We're Back! WHCD's Assassination Attempt Decoded & Catching Tom Up On What He Missed

Key Takeaway

We're living in an age of narrative warfare where information overload forces us to rely on pre-digested viewpoints from trusted sources. Combat this by deliberately seeking out people you disagree with, then 'smash those perspectives together like atoms in the Large Hadron Collider' to form your own worldview. Pick a small subset of issues important enough to go deep on rather than accepting surface-level takes on everything. No one can do this thinking for you—not me, not anybody.

Episode Overview

Tom Green returns from vacation to discuss recent events including another assassination attempt on Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, exploring conspiracy theories around the incident and the ballroom controversy. The conversation examines how narrative warfare, coordinated messaging, and information overload are fracturing American society's shared reality and trust in institutions.

Full Transcript

Transcript of We're Back! WHCD's Assassination Attempt Decoded & Catching Tom Up On What He Missed from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

One. One. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Green Show live. We are back. You were gone for a while, but we are back, baby. And it was a wild time while I was gone. You guys did not exactly hold the fort down. You let some crazy stuff happen. A third assassination attempt was made on Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend. Many are calling it a false flag attack designed to get approval for Trump's ballroom. We're going to be talking about that in detail.

Was the Southern Poverty Law Center funding the very hate groups that they're supposed to be trying to fight against? We're going to go into detail there. People who don't understand economics are once again making mouth sounds about social murder and wage theft. That's a fun one. Rand Paul, shout out to my man, is once again that he does this every year, presenting Americans with a solution to our deficit woes that we will likely ignore, but his proposal is still awesome, and Lord knows, for all of our sake, I hope that somehow, some way, we wake up and take his advice and actually put it into practice.

practice. practice. Talk about why that is so important. And did a time traveler attempt to warn us about would-be assassin Cole Allen? More on that, Drew. We're back in the saddle, baby. Welcome back, man. Thank you. People were worried about you. I want you to know that. It's hilarious. When you sent me the milk carton, uh, I had to get guffaw over that one. That was amazing. Yeah, we we probably did not do uh a good enough job messaging that I was running out of town, but we had so many things we had to get across the finish line right there at the very end.

Uh, that messaging about my absence unfortunately got lost in the shuffle. And when I thought back, I was like, I was basically running out the door like, "Okay, bye. We're going to be gone for 2 weeks." Uh, so my apologies for that. It's part of my personality though, so I am not in any way, shape, or form saying I'm going to do better next time. This is just uh the way that my mind works, so forgive me. But we're back, and I'm excited to be back.

All right. Well, we have a lot to catch up on. Jumping right into it. Trump was attacked this weekend. Let's talk about the White House Correspondents Dinner. Yeah. Well, yet another assassination attempt was made on President Trump over the weekend. This is getting wild. This is number three. A man named Cole Allen ran through a security checkpoint armed to the teeth. If you haven't seen the footage, footage, footage, the checkpoint that they put in the hotel was pretty cheesy, pretty easy to run through, and uh he's not slow.

So, he shot through the gap very fast. He was fired at uh he fired at least one shot, and I think they're saying that something like five shots were fired at him. He did not get hurt. Um Secret Service, one of them was hit, but he was thankfully wearing a bulletproof vest and wasn't seriously injured. Now, the good news is Allen actually wrote a manifesto that spelled out his motives and how he was able to get the weapons inside. inside. inside. Pretty straightforward. He checked into the hotel the day before the event, and just basically carried his arsenal up to the room.

Nobody searched his luggage. And by the way, if this was just a normal hotel, I wouldn't expect anyone to search his luggage. And I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to live in a world where we're getting searched all the time. I've traveled around the world plenty, uh and I know that there are places where you're going into a hotel and they're mine sweeping the car, and they're checking your bags, and you have to go through security like you're stepping into an airport.

That would be a sign that something very, very, very wrong is happening in our country if we find ourselves in that situation. That is a total breakdown of trust, which we are racing towards. P.S., by the way. Uh, and hopefully all of us can back away from that precipice. Uh, so be very excited to talk to you guys more about that. I'm I'm going to be force-feeding this nation a bunch of optimism, Drew. We need it. My my time away has uh made that harden inside my soul.

So, we're going to mix phase we're going to mix phase one and phase two a little bit more around here present day. So, now look, on the surface, this to me looks pretty straightforward. You got a left-leaning guy who hates Trump. He decides that uh nobody else is going to do anything to take him out, so he's just going to do it himself. Basically says that in the manifesto, so this is a direct quote. "I don't see anyone else picking up the slack." Referring specifically to what would you say to somebody, cuz he did this in this like sort of call and refrain.

So, here's the objection. Here's what I would say to that. So, for anybody that says he shouldn't be the one doing it, uh he said, "I don't see anybody else doing it, and so uh I'm going to pick up the slack." So, that one's pretty straightforward. I think that really is the point that we are at as a country. As for the specific reasoning for attempting to kill Trump, he said, again, this is a direct quote. "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." And earlier in the manifesto, he had said basically that uh "I'm an American citizen.

My representatives represent me, so their actions like come back on me." Uh, and so that was the context in which he said that. Now, Trump actually specifically refuted the claims being made about him uh in a 60 minute interview. So, let's play that clip. Uh, I was not prepared. This is what happens, Drew. He was asleep. You guys saw the video? There's the problem, boys and girls. I'm back. I'm back. Spinning wheel. Spinning wheel. Do it. Execute him. Execute him now. Execute him right now. It's Monday.

it. They're doing it. moving quickly. Within seconds, grabbing the Vice President by his coat, lifting him up, him up, him up, bringing him out. Then the counter-assault comes in. Took 10 seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic. At one point, you were down. What was happening? Well, what happened is All right. So, this is actually a different part of the interview. This is my bad. Nobody should blame Drew for this one. Um so, in the thing, she reads his manifesto.

manifesto. manifesto. Oh, that one. Got it. Got it. Got it. Which Which Which um I can pull up the manifesto directly if need be. Uh, but basically in the manifesto itself, he's saying that um the the line that I read in the um intro of this. And then she read it aloud to Trump, and he was like, "Yeah, I knew that you guys were going to play that clip. Like you should be ashamed of yourself. You're terrible reporters." You guys have seen this uh assault that he does on people a gazillion times.

And um they All right. All right. All right. She appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, "Administration officials, they are targets." And he also wrote this. "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." What's your reaction to that? was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're you're you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. Uh, I'm I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody.

Uh And oh, you think you think he was referring to referring to referring to That that was Hold on. Pause it. That was a pretty sly question. And real Tucker Carlson like, "Uh oh, it was you he was talking about." It's like, yes, obviously it was him that uh Now, I saw somebody on social say um oh god, I forget the woman's name. Jean Carroll? Something like that. Um that sued him, I think, civilly for sexual assault or something, and that the judge said something along the lines of some people, by the classic definition of rape, could say that Trump raped her.

So, it's like, if you're really going to try to hold his feet to the fire, it's a sly question. Admittedly, she got it in way faster than if she had tried to give like a whole bunch of context. Um but if you're going to hit him, that's probably the one that you hit him with. But anyway, uh as you will see, he will go into the your horrible people defense here. Um but let's play the rest of that one. Just let him say it in his own words.

from some sick person. Uh I get associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things. Okay. So, uh narrative war. Th- This is going to come to define this generation, for real. real. real. Um and Um and Um and uh he has not been exonerated. So Narrative war is going to define this gen? Narrative war. Yeah, yeah. Just the fact that we can't agree on anything.

We are tearing ourselves apart at the seams because we don't want to engage with each other and try to understand. Um we instead are as a species, we are very easy to lead by the nose because there's so much information that to parse it all is impossible. And so tell me what to believe. I trust you, you're on my team. Give me the line. Now I've got the simplified version. The human mind works by shortcuts. That's how it works. And so we all want that shortcut to just be like cool, this is my party line.

So a very easy way is just be like okay, what team am I on? Who are the like 10 people that I can trust to just basically pre-masticate the ideas for me, give them to me and then I can just regurgitate them back if somebody's giving me a hard time. So that because of the digital age, social media, it's just there's so much information. We need people to parse it for us. So you're going to see this more and more and more. But what's distressing is whatever you repeat becomes true.

He hasn't been exonerated. He also hasn't been convicted. But at the same time, each side is just going to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. He did these things, he did these things. Nobody's proven that. Uh I've been exonerated. No, exonerated. I've been exonerated. No, you haven't. So it's like the this this is all just informational warfare. It is absolutely maddening. It is going to derain. It is deranging us as a society which will only accelerate. And so dear beloved people, I like to believe you guys are here um because one, you don't want me to pre-masticate the world for you.

In some ways you come here to argue uh with my pre-mastication and thank you for that. Um so that my hope is that you guys are really trying to instead of just give me all the um overly simplified versions of all this stuff, I'm going to pick a smaller subset of issues that seem important enough to actually go and build my own world view of what's happening. And so you're taking from people that disagree with each other and you're putting it together. Uh no one can do that for you, not me, not anybody.

All I can do is say that's what I'm doing in my time. And then I'm going to give you guys a good faith presentation of what I think is really going on. You'll hear me talk about that both with this and the Southern Poverty Law Center what I think is really going on. Um but you need to find people that disagree and then smash those together like uh atoms in the Large Hadron Collider and figure out what you think is actually true. Um that's really the only path forward.

And so when I think through okay, how do we make sense of these weird things that are happening like this, you first just ask yourself, is this an idea that I'm going to pursue to conclusion or is this one that I'm just I'm not going to deal with that because I'm not going to be able to get beyond the headlines with that. So cool. I'm not in a position to make any make any make any um you know, life-altering decisions on this one. It's just not important enough and then these are the ones that I'm going to go deep on.

Um now I think it's pretty reasonable to read all of this as the Secret Service are just bad at their jobs. This is the third credible attempt on his life. Uh also nonstop unhinged rhetoric about Trump being evil is a huge part of this. And then you couple that with a contingent of radicalized Americans that are getting a steady diet, not of people that disagree with each other, but a steady diet of people that say that say that say uh we're the only right ones, these other guys are others, they're evil, they're bad.

Uh and when you put all that together, I think it does a very fine job of covering what this almost certainly was. certainly was. certainly was. However, However, However, there is a conspiracy theory that is going absolutely insane on the internet and it has internal logic that I wish were easier to dismiss. And it goes something like this. Trump wants a new ballroom for the White House. He demolished the whatever, East Wing. I think it's the East Wing. Just knocked it down. Uh what do they say?

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, which PS is kind of true. Uh so he demolishes that. He wants to build a new ballroom. ballroom. ballroom. Which I have a whole diatribe about that, Drew, as producer, if you want to ask me at some point. I I was waiting I was Coming back from Europe. I've really got a take on this. Uh so they the Democrats do not want him to have this ballroom. A district court judge put an injunction that said if Trump wants to build this, he has to have a a good security argument and that basically uh being at war, national security, it's not a blanket reason to not get congressional approval.

So the short of it is, Trump needs to get congressional approval if he wants to build the ballroom. Now Now Now as that district court judge's statement is hanging like a thought bubble over the ballroom discussion, Cole Allen storms a bizarrely under-secured White House Correspondents Dinner and makes a weak-ass attempt to kill the president. Within hours, Trump has posted this never would have happened if I had my new ballroom. And an absolute horde of pro-Trump figures posted similar things. All saying this never would have happened if the ballroom existed.

Now keep in mind, they don't hold this event at the White House even though they could erect a tent, do all that. It's just not I don't think it's ever been held at the White House. And if it has, at least from what I've seen in my research, it isn't common. Now, they could of course, if they built this and subsequent presidents felt safer there, great. Uh but as of right now, to me, that's a pretty weak argument and really bizarrely timed uh what just happened.

