Venezuelan President Maduro Captured & How The Monroe Doctrine Told Us This Was Coming...

Key Takeaway

The world isn't peaceful by default—it's peaceful because of hyperviolence that happened in the 1930s and 40s. Understanding this fundamental truth about human nature and geopolitics is critical for making sense of current events. Multiple generations have been raised believing peace is the natural state, but that's only because America emerged from WWII as the dominant superpower with protected geography and overwhelming military might. As China rises and we transition to a multipolar world, we're seeing the reassertion of territorial ambitions and spheres of influence—the Monroe Doctrine reborn as the 'Donro Doctrine.'

Episode Overview

This episode analyzes the US military operation in Venezuela that captured President Maduro, examining it through the lens of the US-China cold war and the reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. The hosts discuss the implications for global power dynamics, the naive belief that peace is humanity's default state, and how territorial acquisitiveness is reshaping 2026's geopolitical landscape.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Venezuelan President Maduro Captured & How The Monroe Doctrine Told Us This Was Coming... from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Happy new year everybody. Welcome back. 2026 is going to be a banger as we will see today. This is wild. I am excited to be back in the seat. I had a wonderful break. Drew, welcome back. I hope you had an equally wonderful break. I needed one more day. Yeah, that hence the outfit. I need one more day. more day. more day. People I wish people could see the pajama pants and everything. Drew walked in. Uh Eric called you the dude. Uh so there it is everybody.

Drew needs one more day. I do not. I am ready to go. I was chomping at the bit this morning. Over the weekend, the absolute world was popping off. This was so wild and I knew that today was going to take care of itself in terms of a news day. Now, as a reminder, we're not normally live on Mondays, but we are going to be live on Mondays from here on out. We are now on a three day a week cadence. So, I appreciate you guys joining us Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

By the way, if you haven't already, as a New Year's gift to yourself, hit that subscribe button, won't you? All right, everybody. The US storm in Venezuela, if you haven't heard about it, and we snatched up President Maduro. Pretty crazy stuff. Trump goes full mask off and says that we're going to be running Venezuela. That's got people nervous. Massive protests are popping off in Iran. And Trump let Iran know we will intervene if they start shooting civilians. So keep your eye on what's going on there.

YouTuber Nick Shirley, if you guys haven't seen this one yet, went hyper viral exposing daycare fraud in Minnesota. And unrelated, Governor Walsh has decided suddenly that he's not going to run for reelection. Isn't that interesting? And Trump has his sights set back on Greenland and Denmark is not happy about it. So, that's going to get weird. We're going to find out. Do we have a territorially acquisitive I can't speak president, Drew? I don't know. I don't know, man. I am uh I'm both excited and terrified by what's happening with the Don Row doctrine as they're calling it.

It It's crazy. Um as I was clutching my last drop of eggnog um before I had to come into the 2026 year, I realized that I haven't really been following what's been going on. So, I would turn on my TV and I'm like, "Okay, guys, let me like catch up. I got to talk about this thing tomorrow. Let's see what the news is." And Venezuela came in hot, man. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was speculation, speculation. Nothing's going to happen. Everything's going to happen. And I feel like it all happened in like a day.

So, maybe uh tee us up to see what is actually what exactly is going on in Venezuela right now. All right, man. This is the ultimate case of Fafo. The US invaded Venezuela yesterday at this point and captured sitting President Maduro and his wife. US forces literally stormed Venezuela in a midnight blitz, nabbing Maduro and his wife Celia Flores in the dead of night. Uh, this happened all January 4th, 2026. So, the operation was called Absolute Resolve, and it saw a barrage of suppressive air strikes on military bases as well as the US cutting power across basically all of the capital of Caracus for about 6 hours.

The US military snatched up Maduro before he could close his steel safe room door and he was then extracted via helicopter to New York. I did not see that one coming. I'm going to be honest. Uh he was then paraded through the streets. If you guys have not seen this video, it is wild. Paraded through the streets in a van with the door open. Look at your screens right now. It's playing. I cannot believe this is real. Drew, I'm stuck somewhere between uh proud to be an American, want to put an eagle on my shirt, and like wanting to hide in a closet.

This is so crazy. I don't know what to do with that one. But there you have it. Literally driving through the streets of New York with the doors to the van open and Maduro inside. He really is the content president. Just, oh, for all of us YouTubers out there, boy, does he make this easy. Um, now Maduro is facing federal indictments for narot trafficking and arming FARC rebels, which he's been doing since 2019. And Trump has said that America is now running Venezuela. And the response out of the US alone has been very mixed.

Internationally, the same to say the least. People do not like the idea of us going in uh regime changing. And regime changing to us. Uh there's a mixed history depending on which historian you tap into. Some say that we have just a never-ending string of failures every time we try to do a regime change, which I fall sort of into that camp. Uh, but after some of the research that I did over the weekend, there might be some that actually were better off at the end.

I don't know. It is a mixed history at best. So, we will see how things go. Trump is promising that of course the oil is going to pay for all of it. Uh but the real thing that I found interesting is the expats from Venezuela in this is obviously happening in other countries were celebrating openly in the streets. Uh so at least from the people that left Venezuela, Caracus, um they are very excited to see something happen. And this is the first or second I've heard both first or second largest humanitarian crisis is people fleeing Venezuela.

Um, so obviously a lot of jubilant response as well, but um, we'll see what happens. Trump is promising to make Venezuela great again, but many are obviously super worried that this is going to turn into Iraq 2.0. Uh, for me, my real read on the situation is all of this needs to be read through the lens of the US China cold war. If you listen to what Trump is saying nakedly, I think this is going to look very confusing and you will not understand why he's doing this.

is going to seem like it came out of absolute nowhere. If you understand that we are transitioning from a monopolar world to a multipolar world, the US is not going to directly combat China, but they are going to draw a hard line in the sand, which is exactly what I think just happened in Venezuela. They're going to draw a hard line in the sand and they're going to say that the Western Hemisphere is ours and China will get the [ __ ] out right now. And he is going to be very aggressive about that.

So if you want to understand what he's doing, understand that Beijing had like $62 billion in loans to Caracus Caracus just since 2005. All to be paid back in cheap oil by the way uh that many in the let's call it the elite business class certainly in the oil industry have had a beef with for a very long time because we had all kinds of oil interests in Venezuela when it was nationalized when the Socialist Party took power. they were just booted out. The American companies were booted out.

Their uh refineries and things were confiscated. So they lost untold billions of dollars. Uh and so you can hear at the edges of what Trump is talking about that he plans essentially reparations for those companies. Uh so that for sure plays into it. But again, focus on the what's going on with the US China. That is the thing that's driving his beef with um Venezuela. You can't have a unhinged dictator who's friendly with China, allowing them to sell them weapons be in our backyard. This is going back to the Cuban missile crisis.

Very similar thing. You had Russia trying to move into Cuba, the US drawing a hard line, almost goes into nuclear war. We take this kind of thing very, very seriously. Uh, and you're seeing it rear its head again. So reading this as a US vhina thing will make all of it make sense. the severity, the aggression that this is only one of the dominoes to fall. If you want to understand why we're now saying threatening words to Cuba, that's why. If you want to understand why we went so hard to help uh Javier Malay in Argentina, that's why.

Uh this is really a battle for the different hemispheres. And so we'll see how all of this plays out. But um we are certainly not going to stand for China moving even farther into our backyard because they certainly have been doing it for a long time. Uh Trump even directly cited China's oil grabs, namely the fact that they control something like 20% of Venezuelan reserves. Um for him that's just a red line. Now experts are saying that we can expect trade retaliations likely to hit things like US soil exports if tensions ultimately boil over.

Um I don't expect that right now, but China's not going to be happy about this. Their delegates landed on Venezuelan soil I think the day before this all popped off. So yeah, it look this is this if you abstract it from Venezuela and just say the two great powers now dividing the world in half is going to get crazier before it settles down and is I mean it just looks like it's all going to culminate in China making at at minimum an administrative move to take over Taiwan uh and us having to have some kind of response to that.

But I don't know what that's going to be cuz that's clearly China's hemisphere. And so if we're saying, "All right, listen, you can't come into the Western Hemisphere." I doubt that we're going to overplay our hand in the Eastern Hemisphere. So we'll see. That's what makes this interesting is because I understand Venezuela is a 30-minute nuclear missile away from America. And this is the closest any other foreign power has had that much access close to a US territory. The fact that China has so many loans and they own so much reserves with Venezuela.

So, when I'm starting to see it through that lens, I definitely understand from a America v China of it all, we kind of want to push those lines back a little bit. Um, but then going back to the expacts that you mentioned, I have it shared right now. There was over 200,000 people celebrating um after this was announced in Argentina. There's been uh parades in New York and other places around the world. There's been so many influencers from Venezuela themselves saying, "Yes, we were waiting for it." People in Venezuela were like, "Yes, it seemed like it was a normal Okay.

Then we woke up and heard the news and now everybody's frantically trying to figure it out. So, um, a lot of this when I first heard it was being spun as if we're having military intervention or we dropped a bomb or we're we did some type of, uh, World War II style incursion, but it seemed that people on the ground who knew what was were going on said it was done in a blink of an eye. People around the world who were waiting for Mador to get pushed out are all celebrating now.

So, it seems like we're at least in control at this uh point. Now, if we can maintain that and have a peaceful transition, yes. But it seems like it hasn't gone as messy or as bad as a as as kidnapping a foreign president could have gone, you know, report back in 6 months. So, this is one of those where a surgical strike, yes, is amazing. And by the way, shout out to the US military. I mean, this is absolutely breathtaking. the fact that they were able to get in, kill the power, um using I'm sure um clandestine agents in the country for months, softening everybody up, working back um stage deals to make sure that hey, when this happens because it is going to happen.

They obviously knew it was going to happen. Trump even said they were in a ready position. They knew we were coming. They just don't know when or exactly how, but they knew we were coming. So softening everybody up to make sure everybody knew what their role was going to be when this actually happens. But despite all of that, man, you've got I mean 20 25 years. I I don't know the exact date that socialists took power in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez took power. Uh but you've completely just demolished democracy.

You've demolished a ton of the economic infrastructure of the country. Uh, this is going to be a part of 2026 is going to be about me doing a neverending series of PSAs against um socialism, communism, people just not understanding um the physics of economics like that. That one really makes me um that that's worth fighting for. So, that one I'm going to talk a lot about. I want to make sure that people understand why and how the world become all of us as humans become economic units.

You want us to become economic units. We are economic units out of our own selfish interests. And if you want to fight capitalism, uh, then you should just be the most pro- AAI person on planet Earth. Uh, but those tend to go in the exact opposite direction. The people that are most terrified of capitalism are the most opposed to AI, which is the only shot you have uh, of getting past capitalism. Anyway, it's going to be a a never- ending string of PSAs about that. But so Hugo Chavez comes in, absolutely destroys the country.

Venezuela becomes a failed state, hyperinflation, um mass migration, uh immigration out of the country because when you destroy the economy, when you destroy private property, um there's just physics to the economy and it all goes to hell. So that's all the things that have happened. Now, when you've had more than two decades of living like that, you begin to change the culture. And if people don't have a culture of what democracy means, uh what it means to be high trust, what it means to um extend grace to somebody, like all of that rule of law, to not try to constantly be vigilante style, to say we have a legal system, we're going to let that play out.

