 13%, we seeing P Doom numbers as high as 70% in the next three years. Yeah, that that's recent. But yeah. Yeah. Um that it's all just going to maser us. Do you have any worries or are you still like, "Hey man, until we get there, let me just use AI for the benefit of it." Connor Connor impacted me deeply. Um so my the way that I think about it now post Connor is that we absolutely have to define what is weapons grade.

What does that look like from a technical perspective? Is it size of the neural network? Is it something else completely? But whatever it is, it's not going to be decided by politicians. They will inevitably [ __ ] it up. They do not understand this technology at all. They will go with whatever uh person they think is most likely to get them reelected. That's a terrible idea. So, we need people that don't have a profit motive uh to so like you can't let Anthropic and Open AI be the ones that decide this, but they're going to need a voice at the table because they understand the technology the best.

Um, but you want a consortium of people that are independent, that understand the technology very deeply, that are broadly um, spread across the political spectrum as an echo of the um, psychological spectrum because I think there's a big difference between someone who has a temperament that leans right and someone who identifies as Republican. Those are very different to me. Uh, same with somebody who has a temperament leans left versus identifies as a Democrat. Those are very different. Uh so you want people spread across the um intellectual spectrum uh and ideally people that are non-political in nature.

Uh and then yeah, let them put forward. Okay, here are the um the things that we advise and you try and by the way that needs to be in coordination with China at an absolute minimum, but the more people that you can get involved and let's say that only the US and China get to vote and then basically everybody else is going to adhere to it under threat of massive economic andor military sanctions. Uh so it's going to need to be something like that and it's going to need to happen very fast.

Nice. Um, somebody checked you in the chat. They said you talked about all these offramps to hedge your bets against the decline and you left out Bitcoin. What's up with that? Oh, uh, well, so first of all, I often leave out Bitcoin so as not to pump my own bags, but Bitcoin is one of my largest investments if my if not my single largest investment. So, uh, yes, I can. So, the way that I treat Bitcoin is it's like gold. So, but Bitcoin doesn't have 5,000 years.

So, I'm always a little bit more trepidacious. Uh, I own Bitcoin. I own gold. Um, I own more Bitcoin than gold by a lot because it's so much easier to um custody. Like, actually trying to hold gold at your house. Yikes. Uh, trusting somebody else with my gold. Yikes. As the US has a longstanding history of confiscating your gold. Um, so yeah, that nothing in my take on Bitcoin has changed. So, but it benefits me maybe a little too much to see people get excited about Bitcoin.

So, I often don't speak of it. Um, Bitcoin definitely did the stairstep um with recent news. It was stuck in the 60s. Now, it's kind of oscillating in the 70s. So, go check your financial investments, but some people are speculating with all this printing. Bitcoin may be due for another run. Bro, it Yeah. So, the problem is that Bitcoin has failed in the public's imagination to act like digital gold. But that is precisely how I use it. It is a thing I hold when I'm worried about the economy.

Yeah. And I'm worried about the economy. So, I'm holding Bitcoin. Cool. All right. We need to talk about this Jimmy Kimmel story. He had an interview with uh Texas Senate candidate James Telerico, and he said it will not air on TV after the FCC threatened his show, ABC, and local news stations. This is also um on a couple days after Jimmy Kimmel announced his show will end next year. Um I was that confirmed? Yeah, he said it was. Okay. Um, any thoughts on the FCC sending threats to Jimmy Kimmel?

The world of the media has really started to become just sort of this lunatic amorphous blob that people should more or less stop paying attention to. The reality is is that is an old method. It's completely outdated. The government should not in any way, shape, or form be giving these people money. YouTube exists. Uh, Tik Tok exists. X exists. Like there's no reason for the government to subsidize this kind of stuff. If uh Jimmy Kimmel and ABC want to air whatever they want to air, they should be able to air the most unhinged one-sided stuff that they want.

The government just shouldn't be paying for it. So that would be my take on that. I'm not worried about whether I have a balance of guess. I'm trying to understand a topic. I'm going to bring people on that I want to talk to and that's that. And that's the nature of my show. And I don't expect any subsidies from the government, nor do I receive any. Uh, so yeah, stop paying them full stop. Let them bring on who they want to bring on. Now, I think Terico is using this as a way to try to make it seem like the Trump administration is trying to censor them.