Now by Sunday morning, we even had Senator Tim Sheehy announce that he was going to seek unanimous consent from Congress to approve construction on the back of this attempt. Now as I said, personally, I do not think this was staged. Way too many things could go wrong when you have people start firing guns in a crowded space. It's my understanding that there were at least five shots fired. Now, my guess is that this is just a case of never let a good crisis go to waste.

And so they are going to make hay while the sun shines. But the fact that you can't immediately rule out coordination tells you exactly how broken our trust in institutions has become, which is very sad and PS very dangerous. Now Now Now there's another thing that's going around right now, which is that maybe this was a time traveler. I wish I was kidding. And by the way, I'm completely convinced that we live in a simulation now. Uh so I will say that while that would be funny it would have to be completely off-limits if we really are in a uh simulation or the multiverse would have to be real in that every time you get one of these weird things, you just branch off a different um version of the Matrix essentially.

Otherwise, you just have no coherence. It would everything would be constantly changing. Uh and it would be poss- impossible to have any sense of timeline going backwards and forwards. Also it would be computationally just absolutely impossible to deal with constantly having to re-update uh things. I will tell you as a game designer, that is just not how you build these things. So I don't think that time travel is possible. I think it's just written into the code of the Matrix that you just can't do that.

I can't believe I'm I really mean this, by the way. Uh so there you have it. I don't think it was a time traveler. It's fun. Uh I enjoy such conspiracy theories, but yeah, it's computationally incoherent and just doesn't make sense if you're running the experiment for any reason other than maximum entertainment value. Uh so yeah, I don't buy it. Let's ground this really quick. Here is the brief review of the time traveler theory for I really like that he doesn't have a shirt on. Probably one of the most bizarre bizarre bizarre The shooter from last night's name was Cole Allen.

But there's a Twitter account from 2023. And this account made one post and it was almost two and a half years ago and it was just Cole Allen. Now here's where it gets wilder. The header of this account is an image from a website called Time Machine, which is a project to preserve digital use of our heritage. But it gets even wilder. If you superimpose the image of Butler over it there's an outline of Trump. Is there Like bro, I have watched that so many times.

I'm like uh Like there are a couple places where it's like yes, I can kind of see what you see. But even the one where like I was watching it on silent first and they were doing just like a slider so that it goes from like completely invisible the Trump image to like fully opaque. They're going back and forth. On silent, I thought that they were using it to show this is ridiculous. Then when you start actually looking at what it says, it's like see? And I was like okay, hold on a second.

too much now. Yeah, I thought I thought you guys were proving this wasn't true. Now I don't know if they can see that yet, but Yeah, can we share this? Can we throw this Th- this is Before we start the conversation, I would just like to put play this flag. Shout out to Tom for this meme. Everything is a sign if you're insane enough. And I think we are clinically insane because we keep doing the same thing expecting different results. We keep calling Trump a Nazi expecting him to get assassinated.

We keep calling the left uh snowflakes expecting them to all leave the country. We're going through these constant loops of the bad guy, bad guy, bad guy thing. So we we kind of wind ourselves up. But with that being said, you're officially planting your flag, not a false flag. This was just this is internet brain slop. Yeah, never let a good crisis go to waste. They're definitely taking advantage of it. I think that the reality is as a nation, we need to get back to Congress exists for a reason.

Congress needs to show some leadership. Um I do actually think that the ballroom is a phenomenal idea in a universe where our budget is balanced. We don't have a balanced budget, so this is crazy. Now, if he really did raise all outside money, great, fantastic. Um when you're walking around Europe and especially Italy you really have a sense of like it must have been so crazy. Even today, the Colosseum is this imposing beautiful structure. It's incredible. It's thousands of years old. And so for it to have withstood, aesthetically, for it to actually just still be standing, is incredible.

And there's stuff like that all over the place. And it really is truly magnificent. And it made me mourn that as a society, we're just not there. Like, we want to tear things down. We don't share a sense of like, there are things that are meant to be celebrated, that we're trying to basically basically basically gas ourselves up as a society. Like, if you go do research on why the statue of David exists, the statue of David was meant to say, "The Republic is so strong that" cuz it's David from David and Goliath fame.

Um, that, you know, we've got this huge imposing figure of this small but mighty guy that rose up against the giants around him. And so, they created this work of art to like rally people's sentiment uh as they were on the come up. And that idea of like, we want to rally people through works of art by getting people inspired and motivated to feel the sense of group cohesion, cohesion, cohesion, is incredible. And the fact that it still hits the human psyche that way today such that people come from all around the world um to see this stuff.

In fact, Lisa, who was getting recognized left, right, and center. God bless that woman, like, for real. Do we stop The number of women that came up to her and was like, "You've touched my life in all these incredible positive ways." It was rad. And there was this woman from India, and she was like, um Lisa goes, "Oh, are you here on vacation?" She's like, "No, I'm on a pilgrimage." We were like, "Damn." And so, she was there with a group of other women from India on this pilgrimage to like see these sites that have lasted for so long because they have so much emotional intensity.

And we're just we're just so busy picking at each other, pulling each other apart. other apart. other apart. Again, because we don't have a balanced budget. I hate to make it that pedestrian, but that's your problem. Uh and and and that is really hard. And so, because to reverse that momentum and get it pointed in the right direction is very difficult, which is another thing I was thinking about in Italy. Um to all my Italians, I love you guys. Thank you for letting me spend time in your extraordinary country.

extraordinary country. extraordinary country. Italy would be amazing if it wasn't for the Italians. the Italians. the Italians. Bro. Bro. Bro. What the [ __ ] are they doing? It was so wild. As a culture, they are reinforcing this out They call it being passionate. passionate. passionate. Lisa and I saw like these two guys just start yelling at each other over vegetables in Italian. So, this wasn't even like, "I just can't be around tourists." This is like two Italians having a go at each other over like a banana.

It was so And it was the shop owner and like a guy. It was the weirdest thing. And just like at every turn, they're looking at you like you're uh inconveniencing them for like, I had an Uber driver annoyed I ordered the biggest van that you could get to load to load to load three suitcases. three suitcases. three suitcases. Looking at me like I had roaches on my face because I had three suit- It was hilarious. And so, he was annoyed because I was like, "These will fit." I put them in, everything fits just fine.

fine. fine. Yeah, it was uh I bring that up because what ends up happening is culturally, once the first guy yells at the second guy and the second guy just yells back, and then we start celebrating it, "Oh, we're just a passionate culture." Now, everyone's a dick to everybody else. And it's like, you just cannot get momentum. So, I know I said this last time, but every time I go there, I have this sense of like, "Yo, you guys were rad 2,000 years ago." years ago." years ago." Uh what about now?

Right? So, that's where America's just racing down that same path of like, we used to do cool [ __ ] uh and now we're really in we're on the struggle bus because we're culturally yeah, just reinforcing this negativity about each other. So, it's very sad to see that play out. There's something you said about the monuments and like the Colosseum thing that I want to kind of bring back. Is it the Colosseum gives them a united history that they can kind of be proud of? And our equivalent of like the Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument don't do the same things, or is there a historical context I'm missing about the Colosseum specifically?

Colosseum specifically? Colosseum specifically? No, no, cuz it When you go to DC, you get that same feeling. DC feels like an outdoor museum. outdoor museum. outdoor museum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, there's something very cool about that. Okay. It's We don't celebrate it anymore. We're not trying to build new and beautiful things. We're not looking to like to like to like I even, until really recently, nah, I never thought about like, "Oh, let's go build some of these equally beautiful things." I live in LA, which is like the land of ghastly architecture.

I mean, it's just an absolute [ __ ] here. Everything feels like it was meant to blow over in 25 years. Um so, I just didn't think about it. And then, as I spend more and more time with other cultures around the world, you start seeing like these gigantic monuments. monuments. monuments. Go go to the airport in Dubai. It feels like a seven-star hotel, the airport. And you just realize when you're surrounded by beauty, it makes you feel differently. And so, there was a time when that was like really pushed, that energy of like, "We're important." Which, by the way, every country should feel that.

You should be pushing your team to feel good about themselves, to be proud of themselves. Now, for reason, if you've got problems, address your problems, but like, you've got to get people to focus on the positive stuff. So, your frame of reference determines what you look at and what you see. see. see. And so, if you look at the problems in the world, that's all you're going to see. There's plenty of evidence that it exists. exists. exists. Um but if you want to create beauty and show how that brings people together, that will also work.

Yeah. And then, now to spin it back to the Trump assassination thing, assassination thing, assassination thing, it it does seem like that theory has more holes the more you start to think about it cuz false flags, why would you leave the guy up? Why would he get stopped so quickly where at least in Butler, they got a shot off, allegedly. You know what I mean? So, it's one of those things it doesn't necessarily make sense when you start to chip away at these things. Is this kind of downstream of the Candace Owens-ization of politics, and we're just trying to look at We're just trying to form connections wherever we can find them?

I'm shocked by how much that is a real thing, that people want to see a conspiracy in everything. People, myself included, there's something extremely entertaining about thinking, "Oh, I see how this really works." And And And when you get that on a social level, meaning a social media level, where somebody can put out all of these connections that if you're not going to do the research, on the surface, they can make a narrative that sounds perfectly plausible. perfectly plausible. perfectly plausible. And when somebody gives you uh like very simple, pre-digested breakdown of this is what the world is, um and it's intriguing because it's contrary to what everybody else is saying, it feels like secret knowledge, I understand this and you don't, that the human mind really runs wild with it.

Uh and so, that is the thing that um I would never have guessed exists at the amplitude that it exists at now, but that really is a thing. Yeah. And I think it doesn't help that we're seeing it on the other side with like the coordinated um text messages and tweets that all kind of came out at the same time where right after the assassination, 30 right-leaning accounts were all talking about having the ballroom. Ashley St. Clair did a brief video talking about that. So, that.

So, that. So, There's clearly So, if you start breaking down, how does communication work in today's day and age? Okay, most of the people that are social influencers, they're in a bunch of WhatsApp or Telegram groups. And so, people want to know who's writing the script, it's going to be stuff that's being talked about there. Um I admittedly don't pay a lot of attention, but I'm in a small handful of these groups. Nobody's trying to coordinate messaging, but somebody will put forward an idea that's really crisp.

And so, you're like, "Ooh, I like that." And so, now, they'll say, I mean, I literally see this, they'll say things like, "Oh, I'm going to steal that. I'm going to post that." And so, then a bunch of people, and the person will be like, "Yeah, of course." People then run off and post it, and it looks like people are coordinating, but at least in my experience, it isn't anybody officially like saying, "Hey, we all need to go post this." It's somebody saying a banger line in a WhatsApp group, and then everybody else like, "Oh, shit." And you're in these WhatsApp groups specifically because you want to be around like-minded people.

Um so, that I think is just When you look at the underlying way that we now communicate, you've got the backchannel private groups, then you've got the public-facing group. So, everybody's workshopping the messaging in a super informal way, but they're like effectively going, "Oh, here's what I think." And then somebody who they trust and like goes, "Well, I don't know about that, but this." And then it's like, by the end, it's like the group think is starting to form inside of that WhatsApp group, then that translates to public messaging, and then the public messaging is refined by algorithms.

Because listen, I've gotten very good at understanding the YouTube algorithm. That's the one that I understand better than any of the other ones just cuz for my business, I have to understand it. And so, I'm like, "Yeah." And then, you're like, that idea then crystallizes into a headline, thumbnail, you know what I mean? And so, we've got this I go on social, I'm getting all these all this different information, I go workshop Nobody thinks of it like that, but you go workshop it in a WhatsApp group, and then you crystallize your message, then you marry it to what you know about the algorithms, and boom, everybody's getting that really refined version.

And so, the really refined version is going to be the one that survived the sort of informal testing, you know, um what do they call that? Uh focus group testing in your WhatsApp group. And then, if you're somebody who actually gets visibility because you understand the algorithms, and so then it's refined again there, and now you've got everybody using that same headline because it gets traction. So, when people are like, "Who's publishing the script on this stuff?" It's like, It's like, It's like, for the most part, it probably doesn't work like that.