Uh because every gang thinks that they're um in the right. So all of that becomes so problematic. And I think that we can and should expect there to be massive problems for years. And if there is no way for us to um allow Venezuela from the ground up to build their own culture to create something that's stable, us trying to put it from the top down simply will not work. And so uh the reason that it won't work and the reason that people are right to be scared about this is people follow culture.

Culture is everything. Culture in a company is everything. Culture in a country is everything. So whatever your culture is, it doesn't matter the force coming down from on top. It just matters what the actual culture is. This is why people don't usually a great power does not want to go in and be an occupying force because you're competing against the culture and it never works. This is why Alexander the Great, part of how he was able to unify the world. Same with Genghaskhan, these were evil men, by the way, that just killed untold millions of people.

But they understood if you want stability in your wake, you have to adopt their culture. Now you're going to rule with an iron fist and you're going to say, "Hey, you can have your culture. Just don't step outside of these very bright lines that if you cross, I come in and just start killing people indiscriminately, indiscriminately, indiscriminately, which they would do, but they knew that they had to let them have their own culture." And so this is how you start getting like all these weird juxtapositions that end up with Santa Claus.

It's like you've got one uh military coming into an already established culture. they bring some of their own stuff uh but they're trying to integrate it with a culture that's already there. So we have to integrate with a culture that already exists in Venezuela that's going to include whatever has happened over the last 20 30 years. Um and then they have to guide themselves to something that is stable. And so many countries say the only thing that's stable here because we just cannot agree on a set of values is the most violent, the most brutal dictator.

and they keep everyone in check because everyone's just so afraid to step out of line. And so like that's where America certainly does not have the will to impose themselves violently like that. So that's not going to work. So then it becomes can they make them rich enough fast enough that people fall in line. Maybe that's going to be the only option that we have. We have to go no no no for real whether you want to see yourselves as an economic unit or not you are.

And so let's make you all wealthier very rapidly with this oil. Let's get it back up to snuff. Let's say that they can do that. And I mean, let's say that they are able to do some Elon Musk type [ __ ] and they're able to get the infrastructure like call it up 10 or 20% in the next 6 months. Like if they could do that, they might be able to buy themselves with milit enough military presence, they might be able to buy themselves six months of goodwill uh if they're helping them reestablish democratic principles.

And if there's enough people still alive that are active in politics that remember what it was like to be high trust democratic wealthy then maybe like we can show them like hey look how nice life is when you don't have hyperinflation when you uh are friendly with the US and we we don't have ships like [ __ ] sitting off your shore, you know, doing whatever uh we can do because we could blockade the [ __ ] out of them. When all of that goes away, you've got a friendly deal with the biggest economy in the world.

Um, you've got a stable government that isn't preying on you. The streets aren't full of roving gangs. Oh, and by the way, you're making money. Uh, maybe, but woo, the history of this stuff is that people are far more complicated than that. And that people will fight for beliefs long before they will fight for what actually works. So, we'll see. Yeah. And I'm curious to see kind of what are the ramifications around the world after the the pieces do land. Um, this goes to Marushia Dark's uh super chat.

Key difference with Venezuela is they already have a high popular dulyeleed leader in waiting. Machado, unlike Iraq, Iran and Libya, much of Europe and even Biden's administration said that Madora was illegitimate, not just the US. So, yeah, look, fingers crossed on that. But I will say that uh you have a military dictatorship. So when you are if you're a Maduro, you're going to rule with an iron fist. An iron fist means the military. military. military. Uh go out on your street and look down the road and just look how big your own like 10 block radius is.

It's massive. And it is full of people that disagree. Now zoom out to a city. Now zoom out to a country and you realize this is why dude almost no matter how many people you send, you send, you send, you're not going to be able to change the culture of a country unless you win hearts and minds. And so what ends up happening is there's just so many people pulling in different directions. You've got people within the military pulling in different directions uh that you can't just go, "Oh, she was elected, put her in charge." Very quickly the military will either coup her or just ignore her.

And so, um, it becomes a question of does she have the might to see this stuff through? And so, I think that's what the US is worried about right now. Now, if it's perceived internationally that she was duly elected, that she is the one that's rightfully should be in power and we don't put her in power, that's going to create international problems for us. So, yeah, it it is this is one that is going to unfold in real time. There's no way to speedrun or guess what the outcome is going to be.

This is a extremely chaotic situation no matter what the what face the US tries to put on it and it's just going to be a race to can you make them wealthy enough fast enough that they think ooh this is better. better. better. Yeah. What what do you think this is going to mean? I know Russia and China buy a lot of Venezuela oil but putting that to the side for a second. What is that going to mean with Russia Ukraine peace talks, negotiations, things like that?

And again, you brought it up earlier, China, Taiwan, uh because both of those, they have the same uh they have the same motivation that we had to even go into Venezuela. Ukraine being in the backyard of Russia, he doesn't want NATO to get that close. China wants to make sure the one China policy is still official. So, they both have, you know, Monroe Doctrineesque Monroe Doctrineesque Monroe Doctrineesque uh initiatives. What are what does that do to us? Can we still stop them? Is it just we got a bigger military, we can get away with it?

What do you think the second and third order consequence consequences to Europe and Asia will be? Okay, so we have to separate the two. So over in Europe, it's already in play. So that one I don't think that there's going to be much change. The only thing uh if anybody had remaining like is Trump going to do what he says or not concerns, those are all gone. Like I don't think anybody um is confused anymore that if Trump says, "Hey, we're going to do this thing that we're going to do it for better or worse, by the way." So certainly looking at Greenland, if he starts banging the drum, we got to have it.

We got to have it. It's like, well, uh you've shown that you're going to push something and then actually cross that line. So that kind of thing I think is going to be more unnerving for places like Europe who obviously don't want to see anything that looks like America being territorially acquisitive. Uh so you've got that then you've got um will we be able to back Russia down? The US unless something dramatically changes the US is not going to put itself in a head-on collision with Russia.

First of all, Russia's proven to the world that we will kill way more of our people than you have the stomach to kill. Uh so you don't want to be in a protracted war with Russia. Uh in a battle of attrition with Ukraine, Russia will win. So Russia knows I don't need to give anything up. The US is not going to put boots on the ground. The US will certainly um sell weapons if we're not doing what the US wants us to do. So they'll sell a [ __ ] ton of weapons to the Ukraine.

But the Ukraine still needs people to fight. So if I'm trying to mindread Putin, it's going to go something like this. Uh, I'm not going to make any moves that would make Europe feel like they have to get involved because then you open a chaos factor that I can't determine as to whether the US will actually put boots on the ground to defend Europe. US is not going to put boots on the ground to defend the Ukraine. So, we'll leave it like that. We're going to keep doing a war of attrition with Ukraine.

We'll let this drag out a few more years. We'll keep getting concessions. We'll keep getting more territory. I'll keep telling people I'm willing to come to the table and talk, but I'm never going to back down. Um it when you look at not what Putin says but you look at what he actually does. This is somebody who clearly has a win state that doesn't involve stopping now. So whatever that win state is I don't know. Keeping the territory that he's already got I would imagine is a big part of it.

So that one is almost certainly going to keep going until there's a big enough carrot that they're both like oo I can really sell this to my people. uh which I don't know what that would be for Russia. That certainly seems to be you can say why they want it in different ways, but territory uh territory as a buffer for NATO, sure. Territory for resources, sure. Territory for military access to the Black Sea, I think, sure, whatever. But they want territory. Uh so, or just to reunite the USSR for Putin's legacy, whatever.

But they clearly want territory. Um and then Ukraine obviously wants their territory back. And so now you're in a position of who's just who has more people to kill and who's willing to do it. That's going to go to Russia every time. So we'll see how that one plays out. All right. China is a very different story. China has their own economic woes. They have to be very careful. Uh China has been on the upswing for a long time. So you've got a lot of people in China that are getting fat and happy.

Uh Xihinping is reverting to some Mauist ways. How well will that go? I do not know. But certainly Mao was horrific for the people. Will they rise up or will he um just be violent enough that they all sit down and be quiet? I don't know. Uh but Xi really does seem to plan to reunite with Taiwan by 2027, I believe, was the date that he set. So this is all going to play out in the next 24 months. So we'll see. Um but yeah, I'm not expecting this to play out in Russia, Ukraine.

I'm not expecting what just happened to play out in China. I'm expecting this to play out in the Western Hemisphere where we are letting people know, hey, get in line with America or there are going to be consequences. Now, this to me is the interesting part. Does America have the stomach to be the national bully, to be the global bully? Because right now, Trump isn't masked off. Like, he has no problem just saying, "We're going to run this. We're going to put somebody in that's friendly to us.

Um, I don't know why people are weird about talking about the oil. 100%. We want to get the oil." like he's just saying the things you're you're watching. So I've talked about this before. When I was teaching film, I would often bring in a bad film so people could see the techniques. Once the techniques are obvious, it actually becomes easier to learn how to do it well. But if you if it's done so well that you can't even see the techniques, it becomes very hard to learn from.

Politicians usually just lie so brazenly and refuse to ever say what they're actually doing that you can never understand how the world actually works. Trump just says it. It's [ __ ] wild. And so he's just like, "Yeah, these are the things that we're doing." Now, I don't know if America has an ability to look at itself and go, "Oh, this is a hyperviolent world and we're the most violent." And so, we can go in and kill basically anybody we want. China would really be a problem for us militarily.

Uh, to anybody in the government watching this, please make um more military weapons locally here at home. You you cannot be outproduced on a ship basis 200 to one. So, uh, we on that side are going to demonstrate to people, we're not the ones to play with. And while Trump is in office, but he obviously does not represent at least half the country, who still has a worldview that is post World War II, everything is fine, and it's only us being [ __ ] that's caused any problems.

To me, that's a child's view of the world. It does not at all represent what's really happening, which is basically unchecked. You have a bunch of violent men, hackers who will steal all of your [ __ ] All of it. Every last bit of everything that you hold dear, they will take. Um, and so the question is, is, is, do we have the ability to look at ourselves and go, "Oh, we're the most violent. We will routinely do morally grotesque things in theory to protect a morally justifiable way of life.

But let me say that again. We will routinely do morally grotesque things to protect a morally justifiable life. I don't know. Like that's me. If you turn me inside out, look at me. It's like, yeah, you've got to have Colonel Jessup on that wall. You just do. There's no way around it because the whole world is full of uh not obviously there are small percentage but there is enough of them everywhere um that they will create problems. The most violent and ambitious among us will expand their ambitions until they are met with violent force.

So So So you've got to be prepared to meet them with violent force. Now, for 250ish years, last 220 years, that's how the majority of Americans saw America. We're right. We're morally right. We have God on our side. And so, yes, we will kill people, but it's only in defense of what is good and right and moral. moral. moral. We're fighting for a beggar cause or correct? correct? correct? Now, social media shows you, oh, we do morally reprehensible things. And so then the question becomes, do we believe that we're protecting something?

Yes or no? And I think a huge percentage of the country does not believe that. So at a minimum, you could see a flip of power and then a total reversion back to that in my opinion very naive, childish belief and then America gets run over on a long enough timeline. Um, so we'll see. Yeah, that kind of brings me to the Monroe doctrine of it all because as I was kind of doing my research on it this morning, it seems like the exact opposite of what we have been doing where we'll stay out of European affairs, you guys stay out of American affairs.