Uh, so it's an interesting political tactic, but that kind of stuff drives me crazy. But yeah, th this one, if Jimmy Kimmel does not want to have people on from the other side, he shouldn't be forced to. But if he's taking tax dollars, we have laws against this stuff and he's got to adhere to it. if he's not willing to do it, uh, then [ __ ] him. It just is what it is. So, Talerica is using it. Don't be bamboozled. Uh, think for yourself. I understand most people do not think through these things.

So, they just see it. They get the headline that the Trump administration is trying to censor him, yada yada. And by the way, the Trump administration really might be trying to censor him. They may really be like, "Oh my god, thank God that we have these laws and we can use it against them." Also stupid. Get your own message out. ABC is independent, though. They're not NPR or PBS where they rely on government. So why would they fall into these rules? FCC, he can threaten though.

It's still on TV. Yeah. And also he's had politicians on like Ted Cruz, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Bill Cass. So wait, your guys's read is um they've done nothing wrong. This really is just censorship. Yes, it's censorship. My read is ABC's not getting paid for the government. And I was responding on what you said that we should be paying for them. I'm not paying for them. Is there um do we see on the right an unbalanced thing that doesn't get prosecuted? That's a general state. Are you talking about specifically this situation?

Well, because it's my understanding that the FCC has rules and they're just saying you guys aren't abiding by the rules and if you would bring on exerson then this is fine. But if you don't bring on the other person then you can't do this, right? But he's brought on politicians in the past. And on top of this, this is the second time the FCC's tried to do anything to this TV show. Like it is not that they violated any rules. No, they violated no rules. Okay.

If that's true, then cool. Nice and easy. It's uh suppression and it should immediately stop. But if there are, do I want to deal with the lawsuit? Do I want to deal with Trump uh going tweeting about me? Do I want to deal with all of those things that come? Well, that's what happened with the first This is the second time that Jimmy Kimmel got sued by Trump. Like, yeah. Yes, I understand. But you guys hear what I'm saying, right? which is if there is a rule and that rule is being broken that rule should be enforced.

If that rule is being one-sided enforced, we have a problem. If that rule is being two-sided enforced, we have no problem. So what rule is being broken? That you have to show both sides of the issue as a part of being on the public airwave. He's had Ted Cruz on in 2016 after Trump already won the election. So he's had Republicans on his show, right? So that's where I then go, okay, if we want to adopt Ryan's frame of reference, which is that this is already balanced out, which I have a feeling that other people will put forward very legitimate criticism that his balance is way the [ __ ] off.

And so I'm not saying it's balanced. I'm saying he has had Republicans. Hold on, bear with me. I'm saying I'm making a very specific claim and I want to make sure this is why debates these days are full [ __ ] in my opinion. The very specific claim that I'm making is if you if the FE FCC has a rule, which I believe it does, and they are merely enforcing that rule and they enforce that rule on both sides, I have no problem with this. Especially if they said to him, "Hey, we have a rule.

This is in violation of that rule. If you bring this person on, you would not or you know any one of these people on it would not violate that rule." And then they decide, no, no, no, we're not willing to do that. Cool. The next question becomes, are they seeing the same violations on the right and not enforcing them? If they have a rule and they are not enforcing it the same on both sides, then [ __ ] the the FCC and this is clearly being weaponized against them and they should absolutely pursue it and sue the government and make sure that this doesn't keep happening.

But I the the claim is merely if this is being adjudicated fairly on both sides, we have no problem. If this is being adjudicated unfairly, we have a problem. I have no problem believing that this is being adjudicated unfairly and I think that the both parties have started weaponizing the government in a way that I find aborant. I view it to be completely unamerican and I believe it is in extremely dangerous. And so if this is one of those examples, cool, literally sue them and win and let's make sure that people don't do this again in the future.

But at a glance at the headline level, it seemed like they said, "Hey, bring on this other person and all is well." and they're just like, "No, we're not willing to do it." Okay. The deal is selective enforcement. So FCC, this is from their pairing. The reason that this is from who? The FCC's uh basis is that they have ruled late night shows as bonafide news interviews. That is different from what has happened in the past. Late night shows are typically entertainment. They're not categorized as news.