Like there might be high-level groups in the government where there is like a caucus or whatever that actually does say, "Okay, this is the line that we're going to use. Make sure you repeat that." This is why like the billionaire tax. You're you you're going to go way out of your way to come up with a banger title because you know that the bill's going to be referred to won't be referred to by its number. It's going to be referred to by a name, so you're going to make sure that you come up with a name that's going to be sticky that gets in people's minds that even if you say the billionaire tax isn't just for billionaires, you're just reinforcing reinforcing reinforcing this idea of a billionaire tax.

And so there might be a core group of people that are high-information voters. They understand. But as you get out into these concentric circles, you just know you keep hearing billionaire tax. And it wouldn't be called the billionaire tax if it wasn't for billionaires, right? So it's like the people that come up with those names understand how that works. Yeah. I kind of took the other perspective cuz I'm thinking this has been around for generations because before social media, it was coordinated local TV rights, local news talk radio.

We had that Sinclair Broadcasting Group clip where the news anchors of 20 different small regional networks in different areas are all saying the exact same thing word for it it literally is the same script. And then if you go back, you know, a thousand years, it was a king telling all the peasants to tell all the other peasants. And that's how they would kind of do installations and that's how they would quell revolutions and things like that. So there is a need for a political class to have a script, quote unquote, just for like a placeholder term.

So I don't think it's crazy for people to assume it. I just don't know if these accounts necessarily are tied to it. But in 2026, we do have to be transparent. There is a script that's coming from the White House to try to control these narratives and the spin. spin. spin. I I think you're absolutely right. I mean this is the iron law of oligarchy. There is a reality to be faced. James Burnham James Burnham about the way that the human mind works. Therefore, there's always going to be an elite group of people that are going to tell you this is what's really going on.

And when there's high trust in those institutions, it works. When that high trust begins to fragment either because we don't trust them or there's just so many voices, then you get a very different reality, which is what we're living in now where it's there's, you know, 30 know, 30 know, 30 arguments out there for people to pick and choose based on what flavor they want of like main flavors. And then there's God knows how many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of variations on those themes that people can choose to go down that rabbit hole and sequester themselves inside of groupthink in their own little area.

But I don't think that we have like I don't think that we need that. I think it's just that's how the mind works and so we gravitate towards that because shortcuts are necessary given the overwhelming amount of information. Um and I mean if I can bring up the the idea that we live inside of a simulation, some of this stuff is just computational. And even if you won't grant me that it's literally a simulation, your brain operates on the same foundations. So humans only see 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And so when we think of, oh, we look out, we see the world as it is. Bro, you you don't even see half of a percent of the world as it actually is. Like think about that. That's so crazy. So we're we fill in all the gaps with all these shortcuts, assumptions, heuristics that the brain just does. And the information landscape is exactly the same. It's like we don't really know what's going on. There's just too much information. And so our brain just fills in all the gaps.

And it we're filling in the gaps created by somebody who's already just giving us headlines. And so it's the most Swiss cheesy understanding of how the world actually operates, but it's enough to like get you laid, make some money, and like get by. And ultimately simulation or not, that's what evolution wants. And so evolution is looking for the propagation of genes. And so it doesn't need like this super accurate thing. thing. thing. So anyway, it it is a devastating truth about the way that the human mind works.

You can You can You can limit the effects of the trap on you as an individual because you can step outside of it, understand what a frame of reference is, get a slightly clearer picture, and navigate well yourself because you understand how all of that is playing out. out. out. But there's only so much time and cognitive space for people to try to truly map the world. So we're all going to use shortcuts to some extent. And it just becomes a question of what method do you use to check the utility?

I won't even say truth. But what method do you use to check the utility of the interpretation that you're using? And for me, that's where am I trying to get to? And by believing what I believe, is it moving me towards or away from that? If towards, cool. Then I'm at least there's high utility. If it's moving me away from my goals, then it's like it's low utility even if it's true. And last thing on this, Jimmy Kimmel had a joke over the weekend about the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Cool people felt it was a bit insensitive. Let's see what you guys think. Our first lady Melania is here. Look at Mel so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. Oof. Oof. Oof. Yeah, I mean here's the thing, man. Um Um Um comedians going to comedy. And I think that they should push the envelope. At a time where we are at um the divisiveness that we're at, I don't love it, but he should be able to say it. Like let comedians do their thing.

I'm not mad at him for saying it. Whatever. Uh and I've actually seen him do he was Jay Shetty, shout out to Jay Shetty, who I love off camera, just an amazing guy. Um he did an a live event with him and I was shocked at how funny he was. Not going to lie. Like on his feet, just funny. Now, he does use he's got a very acerbic sense of humor, so it's all a bit sort of mean, but still funny. And so he is a funny guy.

Like I get that people on the right don't think he's funny. He's got chops. There's a reason that he's had the career that he's had. You may not like his politics and that may thus make it land with a tin ear for you. But it's like I get that some people are going to find that funny. But whatever. Be edgy, do your thing. I don't have beef with comedians. I think they should be able to go pretty buckwild. On to the next one. All right, cool.

In that case, let's shift gears here. Let's jump into the Southern Poverty Law Center fiasco. Uh Elon Musk was retweeting a bunch of stuff. He was going off. I have started to fact-check a lot of Elon's retweets cuz every time he retweets yes, half the time there's a community note there like two days later. So now I'm like, okay, before I just throw that up, let's see. But uh what was your first reaction when you heard about the Southern Poverty Law Center stuff? Center stuff? Center stuff?

Um it was a deep and abiding sadness because as a child of the '80s, I'm watching all of the institutions that I once really believed in um reveal themselves to be politically motivated as I think is just true of the moment. I think most everybody is on a team. Uh but let's go through the specifics. I think that this will help us actually have a fruitful conversation about this meta thing. So I'll give you what's really going on with the Southern Poverty Law Center, but then I want to have a more meta conversation.

All right, so the Southern Poverty Law Center is being accused of funding the very hate the groups that they're supposedly trying to stop. The SPLC is there most frequently referred to as got uh uh uh an indictment on 11 federal counts. So a few of them are wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering. There's a bunch more. The DOJ says that they used donor money to secretly paid a bunch of bad guys Now, this all sounds incredibly explosive, but many are saying that the case just isn't going to hold up in trial.

I'll explain the reasons. First, uh let's go through the specific claims. So between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid roughly $3 million to informants inside the KKK, the neo-Nazi group National Alliance, and the Aryan Nations. I don't think anyone is disputing that. So if we can set that forward, they've paid $3 million to people inside of these organizations. But the idea of them being paid informants is the important part. part. part. Now, it gets weird because they moved the money through shell accounts with names like Fox Photography and Rare Books Warehouse, to name but a few.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanched says the SPLC was manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose. That [snorts] feels like a misrepresentation based on what I know now. I'll walk you through what I think is really going on. Um but ultimately, that really is going to be the question at the center of this case. Were they funding the extremism or were they simply using the same paid informant technique that law enforcement and other investigative agencies like Project Veritas, by the way, who I love, used to get information on groups that they're trying to get dirt on.

The Project Veritas stuff makes me laugh. Getting all these guys on camera just saying the thing is so wild. And the fact that they just use hot people flirting with them to do it is the most amusing indictment of humanity that you're ever going to see. So look, this is a technique that's used by a lot of people including, I'm sure, some of you guys's favorite groups. So you really want to think about this at the policy level. Don't think about it just at the level of this one group.

Say, do I want my favorite group that's fighting in the name of the thing I like to be able to do this. In which case you've got to take the good with the bad. All right, a handful of legal experts are calling the indictment preposterous. Retired federal judge predicts that the case is just going to collapse once it gets to trial because one of the big claims, namely that donors were tricked into donating not knowing what the actual money was being used for, used for, used for, um that's probably not going to withstand scrutiny.

20 SPLC donors have already come forward. They told uh an outlet called The Intercept that paying informants was exactly what they wanted their money to go towards. As mentioned, other organizations like Project Veritas run the same playbook coming from the right and nobody has indicted them yet. We'll see what happens. I certainly don't expect the lawfare to end if the Republicans lose or when the Republicans lose power. Now, we all need to be cognizant of a growing problem and this is where we get into the meta aspect of all this.

Uh it's really strong in the US that incentives drive outcomes, okay? That that's true globally. If hate were to go away, this is a sad truth, the SPLC would go out of business, okay? So, they're not incentivized to make the problem go away. Even if that's only an algorithm running in the back of their minds, more hate in the world benefits the SPLC and any other organization, by the way, that generates donations by pushing an agenda of fighting back against uh supposed boogeyman. We need that common enemy.

You guys have I'm sure thought through the experiment of what would the world look like if we were attacked by aliens. The story goes that we would all unite. There was actually a really famous, I think it was between Reagan and Gorbachev, where he said uh Reagan said to Gorbachev, "If we were um under attack by aliens, would you come to our aid?" And he said, "Yes." Now, whether that's an apocryphal story or not, it shows the way the human mind works. We just need a way to look at each other as being on the same team.

When we think of ourselves being on opposite teams, we're going to fight like cats and dogs. So, given how divided we are as a nation, I think that we're going to see more and more people just be absolutely consumed by a winner-take-all mentality where everything is seen as this insane existential fight. And so, the incentives are to, because it's coming from, just assume for at least a thought experiment, it's coming from a real place of belief. It's not cynical. It's they really believe that they're on the right team.

And because of what's going on with inflation, robbing people of their money, making it impossible for a middle class to exist and for them to make ends meet, they go on to teams because they they feel like they're literally in a fight for their lives. I mean, this is just populism 101. This is what happens every time we go through something like this. And so, when you're on a team and you believe you're in an existential fight, suddenly it feels completely justified to use violence. There's crazy stats coming out where uh more and more people think that violence is sometimes justified, especially the younger they are, the more likely they are to believe that.

And if you believe that your cause is just and the other side is evil, then it's like, yeah, we're if I've got to make an informant that's a member of the KKK wealthy KKK wealthy KKK wealthy to get information on the KKK, then that's what I'm going to do. And if that just so happens to make sure that I've got job security, hey, that's wonderful. So, when all of this is ratcheting up, people are going to look more and they're going to look for more and more evidence that the war that they're designed to fight is still raging and it needs to be fought harder than ever, especially if they need that information in order to get the dollars that they need to stay in business.

And every organization wants to grow, so it's like if you can make it seem bigger and bigger and bigger, then you're going to do that. If you need evidence of that, just look at YouTube headlines. It's like, this is just the way it works because the human mind needs to feel like, yo, this moment is important. I need to pay attention to this one. I need to make this donation to this group because this thing is really happening. Now, again, I'm not saying that's why they're doing it, but I am saying that's the incentive.

So, if you keep all of that in your head, you don't have to believe that anybody when they're doing this is being bad or that they're evil, but that this is just the structure of the human mind. This is how this stuff plays out. So, you don't have to get sucked into it. You can step outside of that fray, look back at this and go, "Okay, some waiting of this needs to be read to this is a bad incentive structure." So, odds are that they're doing things that if I really saw the nitty-gritty of this, I would not like this at all.

And then you just ask, "Do I still think that it's worth it?" But at least then you've got your eyes wide open. And then understand that your team is doing it, too. If you're on a team, I promise you your team is doing it. How can I promise you that? Because it's effective. And over time, groups always find the thing that's effective or they go out of business. So, the groups that have lasted the longest are the ones that are most aligned with the architecture of the human mind.

So, just keep that in mind. Um now, if that's true, then the indictment probably will fall apart. Um and we just all need to be aware that groups like the SPLC have uh fundraising incentive to make America look like it's 1 in away from a race war. Uh whatever team you're voting for, whatever goal you want to see, they all have a similar What side of the race war you're on? Well, not even just a race war, but like if your war is totally different. So, take the DOJ.