America's being North and South American affairs, but we had interventions in Ukraine and some stuff in uh Libya and North there's a bunch of different places in the in Europe and uh North Africa that we have overstepped. Um, and I think that now with us kind of holding up the Monroe Doctrine on South America, do you think that other territories are going to respond as well? What's the background of it? So, if you kind of give us a refresher on like this Monroe Doctrine, because I feel like it's been floating around now ever since the Venezuela attack.

Yeah. So, uh, let's get into what the Monroe Doctrine is. People are now referring to the Monroe Doctrine as the Dawn Row Doctrine. Very cute. Uh but the reality of what it actually is so 1823 manura doctrine is best understood basically as America saying stay out. It's a stayout sign to foreign powers who would otherwise set up shop in the western hemisphere and do things like Russia moving their missiles into Cuba. So the reason that people are calling it the Donro doctrine is that Trump is now reasserting this.

Um and ultimately if you understand that logistics are a major part of a country's power, you understand why you would want to put a stay out sign. So we have enemies. We need to make sure that those enemies do not find a friendly nation friendly to them nation that allows them to suddenly have uh to share a border with us. So you can imagine if Canada was like, "Yeah, China, sure. Come on. You can put nuclear warheads in Canada, we would have a huge problem with that." Cuba happens to be almost swimable distance from Florida.

So when Russia moved nuclear warheads there, that was obviously a huge problem. So we had to draw a hard and fast line. So this is about saying, look, we have a region of influence and we expect all of our friendlies to move around freely and we expect anybody who's not friendly to us to GTFO. And so that is sort of very quickly what the Monroe doctrine is really about. We're reasserting it now because we're moving through this transition period where China is this rising superpower. There's already a cold war between the US and China.

Has been for quite a while now. Um, so all of that stuff is playing out and we've got to protect our backyard. So, um, that's really the key thing for people to understand. The US is going to be very aggressive right now because if you think about this, the the what we're going through right now is is really the result of two things. It's a result of the way the world is. Violent men will do violent things to take everything you have and you have to protect yourself.

geography as logistics and so getting close matters a lot if you want to be militarily dominant. One of the things that protects us from China is the fact that we have big oceans. And then the other is that post World War II, we've raised a lot of generations in a peaceful world uh where the US wasn't so much like a you do your thing, we'll do ours. The US was so dominant that um we had China wasn't a power at all. They were literally ass backwards.

They had been this was in their 100 years of humiliation. They were being slapped around by the British Empire, had been slapped around by the Portuguese before that. Like just not not not let's let's put a caveat on the the Portugal thing. Actually, I'm not sure what their relationship was, but they the for sure the Japanese and the British had um humiliated China and so they were relegated. Then you've got the US helps Europe, but Europe is obliterated. The US is not. The only damage that we took was in Pearl Harbor.

So we've got this protected geography. So the US comes out of World War II. The whole world owes them a bunch of money. We've accumulated the vast majority of European gold. So we are now sitting on top of these huge gold reserves. The US dollar becomes the reserve currency. So, we've got the strongest military in the world, the strongest economy in the world. Our economy is like booming, booming, booming. We've introduced women into the workforce. Uh, we're sending men to get educated on the GI bill.

We've got the baby boom. I mean, it just this unprecedented run of prosperity and peace. The US is acting as the world's policemen. You raise a bunch of generations in that, right? So, baby boomers just believe the world is peaceful as a default. Gen X believes the world is peaceful just as a default. uh Gen Z believes or millennials believe the world is peaceful by default. Gen Z believes the world is peaceful by default. None of them realize that it's peaceful this way because of hyperviolence that happened in the 30s and 40s in Europe and just the way that the geography played everything out and the timing with America's rise.

So you get this world set. All these people believe oh the world is just uh by nature it's a wonderful easy place and so they start feeling guilty to be quite honest and they look at this imperialistic empire building and they think oh this is so gross. Look at the third world. We're just taking advantage of them. This is terrible. We need to make sure that those people get theirs back. And so now you get start getting into this subset of people that believe in I think they're calling it postamericanism where it's like America was a parasite on the world and we now need to redistribute all the things that we've taken from the world.

And so when you look at the Somali um grift in Minnesota, that's how people can defend something like that where they say, "Well, yeah, sure, but uh we took and took from the world, so it only makes sense that the world is going to take and take back from us." again not realizing just how violent and bad of a place the world can become if you don't have somebody that is strong and can police the world. Okay, so you've got that you have us with this military posture around the world.

You have four or five generations of people that grew up believing but the world is peaceful by default. Why are we these global [ __ ] that run around telling people what they can and can't do? And so in that millure you have the moment that we're living in now. China is on the rise. They realize that from a cultural standpoint, they believe that the hardest fighting person is going to win. Uh Americans believe that we've won too much. We've got to give back to the rest of the world.

China is all too happy to take all of that space, which they did. Uh they get admitted into uh the World Trade Organization. And they rise and rise and rise like crazy. even I think to this day are still getting preferential uh loans as if they were this hyper underdeveloped nation when in fact they're arguably either tied for us or even slightly ahead of us economically. So none of it makes sense. But you bring all of that together, you've got one country, the US, question mark over whether they have the will to continue to police things and hold the fort down and be uh the strongest baddest [ __ ] on the planet or not.

And you've got China who clearly is prepared to do that. And so we are now coming headto-head. When you look at geopolitics through that lens, it all starts to make sense. When you look at the Monroe Doctrine through that lens, it starts to make sense. We've got to draw hard and fast lines. We're not going to take China on directly. We're going to let go of the Eastern Hemisphere, but we're going to say if you're in the Western Hemisphere, you're going to do what the [ __ ] we say.

That's the Trump admin. I don't know who's going to come after him. That certainly wasn't what Biden was doing. Um, so period. Yeah. I think it's what needs to happen though because we don't have the budget. We don't have the temperament for a real war. We can't fund a proxy war. We're already running out of proxy war players in those regions that do the war for us. We need to kind of hunker down and kind of take care of what's ours so that way we can regroup and respond if China or Russia or somebody like that is going to make a move.

Um but if anything, you can't go across the street around the block to go fight that war if there's obvious holes in your backyard. So this for at least in the interim secures the Western Hemisphere for the near future. Um, Um, Um, I would look at it slightly differently. So, it's not that it secures, it's that it begins the process in earnest of secureing. secureing. secureing. So, China is doing all kinds of I don't know if their official belt and road policies, but it's that kind of thing.

We're going to go into these countries, we're going to build their infrastructure, we're going to get them indebted to us, and quite frankly, we're just going to be a boon to them and their economy. Uh, but we're going to make them beholden. Like, let us not look at China and be like, "Oh, gross. We do the exact same kind of [ __ ] So, but nonetheless, China was doing that all up and down South America. And a big part of what they're trying to do, make no mistake, China wants to control the world's reserve currency.

currency. currency. China wants to control the world's reserve currency. So, they know that, okay, we're perceived as this evil dictatorship. So, how do we deal with that? We're going to build what they call the gold corridor. And so they're like, "Listen, we're going to back the yuan by gold and we're going to make sure that the gold is being held by you in your country so that you know you can go access it if you ever want to." And that I'm sure they pitch it as we would never be able to do anything.

But of course they would because they control the military might of those countries. I'm sure that they're helping with security. security. security. But that's going to be the pitch, right? And a lot of these countries, they don't have anyone else to turn to, especially if they want to be an unhinged dictator like Maduro did. It's like, well, who you going to go to? China. China is like, yeah, cool. I don't care if you're an unhinged dictator. Uh, you should be able to run the country the way that you see fit.

And by the way, if you think I'm making this stuff up, go look at official Chinese statements. That is exactly what they fought for in the UN. They like push back against language that has anything to do with like moralizing. So, they'll pull all that stuff out. They're like, "Absolutely not." Countries need to be able to determine what kind of governance works best for them. You, the US, have said forever that the way that we, China, run our country is terrible. How dare you? Like, the way that we run our country is Chinese in nature.

This is what the Chinese people want. And so, uh, and in many ways, pre Xiinping, they were probably right. I will see how it plays out because I would say under Mao, no [ __ ] way, because he was starving everybody to death. Uh and then in the sort of Denza Pang era probably true like the growth was insane. The fact that he did it under a dictatorship I I I will grant them that maybe that's exactly fitting with Chinese culture. Cool. No problem. Uh Xiinping taking us back to Mao may be a different story.

We'll see. But that ultimately is for the Chinese people to decide. All right. Let's go from the other perspective right now cuz somebody just said in the chat it's scrolled so I couldn't see it but they even said that America's America's America's Americans view America as the hero. We're out here saving the world giving giving democracy out but when we get out this country this country this country half of America sees that but even like America thinks that America is doing the right thing depending on who's in the political power we can at least justify like oh it was fine when Camala was here or it was fine when Obama was here.

It was fine when enterpresident X was here. But on the grand scheme of things we are the most militaristics. We have the most imperial positions. because we have the most uh army bases in outside countries. We we do have this stain and this reputation on a foreign uh from a foreign perspective. Now with this some people would call it an international law um being broken of us just kind of going in and grabbing Maduro like this from a federal from an international landscape. Do you think that this does hurt the US's stock or do we have a way that we can just kind of oh well we get it asterric asterk clear it up and we can kind of work our reputation back based off historical.

All that matters is whether you can usher in prosperity or not. So yes, it's going to because Europe, which is what most people are thinking of when they say hurt on an international stage, Europe is a Brussels first uh the WE elite. Like that's all of that chatter is coming out of Europe. It's all very globalist, one government. Literally the [ __ ] that Luffy and Co are fighting against in one piece. It's hilarious. Uh, so yeah, it that's all one government, one world rule kind of [ __ ] So yes, they're going to say like, "Hey, you guys are being selfish.

This America First stuff is just morally repugnant. Like, what are you doing?" Um, that is because again, they've had their own four or five generations growing up in a world where it's just all sunshine and rainbows. And so what could possibly go wrong? So if America can come in and make the world more stable and more prosperous, then people are going to be good with it. Not everybody. People are always someone somewhere is always going to be mad about something. So just brace yourselves for that.

Mhm. But nonetheless, uh if America can get stability from a um trade perspective, people feel safe in their own country, people feel prosperous, they feel like their life next year will be better than it is this year, their kids' lives will be better than their lives. If you get that vibe going again, people be like, "Yay!" Not everybody ever, but it will certainly change the tide. tide. tide. But America hasn't done that with regime change yet. change yet. change yet. No, not only that. like America's putting itself in a super dangerous position because even let's say that it does work that it works fast enough to get the world on your side is effectively zero.

effectively zero. effectively zero. So this is where you get into the quote unquote great man theory of history. Trump is saying listen I've got three more years. I'm going to do this and he's going to keep running the Trump playbook until he is ousted. So now we'll get to see most people can't do that. When they lose the will uh of the people, when they are deeply unpopular, they just can't deal with it. He can. He just keeps pushing forward. So we're going to see this stuff play out.

And he's finding ways to do all of this without Congress. So unless it gets shot down by the Supreme Court and literally the brakes are put on him, you're about to find out how far uh the executive branch in an American context can push things. Do you think we should go into like a Euro style unification of the Americas? How in the EU it's, you know, all the European countries? European countries? European countries? Definitely not collected together. Hard pass. Hard pass. Hard pass. I mean, we're policing like we are, so we're we're we're Well, no, that's very different.