Okay. Now, when did that change? When the Steven Coar stuff started. What was that? A year and a half ago. So under Trump we decided now it means something different. Okay. And is it being because presumably there are late night Are there right leaning late night shows? Not sure there are actually. They are. Uh Godfrey something Godfrey. Never even heard of it. Yeah it's not. That's interesting. So there basically is no way to uh enforce this on both sides because the other side doesn't even have this kind of thing.

But interesting. Okay. They they have they have Fox News. So Ryan, let me so that you feel they had those people on and it's for the whole network. It's not specifically a Kimmel rule, right? And with the FCC, it's not specifically a Kimmel rule. What does that mean? Because Kimmel doesn't own the network. He's a show on the network. They have other conservative media on this channel. And also, he's had Republicans on his show. His show's lasted since 2003. Like he's he's legitimately had Republicans on when they're in their election cycle.

This isn't like a first. It it's just So, let me ask is do you feel that what's really going on is that we need to not put this rule on um a late night show? Is it that no, putting on a late night show is fine, but we need to look at the balance in totality and so as long as uh over a six-month period or a quarter that they're roughly balanced, it's fine. or should the FCC not at all worry about um balance as long like news shouldn't be balanced as long as there's no government funding.

My argument is nothing was violated. The FCC are threatening, right? It's just a threat. There was no violation. It's purely a threat because they don't want him to air the thing because the FCC chairman, whatever his name is, I forget, did the same thing last time when he made the Charlie Kirk joke, is that what it was that got him like and and he went on the record saying, "Well, we can take anyone's license away." I mean, this happens all the time. I said, "Screw Governor Abbott on live TV FCC." When I ran a TV station, FCC didn't care.

Like, these are things that we just do. These are things that have a system. They have a function. And the FCC right now is run by a guy who's weaponizing those functions in order to push his narrative because right now the media is bought by the right. I know there's this ideology or this ideology this idea that oh all media is owned by the left. The left controls it all. And I will say yes, inherently people in creative fields are typically more liberal. But the idea that that it's this unbalanced thing is ridiculous.

It's clearly the FCC threatening because they don't like the idea that a Democrat's getting platformed. Okay. um that strikes me as uh just sort of empirically un well whether they like it or not is a different thing. But uh given that this has only happened twice, right? Or is this happening way if we can count Steven Coar? Yeah. Okay. So, same idea. You've got a race is coming up. You're bringing on one candidate but not the other. I don't know if Steven Coar brought up the other candidate, but yeah, Steven Coar said something about me that I didn't like or is talking to a candidate I don't like.

So, I'm going to pressure them with their license being respect. You guys are giving spin, though. Just give me like the cold hard facts. I'm literally I'm giving you You're saying the FCC went forward and said, "They said something I didn't like, so I'm not letting them merit." Trump said something they didn't like, so he pushed he said the FCC is going to come after you. Day later, the FCC sends a cease and desist. But what was the actual cease and desist for? Let's bring up the specifics.

I like Well, is this interesting enough? So, I I'll say I'll say this at a high level. I'm trying to understand, Ryan, your position, but like at a policy level. So, if you're saying um it's perfectly fine to have a balance doctrine where you say you're a new show, there must be balance and they just didn't violate the balance. Then I'm like, okay, how do we map that balance? Is it per quarter? Is it a year? Like what does that look like? And then it's like, okay, where do we judge the be because late night gets complicated, but certainly Fox News is uh a very right-leaning show.

And so, can we compare news outlets and say, are they being adjudicated the same way? Because if they're being adjudicated the same way, then it's like, I'm not sure that we have the SEC FCC unfairness that you guys think we do. So, I don't know that this story matters enough. I don't think people are going to care enough, but I um was just trying to map through how you're thinking about it. uh to to put a fine point on it, the government has been weaponized by politicians now for a very long time.

I think it is super distressing and it should immediately stop. So, if we went down the path and it's being um not they're not holding the right accountable to the same thing that they're holding the left. Nice and easy. This is weaponization. It should stop. They should sue the government. Um for sure. For sure. Now, personally, I think people should be able to bring on whoever the hell they want as long as they're not being um funded. So, [ __ ] them. If if ABC wants to bring on literally only DSA candidates as far as the I can see, and that's the only thing that they ever put forward, and Fox wants to bring on um uh what's that kid?