So, Trump is going to use the DOJ um to make it look like the SPLC is a rogue group that's just trying to bring down conservatives, right? And so, you're going to see that side uh being like, "Oh my god, like this is existential for conservatives." And so, you're just going to see that rhetoric all the time all the time. all the time all the time. Uh when in reality, the only thing that's existential is the economy. So, welcome to my delusion and my existential rant that I will bang the table on because I really believe it um and I'm well aware that my incentive is to make sure that you guys are convinced because I believe it.

Uh and so, that's why I remind myself endlessly that I am at my most fragile when I'm at my most convinced. And so, all of us need to be very careful uh especially when we're making decisions in our own life. Like, what do we do here? I have a whole another rant there, but I'm going to stop. Uh but I have a lot of follow-ups. Um first, Chad is questioning your comparison between the SPLC and Project Veritas. What did you mean by that? Just to clarify.

So, uh from what I have seen in my research so far, Project Veritas also does similar things. I don't know that they I believe, as of right now, and I could be very wrong, so by all means if we have reason to believe that they don't do this, but it is my understanding from the things that I've read that they do that as well. So, they'll pay informants inside of other groups groups groups um to get information on them. And that to me right now is the central question.

If, because as far as I can tell, again, from early research, but as far as I can tell, it isn't illegal to pay an informant. So, you can do that. Now, what would be illegal is if you're violating someone's privacy, if you're uh lying to donors, things like that, then you're going to be in trouble. And that's what's going to be proven out. But if they can't find anybody who's like, "Whoa, I was told that it wouldn't my donations would never be used for something like that." Uh then they might have a case.

I'm just not expecting that. I'm guessing if you donated money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the very thing that you're looking for them to do to do to do uh is uncover any and all hate that is happening in the world. Um Um Um so, it will come down to whether they were using a tactic that will fall under the First Amendment or whether they are using a tactic that actually does violate some other law. Because if it doesn't violate the law, uh then there's going to be nothing there.

And so, I'm saying think of all this kind of stuff as a policy because they're not going to be the only ones using that uh that technique. And the thing that was originally presented when I first started researching this was as if they were just secretly funding these groups to go do their thing. From what I've seen, again, early stages of research, but from what I've seen, the thing that they have paid for is informants. So, we'll see if that ends up being true. If it's not, and they're actually just trying to stir up uh hate to make sure that they have a job in the future, cool, that'll come out in the wash.

But in my current estimation of what's happening, I I haven't seen the proof of that. that. that. Uh I want to pitch a logic chain to you and think if this like passes the sniff test. Internationally, Internationally, Internationally, sometimes it is for the nation's best interest to interest to interest to do some things that might destabilize communities, destabilize governments. We might create nonprofits, create entities, things like that that can move on the shadow him. We'll call it like Colonel Jessup's shadow of like democracy. democracy. democracy.

Um I feel like on the international level, that's fine to do that as long as it's for America's best interest. Once America's best interest becomes a justifier, it then starts to go internationally into domestically. Okay, I'll only do it for the bad groups. And then that kind of spirals out and then before you know it, every group they describe as bad could be anything from the Black Panther Party to the K and all these other things that have happened since then. So, is this really the emperor without clothes or is this just another kind of it started off good and then the government got like or bureaucracy got perverted and then it turned a different direction.

Like, where is this shadow movements kind of origin story coming from cuz we're starting to see it a lot, whether it's USA, whether it's SPLC, whether it's Black Lives Matter, and some of these other groups that just a decade ago we literally felt the exact opposite of how we feel about them now. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. It is a very interesting cultural phenomenon that we went from give me liberty or give me death to protect me from everything no matter the cost. And that's what I think you see playing out.

We're no longer willing to pay a price for freedom. And people aren't even sure that they want freedom anymore. And cultures change, man. And so, yeah, there may not be anything that we can do to revive to revive to revive that spirit. It it may just be that it had its time and all these things move in cycles and so a culture somewhere, us or somewhere else, will rediscover true liberty and make demands. Um it may be from the radioactive rubble because uh we didn't allow um you know, that kind of surveillance in order to stop something like that.

Um so, this isn't one where I necessarily even want to at least in this moment cuz I do reserve the right to one day just really go berserk on this topic. Um Um Um I think people should cherish freedom. And I think that we the reason that even though I'm not religious, the reason that I'm so pro-Christianity pro-Christianity pro-Christianity is that Christianity gave us this idea that the individual is sacred. And that foundational belief then played out in the Enlightenment. And so, the crazy thing is the church was like killing people hand over fist, but that idea of the individual is sacred just wouldn't let go.

And so, over a long enough period of time, you get the Enlightenment and all that stuff. And now we're clawing back away from that and saying safety, safety, safety. And I think it was Benjamin Franklin, it was one of the founding fathers that was like if you exchange um freedom for safety you get neither of either of them. It's a really banger quote that I'm totally [ __ ] up right now, but that quote I've always really thought was incredible because it's just like with socialism. People never ask the question, how do you enforce this?

enforce this? enforce this? And it always ends up with men with guns. guns. guns. And once you understand, oh, they'll kill me and like do this, got it. Then it's like, whoa, are you really interested in that? Because the government will truly put its heel on your throat. And for me, there's a reason that I don't want to live in China. Even if China were like pulling ahead at some point and I was like, wow, this moment in history brought to you by dictators are a better play, I'd still be like, but I don't want a dictator.

Like I would much rather be able to be over here [ __ ] up because I have freedom than be forced on the right path over here. Now, that's a quirk of my wiring that I don't expect everybody to agree with, but it's like, dude, in fact, did we release the thing that I recorded about the five books that people should get behind? I've no idea if that was taken well or poorly. Uh but man, it's once you have a historical context for how evil it would be to have a government go, I know what's best for you and I will kill tens of millions of you to make sure that my way gets executed on, uh I'm just not here for that.

Yeah. It it's interesting that you say that cuz I I forgot who said it. Um it's just going to bother me. But they were talking about how they diagnosed America's current problems by saying the individual is sacred is now getting perverted to the other side where certain individuals think that they're smart enough to say, okay, because because independent sovereignty is so important, I need to do this thing that's going to help other people realize their independent sovereignty. So then they end up trying to build in can screw and bend the rules and all these things because they're so focused on one thing that it then propagates into something that ends up impacting like masses.

This is what I call the dumb voter problem. Mm. I I can learn everything about somebody that I need to know. Like it's a calibrating question. Yeah. Just ask, okay. okay. okay. Um if a bunch of dumb people got together and voted for the very thing that you hate, what do you want to be done about that? And if they're like, yeah, we've got to let dumb people vote because who the hell would get to decide who's dumb or not? And so, yeah, if dumb people outvote me, such is a democracy.

It is what it is. If people are like, nope, you got to like find a way invalidate their votes, do something, but you got to keep them out of the voting pool, then I'm just like, yeah, we've got a problem. Take God, this is going to be controversial. Take women. Take women. Take women. Uh Uh Uh women are predisposed to very different thing than men. Dude, look up some of the things Camille Paglia has said, a woman first of all. Uh and she was like, if women I'm paraphrasing it and I may get this a little wrong, so please chat if you guys know the real quote, let me know.

But she said something along the lines of if women ruled the world, we'd still be in grass huts. Camille Pagot Paglia. Paglia, yeah, okay. okay. okay. Um If we if Just type in her name and then grass huts and see if you can get the uh the full quote. So, it's like what she's saying is that um women are evolutionarily bent to be into very different things than men. And men have been evolutionarily shaped by women, PS, by the way. Okay, so here it is. If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.

Camille Paglia. Jeez. Uh so, what she's getting at is not that women are bad or dumb. They certainly are not. And if you have awesome women in your life, you will learn very quickly. They are your peer. They are just very different than you, dear men. So, what she's saying is they're optimized for something different. something different. something different. And men are optimized for something different. And men are if you left the world exclusively in male hands, I think it would be pathological just on the other side.

So, men are going to be uh uh uh Nazi Germany. Just to give it like a really goose-stepping I want to see you salute me for 8 hours and if you lower your arm first, we [ __ ] shoot you. I mean, it's like that's like masculinity gone pathological. And then the woke movement is femininity, whether expressed by men or women, by the way, gone pathological on the other side. So, men are hyper-ambitious, very aggressive. They try to innovate as a way to dunk on other people and to be better than them and to climb higher than them and all that.

And yeah, that's what if you think of men as a God, I'm really going to just give people all the ammo in the world. Uh if you think of men as a breeding experiment on behalf of women, then it's like, well, this this is what you wanted. And the thing is in a modern context, it feels weird. In the same way that our palate is designed to make us want to eat Ho Hos and cupcakes because in an evolutionary standpoint, getting the honey out of a beehive was super risky.

super risky. super risky. But it was also most people just starved to death. Like history is a never-ending story of you can't get your Minecraft civilization going, you just all die. And so, you finally find ways to do things like farming and agriculture and all that stuff, but ooh, man, it's really hard. And so, we had to have these incredible impulses to go and take huge risks and all that. But somebody's got to take care of the kids. Anyway, so we we co-evolve down these different paths.

We come together, in my opinion, to be to be to be more of a whole when we're together. And one of the truest things my wife ever said to me cuz I was joking with her one day and I was like, man, do I wish that you thought like me because this gets very frustrating. And she started laughing and she says, you don't wish that I thought like you and you don't wish that you could just always convince me. convince me. convince me. She was like, you would find me uninteresting in a heartbeat.

And I was like, that's so true. And when I really reflect on our lives, what we've achieved, we've achieved because of the the dynamic tension between the two of us, where she wants to go one way, I want to go another and we have to find a path that we both find beneficial. So, anyway, once people under begin to understand that, then it's like you can get a better grasp of what the actual useful path forward is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then last thing with the SPLC thing, Trump did mention that they funded uh Charlottesville and the KKK.

A lot of people are saying he's using this to kind of distance himself from like the very fine people comment and that was this other center was responsible for like kind of redging judging that up judging that up. Um do you think that SPLC had any long-term implications or anything that anything that anything that kind of consequences or was this just kind of a shady side deal and it's kind of isolated at that? It it's hard to say at this stage in the investigation. We'll see what comes out in the indictment.

If there's more information that they were just funding it like think of the um protest where you've got organizations that are like the No Kings protest. You've got organizations spending millions of dollars uh creating signs, all that stuff. That's like real material support to the protest. So, if somebody said, hey, I have a beef with that. This isn't organic. This isn't, you know, grassroots. This is somebody with a lot of money coming in and giving them all the messaging and that the people don't even really understand what they're necessarily saying, but they've got the signs cuz they've been printing for them all that.

I'd be like, yeah, I get that. Um so, if they're doing stuff like that, then I would be like, oh, okay, that's pretty direct material support. I have not seen that evidence yet. So, if I don't see that evidence, then I'll be like, okay, if the thing they actually did is paying for men's and that's like a typical thing that groups do, then we all just have to decide as a matter of blanket policy, do we want to say, you just can't do that? And then you create legislation and you make that illegal.

But you don't want to single out one group and go after them. You want to make it a policy. Cool. All right, with that being said, let's jump to some super chats. Ryan, happy Monday. What's up? We got four super chats. All right. First up from Marussia Dark says, welcome back, Tom. We all missed you. Any advice besides uh repetition and only belief that matters on how to overcome being mad at God and developing an abundance mindset when one's reality reflects nothing but scarcity? Oof, that's a banger.

Yo. Okay, opening it up with the with the big question. Let's uh let's lock in. So, um all right, I'm going to answer this from the frame of reference that you believe in God rather than spending time trying to convince you that God isn't real. Uh if I believed in God, then I would use the um I'm sure you've read that poem, the times where it looked like there was only one uh set of footprints in the sand, that was not me abandoning you, that was me carrying you.