So what the where where you have to begin to separate things is what America's doing right now is I don't give a [ __ ] about you. I care what's in the best interest of America. Now I will try to make sure that you guys are fine so that you're not rebelling against me and I'm not driving you into the arms of China. So the good news is there's this counterveailing force where we can't just treat people like [ __ ] because then they'll run into the arms of Beijing.

So we've got to seduce them. We've got to find a way to make this economically viable for them. But America is not trying to do let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya under Trump right now. What they're doing is we are the biggest baddest [ __ ] on planet earth. We want good things for you a thousand%. I want to see you thriving. I want to get rid of that dictator. But let's be very clear. If this was not in my strategic interest, I would not be doing this.

There's no pretense. Like he's not uh dancing around it. He's just saying it. Like somebody asked him, "How is this America first?" And he was like, "This is America first because we need to have people in our backyard that are good neighbors that are not allowing our enemies to come in and bring stuff. We need I don't think he said cheap oil, but it was close." And so certainly that's what he was getting at. We need cheap oil. We're going to get it. You guys stole from us.

This is now specifically Venezuela. We're going to get that money back. I mean, it's just it's it is literally the law of the jungle. And it becomes a question of are we actually doing immoral things for a moral end or not? If we're doing immoral things for an immoral end, it's going to be bad and on a long enough timeline we will lose. If we do immoral things and the outcome is moral, um whether you believe that the ends justify the means or not, people will vote according to the ends.

And if you're making their life better, if they feel safer, if they believe that their kids will live longer than them, if they believe that their kids will make more money than them, if they believe that tomorrow they're going to be in a better financial position than they are today, it doesn't matter how you got there. People would be like, "Word. How do I know this?" Because we evaporated 200ome, thousand Japanese and everybody was like, "Yeah, word." Because even Japan was like, "Yeah, word, dude. In in the lifetime of people that are still here, we dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan and and and we're now we couldn't be closer allies." So the question becomes why?

And the answer is because on the back of that, we helped Japan for a time become one of the strongest countries in the world. It still remains in the G7. So, it's got an incredible economy. So, they're like, "Yeah, okay." Like, "Yeah, I guess there's a story that, you know, my grandparents or great-grandparents tell about like this really horrible thing that happened, but I don't know [ __ ] about it." about it." about it." All I know is that this place is dope. And that's how the world goes.

If you make place dope, people will overlook how you got there. We'll see. I I'm a bit more bullish. Um, I think that on what on what on what I'm bullish that this is going to have large larger ramifications than we're giving it to. I think Trump is acting with a certain level of impunity that he just hasn't been checked yet. To your point of strong men will keep doing things until they get checked. And I don't know if it's going to be a international sanction.

I don't know if it's going to be a finger wagging from a European president, but I feel like there is going to be some type of backlash from this. Um, I want you to imagine the following scenario. scenario. scenario. Mhm. Uh, you're Jake Paul and you're fighting against Anthony Anthony Joshua. Anthony Joshua. What sanctions is Jake Paul in the ring? What sanctions is Jake Paul going to put on Anthony Joshua? He can't. He can't. He gets his [ __ ] jaw broken. That's how this plays out. America, try and sanction us.

Europe, we will [ __ ] you up because we are so much stronger than you from an economic standpoint. Oh, Russia is now threatening to invade you. I'm not selling you [ __ ] Not only am I not selling you [ __ ] I'm going on news conferences and I'm like, you're abused to be great. Uh, [ __ ] Be real shame if Putin invaded because we're not going to sell them a goddamn thing. So, if they want to clap back, that's on them. Wouldn't that just open the door then to to what?

to what? to what? To somebody else saying, "Okay, we don't need America more. Let's ice them out." Yes. and on a long enough timeline. What a stupid move that would be. A thousand. A thousand. A thousand. You think we're just untouchable out here? We're We're made We're not untouchable. China can [ __ ] us up. What I'm saying is that you have to understand what the like global pecking order is. When it's USV China, you've got peers. got peers. got peers. Those two can hurt each other. Not only can they hurt each other, they can hurt the world.

So, this is two gigantic [ __ ] of like equal strength. Although one of them has a way better jiu-jitsu game, China military industrial complex way more on point than ours, but we from a like let's say our wrestling is better or our uh [ __ ] stand uh up game is better, whatever. But we are two very powerful heavyweights. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. But we're in a cage and there's no referee and there's no time limits, bro. It there's not even a way out of the cage. There is only I beat you, you beat me or I hurt you bad enough, you hurt me bad enough that we become consiliatory, but that's it, man.

And so, uh, can what can Europe do? Basically nothing on a short time horizon. on a long enough time horizon, they could build uh their wealth back up, they could get people on their side, but we're talking 30 years, 50 years. Like, this is not the kind of [ __ ] that happens fast. So, you've got to build alliances. Look how long it took China to rise. So, depending on where you start the clock, China's like 50 years in. So, and they're Hey, what they pulled off is absolutely extraordinary, but that's that's 50 long ass years.

So anyway, I this is not me saying US go be a bully. This is me just telling you what I see playing out. Now I know people are going to represent this as what I'm saying we ought to do. It's not me saying what we ought to do. This is me saying when I look at this, this is how the world actually is. actually is. actually is. This is what you see playing out. If you look at this as he's trying to stop fentanyl or cocaine from coming into the US, you are going to be perpetually confused.

If you look at this only as we just want to get some cheap oil, you're going to be perpetually confused. If you look at all of it within the China is a rising power, we're going to cleave off the Western Hemisphere and we are going to get everybody the [ __ ] line. Uh, all of a sudden it's going to make sense. All of a sudden doing a currency swap with Argentina makes sense because Javier Malay is pro Trump, pro- America, pro our values. Mhm. If you want to understand why we went in to Venezuela, well, all those same reasons in the reverse.

If you want to understand why Cuba now is getting some talk makes sense if you again geographically Russia has a history of putting [ __ ] there. China, I'm sure they were involved in Venezuela, all that. Oh, and we haven't even talked about the fact that Trump believes that Venezuela was involved in rigging the 2020 election. Now, it's entirely possible that a huge part of this, like the way that they went and got him and made sure that we brought him to New York and all that, is that they have a deal with him where he's going to name names in the Biden administration administration administration and this is what they did or the um Obama administration and say the Democrats did XYZ.

So So So yeah, we're going to chat is debating the morals of this. Um, as they should be. Is gathering power good or even virtuous? virtuous? virtuous? Gathering power is good and virtuous. And anybody who thinks weakness is a virtue is going to have a miserable [ __ ] life. And I'm sorry for that. I wish that the world wasn't that way. Uh, this is where I go. Jordan Peterson's interpretation of the ancient Greek upon which the Bible was built where, if he's correct, the meek that shall inherit the earth are people who are incredibly strong but keep their sword sheathed.

It is not a virtue to be weak. It is a virtue to be strong as [ __ ] and keep that in check. Read about Bruce Lee, man. man. man. I mean, it sounds like there's nobody that's going to check us. We're going to keep doing our own thing. China is already checking us. China is Yes, but they're not doing anything. Yes, they are. They're doing all kinds of [ __ ] All of this stuff is going to play out in the Cold War. You're just young enough. You don't You were alive, but you don't remember what it was like growing up with US vussia like where you're sending spies to each other's country.

Um you're trying to infiltrate and get as many secrets as you can. You're doing all kinds of sanctions and embaros embaros embaros and all that. But that's why we moved on Venezuela because of the Chinese influence. influence. influence. All right. Well, it seems like this will then be just another a no consequence uh US military operation. Well, I think we have to look at consequence in the near term. There will be no immediate term consequences because no one is going to say a thing about it.

about it. about it. No one has the ability to say a thing about it. Russia, nope. China not crossing an ocean to [ __ ] with us in Venezuela? No. Will it echo in weeks in trade negotiations? Probably. If Chinese energy costs go up, then US somewhere, soy or somewhere else, our costs are going to go up. The for sure. So, there are going to be midterm consequences, not midterm elections, though that may be as well. But in the, you know, sort of middle ground timeline, 6 months, 18 months, there will be consequences that I can't yet predict because I don't know how this is going to play out.

This is so early and there will for sure be long-term consequences. Now, will the balance be in the US's favor or not? Don't know. But the one thing I will say, now let's get into a the US must control its backyard. Full stop. Whatever that means. So you cannot China will choke you out. If people have the base assumption that China just wants to play nice and China wants equilibrium, then yeah, I bet this looks like a [ __ ] move. That that is not the reality. China believes that they have a mandate from heaven to rule the world.

So they're not stopping. Do you think that now if China makes that move with Taiwan we are we have no bearings to stop it or do you think we're still going to I honestly for me that is at least four question marks. I don't know what Trump is going to do. So you could if they invaded today Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. you couldn't just let them take over the chip manufacturing. You can't you can't like your whole modern way of life, AI supremacy, all of it would just defaced in China.

the increased investment in Intel in America and the factory uh that the Taiwan TSMC is coming to Arizona. Like those type of like if I'm China, I wait until the US has a release valve on the manufacturing of critical chips because then I know ah they they're not going to have the will to fight. But if you do it at a moment where it's like think about how differently a man fights if his kids are starving versus if his kids are wellfed, it's a very different ballgame.

ballgame. ballgame. So if we have we're making our own chips here in the US, everything's going great and let's say 40 to 50% of our production now is in either the US or friendly territories. And then China makes a move, then we can go, listen, we knew that they were going to do something foolish like that. We wish Taiwan the best, but we've moved our supply chains largely. We expect some disruption, but not anything that's going to be crazy. The narrative changes, everything switching. switching. switching.

Correct. If they did it today and it's like 2% of our chips come from anywhere else and 90% or 98% come from there, we got to [ __ ] do something about it. Now, would they be militarily proactive? Probably not. But they would sell a metric [ __ ] ton of weapons to Taiwan, which would be wildly provocative to the Chinese, but we would still do it. And then we would be um sanctioning China to death, but China would sanction us back. And so then it would be a well, we're about to find out how real China's economy is.

Now remember, the US GDP is like 72% consumption. So theoretically on a protracted battle with China economically, the US would come out ahead ahead ahead because we're the we're the buy [ __ ] They sell [ __ ] Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, copy that. Um, cool. All right, we need to get off this topic. I know we have a big super chat though we wanted to get to. to. to. Indeed, we do. Uh, from Johnny, good night 4710 for a hundred bucks. Thank you so much for that. No joke, No joke, No joke, Tom.

I've been waiting for you to go live. Will you say you believe that we'll make it? Especially if we do the 26 things you laid out in your video. My name is Good Night, Johnny. Good night, and my life will and is forever change. Thanks, Tomine. Thanks, Tomine. Thanks, Tomine. Well, I appreciate that. Uh, it's very easy for me to say individually, yes, you can make it. You will make it if you do the right things. I won't be so bold as to say that I am flawless.

And so, just do the 26 things that I say and you're going to be perfectly fine. They are an incredibly good start. they are how I live my life. Uh but I would adjust my behavior immediately if I saw different feedback from the market. That's very important for me to state. You cannot just get a piece of paper and go I'm just going to execute against this. Um I think at an individual level if you have the requisite intelligence you are going to be fine no matter what happens.

Uh so at that place I don't fret. Where I fret is that there are call it half uh of the world that doesn't have the time or the intellectual bandwidth to figure all that stuff out and we owe them good architecture, architecture, architecture, cultural architecture cultural architecture cultural architecture um so that they can just live their life. So anyway, I feel a moral obligation to do that. So when I'm sending out warnings, it's really about the architectural level. never worried about the average human. The average human just follow Ray Dalio's advice economically anyway around an all-weather strategy and you'll be fine.