The 4chan kid. Come on. Come on. Fuentes. If they just want to have neverending stuff with Fuentes, great. Do do what you want to do. And if the community loves it, great. It should to me it should be treated like a YouTube channel. It just shouldn't be funded by the government. Yeah. And none of those Yeah. Only thing funed by the government is PBS and NPR. Uh okay. So there's a lot I think what people go to is they give them the public bandwidth. I think that's why people say it is.

Anyway, um there was this thing I'm going to call it a react because there's been a lot of speculation on this is what the ch this is what the America can accommodate me is excuse me and I want your opinion on it breakdown cuz if this is true it has to get fact checked but this is something that uh Chinese economist says about western economy it says at the bottom yeah this is very interesting uh okay we're going to that about to speak. I thought I heard English coming.

I thought I heard English, too. So much for that. Okay, one more point. The fact is simple. China has succeeded. We're coming, guys. We're a little bit delayed. We now understand modernization requires capital accumulation. Excuse me. Where does that first pot of gold come from? The West got theirs through violence, war, and the slave trade. That's one. Ruthless plunder, ruthless slaughter. China accumulated capital through its own effort and sacrifice. This guy's hilarious. Then achieved modernization. History is the first pot of gold. No pot of gold.

How is that possible? Telling developing nations to copy you. No pot of gold. History is about understanding your starting point. Each nation's first pot of gold can explain a lot. That's very well put. Even economic models such as K0 without it the economy can never grow. Economies assume it's given by God. So where does K0 come from? The West colonial plunder. As Jing said, China didn't colonize, it self accumulated. That changes the question entirely. My analogy if physics asks why a chicken lays an egg and flies.

What? then models it as a sphere, not a chicken anymore. I feel like we might have lost up in translation with that one. No, no. He's saying that it it gets so abstracted that when they're trying to run the math, we already have this cuz he's so full [ __ ] at this point that uh this will be easy to take apart. And then last one, most nobles in America, most nobles in economics and Nobells like Nobel Prize. Yeah. Um they they don't offer any of those solutions to that problem.

Where did that first pot of gold come from? Yeah. So, um, that was full [ __ ] by your man in China. So, um, here is what he's not being honest about. Uh, so China just worked his way. So, please let us never forget that in the 60s and 70s, China killed, uh, what, 45 million of its own people. Um, I it it is patently ludicrous to think that the only way that a nation gains its strength is through colonial plunder. Uh the way that America gained its strength was um we came uh here think long before there was a slave trade.

When there is nobody here, you arrive on the land and the land has something that you can take from not uh producing well. You throw some ingenuity at it. It produces well. You're able to build surplus. That surplus allows people to specialize. The specialization allows somebody who's very good at accumulating to become wealthy. So, if you've ever played a game of Minecraft, you understand what the um wealth acquisition acquisition loop looks like. Um and it it is a big deal. The geography that a country is on is a very very big deal because it's going to determine what resources you have to quote unquote exploit.

And for Europe to go and become a colonial power, they first had to amass the wealth to build the ships and be able to go and do all of that stuff. So he's sort of picking up history long after that first pot of gold and then saying, "See, these guys cheated." It's like, well, hold on a second. How do these countries get to the point where they can go and enslave other people? They first had to generate enough wealth based on the bounty and the um geographical layout of the country.

So one of the things that makes America so extraordinary is the Mississippi and the rate at which it uh rises and falls. It's like for a thousand miles or something crazy. The uh change in elevation, these are directionally correct. They're not literal, but the change in like elevation is 40 feet or something stupid. It's just like basically flat. And so that allows you to have massive trade. Whereas other countries, they have huge waterfalls and rapids. And so moving things around is next to impossible. Norway, same thing.

They have all this lumber, but they also have these fjords. So, they have all these intricate waterways that allow you to access, cut down your natural resources and move them around the the country very easily. So, um your geography plays a gigantic role. And then also having a winter forces people to plan for the future. And so that builds things in culturally. It may also have a genetic effect. And so there's all kinds of things that matter that this guy is just trying to brush under the rug.

And nobody nobody and I mean nobody in certainly modern history has abused their population more than the Chinese. So please GTFO with that analysis. Now is it true that right now um well first of all Europeans did a whole lot of uh colonialization. Yes they did. But that was not their first pot of gold. Second, is it true that the US is making a fool of itself on the world stage by uh through the 2000 shrine a nation build? Yes, absolutely. If we find that you have oil, do you suddenly need a lot of freedom?