So, the sense of I don't always know what's going on, when I look back at it, I may feel that I was hard done by, but you are omnipotent, you have obviously uh far better view what I need and where I should go and, you know, what I should be doing to make the life that you think is best for me. Now, if you don't believe that God is omniscient, uh that God is good-willed, and that God wants good things for you, okay, now we've got a problem.

Uh if you think that you are beholden to a vengeful sinister God, which certainly the Old Testament will give you plenty of reasons to believe that's true. Uh but if you get down with the New Testament, far more optimistic, I would keep you focused on that. People tend to sum it up with God works in mysterious ways. Cool. So, as a placeholder, I'll be like, "Hey, I don't understand, but this is the position that I'm in." Now, we get to the way I view the world, which I think is very helpful, which is uh I'm currently suffering.

What I choose to believe about this suffering will determine the actions that I take, and the actions that I take control my entire life. So, I would put forward being angry with God is low utility because it will make you feel helpless. Feeling helpless is never going to be useful. I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals. So, I will sometimes think very negative things about myself because it kicks me in the ass and gets me moving. But I tend not to spend a lot there because it will become very corrosive.

And so, even if something is true, like for instance, an idea that I struggled with for a very long time, uh when I just could not get my career going, was maybe I'm just not smart enough to make all of this happen. And I was like, "Hey, that might actually be true, but it's not very helpful. It's not making me take the right actions." If I believe that I can get better, what I now call the only belief that matters, then I start taking the right actions.

Obviously, that changed my whole life. I don't need you to believe that I'm smart, I just need you to look at the actions that I took to see what they yielded, which was skills. Those skills have utility, they've allowed me to do things in my life. So, maybe I am a complete and utter [ __ ] but by taking the right steps, I've gotten incredible outcomes in my life. So, this is why I get obsessed with utility. So, God is uh worthy of my anger and derision, low utility, it puts me in a very constrictive place, it makes me spend time just being mad at him instead of taking time to acquire the skills that I need to get somewhere.

Um the reality is that the world isn't abundant or scarce, uh it's just that some people are going to win and some people are going to lose. And so, what you want to figure out is what are the things you actually care about. Don't play a game where winning wouldn't be helpful. Figure out what you want your end state to look like and then say, "What are the things that I need to do to get there?" And I would just tell you love is way more emotionally useful than money.

And so, if you can't win at the money game, I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time there. I'd be thinking about how do I create a group of people, one that actually will oddly increase my likelihood of success by helping each other. Uh but two, also having friends and people that you love and care about, doing something for other people is emotionally extraordinarily high utility, and it's also extremely good for being successful in the long run because if you're down, but you've helped a lot of people, those people are going to come to your aid and help you out.

So, that's how I would approach that is just around utility. He also wanted me to clarify the you're mad at God is in reference to a phrase you said. you said. you said. Yes, I say it all the time. The whole I but it that wouldn't change a single word of what I just said because that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm trying to get people to realize that when you're mad with the way the human mind works, to spend all your time being pissed about it, you you're mad at God.

I'm just trying to get people to go, "Okay, yeah, [ __ ] it is the way that it is. So, there's no person for me to blame. Now what?" And that's always my favorite question. So many people stop at the well, life is unfair. Okay, cool. Yes, great. I'll grant you life is unfair. Now what? You can either let the weight of that crush you and stop you, or you can push forward and go, "Well, I guess I have to work harder than other people, but it is what it is." Uh Mauricio Dark says, "What would have stopped a nuclear Iran from closing the strait anyway and holding Israel hostage while being untouchable like North Korea?

Seems like we'd be in this situation regardless. At least the US isn't a death cult." Uh I totally agree. I don't understand what people are fighting for on the Iranian side. So, to me, all of this comes down to what do you believe America should do in the face of a country country country getting nuclear weapons? And if you think the answer is if they're a rogue nation, then they should be defined as such and we should stop them at all costs including warfare like we are doing now, and we made a mistake with North Korea, we never should have let them get nukes.

Or maybe you believe, "No, people war is never justified. If somebody gets nuclear weapons and they deploy them, that is what it is. Uh and we should only do a retaliatory strike. We should never um do a preemptive strike." Cool. Now at least you have a coherent path forward. What I find is that people don't want to define what they believe because when they say it out loud, they feel like an [ __ ] And so, I just want to hear what people say. Like, "Okay, cool. Let's say that Iran really was about to get a nuclear weapon.

weapon. weapon. Where do you draw the line? Nowhere? Meaning they can go all the way to North Korea?" And if they say yes, cool. They may say, "Listen, let me explain to you. North Korea hasn't fired any nukes. So, what the [ __ ] are we arguing about? This is absurd that America would think that they could just go in and start killing people because they might get a nuclear weapon that odds are they would never use." Um look at the history of warfare. There's only one country that's dropped nuclear weapons, and it's the [ __ ] guy running around telling me that he gets to be the cop.

So, yeah, great. Now you have made your position clear. Most people just don't make their position clear. But I happen to fall on the side of if a nation is rogue, uh then we should stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, and this becomes a question of were they really about to get a nuclear weapon? And if the answer is yes, cool. Then stopping them makes all the sense in the world to me. If that's just a lie and this is really just a pure economic play, well then that's a total dick move, move, move, uber grotesque, and we should all be up in arms.

And right now, I think you can make a case for either one of those, and honestly, I don't know which is true, and I fear that it's probably a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. column B. column B. So, um So, um So, um but yeah, if people were willing to state the thing that they believe, the world would make a lot more sense. Patrick Wrightson, 2072, says, "Banger opening. Love Drew's Fast and Furious cutscene. Glad you guys are back." Thank you.

It's very good to be back. Uh shout out to the boys. That was the first time I'm seeing that. I I had seen a rough cut, but I had never seen the finished thing. finished thing. finished thing. Uh I found it hilarious and was in hysterics hysterics hysterics uh before we went live. So, hope you guys enjoy it. Is that going to play every time before the uh show? Yeah, we got we're couple editing, we'll smooth it out. The goal is to get a 5-minute to that way we can replace the stream start screen.

Ah, just a countdown. Nice. Yeah. All right. Again, yeah. Last super chat from Big Digglers. Glad you all are back. Scott Adams was my regular morning for a decade. Your three times weekly's helped me seek signal seek signal from the noise. Tom and Drew, you had a good conversation last show, but I felt it wasn't wholly resolved. Any more insights with hindsight? I think they're referring to y'all's debate episode. Yeah, I would assume where we left it saying that this very much isn't resolved, but uh in the sake of good TV, uh it was getting to the point where Let's bring back up the argument.

Let's flip the tables. Uh so, I I I I have not thought any differently, so I still feel the same. I would imagine Drew still feels the same. The part of the reason that the um argument is, I hope, interesting to you guys is it really is core foundational beliefs between Drew and I. And so, what you're witnessing is a collision of values and beliefs, probably, where we're both mapping what we believe to be true about the world in a way where we can state it out loud.

Drew can say what he believes. Drew can say his values. I can say what I believe. I can say what my values are. Uh we just don't agree. And so, how do you deal with something where you understand the other person, you just don't agree with them? Um and I hope that uh people can see that you can be um very respectful, you can have a ton of respect for somebody even if you disagree with some of the things that um you believe, uh and you can have different values, and you don't have to think less of the other person.

So, yeah, I'm trust me, uh it will come up again up again up again uh as those are very foundational to Drew and I. And so, whenever these uh become the thing of the day, um we'll we'll dive deep. And mad respect to Drew, and this always feels very important for me to pay that. When you put your thoughts out there, you're going to get attacked by some people. Um and that was never the bargain Drew made. I did not hire Drew to be on camera.

I hired Drew to produce, which he has always done faithfully and extraordinarily well, uh and also allowed me to drag him in front of camera where he is inevitably going to suffer the slings and arrows. So, just always want to acknowledge that and much appreciated. appreciated. appreciated. Just happy to be here. Uh okay, so the next thing probably will turn into argument, so Big Digglers will get what he what he wants. Cuz okay, we have like four economic things, and I want to get to all of them.

them. them. You also being gone, there's been some stuff that's been popping off while you've been gone. So, I kind of want to frame it with the stuff that you've been gone, on, then it's naturally going to like bleed into the economic stuff. But, I think that we talk a lot of times about taxes, about communism, about uh capitalism. We talk about it at the 40,000-ft level, what the art should be, what it is, is, things like that. But, there's certain ideas that are now gaining steam, and I want to kind of attack those head-on versus just take a headline, and we talk about the headline, and we don't talk about the idea from a grander stance.

Yeah. So, Hasan went viral um twice last week. week. week. He had a uh interview with the New York Times. They platformed him. The first debate before even jumping into the clips is Hasan can say "CEOs should be killed, the means of production should be seized." and get a platform at the New York Times. A Nick Fuentes has will never get platformed at New York Times. Should Hasan be like classified as an extremist and things like that? We could get into that. That thing that seems like censorship to me, so I don't think that that's really a fruitful conversation, but I'm curious to see what you Yeah, think about that.

Well, so I would say that labeling somebody is not the same as censorship. As long as there is no um core like you're not institutionally being blocked by something. I don't think Hasan should be debanked. Uh I don't think he should be algorithmically muted or anything like that, and I really don't think he should lose his account. Um we have laws around freedom of speech that are clearly defined, and I personally wish that the private companies, and they are private companies, but I do wish that the private companies should have adhered algorithmically to what is um put in the Constitution, and then I wish that they would allow users to control the algorithm, and say, "I want like either let people make algorithms." So, like imagine if as a private citizen, I could go get off of uh um uh forum somewhere, I could get somebody's algorithm that I could then apply to my X feed or my Instagram feed or whatever, so it's showing me what I want to see, not what optimizes the money for that company.

That would be dope. They're not going to do that, by the way. Um but, that would be awesome. So, now I don't know that it would work, that's the bad news. And so, from an economics standpoint, it may just always lose out because you just can't sustain the company. Um so, it is what it is, but that would be my fantasy, where people have the ability to choose the algorithmic amplification. Cuz I get that they don't want to amplify that stuff. Um but, nonetheless uh Hasan, when he was across the table from me, was really lovely, and I don't ever want to betray that.

Now, of course, people send a an emissary, that was a version of him, and so I don't know what version of him he wants me to believe, the one that seems like an unhinged lunatic on uh his own streams, uh or the far more reasonable person that sat across from me. So, but going back to this idea of labels, Hasan has called himself I've seen it out of his own mouth say, "I am a propagandist." So, if you call him a propagandist, that seems pretty fair, as he has said, "I am a propagandist." Um are his views extreme?

Yeah, in my opinion, yes. But, do I want to see him um debanked or anything like that? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Copy. All right, let's Now, when he calls for violence, that's totally different thing. And that's where we're going. So, he introduced this concept called social social murder. In a new New York Times interview, Hasan [ __ ] says that many understand Luigi Minchioni's killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson because Thompson himself was guilty of {quote} social murder. Engels wrote about the concept of social murder.

murder. murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO Healthcare CEO Healthcare CEO was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, violence, violence, uh the the structural violence of poverty, poverty, poverty, uh the the So, uh whenever you're arguing with somebody and you think that they're saying something that doesn't make sense, you want to drill into what is the base assumption because he's putting forward a worldview, a frame of reference that has a base assumption that healthcare is a right.

And that a um insurance company therefore must exist. And that um any CEO running a company, despite all the personal risk that they take and all of that, which I get a non-entrepreneur just has no [ __ ] idea Mhm. for reasons that I hope are obvious. obvious. obvious. Uh I feel very aggressively about that. And so, it's like, "Yeah, [ __ ] go build that company, and now run it the way that I [ __ ] think is the right way." Um there was a poll done where people asked, "How profitable do you think companies are?" And people estimated that companies are over 30% profitable.