You might not come out the other side wealthy and any of your friends at Yolo into something that hits, they're going to look at you and laugh. Uh but anybody that invests like that is going to be toasted. Um so anyway, I don't lament at the individual level if you meet minimum intellectual requirements ever. Like I don't have any concerns whatsoever. I hope that helps. We've got one left over from Marushia Dark on Maduro. So, um, they said, "Lefts out here like they wouldn't be dancing in the streets if Trump back if Trump blackged Putin or Bby.

Much of the pro- Maduro sentiment online appears funded by China. Lots of astrourf accounts on X make commies mad again." Yeah, all probably true. But instead of dismissing the people who really believe it, because there are people in my life who I love who really believe it and they're bright. Uh but boy oh boy, it is fascinating to hear them talk as they assess the world. Uh so there are people that really do believe it. There are people that really do believe that socialism is better as one example that really do believe that no matter what Trump does that is just completely wrong and unhinged.

They really believe it. So um while I agree that there's tons of bots, I agree that a lot of it's astrourfed. I agree that a lot of it is um people that are swayable being swayed versus it all just being authentic, but I find that it's better to engage with life where you run a thought experiment that takes you into the absolute most difficult problem and then deal with that. And the place to face headon are people who with love in their heart believe that we need to migrate to socialism uh to be good, just, moral and kind.

those true believers are the ones that we have to win over. Uh and failing to win them over will cause bad architecture to come into place as it has so many times throughout history and absolutely demolish those countries including potentially the US. Hopefully not. Yay. Hopefully uh an age of prosperity is staring us in the face. Um but it won't happen by accident. And so we're going to have to find a way to make a compelling case for exactly why economics have physics. Um to explain to people exactly why socialism doesn't work.

Um and to win people over with results. That is going to be extremely important because part of the reason we're losing the battle right now is um economic corruption starting in 1913 has led us down a historically repeating path of debt and money printing that absolutely eviscerates the middle and working class just reliably over and over and over and over. And no country in human history has ever avoided the temptations of debt and money printing. So, we got to solve for that. Let's go, Drew. What we got next?

Cool, cool, cool, cool. Um, Manny was uh inaugurated on January 1st. Yeah, he was. Um, this this line just keeps coming back. So, I want to talk about it. Um, on the backs of his uh tenant director um is also using the same line. So, I want to hear it hear it from him, hear it from her, and then you can kind of give your take on what it actually means. means. means. Let's do it together. We will replace the fragility of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

collectivism. collectivism. God damn P. What? I mean, they're really just saying it. [ __ ] hell. [ __ ] hell. [ __ ] hell. And then this is from his tenant. Was that from his speech? That was from his Ignite. I got to watch the whole thing. It didn't make my radar at all. I guess it just all got swallowed by Venezuela. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was the first and then of course Yeah. The last holy Oh, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. The second you hear somebody say anything about collectivism, you need to hear what they are actually saying.

I'm going to take your [ __ ] Okay? So, when he says collectivism, he means I'm going to take your [ __ ] Now, how do I know he means that? Cuz I'm not being hyperbolic at all. I mean, he literally means whether even he knows it or not, I'm going to take your [ __ ] Is because what happens is you put people in the game of life. We are all economic units. We all trade our time for money in some fashion. But some people are very good at playing that game.

And so they will be able to get disproportionate value out of their time than the next person. Okay? And so what ends up happening is you put everybody in that game. Some people play it way better than others. And so they end up with more. And then people go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not very fair. We need to think of this as a collective. And so now I'm going to need to take some of the things from you and give to other people." Okay, cool. Problem is, there are going to be some people that go, "No." Now what?

Now what do you do? You take it by force. That's it. And so this has played out over and over and over, over and over and over all throughout human history. We will put somebody in prison if they don't pay their taxes. Anybody disagree with that? So they they will already lock you up if you don't pay your taxes. Now you can imagine if they say, "No, no, no. We've got to make this [ __ ] more equal." And then you go, "But hold on a second. I'm better at this game than other people.

Why can I not play the game to win? Um, and they go because that's not fair. And so, drum roll please. We're going to take your [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] So, I this is one of those where the the through line is so direct and so short. This is not like convoluted pathing or anything that you have to take. It's very simple. If we can all agree that if you put people of differing levels of intelligence in a game that can be won or lost that people with the higher degrees of intelligence on average they're going to win more.

And then if you try to equalize the outcome that you have to take people's [ __ ] That's that is what collectivism is. And so now go research it. Go research China. Go research the 45 million people dead uh just from starvation. By the way, there was way more dead for other reasons. Uh, go research Ukraine and the famine. Was it 28 23 28 somewhere around in there? Um, as Disney is being formed in America, tens of uh, did they get to tens of millions? I think it was like 12 million people were starved to death in Ukraine.

Ukraine. Ukraine. That's collectivism. Read about the Kulocks. Kulocks. Kulocks. You have more [ __ ] So, that's obviously not fair. So what did they do, Drew? They killed them. And so what happens when you kill the people that are winning at the game? They tend to be the people that are brighter, more talented, have better ideas. When you kill them, those ideas just go away. That's how the people ended up starving to death. You killed the people that knew how to do it in the name of what?

Say with me now, collectivism. So yeah, we're going to kill you and take your [ __ ] So yeah, his tenant director C. Weaver said something the similar and we'll transition from treating property as an individual good to a collective good. Um this whites especially she also said pe people of color will be impacted who are homeowners. So this was a bit more hyperbolic in the title of the captioning but it's the same principle of individual property ownership versus collective property ownership. Yep. And sorry really fast. uh because I'm going to guess one of the things that people are going to push back on is but Tom we already have some degree of socialism in the US and I would say yes that's true and I would say there's an amount of hey let's all pay taxes and have some communal things um and um and um and we want to redistribute the wealth in that fashion and I would say yeah that makes sense when you have private property and you say Hey, you control the means of production.

You get to reap the benefits, but we're going to tax people. people. people. I don't think anybody has a beef if it's a flat tax, so everybody pays 20%. Whatever. No one's going to complain about that. The people that make more money will pay a huge a much larger raw dollar, dollar, dollar, but it's still just a percent. Cool. Uh you could do what the US does and roughly half the country doesn't pay any tax at all. It's like 3% of the tax. Uh, and then the other 50% pay 97% of the tax.

You could do that. And there is a point at which when it's based on I can still own my private property, it's mine. That people go along with it. Some of it's go along to get along. Some of it is yeah, it's better that certain things like the military being the most obvious obvious obvious that are handled at the level of the government. And yes, I speaking for myself um I don't want an anarchic system. I don't want um a libertarian system. I want a wellfunctioning um lightly regulated capitalist system.

Cool. So the goal is to how much tax can you take from people where everybody feels good about it and take that and you help people and all of that is wonderful and beautiful and I think it's amazing. amazing. amazing. What they're talking about is they're saying change your relationship to property. What they're talking about is getting rid of private property. So, you can't own the property yourself. You can do something with it if you've got the right right right uh you know, approvals and all of that, but it's not owned by you.

It's owned by the government. Now, do things get better or worse when the government takes it over? Worse, always and forever because there's no money signal, price signal. there's no competition and so there's no one forcing you to get better. Um, when you only have one Department of Water and Power in your town, they're going to be ass. When you only have one internet service provider, they're going to be ass. Uh, when the government runs something, it's just going to be ass. Like by definition, as a quick reminder, the rate of retirement from the United States government is bottlenecked by how fast we can move files into a mine where the files are stored.

In the age of AI and computers, we still physically move the files into a minehaft. Okay, that's real. I'm not making that up. So that's what happens when the government runs something. So with with all these pushes um I've seen something I was trying to find the article I couldn't find it but you know Mam Dani did did something as research the permit pipeline to build new housing and what's take what boggles down the New York housing build housing process down. down. down. So if he were to do certain things that would be let's just call it democratic socialism like we're going to do 75% capitalism 25% socialism on certain aspects.

Democratic socialism is socialism. Social democracy, which is what I what I what I Okay, maybe I got I thought dem he said democratic socialis he said democratic socialism not social democracy. So social democracy is ultra high tax across everyone. It's the Nordic model. Okay. Copy. Okay. Copy. Okay. Copy. Democratic socialism is socialism. Period. Period. Period. Okay. So you're saying all the nuances he's not going toward Nordic, he's going full socialism. Correct. Communism. Okay. Um I had some people in the chat disagree. So they are wrong.

I mean that of his own admission. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So if you want to play home girl, she's about to say the thing which is we want no more private property. private property. private property. That's not social democracy. That's democratic socialism. That is socialism. Okay. The Nordics do not do uh government owns everything. It's all high tax off of private ownership. All right, let's play this uh talking about housing and see if this could be a viable way to fix it while I look up the differences between those two socialisms.

I think the reality is is that for centuries we've really treated um property as an individualized good and not a collective good and we are going to tr and transitioning to treating it as um a collective good and to towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently and it will mean that um families especially white families but some PC families who are homeowners as well um are going to have a different relationship to property than than than that was her searching for the uh politically correct words there.

A different relationship to property. Dude, this is so wild. This is so wild. This this idea isn't dying though. Uh so is this just they just have to fafo until until until they find out? Like I mean that's the trajectory that we're on because we are in a position right now where now where now where um we have so failed people with the current economic system that they want something different and that is necessary. But the what is the different thing is going to matter a lot.

And right now some percentage of people the the thing that they want is going to be horrific. Like it's actually horrific. We've tried it over and over and over. It's so wild. It'd be utterly fascinating to hear people's um explanation of why this time is going to work. But this time it's going to work always boils down to uh because the people now that are like me that think like me, they would be able to pull it off. everybody else was dumb. Not it violates a principle of the way that the human mind is wired, which is actually why it doesn't work.

Um, if you could get everyone to agree socialism would work. You can't. And it doesn't. And that's why, dude, families will tear themselves apart over wills, which is just how to distribute the resources. resources. resources. If a family will tear itself apart, imagine a country, bro. Like, people are not going to agree. And by the way, you're going to get a bunch of politicians, bureaucrats, nameless, faceless, that are going to decide. And the level of maddening that that becomes, it just chokes out innovation. It chokes out progress.

It's so wild. And so people are running these mental models that I'm just like where like are you not encountering history and going okay what specific thing would I have done differently because it always comes down to down to down to you have to be right every time because if you're right every time then you can ignore the will of the people but one you first what are we trying to do and does everyone agree with that so everyone would have to agree with the desired outcome then you would have to be right at every step as to what to do to get to that desired outcome and then you could ignore the will of the people because you're able to get them to their desired outcome.

But I'll just put it to you. If there was a powerful AI and if you did exactly what it told you to do and it would lead to a good outcome, would you completely give up your will and just do what the AI says? Some very meaningful percentage of people are going to say absolutely not. On principle alone, I'm not going to do that. So what on earth makes you think that they're going to do it for a government that a doesn't have an end state that everyone agrees with is wrong a lot.

And so now people have a reason to say I disagree and think we should do it this way. And once somebody disagrees, what do you have to do to get them in line? You have to shut them up, lock them up, whatever. Kill them. Tends to be a very popular answer. So I'm just like, bro, when I Okay, so there's a fascinating thing that people will do when they come up with a new philosophy on investing and they'll say, if you had invested this way from like 1901 until today, how many years would you have been up?