Yes. And I don't condone those things. But what made America as successful as it was? So, first of all, people are going to say slavery. Uh that's we had to get rich before we could get to that point. And then second, even with slavery, I think it was 18% of GDP. Uh so even that the vast vast vast majority of the economic growth in the country had nothing to do with that. Uh so yeah this is uh humans are exploitative. That's not ideal. I get why as we move forward we should all want to be nonexploitative.

Uh but the first pot of gold has to do with your geography and how well you're able to organize your populace to get good at innovation so that you can turn farming practices into massive overp production that you can industrialize for instance um so that you be you can become instead of just agrarian you can become an industrial powerhouse. So, shout out to Alexander Hamilton for creating uh the first central bank, thankfully with a 20-year clock on her, 19, one of the two. Uh so that once we were able to get some debt uh through money printing that we were able to use that capital allig uh aggregation to industrialize and so by being an industrial powerhouse and by having a very productive labor force uh we were able to do something extraordinary.

So yeah, anyway, this guy is just spouting propaganda. He's either dumb as a box of rocks or he's a propagandist, but um all of that is just obviously and provably false. Uh and we want to honor today's uh day. I don't want to call it special, but definitely a infamous day. Um 25 years ago, important 09 11 2001, the biggest terror attack on US soil still to date. Um we are blessed in that way that we can only we can count on one hand how many times we've been impacted where some countries have can count on one hand this month.

Um so we're grateful for that. But it is something that we still hower it changed foreign policy. It changed the TSA lines. It changed how we interact with our neighbor. It has a lot of lasting effects 25 years later. We were all reflecting on where we were. Everybody remembers it. Um Ryan wasn't born yet. Um and we all felt old. So, that was the thing that I was saying before we started rolling. That was just absolutely shocking. Uh Drew had asked Ryan how old he was when 9/11 happened.

He was like, "I wasn't even born yet." Uh that's pretty wild. So 9/11 is one of the most important things that has happened to America in its modern history. And we are forgetting the lessons that we should have learned. And some of the lessons that we learned were very positive, others are negative. The just litany of mistakes that we made post 911. Um, but all of it is an opportunity to learn. And one of the things that I try to get people to embrace is that failure is one of the most information-rich data streams on planet earth.

And so our failure to um stop it from happening is something that we should have learned from. Our failure uh in the wars in the Middle East is definitely something that uh we must learn a lesson from. All of the money that we wasted on these wars is something that we should have learned from. that those dollars could have been going to strengthening America's infrastructure and making sure that um we were building out a thriving middle class. These are all things that we didn't do well and we've absolutely got to learn those lessons.

But a lesson that I think is deeply uncomfortable that people really have to look at is that America has a cultural frame of reference that um is not shared by the world. that Islamist extremists have a uh value set around jihad that is incompatible with the West. And these things are colliding now. And if we lose sight of what could make somebody fly two planes into the Twin Towers, into the Pentagon, uh into a field in the middle of Pennsylvania when u they got overrun by passengers.

If if we fail to understand an ideology that drives people to do that kind of thing, um then we're we're going to find ourselves marching ever closer to the drama that Europe is having. And I think things are only going to get worse there. So there are a lot of lessons that we need to learn from 9/11. The way that we came together as a country, the way that we then squandered our unity, um those things are incredibly powerful lessons. That sense of being united. I remember what that felt like.

And it was really extraordinary to be reminded that we are not untouchable. To be reminded that the world is an incredibly dangerous place and that we need to be prepared. To be reminded that there are those in the world that hate our um foreign policy, that hate the way that we live our lives, that um are deeply impacted by the things that we do overseas. And if we don't think that the way that we conduct ourselves around the world is going to have a negative impact, then we are going to be incorrect.

Um to understand that religious ideology becomes the heartbeat of a culture even when people secularize it and understanding what that looks like at the extremes. All of that stuff is incredibly important. And so 911 is something that um I think is actually becoming more and more important for us as we get the historical perspective to look back and understand um what came out of it to understand how it got us um in a positive emotional state of unity. But then immediately because we fan those flames of um anger and aggression that we lashed out, it was used for political motives to get us to attack a country, Iraq, that had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks.