Do you know how [ __ ] crazy that is? So, uh the average company is actually like whatever, 7% or something. So, people have just a ridiculous sense of like what it takes to run a company and how profitable these companies are and all this stuff. It's patently absurd. Also, insurance companies have to pay out like up to I think 80%. And so, an insurance company cannot keep more than 20%, no matter what. Like they have to pay out. So, uh these guys just don't understand this stuff.

They don't understand it. And so, he's putting forward an idea that is stupid on a whole lot of levels. And one of the levels on which it is stupid is that healthcare is a right. Now, I expect my own community to be up in arms in about 30 seconds when this gets to them, because I know a lot of them are going to think that this [ __ ] is a right. And maybe once the bots and AI are doing it for free, but when you're asking people to take incredible risk, invest massive amounts of capital uh no.

So, all of that stuff is absurd. So, it it's it's it's if you if you if you build a governmental structure that creates the infrastructure for business to thrive, and make it impossible for them to build monopolies, you're in great shape. The bad news is, we do the exact opposite, and we create this environment where regulatory capture makes it next to impossible for innovation to happen when you get these gigantic companies, where it takes hundreds of millions or even tens of billions of dollars to build a competitor, and now functionally, you have a monopoly.

That's the thing that we've got to be super paranoid about. And when you've got somebody like um Mark Cuban, who's like "Guys, the real problem is this whatever layer of the bureaucracy." Yeah. He's like, "That is the problem. You guys are all [ __ ] worrying about some other thing." And he was like, "What we really need to do is make sure that we can use innovation to drive the cost down. But, I've got to put up with all this [ __ ] of the bureaucracy being able to stop somebody like me." And if you're a lesser entrepreneur than him, or you have lesser capital than him, which is basically everybody then it's like "How the [ __ ] you going to compete?" And so, I that just isn't the shared understanding of what a a capitalist is or capitalism is.

And it's one of those Capitalism is not like some clean, angelic thing. It's a [ __ ] messy knife fight of essentially guys trying to outdo each other effectively by any means necessary, which is why you need some light-touch regulation. regulation. regulation. And they're in there they're they're not innovating only because they love and want to see good things, though there is a lot of that, myself included. I wanted to help my mom and my sister. And so, I Remember, I didn't know Quest was going to be successful, but I knew my house was on the line.

And so, the emotional way that I connected with all that risk and all of the fatigue and suffering and uh uh uh was like, "I'm going to help my mom and my sister." So, I showed up every day thinking of my mom and my sister, my mom and my sister. And there is some of that, to be sure, but I'm not asking anybody on balance to take capitalism, myself included, by the way. I got [ __ ] wealthy, and that was also a motivation. I was like, "Hey, if I can pull this off, a lot of money.

Holy [ __ ] this could be incredible." So, it's always going to be a mix bag of all that stuff. But, in all of that you get to take advantage of the way that God, the matrix, whatever constructed us such that you get this small cadre of people. It's largely male. It is not exclusively male, but they are hyper-ambitious, and they are very driven, and they will burn the candle at both ends. I have knowingly shortened my life by enduring a level of stress is not healthy. healthy.

healthy. But, bro But, bro But, bro if today I came down with a disease where I'm like, "Well, I've got 2 weeks to live." or whatever, I'd be like, "I really [ __ ] gave it my all." Like I really went after it. I would be very satisfied on my deathbed. So, there are some people that like to play the game like that. You get to take advantage of that only when you create the system that allows people like that to really just go balls to the wall.

And they will innovate and innovate and innovate and innovate to try and get you to give them your money. And they will drive cost down, and they will make better products, and they will make better products cheaper that help extend life, save people, all that. But, they will also abuse the system. And one of the ways they abuse the system is regulatory capture, where they go, "Okay, I did all of that. I'm now in this position. I did take incredible risk, and did [clears throat] miraculous things to get here.

here. here. But, I don't like this feeling of vulnerability. I don't want the next guy who's going to outwork me, he's going to be younger than me, faster than me, sharper than me, more of the moment than me. I've got to block him out. And whether they know it consciously and are just [ __ ] or like we were talking about with the um SPLC, it's just the subconscious motivation in the back of their mind that they never fully acknowledge, but is there, they're going to block other people out, and we use the government to do it.

And the great [ __ ] irony is the people that are being abused by that system, meaning healthcare costs are going up. Do we have the graph that shows the administrators? I can't remember if I grabbed it, but it's been going all over. over. over. Administrative costs on hospitals. Yep, there it is. Look at your screens, boys and girls. The administrative costs. It's not physicians, more physicians that are driving the cost of health care up. It is administrators in the extreme. And one of the things that makes all that required is all the additional regulation.

And so, the very people being abused by the system who are screaming that Brian Thompson killed them. Nope, this killed you. This is what's making it ridic- ridiculously expensive. The reason that I say it could be free one day is in innovation. It's AI, it's robotics. If that really does like hit where they can capture essentially 100% of the energy from the sun, and like now energy's free, that means after the first wave of robots, everything is free. Then, sure. To say that everybody should have equal access, got to love it.

I'm here for it. But right now, it's humans have to take huge risks, spend their life pouring themselves into a career. It's not owed to anybody. Uh Uh Uh I I want to weigh in on the conversation really quick, cuz we're going to bring it back around to then hit some of the rebuttals that you have, and then chat will take some of your questions as well. for-profit uh paywalled m- paywalled m- paywalled m- uh system of of health care in this country, and the consequences of that are are are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths.

of deaths. of deaths. And that was a fascinating story from for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain pain pain that the that the that the private health care system had uh created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. place. place. So, it it's one of those things now where where where hypothetically speaking, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. Luigi Mangione needed a surgery, couldn't get it cleared.

His claim got approved. approved. approved. Two day two weeks later, United CEO announced record profits, whatever like that. That's the typical news story that people are kind of regurgitating on. Yep. However, let's actually go through the layer as a company. Is there something we can actually do to hold health care companies accountable? Cuz there are, whether it's 1%, whether it's What though? What though? What though? My my very next point that there are certain there is a certain percentage of I'm going to deduct deny this claim, because it cost me too much money.

Mhm. Versus Versus Versus the Hippocratic oath. I have to help you whether or not I want to, whether I like you or not, like that. oath is first, do no harm. Okay. So, then at that point, there is no responsibility, social we can't uh legislate it or otherwise for for for health care companies in order to try to keep the health of their populace. You you certainly can legislate an attempt, but what we have found is that when you try to run something like health care through the government, it gets atrocious.

And I know people like to bang the drum about other countries that have free health care. Do you see the uh lines for seeing your normal GP in Canada? It was absurd. So, they begin throttling it, because the when something is free, obviously usage rates go up up up up up. So, um this is one of those things where the the free market has proven to be far more beneficial at creating these things than the government by by orders of magnitude. magnitude. magnitude. And And And I'll go back to the statement that I made before.

If we want free health care, we can have it, but we've got to give something up to get it. So, if Americans said, "Hey, we're going to balance the budget, and our biggest expense is going to be health care. Here are the things that we're going to do to means test it to make sure that this doesn't become parasitic, which it will. Um and so, we're going to make sure that everybody has high quality health care, and we're going we are going to realize there are trade-offs.

When you make it free, there are going to be big trade-offs. And we're much happier with those trade-offs than we are on the free market side. Cool. Like I like I said, even if I thought people were dumb to vote for it, I'm perfectly willing to accept what people decide to vote for. So, this is one of those where what I would appeal to people on is look at how the free markets work, answer the question why China was in grinding poverty until they embraced the free market.

Um and so, you begin to understand the physics of how this stuff works, of how you actually get doctors to come in and do their thing. You begin to understand why when the system has the government backing it, that administrative costs balloon in in the most egregious way possible, that we don't spend money on more doctors, we spend more [clears throat] money on administrators. And so, it's there there is a base assumption being made, and this is what I was trying to get to with the diatribe about um Hassan, is that he has a base assumption in his world view that people are obligated to work on behalf of other people.

Now, each and every person listening right now would never do that. They themselves obviously believe they should have a choice about where they work and what they do. Uh but all of a sudden, when it's health care, it's like, "No, no, no, [ __ ] get to work." work." work." And that's just crazy. That's somebody who's not saying, "Oh, yeah, this people They're not slaves, and so they can work where they want, on what they want. They are not obligated." And so, if Brian Thompson or anybody else wants to run a bad insurance company, they have the right to do that, and they should go out of business if it's bad.

And if the government is funding a bad company, guess what we should be mad at? The government. Don't fund companies. Like Trump is now talking about buying uh Spirit Airlines. Like how [ __ ] stupid is that? That's so moronic. It's like companies are meant to go out of business. They're not doing the thing. So, uh yeah, you got to let it die. So, get the government out of this [ __ ] And even if we were going to make health care free, then what you do is you give people a stipend, just like I would want to see them do with education.

You go, "Here's your budget. Everybody gets this amount of money, and spend it how you see fit. And if some people spend that money poorly, and they die, yes, people have to be responsible for themselves. We are so it's such a nanny state approach to be like, "The government's going to pay for everything, and we're going to decide what you can and can't do. We don't think that you're capable of making that decision." That's wild to me. That don't assume that your populace is stupid. And if you think your populace is stupid, in what way are you letting them vote?

Like you're saying you're too dumb to make decisions for you, but you can make decisions for the whole country? Get the [ __ ] out of here. That's so wild. So, anyway, these are things when I talk to people like this, I'm like, "Hey, let's actually name your base assumptions. And let's get into it. And the only way for what he's saying to make sense to him is that yes, that yes, that yes, this is a right. People have the right to health care. And if that means that we have to force people to work in those organizations, we will.

Uh and that's lunacy. I think for like school choice education, I can understand this point a bit more. I think health insurance is a bit different because of how gatekept the industry is in general, whereas there isn't a free market [snorts] open source health care marketplace. The Affordable Care Act is the closest thing, and that's not even being properly funded or supported or anything. at all. It's the government. So, what I'm saying is cool. You and I agree. But but I'm saying I can't just go I need health insurance.com.

Like it's through my employer. There aren't independent health care institutions I just walk in and say, "Hey, I want to be a member." Mhm. Um they're trying to advocate that Costco can now sell health care health insurance membership. That's something that's being lobbied, too. So, when it comes to education, yes, I'm in a shitty school, I can actually do something. I can take my kid out. I can move. I can drive. I can do these things now. If my health insurance is shitty, I can quit my job, yes, but now because I have cancer and I need health insurance, quitting my job to get seems a little bit like counterproductive.

is all stupid. Yeah. So, I do think that health insurance specifically is a stupid industry that does need reform. Yeah, but so now, yes, agreed. Reform, what does it look like? If you say government reform, now I'm flipping the table over. If you say innovation in the free market, then I say, "Yeah, cool. We're in total agreement." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The The The delta from where we are now to where it would be in a perfect world, I think for health insurance, the casualties are too high that I can't just trust a selfish capitalist to worry about that.

Cuz right now, even with govern- government subsidies propping them up, they're still denying at record rates. So, I can only imagine when there's no regulatory oversight, and I'm just giving them the 100% veto power, the nos would probably increase rather than decrease. And then, after the wave of people die, and then the next company comes and says, "Hey, we can do this a better way." Then, I'm sure there'll probably be that open source new Yeah, so look, this is all knowable. So, the way that innovation works goes like this.

Um I am a kid. I'm 21 years old, and I want to help humanity, and I want to get rich. And I'm [ __ ] smart. And so, I look out at the world, and I go, "Hm, I'm going to build better health care." And And And I want an even playing field from the government. I don't want this to be something that I can't get involved in where I've got to spend $50 million in legal stuff just to like start my company. I want regulation to be sure, but it needs to be light touch.