How many years would you have been down? People do not do this with ideology. They don't go, oh, with this ideology, not not what would have happened. What did happen? Oh [ __ ] this ideology killed more people than basically anything. So, socialism killed way more people than war. But I think most people agree war sucks, but they don't agree socialism and communism suck. I don't I don't understand. I can give you a reason in terms of the way that people are paristatized by their own emotions which make them connect dots that don't actually connect.

And they think because this feels right, it must be right. It must actually work. But they don't understand how the human mind is actually architected. So and go ahead from the chat. They said, "Yes, we need a different relationship with property. How else could it become affordable if the prices will continue to go up? If property continued by debt and money printing. So money printing is very simple. the government saying, "I'm going to take more of your money and I'm going to do it without you having to vote on it." If people understood money printing as that, then every time we go over budget, they would understand that the government is saying, "I'm still going to take this money from you." And the reason it gets complicated is because the government is technically taking it from anybody who holds dollars, holds dollars, holds dollars, but they're still taking it.

And I presume everybody that can hear my voice right now uh is their life is in some way impacted by the dollar. They might not hold it directly, but they're exposed to the US economy in some very meaningful way. So, uh but people don't understand how they don't understand how it works. It's so interesting. I know if I read the comments, I'm going to be maligned endlessly by people who do not understand. It's interesting cuz it is split cuz I'm getting a portion of socialism doesn't kill those people.

Um people kill people and then on the other side it's working hard in America. They're not wrong by the way. It like working hard in America doesn't get you anything. Yes. Correct. The economy is [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But can we agree on why the economy is [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] You said earlier though that like America can go into Venezuela and do all these things and Venezuela will buy in as long as their kids feel like they have a better home. They be better and stuff like this.

But what will they do if they don't? But that's what America is now. Correct. Correct. Correct. So I So I So I you know my philosophy. So I don't know how I'm surprising you right now. Our economy is totally [ __ ] We have stolen from the American people. This can be traced back from anyone who holds dollars. You are being abused right now today. uh anytime that your budget is not balanced, you are being stolen from by your own government who does not have the balls to just get you to pass legislation because they know that you wouldn't pass it.

Uh if you have uh let's say a $4 trillion um budget, sorry, what do we have? $6 trillion budget, 4 trillion in taxes roughly. It's a $2 trillion uh deficit. So you've got the $2 trillion delta there. There is no delta. They're just money printing which is secretly taking the money from you but it's still taking the money from you. And so this really makes me mad. I'm gonna say in a single sentence and no one is going to understand this or very few people will understand it.

The economy The economy to be real must be expressed in a complex fashion that makes most people turn their brain off and just say fine. That's the entire problem. In order for the economy to run efficiently, it has to be run that way. For for the economy to be understood to be understood, not even as it actually works. Got it. Okay. It must be explained with all the complexity, which will cause most people to tune it out and say, "Fine." The government tells you to your face, "I'm going to steal 3% of your money every year." every year." every year." And people just go, I don't understand it.

Fine. it. Fine. it. Fine. So when I make it simple, I am lying because the economy isn't as simple as I make it sound. But at least people can understand the effect. And the effect is in the last 5 years, years, years, 25% of your money was stolen by the government. 25%. government. 25%. government. 25%. And then any number that is the same percentage year-over-year is what's known as exponential growth. So they are stealing exponentially more money from you every year. So 3% on a dollar is 3 cents, cents, cents, but the next year it's now a dollar and three cents.

and they're going to take 3% of that and on and on and on and it just compounds and gets bigger and so everybody's just like, "Yeah, I don't really want to understand why that's true. I don't want to understand why inflation," which Tom bill used to think inflation was just a law of nature. I just it happened. I didn't know why it happened, happened, happened, but just everybody seemed like it was just always there. I was just cool with it. Yeah. So, Yeah. So, Yeah. So, uh that is the government stealing money from you.

All of this is architected off the human mind. The value of quote unquote money is just an artifact of the way the human mind works. Um the fact that people won't acquies to socialism and communism without violence is just a way that the human mind works. Ants don't have a problem with it. Ants don't care. Oh, I got to die. Yeah, no worries. Bees, oh, I don't get a [ __ ] Okay, cool. Like those guys, they get a [ __ ] I just have to go die. Yeah, okay, no worries.

Humans aren't like that. We are not a collectivist species. We can cooperate, but we've got to know what's in it for us. And it could be the your genes get passed on, which is why you'll fight much harder for your family. You'll fight harder for your own children than you will for your nieces and nephews, but you'd fight harder for your nieces and nephews than you would for a stranger's kids. Just that's the way the human mind's architected. architected. architected. Just is what it is. Much like socialism uh tends to end up in a dictatorship as it starts to devolve.

Um, is capitalism uh destined to always devolve into a tale of two economies? Um, yes. It's more nakedly going to be um a person will turn themselves into a king because they just control all the resources. So you have to keep it in check because if you let Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, whatever, like win all the money, then you just all do what they say and they say, "Look, I love you guys. This is what we're going to allocate capital to. I'm the best capital allocator.

I think we can all agree." Um, so just do what the [ __ ] I say. And I get a couple guys speaking up. You got to go [ __ ] kill them real fast and you get back on track. It's all the same. The human mind works in a very knowableish way. Look, it's very complicated, of course, but god, when you start taking these trends over long enough periods, this is why I'm saying I don't want to live in an anarchic system where uh the biggest genius can [ __ ] trick everybody in the game of capitalism.

Like, pump and dump's real. You can make a stock feel like it's valuable. Uh people tend to trade on FOMO. The reason the best advice you will ever get on the stock market is buy low, sell high is because everybody buys high and sells low. People, but people don't think they do it. People think obviously, bro, I'm going to buy low and sell high. No, you're not, [ __ ] Buy the numbers. You're going to buy high and sell low. That's why that had to be said out loud.

out loud. out loud. So, what they're saying is when everyone else is panicking, you buy. And then when everybody else thinks number go up forever, you sell. But nobody can do that because the future is too unknowable and you have these really strong emotions that tell you, "Oh [ __ ] this time it's different. The number is going to stay down forever and so I've just got to like cut my losses." And you probably bought in when you thought number's going to go up forever. So I don't have to worry about eating in a month because I'm going to be 10 times richer than I am today.

No, you are not. Something is going to change. You are going to be surprised in some way. This is why I get it. I'm sure I'm part of the meme about Michael Sailor and the like, "How many uh chairs are you sitting on right now, Tom?" But the reality is that when taken across a lifetime, making one concentrated bet is the shest way to get rich and the shest way to go broke. And spreading your exposure across a whole bunch of uncorrelated assets is the shest way to be okay.

be okay. be okay. And it's like, I'll take the okay. I'm the guy that you come to who's like, "Hey, listen. There are [ __ ] patterns. Let's look at all those patterns. Also, I don't think I'm the luckiest guy on planet Earth." So, I'm like, "Yeah, like I could get hit by whatever this problem is. Uh, I will not see the future clearly. So, the odds that I get all of this right are basically zero. So, I'm going to try to diversify as much as I can." That That's what you're here for.

So, if you're here for somebody to [ __ ] stand up and beat their chest and say, "I know everything perfectly and this is all going to work out just like this and put all your money in XYZ." Yeah, you're on the wrong [ __ ] channel. So, So, So, uh, all right, let's, uh, do a hard pivot right now because we got to talk about this breaking news. Tim Waltz has dropped out of the 2026 Minnesota governor's race. Uh, praise Jesus. praise Jesus. praise Jesus. Prayed by the uh, played by the Somali daycare, healthc care, all types of fraud.

They were frauding everybody over there. there. there. This is wild. He was talking so much [ __ ] up to like 45 minutes ago. I did not see this one coming. I'll be honest. Now, is this part of him like making a deal like do not pursue me legally and I'll peace out? Maybe. So, all right, let's play it. I haven't heard this yet. So, um this is what happens when your own federal government wages war against you. This is what happens when they target communities for their own benefit.

This is what happens when they scapegoat. And this is what say happens when they no longer hide the idea of white supremacy. When you hear the vice president of the United States talk about now white people won't have to apologize for being white. That's never happened once in my whole damn life. And I think everybody in this room knows what they're doing. So we're here today to say enough of this. We're here today to stand that Minnesota will protect their neighbors. So um that was not I thought that was going to be the speech where he pieces out.

No, but that's the thing. It's like you're leaving, but even you're still firing shots. Yeah. To me, it's like you're you your your hand is red, you have no leg to stand on. Battle aggress like you can't talk [ __ ] walking out when you have started [ __ ] Like it's just agreed. But let's look at this in two ways. Let's look at this in the um I really didn't know this was happening. And I love the Somali community, but for only one reason. I love the Somali community because uh Tim Walls would say they have come over from a war torn country that partly America was involved in destabilizing in destabilizing in destabilizing and they've got a chance to come here and make their life a little bit better and so yeah like we want to see these guys thrive and we obviously we need to be very careful about fraud.

um if he gave that speech, I'd be like, I get it. I get where you're coming from. I want good things for them. Like I remember the first time I met a smallie cab driver. This is like way back back back uh in Minnesota was there for something called Icebreaker. This is back when I was selling. This is Prequest. I was selling into Target uh and I had a smallie cab driver and I was like, "Bro, you're from Africa and you came to Minnesota." I'm like, "It is so [ __ ] cold here.

What are you doing here?" And I was just utterly fascinated by this guy. And I was like, "Bro, this is so dope. Like, I wish you the best. Hope everything goes great. Like, you know, be careful. It's cold here." Uh, and so like having animosity towards him didn't even occur to me. Thought it was dope. But when you start seeing the fraud, it's like you've got to be like, "Hold on. We have absolutely smashed with a hammer at least two generations. We've destroyed millennials. We've destroyed Gen Z.

Hopefully, we get it together in time for Gen Alpha. But [ __ ] hammer blow to those kids psychologically. They're so fooar. fooar. fooar. So, and rightfully so, because what we've done to the economy is is just an absolute moral abomination. So, you've got to be like 10 toes down on you've got to root out the fraud. I'm here to make sure that this all goes away. Dear Somali community, we want to see you guys have a beautiful life. You've got to root this out. Like, nobody's going to have more access to your community.

And I get than you guys. And I get that this is going to be very hard, but you've got to stand up for the ideals that make America great. Uh, and one of those is rule of law. Like we've got to be a place where people can trust that their tax dollars are being used efficiently so that we remain a high trust society so that people are ecstatic to pay their taxes and that we can do incredible things to uplift our community. So you guys have to turn inward and police yourselves so it's not just all coming from the outside.

Like if he was giving that speech like, "Yep, cool word." cool word." cool word." But we are in such a politically dysfunctional moment that it's all about taking shots at the other side. And this is not just a Tim Walls problem. This is on both [ __ ] sides. It drives me absolutely batshit crazy that in populist moments, that's all you're going to get. That's all you're going to get. You're not going to get anybody else. I get it. But I still hate it. Yeah. So, we talked about the downfall of Doge a couple months ago, and it was just Elon had the vision.

He had a plan. He got there and the politicians were the ones getting in the way. It wasn't even, you know, it wasn't like he couldn't do it or he couldn't find it. It was too much minutiae to move to actually get to this. We see it now happening in Minnesota live where we're people are uncovering businesses, institutions, ways that they're kind of taking advantage of the resources and stuff like that. It does seem like on a federal and state level, we do need some type of Doge fraud detection because a lot of money, especially with a country that's about to be $40 trillion in debt, we are wasting a lot of money.