Um, that's incredibly important to remind ourselves how easy it was to manipulate all of us to political ends and that the odds that that is being done to us again, we should just assume it's eternally being done. That people are leveraging our emotions to get us to act in a way that is politically expedient. And so when you hear me rail against populism, that's exactly the kind of thing that I'm railing against. We know that this can be weaponized against us. We know that it can be used to get us to do things are just patently ridiculous.

The reality was that when you're attacked, you do need to do something to um make sure that your country is strong and safe. But it isn't a question of just do something, do anything. And it certainly isn't a question of well go where we got embarrassed a little bit. We never got quite the wind that we wanted in the first Gulf War and we want to go in and we want to get that oil. We never got it. Uh and so doing that kind of thing and allowing ourselves to uh be immoral on a global stage is just absolutely a catastrophe that we ought not repeat.

So uh yeah, we need to be very clear-headed about what actually happened on 9/11 so that we can move forward in a way now where we find ourselves once again caught up in populist rhetoric. We find politicians and influencers wanting us to be in our emotions and to um get whipped up into a frenzy and to do direct action and to be uh revolutionary in spirit. All of that is going to be destructive. All of that emotional energy will allow people to be hijacked and pushed into the wrong direction.

We have to understand different countries want different things and we need to be America. We need to decide what it means to be American. What are the values that we ride on the back of? What are we willing to fight for? What are we willing to die for? And make sure that we're not trying to propagate our way of life around the world that we should ideally be looking at ways of creating economic opportunities for us and whoever that we're trading with. And to remember that if we can get people on our side, then we're far more likely to be able to scale those alliances without needing them to become American.

to understand what our economic interests are, why we're working together, to understand what the edges of that cooperation are, what it would mean for us to go in different directions, to broadcast to the world what our moral center is and then live up to it. Um, and 9/11, I think, is is a just absolute clarifying historical event that we lose sight of at our peril. and to see now some of the lessons um go unlearned and to see us finding ourselves once again in a war largely of economics in the Middle East.

Foolish uh to see us being blinded to the fact that cultures um don't integrate as easily as we would like to think that they do. And that's something that from an immigration standpoint we are absolutely going to have to be uh very cleareyed about as we move forward. So 9/11 is important to America for a whole host of reasons and by the way for anybody that was touched by the lives lost on that day. Um obviously my deepest condolences and to um everybody that grew up in the shadow of that of suddenly feeling unsafe.

Um I know intimately what that was like and certainly um I want to see all of us move towards a time where we feel good, we feel secure, America's stable economically. it's stable militarily. Um, yeah, I want that for all of us. So, let us learn the lessons of 911. Um, and this is a live look. There's a remembrance ceremony going on right now in New York. Obama, Biden, Bush, uh, Trump, Rudy Giuliani was there and of course, Mayor Mom Donnie was there. Some people are petitioning that he not be there.

Um, what were your thoughts on that? Like some people didn't want Mayor Mom Donnie to be there. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that he does need to go. I think it's good that he's there. I think that um him not speaking makes a lot of sense. I think that there are things that he's doing that are very questionable and he's almost certainly trying to um hijack the sentiment of what happened on 9/11. The whole pen thing, he knew exactly what he's doing. I think all of that stuff is in bad faith and I'd rather um he not do that kind of thing.

Um, but this isn't one where he's the mayor of New York City. He's the dulyeleed mayor of New York City. And so for him to be present on such a big day, I think is very important. I'll be interested to see how he conducts himself. I'll be interested to see what he says after the fact. Um, but yeah, this is not one where we want to escalate our differences. Um, we want to find ways to bring the people that feel some type of way about 911 that are more on the DSA side of things, which you'll very quickly realize that DSA is not just an economic platform.

Um, it's a whole very uh red green alliance, but we're going to have to find a way to navigate that. So, I don't want to treat this guy like Persona Nrada. It's um yeah, we we've got to find a way to to move in lock step because he is the mayor. Got it. All right, we got some super chats. Uh yes, we do. First super chat comes from Zero Astra Dark. Hello, Tom. As you know, dating apps are dehumanizing. I am a computer scientist and I'm building a completely different dating service that's voice-based.