It needs to be simple, easy to navigate. I then want to innovate. And for anybody that doesn't think this is true, remember that there are kids that have built nuclear reactors. I mean this literally. I've interviewed one of them on my show that build nuclear reactors in their garage at 14. So, they will innovate if they believe there's a future in this and they can do something with that. And so, innovation drives cost down over time and makes quality better. But, you have to create the incentive structure where that can happen.

What I'm saying is the healthcare industry has done the exact opposite. It's got regulatory capture such that the government makes the hurdle to get involved in healthcare basically at any level, creating a medical device, anything. The hurdles are so absurdly high. The legislation was drafted by the companies that are already successful, designed specifically to keep anybody new out. Therefore, the 14-year-old in his garage does not try to build a medical device because everybody he talks to is like, "Don't. You'll It'll take you 20 years to get something approved." I've been on the advisory board of a medical device company for 10 years.

10 years. 10 years. And they're just now going to market. Bro, Bro, Bro, the the the guy went from 100% ownership of the company to like 2% ownership in the company because he's just had to keep raising capital, raising capital, raising capital, raising capital. And it wasn't the device. The device was the cheap part. It was getting through the 10 years of regulatory hurdles. It's really insane. Like when people look at it, they're like, "This is ridiculous." So, if you can do a regulatory structure that instead of creating the graph where administrators is like a vertical wall of expense, of expense, of expense, you get more physicians, the cost of high-quality treatment goes down, that would be better.

So, the way that this should work is that young kid develops something in his garage. It's very expensive because he's not doing it at massive scale. Wealthy people can afford it. They show that there's a business. Then, they begin to innovate and drive cost down. This is how technology works. Healthcare is technology, plain and simple, period, end of story. The thing you are asking for is better technology. I don't think anybody's dumb enough to argue the fact that technology and healthcare are one in the same.

So, we are asking people to technologically innovate in healthcare. And what we know is, "Cool. You need to start making this [ __ ] that's very expensive that a very limited number of people can do." And then all of a sudden the cost has come down down down down until it's ubiquitous. But, we glitch out as a society when only rich people can afford it. We freak the [ __ ] out. We tip the tables over. We want it in the government's hands, which makes it more expensive and slower innovation.

And yet, I see people banging their chest wanting to do that. And I'm like, "Look, I get it. None of us want innovation to work the way that it does. We want God to hand us a an updated MRI machine or hand us hand us hand us something that stops cancer instead of chemotherapy. We want the coders of the Matrix to go in and edit a database variable and now all of a sudden nobody gets cancer or cancer's super easy to cure." It doesn't work like that.

And so, the way that it does work is we innovate in technology and when the government gets involved, innovation stops. If so, factor to that, uh we have the button. I forgot where it is though. All right. I'll get to that another. Uh okay, we need to talk about this billionaire tax because there is a secret proposal that has just been released that a lot of people didn't realize was in there to begin with. So, this is from uh Chamath Palihapitiya on page 26 of the billionaire tax proposal in California.

It explains how the state legislature can convert from a billionaire tax to an everyone tax without voter approval. They can also adjust the tax to be a yearly tax, not just one time, again without your approval. Intelligence test for you. If this was meant to just target billionaires, why did they write this in? in? in? Is this the smoking gun that um the capitalists been warning everybody about this entire time? That once they start with a little one, it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger people to tax.

So, I I just cannot get people to understand that the bulk of the wealth is not held by billionaires. So, you could take 100% of billionaire money and it only buys you a couple of years of the deficit. I forget the exact number, but it's like $7 trillion or something is held by billionaires. It's a lot of money, for sure, but it's not nearly enough. You acquire $2 billion of additional debt every year. So, you don't It just wouldn't help at all. So, now the question becomes, where is the money?

And I will point you to the Nordic countries. So, the Nordic countries, which want to give everything for free, guess what they do? They tax everybody. everybody. everybody. Rich, poor, middle class, wealthy, doesn't matter. Everybody's going to get it. Everybody's paying in the neighborhood of 50% and more in taxes. And this is why their innovation rate is just tiny compared to the US. So, it you're not going to be able to solve the problem by taxing people more. You have to get your spending under control.

So, Chamath is right. What's going to end up happening is they're going to do the supposed one-time 5% wealth tax, which will be economically destructive as it is, will cause a ton of people to leave. Many of them have already left. And then they'll realize, "Huh, that either didn't bring us in the money that we needed or it actually brought in even less money than we were collecting before. Whoopsies. So, now instead of being a one-time tax on billionaires alone, we're now going to go downstream." And then they're going to tax more people there.

But, if they keep taxing on wealth and for reasons that I've explained, and I'm happy to do it if there are follow-up questions, but for reasons I've explained a million times before, when you try to sell fictional wealth, which is known as unrealized gains, it is pure fiction, then when you try to make that real, it's destructive in and of itself to do that. And so, now you're creating all these economic problems that will only lower, not just even if nobody left, it would lower the amount of tax revenue that you're able to collect.

So, then you go down another rung until you're finally taxing everybody. This stuff doesn't work. They will keep broadening. And which by the way, the fact that they would be able to make it recurring and go down the ladder in terms of net worth without needing the people to vote is is a catastrophe. So, this is one if this passes, even though it doesn't apply to me today, I will move. So, it's It just is what it is, man. So, this So, money needs to change his tax when you go to Florida or Texas.

Yeah. That's the blue states down there. So, So, So, uh here here is my mandate. If if it even ends up on the ballot, I start looking. It's not an immediate exit plan. I would want to see if California can uh flip red. Uh but, if it's on the ballot, I start getting serious about finding out if Drew likes Florida and how we deal with Lynn uh being in Arizona. True statement. Uh and if it actually passes, then it's it's peace out to California. Sheesh. Sheesh.

Sheesh. Sheesh. Crazy. Um Crazy. Um Crazy. Um there was another What was it? Nor- Norway? When the Laffer curve was undefeated again? So, it's it's one of those things where I guess they're just going to have to figure it out the hard way. So, this is an example from Norway. They their wealth in tax increase was expected to raise 146 million. Instead, it led to a 448 million net loss as 54 billion wealth left the country, reducing the tax revenues by 594 million. So, they increased the tax thinking like, "Okay, we can raise this amount." They actually lost that amount cuz a bunch of people left and ended up taking their tax base with them.

Um Um Um Yep. Okay, so I'm going to now go Ontario warehouse uh burner arsonist Really fast just before you blow past this because I I want to make sure that we plant flags as we go because America is headed down this path. path. path. Yeah, that's where I was going. So, again, Norway just tried it. They've run the experiment for you. They thought it would generate 146 million. It led to almost $500 million in net loss. Uh people will leave. You've got the Momma Donny thing popping off now where he stood outside of Ken Griffin's uh second apartment in New York City uh cuz he does already live in Florida um and said that Ken Griffin and people like him need to pay more money.

And so, Ken said, "Well, uh maybe I just won't be doing the $6 billion investment that was going to bring 21,000 jobs, I think, to New York. Maybe I just won't do that." in New York. And I get that people think things like that are impossible. It is not. I assure you. So, I forget the amount of money that's already left California, not may leave California, that has already left California. Remember, there is a staggeringly small number of billionaires. So, it does not take many of them to move for it to have meaningful impact.

meaningful impact. meaningful impact. So, yeah, I'm I am really hopeful that people will just look at the numbers. Just look at the math. The math will give you all the guidance that you need. Um trying to confiscate more wealth does not yield more returns, especially not when people think it's unjust because people will cite things like, "Well, after World War II, Tom, the progressive tax rate went up to 90%." Yes, that was a time where people actually believed, guess what? They actually were getting less tax revenue at 90% per taxpayer than they get now, okay?

Again, that's per taxpayer. This is not just like, "Oh, well, obviously because the population was small." Per taxpayer. At 90%, they were getting less revenue than they get now. So, this is one, just run the math. Run the math. We don't have to call names. Just run the math. Look at it. It doesn't work. So, uh if you want to get more money in taxes, the key is simplify the tax code so you can actually get more money so that it's harder to dodge. And then, number two is get the economy growing.

Right now, the economy is on life support. Get the economy growing, balance the budget. Don't waste You're spending $1.2 trillion a year on interest. Imagine what you could do to the infrastructure of business to make that really sing, to get your economy really humming instead of spending it on interest on the debt. Um Um Um that brings us to Rand Paul's point. Yes, it does. Which he's done this before, but it's nice to highlight people who have solutions. I've introduced the six penny plan because the answer to our debt crisis isn't complicated.

Cut six cents off every dollar. Balance the budget in 5 years. Protect your children's future. The only thing standing in the way is Washington's refusal to live within its means. That's so true. Let's read that sexy flirtatious sentence one more time. The only thing standing in the way is Washington's refusal to live within its means. That's it. Balance the budget. If you balance the budget, everything starts getting better. That is stopping the bleeding. I'm not saying overnight the populism goes away or anything like that, but you get yourself on the right track.

You no longer have terminal cancer. You may still be in rough shape, but you don't have terminal cancer. I I think that's the hard part that we're in now where people we are a microwave society now and we want a microwave solution. And it seems that every solution that we're offering, like let's take Rand Paul's, it'll take 5 years just to balance the budget and then now we need to start cutting back on the budget. We need to start reinvesting. So, it's another 10-15 year plan.

plan. plan. Um I think technically this one's five, so it's so it's so it's But I mean, if we're balanced, it's to your point, we're now at we're now starting at zero. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, now we need to start putting in the incentive structures and doing things for business. that would be like 30 years. And it it will really, really take you a long time. But um everything starts getting better the day that you stop adding to the deficit. It if you did that, it we would be in a much better position.

So, it would make a tremendous difference. And I I wouldn't want people to feel hopeless like in the face of the $39 trillion, which be call it 42, 44, somewhere in there, even if we start reducing the deficit over the next 5 years before we finally get it to stop. Um but man, if we were able to do that, like if everybody got behind the idea of yes, we're committed to this, we are going to balance the budget, um psychologically it would do something massive to investment into the US because they would realize we're not on a suicide run anymore.

Yeah. Uh if we cleaned up the fraud and we started to balance the budget, I think you would see global investment double. I mean, maybe more. Got you. That's obviously me pulling that number out of my ass, but that's like the the sense of optimism and like, oh [ __ ] they really got their stuff together, I think would be massive. With our short attention spans and our lack of patience for 5 years to actually balance the budget, do you think there is a policy short-term solution, something that we could do in the interim to get the ball rolling until we get to 5 years?

Grow. There's nothing else. Right now, your your uh Trump is running the game of chicken. And he's saying via AI um and crypto in a different way, but I can grow this economy. Mhm. And we'll grow faster than we're accumulating debt. I don't see any reason right now today to believe that that's true. So, as of right now, the things that he's trying have not worked. He's got to accept that. And so, I'm not sure what else he's looking at to say, oh no, no, we're going to pull it I mean, I do.

He's basically now trying to confiscate oil. That's the the next step in his master plan. But um yeah, it nice idea, shame about the execution. It just isn't working. Um and I have to eat crow because Mom and Daddy, I was rooting for you. I was so excited to find out about the new policy, but he announced that the um city-owned grocery store is going to cost a reported $30 million to open. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And somebody did a uh I forgot like a commercial real estate business leasing uh listing and there was bodegas, grocery stores.

Now, mind you, this wasn't Whole Foods with two stories, nothing like that. But there were other groceries, Whole Foods stores other grocery stores and convenience stores that were already existing open, just looking for new buyers. $2 million runway rates, things like that. $900,000, $1.2 million, $2 million, things like that. And I was like, okay, if an entrepreneur would approach it, he would have been like, okay, I'm going to buy one of these 1.2s, upgrade it a little bit, throw this on there, I'll spend five in marketing, whatever.

Now, at least I spent seven, eight, 10. It's a third of the cost. Whereas when you take it with the government, I see out of this 30, it's going to be 6 million in consultants, another 8 million in construction cost, and nothing's actually going to get into the actual grocery store until they have like a million dollars left, and then they're going to ask to more for to raise more money. So, that's why I'm like, Mom and Daddy, I was rooting for you, and you rooting I was rooting for you, and you literally just did like the playbook in real time.