We're spending a lot of money is being stolen. A lot of money is being unaccounted for. The Pentagon hasn't passed a budget in the last 25 years at now 10 trillion and unaccounted for. So, it's like, do you think that this is actually be something that we can re in? We tried it this year, it didn't work. Is this just we need a a better person to run it other than Elon? Or is it just corruption comes with politicians and we just don't know? We won't be able to intertwine the two.

We need the untouchables. We need a group of people that really believe that they can clean up the corruption that are going to call it out that cannot be bought, bribed, nothing. No amount of money is going to make them sway from their principles. And they've got to go into every state, every nook and cranny of the federal government and hold people accountable to creating a system that has total transparency so the American people can see exactly what their dollars are being spent on so we can see what we are getting from all of this.

It would be very straightforward to build a system that tracks all of this. It would be very straightforward to improve the systems that we have in the US government. But we've got to have the will as the people to demand that kind of accountability. And to do that, we have to come face to face with the fact that right now America is rife with corruption. It it is an absolute travesty. Politics are going to bring it out. It's not unique to America in any way, shape, or form.

But it this is a real problem and we've got to tackle it as such. And if we don't do that, we will just continue a slow and steady decline into irrelevance where we milk the people for everything they're worth. We create all these barnacles of fraudsters on the turtle, as I like to say. And ultimately, turtles do drown from too many barnacles being put on it. This is game theory 101. Game theory 101 says, if you create an exploit, people are going to exploit it. It is that simple.

People will not see it and look away. There is some subset of people that will maximize the exploitation. We have to face that reality of humankind and go in and stop this stuff from happening. This this is absolutely crazy. and we're allowing it to be this political [ __ ] And this really needs to be about what actually works. And efficiency of tax dollar works. Wild inefficiency, massive amounts of fraud are how you bankrupt a country. And we think that money printing to cover all of that works.

And it doesn't. It leads to the morally bankrupt economic system that we have currently that people are blaming on capitalism. has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism and has everything to do with debt and money printing. printing. printing. Somebody asked um can you clarify the corruption um that Walt specifically you think is guilty of? Is it one of those things it was just under his watch so it falls to him? People are assuming that I think that Walls is corrupt. I don't know if Walls is corrupt.

That needs to be investigated. What I'm saying is his tone does not say uh I care deeply about the corruption and obviously if there's corruption we have to solve this immediately. If when the Nick Shirley thing came out he held a press conference and was like holy hell this is wild. These are crazy. We've got to look into this. I don't just take his word for everything but this is worthy of investigation. I'm going to be working with the federal government. I'm going to be working with state and local officials.

the one thing everyone in my state needs to know is that your tax dollars are being spent efficiently. He did not do that. He went on uh the campaign trail and was beating the drum to make sure that Somali want to vote for him. And listen, man, I get it. Like there is um there is it is impossible to get a man to understand something where his paycheck depends on him not understanding it. understanding it. understanding it. He it famous quote poorly phrased by me I'm sure.

But the idea is that he gets elected in part through Somali's voting as a block. And because of that, politicians in Minnesota make sure that they appeal to that voting block. And instead of going what's my northstar, I want to make sure that motans uh are thriving on every metric that the government can influence. And I'm going to list the top 25, whatever. And so we're going to go through and we're going to make sure that the programs that we have are positively influencing the metrics that we care about.

And I would suggest that they reduce it to five. But anyway, and so we look at those five metrics and we say, "Cool, is this program helping that? Hurting that? Neutral to that? If it's helping, we do more of it. If it's neutral, maybe yes, maybe no. If it's hurting, definitely no." But that's not how he's running the state. He's just thinking about, this is the first time I'm going to say it in 2026, but it won't be the last. politicians will do and say whatever horrific lie they need to tell in order to gain and retain power.

Once you understand that, then you understand what's going on here. So, this is a guy that he doesn't give a [ __ ] about any sort of moral northstar. He cares only about get me back in power. I don't understand where he goes from here though. Like your whole country, your your state is cooked. So, I don't understand how that lets you fail upward, but hey, he probably won't fail upward. I doubt that. Not if not if he gets caught up in this corruption. this corruption. this corruption.

Uh what it will look like is um enough people believe the way that he believes that he will be invited to speak and all of that. He'll give more speeches like this. this. this. Uh and he'll get paid to do it and he'll be just fine and he'll find a way to uh derive meaning and purpose. I think he coaches or something like or used to uh probably go back to that and make plenty of money, do that occasionally to feel good about himself. Here's the bad news, man.

If we're all waiting for the quote unquote bad guys to be obviously bad to themselves and to like be crushed, no, it's not going to happen. That like guilt spiral is way more about your genetic lot than it is you did something bad. There are plenty of people who feel guilty and you're like, why do you feel guilty? like you seem like on balance a pretty good person, but they just get in a twist. And then you get people like Mao who literally die still in power having starved tens of millions of people to death.

Yep. So yeah, not a single drop of guilt. Uh all right, we are closely tracking a breaking news story. Um a couple people sent it to us in the chat. Um chat, thank you for that, by the Yeah, we we didn't really have anything new to cover, so we haven't really, you know, queued it up or anything like that, but it was announced that early Monday, a 26-year-old named William Deour use a hammer to break four windows and damage a vehicle at uh JD Vance's East Walnut Hills residence um in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Um and Um and Um and yeah, welcome to politics in 2026, man. Everything feels existential. This is what happens when you have a declining economy. people realize we're fighting over a pie that is actually shrinking and so who gets what piece of the pie, it really matters and so people will be violent. This this is human history over and over and over. So unfortunately we really are in that moment and so that's why populism is on the rise and until we solve that problem economically which by the way um Trump made an announcement I don't know if we have the clip but he made an I think I did put it in.

He made an announcement that we might not be paying income tax anymore. Now, this feels like a wild statement that I do not believe he has any ability to back up yet. Uh but you want to talk about something that would make people happy. If he can pull this off by the midterms, holy be Jesus Jesus Jesus that at some point in the not too distant future, you won't even have income tax to pay because the money we're taking in is so great, it's so enormous that you're not going to have income tax to pay.

that at some we'll see man like it feels far-fetched right now. Um but yeah, if he actually pulled that off, that would be incredible. I I'll put it at like 2% chance. chance. chance. Is it more important to remove income tax and give people that daytoday dollars back into their pocket or is it more important to take that extra let's call it $800 to a trillion dollars we would have um and throw that toward like the debt? the debt? the debt? In no uncertain terms, balancing the budget would be the best thing that you could do.

M uh that's my northstar because that's what's best for people in the long run with my value system being able to control their own destiny, being able to save their money. That to me is just like the top top top top. Um anything else you would have to tell me what's your goal? So for instance, putting money in people's pockets, like actual checks coming to your house. I was just thinking zero income tax. They now have, you know, so I'll rank order them. Zero income tax gets you the most votes at midterm, followed very closely by a $1,200 stimi check.

Uh, and then the one that's actually the best for you, but people would be like, in fact, they'd be violently opposed to it. What am I saying? They would be violently opposed to it, is balancing the budget. That's what they should actually do. But that one's hard. That one's going to make people mad. people mad. people mad. Yeah. I feel like we're we're never going to get to a balanced budget. So where where where Oh, we've had a balanced budget before. So never say never. But you're not going to get there with Trump.

No way. No universe. Uh you're not going to get there with any Democrat that has so far raised their hand. Uh you're certainly not going to get there with Kala Harris. So I can feel that chick revving up to run in 2028. She's more like taking harder stances now than she did when she ran. This is crazy. crazy. crazy. That was do a presidential race in 107 days. Um Gavin Newsome is really kind of positioning to it's his race to lose, I would say. Um, in terms of the Democratic nomination, Democratic side, Democratic side, Democratic side, what's Poly Market have meant?

Do you know? know? know? Oh, I don't know what Poly Mark has been. been. been. Pull him up. I was gonna ask so from your perspective though, um, as a I'm not going to call you a lifelong Californian, but you've been here for a while. A very long time. Um, do you think that Gavin Newsome can do do do He is a train wreck and he will steal all of your money through inflation. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. He is king of no balance budget. He is king of spin.

I I am shocked that people like this guy. Like actually shocked. You got him at 37% uh AOC at 11%. So he released front runner. Damn. He's He's He's That is crazy. Is that him that had the huge spike? What happened there? What did he do there? I don't know if the blue line is that, but it looks like it is. Yeah, it is. What did he do? When was that? was that? was that? I think that's when he announced he wasn't returning to governor. I have to check.

But yeah, that was in August. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, from his perspective, that's what's left. That's the only thing that's remaining. Um Oh, Um Oh, Um Oh, man. That that one is heartbreaking. Yeah. But to to the point with this Tim Wall situation, the left kind of backtracking on a lot of the gender affirming care and things like that they they ran on in 2020. I don't honestly know what the Democratic platform is in 2028. Um so that's why there's like 40% socialism.

socialism. socialism. Yeah. Like that's just his biggest block. But I don't think DC is is is up to that. They don't want that. They are. They are. So they're all eyes on M Donnie right now. He won in a landslide in the economic center of the United States. If you're in the Democratic party and you're not like that, then you're dumb as a box of rocks. It's like, dude, every day a boomer dies and you're if you're trying to appeal, Gen Xers are going to be a big question mark, but if you're trying to appeal to millennials, Gen Z, and I don't know if any Gen Alphas can vote yet.

I don't know what their top age is, um, or will be able to in 2028, but, uh, bro, they all want to hear that socialism works. And that's exactly how Mom Donnie got going. Mom Donnie knows how to make the unpalatable sound palatable. And they're all historically illiterate. And so they'll be like, "Yeah, this is dope. That is exactly what you should do." And because it goes like this, uh, "The economy is broken. Can we agree?" Yes. Like even that [ __ ] Tom Billy agrees the economy is broken.

What is the economy? Capitalism. So what's broken? Capitalism. How do we fix it? Socialism. That's the logic. It's wrong. But that is exactly what's going to happen because if you get into the realities of no wait, in 1913 we created this saying called the central bank and central banks smooth out like the problems and it really does that and it really is good at that but oh it does come with one problem. You can't save your money because you're going to get annihilated by inflation because every time something bad happens and bad things happen all the time with increasing frequency.

We have to steal from everybody and smooth that out. And what that means is you have to own stocks. Not just the right stocks or sorry, not just stocks, the right stocks. And so I know you're too busy. You're working three jobs right now and you're trying to raise a family. Thank you, by the way. Uh but you're you are going to have to figure out where to invest your money and a meaningful percentage of your money. And if you don't, you're going to get left behind.

That's the actual economy. But you will notice the problem is that we spend more money than we take in in taxes. And nobody understands that part. So we just go, "But I want all these services, Drew. I want them all to be free. I want free buses, Drew. So now I'm going to authorize. I'm going to vote aggressively for that unbalanced budget, not being able to connect the dots that that's exactly why I can't afford a house." house." house." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I am forced into the stock market that I don't understand.

Okay. Um I feel like this episode should just be titled Fafo because this is another story about that. I don't know if everybody remembers that titled Fafo. titled Fafo. titled Fafo. Uh last summer there was ICE raids in Georgia for a Hyundai plant. There was a lady who seen a bunch of South South Korean uh immigrants coming in when ICE was popping off. She's like, "I'm going to call them, get them all deported." 245 people got apprehended. Some have visa v violations. U Hyundai made a statement saying they brought these people over to train up the Georgia base to kind of get the plant rolling.