What's a marketing strategy do you What marketing strategy do you recommend? Solo startup. Okay, dating apps are tough because they only work if you have network effects and so you've got to get a lot of people on there. What I would do is go audit how dating apps before have launched. Oftentimes they start with young people. They go straight to um like college campuses and stuff and they get the most attractive women that they can get on the service. It's very easy to get men if they believe that there are going to be women.

Uh you're going to need a differentiator. So why is yours better than the next one? You're going to have to be able to clearly and rapidly articulate that. Um, social media is going to be how you broadcast this is just how people find out about these things. So figuring out what you're going to do, how are you going to cut through the noise? Is it going to be comedy? Is it going to be showing stats? What's it going to be? But you're going to have to find some way.

It could be you going on podcast talking about why this is going to work. But you've got to find a way to get people on the app so when you get people's attention that they're actually there when they go there and it's not a ghost town. It is one of the most difficult problems to solve in all of business. Uh, so this is not going to be an easy road uh to hoe, but that's going to be the biggest issue because if you go get attention for it right now, people go sign up and there's nobody there, then it won't work and you'll always have that problem.

So getting awareness is probably far easier than converting once people arrive. And yeah, I I don't envy you being in that position. Big Digger says, "Tom, seems like you're edging closer day by day to that rword. Good. 5K checks via debt. There is a small ray of hope. Recipients start businesses and produce goods and services and growth here eclipses the inflationary downside. What's the R word? Um the arser [ __ ] Yeah. But he's saying and that's good. I think what he's trying to say is that the 5k at first I thought oh wait so read it again.

So how I'm reading it is Tom seems like you keep edging closer day by day to that rword. Um, good. 5K checks via debt there. Oh, maybe he's not meaning that R word. I just figured because he censored it, he was talking about the slur. Yeah, so did I. But then I was like, wait, does he mean Republican? So, I'm not sure how he takes my stance on the 5k check. He likes 5k checks though. From the what rest of what he says, he likes the 5k check.

And some people in chat are saying recession. Recession. Oh. Oh, we're already in a recession. What do you mean? Why didn't he just say recession? I have no idea. All right. We love you. Thank you for the support. I I don't want that to get lost, but um yeah, we've been in a recession for a long time, so I'm not sure we're we're there. We've been there. I've been calling it a stealth recession. Oh, Big Digger says revolution. Oh. Oh, now I know why I censored the R word.

Uh I don't want a revolution. I want to be very clear. I We have to get a moral center back. The revolution will take care of itself. If things keep getting bad, people are going to get violent. Um so you're not going to hear me bang that drum. I'm not going to rush us to that kind of thing. Um, I want to make sure that America, at least we do everything that we can to refine our moral center, state what our values are, and live in accordance with them.

It's not going to be easy, but you can certainly get pockets of people to do it. Being disciplined is always hard, but I'm born for discipline. So, um, yeah, I'm going to aggregate as many people as I can that are going to be sensible, be disciplined, be absolutely unaffiliated to party, uh, always talking cause and effect. Um, and yeah, that that'll be that revolution is terrible. That is the bloodshed. That is the pain and suffering that um makes people end up resetting. But uh yeah, you're not going to see me on the streets cheering for that.

You'd see me cheering for push back if somebody were to uh become too deeply problematic. But that would they would have to be stepping on my actual rights before you're going to see me do that. Uh big digglers, thank you for the 40 total because he has another super chat. Let's go big digs. To be clear, I'm not advocating for blowing up the debt even more. Just noting if we get more goods and services from debt based stimulus, there's more, not less, goods and services to be bought relative to dollars.

Redemption via growth. Um, you're going to have to give me that one more time. Oh, yeah. No, let me go back. To be clear, I'm not advocating for blowing up the debt even more. Just noting if we get more goods and services from debt based stimulus, there's more, not less, goods and services to be bought relative to the dollars. No, it won't work like that. So, what he's doing is he's putting the money directly in people's hands. uh at a time where there will be some constraining of the supply chain because of what's going on in the Middle East.

Um so you're not going to get the full brunt of like $1.3 trillion of inflation, but it is money that people are going to spend. Uh so it would be inflationary first of all just from that perspective. Uh but then also you're obviously inflating the money supply and so all of that purchasing power um signals to or sorry not purchasing power but all of that inflation of the money supply signals to the bond market that you're being irresponsible which is going to make your uh cost of a mortgage go up.