So, Well, also, here's the thing. So, I don't know what mechanism they're going to use to um keep the cost down, but as soon as you artificially keep the cost down, then you can afford the items or they go down in quality. in quality. in quality. It's like think about your entire world being the 99 cent store. Mhm. It's like 99 cent store is not exactly known for uh high nutritional value or you know what I mean? So, it's like you you're going to have to do something to drive those costs down.

Now, innovation would be the fantasy. And listen, I will [ __ ] cheer for this guy until my hands bleed if he actually puts together like an innovation program and they like are doing new [ __ ] like they come in and and Jeff Bezos it and they just figure out how to drive those costs down through innovation on supply chains and stuff like that. That would be incredible. incredible. incredible. Then I'd be like, hey, that guy, like trust me. I want the outcome. And if we get there by a guy who labels himself a socialist, cool, as long as we actually get there.

get there. get there. Um but I have a very bad feeling that we are not going to do this through innovation, which is the only thing that has proven that it works. Um we are going to try to force the prices to be low, and that doesn't work. Woo, man. Woo, man. Woo, man. Um and then the last hit on this, I've been like breezing around. There's just some kind of quick hits. Seems like there's another there's another there's another another round of fraud in California.

This one is surrounding Fire Aid. That was at concert slash tour that they did briefly. It raised up a reported 800 million. million. million. Um but apparently nothing, not a single dollar was given to the people. It hasn't gotten through. Um Section 8 was supposed to be benefited from it. This was to go to um to help rebuild the houses. And I think as it stands right now, there's only like two or three houses that got rebuilt. Oh. Oh. Oh. Like it's like really bad. Damn.

But honestly, with this one, I have beef with nonprofits in general cuz I seen the Red Cross's breakdown years ago that for every dollar, like two cents ends up getting to the cause. They have to like filter out all that stuff. So, it was like seeing this, I wasn't as surprised. The same thing happened with Haiti after we raised 8 billion for that massive earthquake. massive earthquake. massive earthquake. 8 billion? 8 billion? 8 billion? 8 billion dollars total all in with every every country's contribution and everything like that.

We built this soccer stadium for condos, and that was it. It was literally like a row of like townhouses that like US Aid was staying at the first week as they were like sending members and stuff like that. And they built like a soccer stadium. I guess to like inspire like kids or something like that, but infrastructure still terrible. No schools, no nothing like that. And everybody kind of ran off with the money. So, I like I thought it was like, okay, that's this specific situation, but it's now starting to seem like any type of NGO, any type of nonprofit, the more we're starting to get transparency in these things, like money just disappears.

That's so brutal, man. That is so brutal. I didn't know that story about Haiti. Yeah. Uh that's heartbreaking. Yeah, I totally agree. The fact that all of this money is going to be siphoned out through all of the administrative things in the NGOs is is a crime. And we all want to do something, and so we donate the money, and then in the end, it's just like it doesn't end up doing something, and yet people keep doing it cuz like everybody knows that this is what ends up happening.

But it's really frustrating, man. It's really, really frustrating that we are unable to have the shared will to say this is the right thing, and so we're going to create these um ultra-efficient ways of I mean, how would you even funnel the the donated money? Because the reality is it's really what the government should be focused on is deregulation, which is what they said they were going to do, by the way. We're going to cut all the red tape. Obviously did not do that. Uh they need to deregulate.

They need to get the private companies in there. And then let the market do what the market is going to do. Now, are there light touch regulations that they could put to make sure that people aren't getting abused? Maybe. Have to really think about that cuz you end up thinking you're doing something good, and then the companies use the regulatory capture to make sure they're the only ones that are trusted, and then they use that to be able to jack the prices up. Uh so, yeah, it's uh it's very disheartening that the government just doesn't get out of the way.

Wild. All right, we got some more super chats. chats. chats. Yes. Let's go. From George Hansben says, welcome back. I give you this post-inflation $10 to say how much I appreciate you, Drew and the crew, being live again. Didn't know how much I missed the live shows until I only had insightful shots to watch. Uh not the same. Thank you. Uh it was uh incredible trip that I went on. So from that perspective, I'm I'm very grateful that you guys have given me that space because I truly understand how delicate community is and that going radio silent for that long is absolutely terrible for community building.

So much much much appreciated. But if I'm going to do this forever, I've got to be able to have a life that is joyful and this was a celebration for my 50th birthday. And I actually was able to get the majority of the family that I spend like really close time with and we took them all to Europe and it was absolutely incredible what just unforgettable trip. like mixed. like mixed. like mixed. Both sides. Yeah, it was wild. Very light on drama. I won't say no drama.

drama. drama. That makes it interesting. You need a little little salt and drama. We had some. some. We had some. But it was really extraordinary. And so it was um Yeah, a big ask of me to be gone that long and I appreciate you guys giving me the space and for being so generous in welcoming me back. So thank you guys. And jumping in on his second chat talking about starting up the workout challenge again. We should. G has embarrassed all of us here and then Alex one up him.

So we have two co-workers here. G ran a half marathon. Full. Full. Full. My bad. All right. I wish you guys could have heard him. Full marathon. Full marathon. My bad. He clicked his teeth and everything. That was wild. I don't know the difference. I don't know at all. So I'm I'm I'm marathon dumb. He did. It was awesome by the way. Another one of our co-workers just did Iron Man. So yes, Impact Theory is breaking barriers. We need to start working out. Eric's doing jujitsu.

We need We need to get off the couch. We'll start We'll start something up. We'll start Summer's right around the corner. corner. corner. it. Let's get it. RJ Johnson says Tom, while you were gone, the world experienced a paradigm shift. Opus 4.7, Codex/GPT 5.5, Kimmy K 2.6, Deep Seek V4. All coding engines have been autonomous error correction. Claude code built a QuickBooks replacement in one day. Dude, see that AI moves fast. Moves fast. That is why whenever somebody is like, man, AI hasn't done anything. I'm like AI is getting better by the day.

Two weeks in AI land is like two years. It's wild. So yes, do keep in mind that it is going to get better and better and better and better. So Yeah, Deep Seek apparently has actually caught up now and then with it being open source Like over a trillion What do they call those? Data points. I forget the name for it, but yeah, over a trillion. It's crazy. 70 billion used to be like, oh my god. It's wild. It's wild. It's wild. DK the Sage says insurance was never the solution.

The second the government made everyone have car insurance, the rates went up across the board. Healthcare would be a bit better if they were treated like a public utility like electricity. electricity. electricity. Do you guys not agree that [ __ ] the electric company? Like you need competition. You competition. You need competition. You want there to be 300 of these companies just all going to bat to innovate and create new stuff. You want them yes to be able to get rich because that will incentivize the best and the brightest to flood into innovate and to do cool stuff.

We've got a hunger for that. We've got a hunger for people to be able to do something really extraordinary and pass those benefits on to us as the consumer. But we have to be very careful about the ways the government come in and [ __ ] things up. Did you guys know that that that I think I think I think I don't remember the exact company. I'm going to say Wonder Bread, but Wonder Bread may be a stand-in. They tried to sell it as bread in Europe somewhere and Europe was like based on the ingredients, you can't call this bread.

This is cake. Dude, every time I come back from Europe. So I eat like a host beast when I'm on these trips. I had so much pizza. It was glorious. I even had a couple desserts. It was amazing and no joint pain. pain. pain. I come back. I have I'm not kidding. Two slices, not three. Two slices of pizza one Saturday, one Sunday. Vegan pizza and I woke up today and my hands hurt and my knee hurt. So I was like like like there's something we're doing to our food supply.

Anyway, so yeah, innovation. You need people to innovate. innovate. innovate. Next up, Luke Adam Miller says Tom, would you like the president of Stockholm City Council to explain to your audience why Sweden doesn't have a socialist economy and why social democracy is different from the DSA. He's a friend. I could ask. Stay legendary. legendary. legendary. Well, Well, Well, that's interesting. I don't know him. I don't know if he's a good talker, but if he is a good talker, that actually could be interesting. be interesting. be interesting.

I do understand it myself, so I can certainly speed run this, but never turn down an opportunity to speak to somebody interesting. So if that's a real offer and and and Drew can get me some footage of him speaking, speaking, speaking, that would certainly be interesting. Yes, they they social democracies are different than democratic socialists. This I'm well aware of. DK the Sage says if I'm having a heart attack, I don't get to shop around for the best rates. You can't even walk into a hospital and ask how much a procedure is.

It has to happen first. I've been charged 700 before for three Advil before. It's crazy. I don't know what it is that has to happen first, but I will say this. whatever has to happen. Right. If you guys aren't just furiously angry that people without insurance get charged less than people with insurance, your anger is not placed in the right place. Like that is crazy town. So that tells you that they're running a racket. It's a racket. Yeah, I I think there's something to that cuz it was Dave Ramsey who said you shouldn't have dental and eye insurance.

And I was like, no, like you need that. Like that's important. Like I had a kid. I was like, no, I definitely have to. And then I ran that experiment two years ago where I was like, you know what? I'm not going to have any like I'll pay everything out of pocket. And it cost me 150 bucks to clean her teeth. You know, I did it to I think we do it twice a year. year. year. It was one time in the summer and then like the end of the year checkup.

But it was like still like, all right, I paid 200 bucks all in and if I would have had it with the insurance, it would have been like $20 a month. So yeah, I saved 40 bucks, but it's one of those things where it's like if you take a step back, if she doesn't have crowns, if she doesn't have like braces and all these other things, do you really need insurance? insurance? insurance? So I can only imagine what it is on the health insurance side. That one I'm just a bit more crazy about cuz I'm like, okay, what's the if she gets hit by a car and she's bleeding and I need to just rush her to the emergency room, insurance.

But after seeing some of these videos, it's like maybe you don't need insurance and you could just do a payment plan and you'll save a bunch of money. I don't know, but Yes. So there are many solutions. The one that we're doing currently is dumb. And so just getting everybody on board with that starting position would go a long way. Yeah, and again, if we balance the budget and we say the thing that we want to pay for is health care for all, just make sure you look at the trade-offs and the likelihood of the certain parasitical things that will happen there.

Clean that up. Find a system that actually works for people. Great. I have no problem with that. It's just I really really want people to understand the physics of innovation and how costs come down over time. They come down over time because somebody somewhere is incentivized to pour their life energy into creating something better. And doing that in a government, it just doesn't happen. The incentive structure isn't there. So you don't end up attracting the best and the brightest. Now, if you want to do something like they do in China where it's like the best and the brightest are desperately trying to be a part of the government so they don't get killed or disappeared.

It's like, yeah, you can do that. That's a real thing. But is that really what we want to do? So that would be my advice. Find a way to unchain the innovation. I like it. All right, speaking of unchaining the innovation, the next Zero to Founder Masterclass is Thursday, May 7th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time. I'm going to be teaching you guys my like now patented formula on how to use AI to launch a company. I am trying to get more people to launch companies partly because so many people have been losing their jobs lately and because it will show you just how much you can control your destiny.

AI has made it possible like never before to build a company cheaply and do many things by yourself. And we're seeing a lot of our entrepreneurs that have gone through the program falling in love with the idea of being a solopreneur. I don't know if you guys saw it, but it looks like we actually have had the first solo company achieve a valuation on paper, but a valuation of a billion dollars. He hasn't done a billion in revenue yet. And he did hire his first employee now, so keep that in mind, but it was his brother.

So some pretty fascinating stories coming out of real world success. And that guy was doing Man, I want to say he's already done like a hundred million dollars in revenue off of one employee. I mean that's absolutely incredible. So all right, with that the next one is coming up Thursday, May 7th. I'm so glad to be back. Love you guys and I will see you on Wednesday. Peace.