Those people are there temporarily. They're not going to be there in in long. Just then, Boston Dynamics, the humanoids, the Atlas now works autonomously in that Hyundai factory in Georgia. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, whatever happened with the people, it doesn't matter anymore cuz there's robots everywhere robots everywhere robots everywhere auto. auto. auto. And I think it's very interesting how we keep again talking about AI and how there's going to be this impact and it's going to do this thing. And this is something on a smaller scale, you know, 200, 300 jobs, but it just shows you that there was a problem with ICE over the summer.

That problem has now gone away. Whether they're caught in court or whatever, it doesn't matter now because now the robots will come in there and take that place. I want to be very clear. The reason that they put robots in is because you want cheap [ __ ] You are the problem. Now, of course, I'm the same, but we're all the problem, Drew. People People seem to think it's some boogeyman out there somewhere. The boogeyman is you want cheap [ __ ] And so as long as you would rather your budget be cheap as [ __ ] then they're gonna put robots in place.

So there it is. And then this is the new Atlas. Uh it walk it can carry heavy things and it's actively walking the line as as you guys can see in this video. It's doing the same things that we're seeing um Tesla Optimus Promise and things like that. So is this could just be the first release of release of release of These are going to get so much better, Drew. And they're going to get so much better. so fast. If these things are running AI, and I cannot imagine a universe in which they aren't, they are actively training them right now.

They have bots that are like watching humans do it or humans are controlling them or whatever. And everything that bot learns, it instantaneously updates the other bots with how to do it. And so every bot that's being trained then sends reinforcement learning to all the other bots. And so these things will get fast, get intelligent fast. And oh god this and like these are your gen one bots. Like think about how fast your iPhone updates. So your bots are going to update like that. So think about what these bots are going to be in 10 years.

Dude, if you have a six-year-old, they're still in high school in 10 years. So yeah, uh this is this is all going to happen. So now the question becomes, uh does it just make everything better? And do we have more jobs? Sure, we're not working in the factory because bots can do that, but that frees us up to do other stuff. Just as a reminder to myself, if nobody else, every technological revolution, every single one has always created more jobs, not less. Now, every time I write a deep dive and I say, "Anybody that ever says, "This time is different," run the opposite direction.

They do not know what they're talking about. But with AI, I find myself going, maybe this time it's different. So yeah, the past tells us that this is only going to be good, that it will create jobs that we can't imagine right now, and it will create more of them. But my current assessment of AI is that AI on a long enough timeline, and what is that? Is that three years? Is it 30 years? Is it 300 years? But AI on a long enough timeline becomes better than us at everything.

Not some things, not most things, everything. If you want something that really feels human, you don't go to a [ __ ] human. You go to an AI. It's way better at mimicking the quirks of being a human in a way that feel right. And if you think I'm crazy, do you know that your Spotify shuffle isn't actually random? When I think it was Apple that discovered this, but if you put your music on actual random, people go, "This isn't random. It'll sometimes play the same song twice in a row.

That's not random." Yes, it is, [ __ ] Because random is literally there's that one time where it plays the same song six times in a row. So you have to architect something that feels random. feels random. feels random. So eventually So eventually So eventually human will be a vibe that something gives you. That painting that painting feels human and that painting will have been done by a [ __ ] bot that understands what you think human feels like. It's not actually human. It will be Yes. they will be better than us at everything.

So, the only thing that will matter is if you're like, "No, no, no. For real, for real, for real. I only eat um um um tomatoes harvested by Tina because I know Tina. I watch her do it and it matters to me that these were harvested by Tina." Okay, a bot's not going to be able to do that, but it'll be able to make uh the appropriate amount of [ __ ] up in the tomato so that it feels more authentic and homegrown than Tina would be able to do.

So yeah, this this this one. Oh god, maybe this time it really is different. is different. is different. No. So So there was a good point. Um automation, this is from Dr. 4205 said automation was held back by labor laws. We should have been fully automated. We should have had fully automated plants decades ago. I know right now on the docs there was some doc workers that were pushing back against AI trying to stop that automations and stuff like that. that. that. Is there any do you think that that might be a headwind for a lot of these AI initiatives?

Is that the humans just getting in the way of not wanting it to happen? happen? happen? And to be honest, yeah, do do your thing. Create friction. It it's it's one of those where um the whole thing that I'm fighting for is people need to be able to say what they believe to be true. People need to be able to fight for the things that they think are right. And you do not want somebody from the top down telling them to shut up and sit down.

Now, I want to be able to make my best case argument for why they shouldn't do it. But the fact that some people are really going to feel like, "No, no, no, we got to slow this down, do their thing. They, as long as they're fighting within the rules, they should fight. I'm going to fight just as hard on the other side, but they should fight for what they believe to be right." So, uh, I don't mind that kind of friction. I think in the end, it's silly.

uh because any technology that promises an advantage will be developed because like I was saying before the architecture of the human mind anything you can exploit to get an advantage people will to the maximum maximum maximum every time. every time. every time. Is there some initiative then to maybe go into areas that are a bit less sexy then? For example, we were talking about the Dyson robot before break that harvested the strawberries. And it's like, okay, that's an immigrant population. They usually rely on other low-wage um lowwage labor to get that job off the ground.

Should that be kind of the initial focus on AI to at least maybe get it off the ground to not have those labor laws or those protests or picketing? Because I feel like right now I think it should be way simpler than that. If you have strawberries that need to be picked because the price at which it costs you to pick them now is a price people are not willing to pay at the grocery store. Get a robot in there to pick them. Innovate your way to creating a product that people want.

This is why I say you have to understand humans as economic engines. Once you understand that we all want to get things, food, shelter, clothing. I don't even need you to go all the way to video games and [ __ ] like that. But like there are things that we need and we don't want to have to spend our entire day playing the survival crafting game that is life going out and finding our own food. That's how you starve to death in the winter. And so we ran that experiment.

We for god knows how many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, we were all playing uh an episode of Alone. And so it was like, yeah, people just dying all the time. And so we're like, "All right, this sucks. Uh let's start living in bigger groups. Let's start specializing. You're very good at raising strawberries. I couldn't care less. I like killing deer. Uh the other person's like, I don't care about either of those. I want to do daycare. Yeah, cool. You watch my kids.

I'm going to go pick the strawberries, whatever. And so, and that's how the specialization happens. We all like different things. And so, you get that psychic energy from the things you like to do. So, we all want to pursue the things that we like to pursue. Uh and so, then it becomes a game of, oh, whoa, by doing a thing I get paid money. you look over at that other thing that you like doing and that one people value even more so that pays more. So you start doing that thing and that's how economies are born.

They're not shoved down on people from the top down which is what people get confused about. It's all come up from the bottom that you don't want to starve to death in a winter but you also don't like going and picking grubs. You want somebody else to do that [ __ ] for you while you weave a basket. basket. basket. Ipso effective fact. We've got a super chat. Let's hear it. Yeah. Super chat Tom. Inflation, boom and bust, monopolies, central banks, cronyism, corporatism, etc. are all capitalism the same way you think dictators, famines, breadlines are socialism.

You can't just talk about capitalism idealistically. My beloved giver of the super chat. Thank you for your super chat. This is Brutus Luggo, too, by the way. Brutus. Brutus. Brutus. Oh, okay. So, it's in all caps, unless he has a 2026. Uh, the last line is not all caps. Oh my god, Brutus, I'm so proud of you. Uh, okay. So, Brutus knows me better than that. I trust. And so, this is why when asked in this episode if I think that capitalism left unfettered ends somewhere good, I said, "No, you basically are just going to give birth to a king who has all the resources and tells all the plebs what to do." So, you've got to keep that system in check.

So, there is humans are not idealistic and all of these systems are merely echoes of the structure of the human mind. So yeah, they all end badly. But the good news is when we come together, we do have the ability to build cultural initiatives, maybe the right way to think about it, that keep us in check. This typically manifests as religion where we can say you should do this thing not because you need to understand the nuances, but because big man in sky says do it or you're gonna burn forever in hell.

It it is literally evolution of the human mind. um asking and answering the question, how do we deal with things where dumb people cannot comprehend these really nuanced things? I know. Let's come up with a punitive sky god who says if you don't do these things, you don't need to [ __ ] understand it. You just need to do it. And if you don't do these things, you burn alive for all eternity. It's really brilliant if I'm honest. Like, as somebody trying to build a virtual world, that one's pretty clever.

Religion is the [ __ ] So, uh, whoever invented that, well played. That's very impressive. So, yeah, you need something that keeps people in check from capitalism, from communism, socialism, all the isms. The thing you need to understand is that capitalism is the only system that we have found so far that when at least properly checked at the edges is the most in line with the architecture of the human mind. People will do it naturally. You don't have to force them to. Let them compete and they will compete.

Now, true or false? Real change doesn't come until we flip the monopoly board. False. False. False. Really? Really? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Revolution can come without through uh um um um we can get there. Diplomacy. Diplomacy. Diplomacy. Uh you're it can come through diplomacy for sure. So, here's the thing. Are you ready? Would you like to fix the entire system? system? system? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Step one, balance the budget. Never let the government spend more. Step two, I guess, never let the government spend more than uh the rate of GDP growth in debt.

So, if you're rate of growth is 1.8, you can spend up to 1.8% in debt because you'll make it up in one year. Huh, that's not so bad. Um, if it's 3%, 3%. But that's it. and deregulate housing dramatically, not to zero, but dramatically because the only asset that people understand intuitively is a house. So if you do those things, then it you can't imagine how much better things would be just fixing those. It wouldn't be a panacea, but holy be Jesus, that would solve so many problems because then you could look at people and go, "Hey, listen, just save your [ __ ] money.

Just save your money because it's not going to be inflated away into nothing because they're not money printing money printing money printing and you'll be fine. Save, save, save. And once people can save their way to money, if somebody doesn't save, that's on them. But right now, you have a system, the people that are failing, it's not because they did anything wrong. They're failing because they've been smashed in the face with 110 110 110 12 112 13 almost 113 years of terrible economic policy that has just been building and building and building behind the scenes and starting in 2000 with the dotcom crash and then really accelerating in 2008 with the housing crash.

crash. crash. Uh it's just look at the M2 money supply graph. That is the graph of misery. If you look at that and you want to understand why does my life suck economically, just look at that graph. The fact that all you need to do is look at that graph tells you everything you need to know. And but that's just complicated enough. All right, it's nine. Do we have any super chats we need to get to before we go? All right, boys and girls, thank you.

First of all, if you were here as one of the real ones on day one of 2026, we thank you very much. We are now on a three-day a week cadence. Please hit that subscribe button. We really want to bring you the best content that YouTube has to offer. Uh we are very grateful for your guys's engagement. It absolutely means the world to us. Uh 2026 is going to be a wild ass year. We are here for it. Uh we are trying to be a grounded place of reason.

Um where we welcome your ideas. So you can debate in the chat. Uh you can yell into the void about uh what a dummy I am. All of that's fine. Or you can cheer by all means. uh but let's actually focus on these big issues and they are big issues in a way that is optimistic but realistic uh and we're going to have a great time. So mad love to all of you guys. I hope this is going to be a banger year and we'll be back on Wednesday, Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays 7 a.m.

Pacific time. We will see you there. Love you. Bye.