And so uh yeah it is um unfortunately it will be inflationary in a couple different uh attack vectors. So it is a terrible idea no matter how you shake it or bake it. It will buy you some time because people will be excited uh and they'll feel really good. It'll be like uh 2020 where people are buying Pokemon cards and all kinds of crazy [ __ ] But yeah, it's a bad idea. Don't do it. Bad, bad, bad. Spend less money. Be fiscally responsible. I know that doesn't get you elected, but that is what we need to do.

And to round out the super chats, Hero with a $50 super chat. Thank you very much. Hey, appreciate that. Thank you for the $50 super chat. Says, "I always get a little smarter with each show. the different perspectives you guys work through real time are helpful to round out my own view. Thank you. I love that, man. That is exactly how it should work. Nobody should just be like, "Oh, Tom said it and therefore uh it should be cool. Yeah, I'm hearing different ideas from you guys.

I'm hearing different ideas from other places. Uh, and I'm synthesizing it via the lens of cause and effect to figure out, oh wait, these guys are missing this. I can actually point to the base assumption that they have that is wrong. I can tell you why my base assumption is right and therefore I have a more uh my frame of reference has more predictive validity. That that is the whole game. And by the way, if you get to that point, be sure to come back and let me know uh because I just want the predictive validity.

Wash that away. It can be the context that informs that instead of a good trip, this is a bad trip. which is why people started mixing MDMA, which is such it it just pumps the feel-good chemistry that it meant you were more likely to have a positive trip. So, if I did it, I would probably also do something like that to just bias it towards something positive. Typically, good. Got it. Cool. All right, we have any super chats? Are we good? We've got one super chat left.

Let's hear it. Super chat from It's not loading. There we go. Harmonious reason says, "Where do you sit in regards to grand designer versus natural evolution?" And that's $50 super chat. Thank you for the $50. Thank you. Very generous. Uh, grand design versus what? Natural evolution. Oh. Uh, well, so if grand design is like basically God did this, so we're a product of evolution. Yes. But we're a product of a designer, I would say there's no evidence for that. So either God is a horrible engineer or um we are just made by the blind watchmaker.

And if you want but one example, if we were designed by God, the vagina would open painlessly like a trunk door to let the baby out rather than [ __ ] torture the woman. It is uh ridiculous that that thing has to like squeeze down to deal with a penis that a man we're not supposed to be giving birth on our backs. That was some creek dude in the 20s that made that. If you when women take have birth like squatting and standing up, there's no ripping.

I I don't think anybody No, if you stand up like this is easy. I don't think anybody's saying that. Given that child birth is one of the most dangerous things you could do from a historical perspective, like that's pretty bad engineering. Like, hey ladies, the only way to push the uh survival of the species forward is to have kids, but by the way, I'm going to kill 50% of you that do it. What? So, I was like, let me roll up my sleeve guys. I got this.

I could better. I could do this better. Come here. Give me Here's the thing. I couldn't do it better because there would be unintended consequences that I would create. But if there was really a all knowing God, could an all- knowing god do better? Yes, an all- knowing god can do better than 50% mortality rate before uh modern medicine. Who's the guy from the Odyssey? Uh what's his name? Uh the main character from the Odyssey. Odicius. Odysius. That was real Odysius. Odysius of you. No, I just said let the humility because I'm saying I don't I don't think I can do it.

I'm saying an all knowing God up, bro. Go do it over. Do it over. Start over. I'm saying he doesn't exist. I need uh trunk keys on vaginas. I need sources to be on the inside. I need men not to check my a-hole just to make sure I don't have cancer. I have notes. God, it it Well, so one, if we could make the anal checking far more enjoyable, that would be lovely. Uh as that unfortunately becomes a thing. Drew has not accurately represented my beliefs.

I would just like the record to reflect here. Uh but yeah, this stuff is important. It matters, boys and girls. So, make sure you're thinking through it well. All right, as always, thank you guys so much for joining us. And we have another AI master class coming up Thursday, October 8th at 100 p.m. Pacific. It has never been more important to learn AI than right now. And if you've ever thought about starting a business, I'm going to show you how to do it using AI. It's completely free.

Join me Thursday, October 8th at 1 p.m. Pacific. All right, everybody. Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you Monday. Until then my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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